{"id":629467,"date":"2026-06-09T16:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T16:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/629467\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T16:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T16:09:11","slug":"badenoch-criticises-macpherson-report-and-calls-for-more-stop-and-search-kemi-badenoch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/629467\/","title":{"rendered":"Badenoch criticises Macpherson report and calls for more stop and search | Kemi Badenoch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kemi Badenoch has argued that Britain took a wrong turn after the landmark Macpherson report into the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence<\/a>, and said that it didn\u2019t matter how many young black boys were stopped and searched by police.<\/p>\n

The Conservative leader made the comments as she announced plans to scrap the obligation on public bodies to consider how they can promote equality as she seeks to head off the challenge to her party from Reform UK.<\/p>\n

The Southport murders of three young girls, the Nottingham stabbings, and Manchester Arena bombing could all have been stopped if public authorities had not feared being called racist, Badenoch argued during a speech in which she cited the incidents as examples of where equalities law had gone too far.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these crimes could have been stopped if people had intervened instead of having a fear of being called racist,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Badenoch also used the murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, who was falsely accused of racism by his murderer, as a reason for why she believed a wrong turn had been taken by the Macpherson report, which was prompted by the racially motivated killing of Lawrence in 1993.<\/p>\n

\u201cStephen Lawrence\u2019s murder resulted in the influential Macpherson report, a report that wanted to put right what went wrong with policing in the 1990s,\u201d said Badenoch.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, in attempting to do so, it also enshrined a principle which I believe is wrong: that a racist incident is racist, if it is perceived as racist by the victim or any other person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis may have made sense in a different context long ago, but today when we look at the response to Henry Nowak\u2019s murder, and the police\u2019s acceptance that the murderer was correct when he accused Henry of racism, it\u2019s clear that mere accusations are being accepted as facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report had ultimately morphed into the public sector equality duty (PSED), a legal requirement obliging public bodies to think how they can improve society and promote equality in their day-to-day business, and which the Tory leader committed to scrapping.<\/p>\n

Badenoch listed other examples where she felt public bodies including the police were prevented from doing their jobs because they were \u201cconditioned to see minority status as victimhood\u201d.<\/p>\n

Referring to her party\u2019s plans to triple stop and search incidents, she took aim at police guidance that she said explicitly stated people should be treated differently based on their protected characteristics, adding: \u201cI\u2019m afraid it doesn\u2019t matter if more black boys are searched, because it means more black lives will be saved.\u201d<\/p>\n

A report earlier this year<\/a> found that black people are up to 48 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police in some of London\u2019s best-off areas.<\/p>\n

In questions after her speech at the Institute for Government thinktank, Badenoch said that when black boys are searched, more knives are found, and that it was the mothers of young black people who had been killed by their peers who had told her they wanted stop and search.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not going to run away from an outcry and allow other people\u2019s children to be killed just so I can have a quiet life,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Liz Kendall, the science secretary, said before the speech that Badenoch\u2019s plan to abolish the PSED would \u201cturn the clock back\u201d.<\/p>\n

She told Sky News: \u201cWhat she\u2019s saying is she wants to repeal a duty which stops pregnant women being sacked, women on maternity leave being sacked, which prevents discrimination against disabled people, which prevents discrimination on age grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Badenoch\u2019s plans also triggered a backlash from those in the charity sector, with the disability charity Sense describing the PSED as a \u201ccommonsense safeguard\u201d that ensured public bodies think about the impact of decisions on disabled people.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor disabled people, that can mean the difference between being able to access school, healthcare, transport or housing, and being shut out of those services altogether,\u201d said Harriet Edwards, director of influencing at the charity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe urge politicians to commit to not just keeping, but strengthening legislation which enhances the rights of disabled people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Badenoch also took aim at staff networks in public bodies that were set up to represent employees from black, Asian, LGBTQ+ and other communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they should not be given time off to carry out these activities. My experience of staff networks in the civil service was that they were actually a way for some people to create a clique or a cabal who were then furthering their own personal careers at the expense of other civil servants and the staff networks ended up being bad for some of their colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI even saw in some cases bullying of other people who didn\u2019t share their views, so staff networks should not be anything other than social organisations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kemi Badenoch has argued that Britain took a wrong turn after the landmark Macpherson report into the racist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-629467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}