Stop-and-search vital to combat threat: Campbell

DUP MP Gregory Campbell says stop-and-search powers are a vital tool required by the PSNI to combat the terrorist threat with dissident republican activity currently on the rise.

He was speaking during a debate on Government plans to reform stop-and-search legislation at Westminster.

The debate followed an EU ruling last year that Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which permitted random stop and search without reasonable suspicion was illegal.

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Following a Counter-Terrorism Legislation Review Home Secretary Theresa May decided to replace section 44 with a more tightly circumscribed power with Secretary of State Owen Paterson vowing to make a similar amendment to the power of stop-and-search in Northern Ireland.

Last summer the PSNI was temporarily barred from using section 44 although a PSNI spokesperson insisted stop-and-search remained an essential tool in countering the terrorist threat.

Addressing NIO Minister of State Hugo Swire at the House of Commons, East Londonderry MP Gregory Campbell backed the PSNI view saying stop-and-search is a vital tool for the police in combating the threat from violent republicans.

He said: “When the police in Northern Ireland have used stop-and-search powers, they have used them when there is a reasonable suspicion of terrorist activity.”

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He asked: “Will the Minister reassure the House that that will continue to be the case? Dissident republican activity is on the rise, and those powers are required principally and forcibly by the police to thwart that terrorist threat.”

The Minister replied: “Look, we want to make those powers watertight; we do not wish to water them down.

“It is because the PSNI has used those powers proportionately that we are where we are with section 44, and the Home Secretary was clear in saying that.

“She went to Northern Ireland and specifically said that the PSNI had been behaving properly, but we do not want anything we do in Northern Ireland to be subject to a possible challenge.

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“That is why we are taking that action, and why a code of practice will be worked out in conjunction with the PSNI-as I say, to make the powers that we have watertight, not to water them down.”

During the same debate Foyle MP Mark Durkan complained that there are no plans to curb the army’s powers of stop-and-search in Northern Ireland.

Mr Durkan said that these powers exceeded those granted to the police under the 2007 Act.

He stated: “They are not subject to annual renewal by Parliament as emergency provisions, as they were throughout the years of the troubles, and are now permanent and not subject to any of the accountability checks that apply to police powers.”

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Mr Swire replied: “The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the rising terrorist threat in Northern Ireland, and he will recognise the part played by the military’s bomb disposal units and the need to go about their business, not least in his own city of Londonderry, where unfortunately we had an incident recently.”