Two-tier Tuesday! Labour civil conflict over police and justice disaster | Politics | News | EUROtoday

Police shouldn’t be affect by “insane political correctness” when they make arrests, Sir Keir Starmer has been warned.

A new report by the National Police Chiefs’ Council called for “equality of policing outcomes” for different ethnic groups.

The Anti-Racism Commitment also stated that aiming for racial equity did not mean “treating everyone the same or being colour blind”.

It adds that officers must “consider cultural impact and community trauma when using their powers”.

The Tories on Tuesday vowed to table amendments to Labour’s Crime and Policing Bill to block the plans and prevent a repeat of the sentencing crisis.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the Daily Express: “This is Keir Starmer’s two-tier justice at its very worst.

“It is appalling that this document says that people should be treated differently depending on their race.

“Everyone should be treated equally before the law regardless of colour, yet this document says the opposite.

“The document also refers to people being criminalised by the police – this is absurd, because people criminalise themselves when they break the law.

“And it asks for the police to artificially engineer the same arrest and charge rates across ethic groups, with no reference to underlying levels of criminality.

“The police should treat everyone the same and investigate all crime.

“There is no room for social engineering or insane political correctness when it comes to arresting criminals and protecting the public. I will do everything I can to get this appalling guidance reversed.”

The latest two-tier row comes as Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood refused to back Sentencing Council chairman Lord Justice William Davis after controversial new guidance said ethnic minorities offenders could be treated differently to white criminals.

Ms Mahmood said she was “not inquisitive about making a private assault on anyone” and defended those working in the judicial system.

Her remarks came after she insisted “all have to be equal earlier than the legislation” as the Government introduced a Bill following the row over guidelines, which were scheduled to come into force on Tuesday but delayed due to the proposed legislation.

The new law will ban the Sentencing Council from making guidelines about pre-sentence reports with specific reference to an offender’s personal characteristics.

Ms Mahmood told the Commons: “My view is that regardless of the noble intentions behind them in trying to handle inequalities in our justice system, these pointers sacrifice an excessive amount of.

“They raise a serious question of policy. In the pursuit of equality of outcome for different religions and races should we treat them differently before the eyes of the law, and move so far away from an ideal that has underpinned justice in this country for centuries? On this, I am clear. All must be equal before the law.”

Conservative shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick mentioned Ms Mahmood had proven “incompetence” in her dealing with of the Sentencing Council’s pointers.

Mr Jenrick mentioned: “(She) must be living a parallel universe if she’s giving herself a pat on the back today.

“The truth is she has completely lost control of the justice system. She sat on her hands for weeks, she took seven days to gather her thoughts and put her views in writing to the Sentencing Council. Her incompetence took this down to the wire.”

He mentioned he was involved some offenders had been sentenced beneath the brand new steering between courts sitting at 10am and the halt being introduced at noon.

“That raises the very real prospect that magistrates and judges sitting from 10am this morning were unaware of this chaotic last-minute change and did sentence people under guidelines that the Justice Secretary herself has conceded are two-tier,” he mentioned.

Mr Jenrick added the identical challenge may very well be repeated once more except critical reform is undertaken of the Sentencing Council.

He mentioned: “This doesn’t tackle the root cause of the problem at all.

“A authorized quango that’s activist, which holds views fully divergent to the general public, to parliament, and, now we’re informed, to the Government.”

Mother of the House Diane Abbott has said some MPs are “astonished” at Ms Mahmood’s response to the Sentencing Council’s proposed new guidelines.

The Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington told the Commons: “I realise this isn’t a preferred view within the House however the Justice Secretary can be conscious that a few of us are astonished that she thinks our judges are so weak-minded as to be affected by what are pointers in relation to how they sentence black and brown defendants.”

Ms Abbott said: “Report after report, repeated statistical evaluation, has demonstrated what a few of us think about to be unfairness in relation to black and brown individuals, and the legal justice system.

“But the Justice Secretary will also be aware that there is a reason why the Sentencing Council is independent – it was made a statutory independent body to avoid even the appearance of ministerial interfering in sentencing. This is not the United States, our political system and our judicial system are entirely separate.”