Badenoch criticises Macpherson report and calls for more stop and search

Tory leader takes aim at police guidance and says more black boys searched means more black lives saved

Kemi Badenoch has argued that Britain took a wrong turn after the landmark Macpherson report into the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence , and said that it didn’t matter how many young black boys were stopped and searched by police.

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.

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.

“All these crimes could have been stopped if people had intervened instead of having a fear of being called racist,” she said.

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.

“Stephen Lawrence’s murder resulted in the influential Macpherson report, a report that wanted to put right what went wrong with policing in the 1990s,” said Badenoch.

“However, 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.”