Rules governing police strip-searches of children and the vetting procedures for new officers will be tightened under a Labour government, Yvette Cooper has promised, as the party sought to attack the Conservatives’ record on crime.
In an annual conference speech on Tuesday that outlined plans to overhaul immigration policies in place under the Conservatives, the shadow home secretary said she would drop the “deeply damaging, extortionately expensive, unworkable and unethical Rwanda plan”.
Following an outcry over police vetting procedures in the wake of the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving officer, and revulsion at the treatment of Child Q, who was strip-searched by female Metropolitan police officers in 2020 after she was wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis, Cooper said there would a review of rules under a Keir Starmer-led government.
“Labour will strengthen police standards – overhauling training, vetting and misconduct procedures. And new mandatory rules and safeguards on the strip-searching of children so that an awful case like that of Child Q, a black teenage girl in east London, can never happen again,” she said.
The Home Office under Cooper would review the rules around strip-searching of children under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and introduce mandatory national standards on police conduct issues – such as vetting – where rules are currently voluntary, it is understood.
Cooper pledged her party would “rebuild community policing” and...
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