The home secretary, Amber Rudd, has backed the Metropolitan police commissioner over the use of stop and search in tackling rising knife crime in a move that marks a change in tone since Theresa May was in the Home Office.

Rudd made clear she was in favour of targeted use of stop and search, after Cressida Dick revealed she was encouraging her officers to use the tactic and was determined to fight the perception that it was discriminatory, despite warnings that any increase in stop and search would further alienate black and minority ethnic communities.

Writing in the Times (£) on Wednesday, the home secretary conceded that stop and search had been badly used in the past but gave her backing to its use in an appropriate way, especially to target rising levels of knife crime and acid attacks.



Rudd wrote: “Officers who use stop and search appropriately, with reasonable grounds and in a targeted and intelligence-led way, will always have my full support. This includes using stop and search to confront the use of acid as an appalling weapon of violence.”

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London,has also endorsed Met chief’s position, arguing that people should expect the use of stop and search to increase in order to keep London safe. He said he supports the use of targeted, intelligence-led stop and search in conjunction with the rollout of police wearing body cameras, as long as there was no discriminate overuse of the tactic.

The strategy has clearly moved in a different direction since May was home secretary when she changed police guidelines to reduce the use of stop and search, arguing as many as a 250,000 searches a year were probably carried out illegally.



Rudd intervened while May was out of the country on her third week of summer holiday. One Whitehall source acknowledged it was a change in tone compared with May’s time in the department, but argued the main aim was to give police the message that they should have the confidence to use the tactic when appropriate, without undermining the prime minister’s past attempts to outlaw its discriminatory use.

The home secretary pointed out that the latest figures showed that the numbers of stops had come down by almost two-thirds since May’s overhaul, while the stop-to-arrest rate was at an all-time high and had doubled in London since 2009-2010. “Police are targeting the right suspects better than ever before,” Rudd said.

Rudd’s approach chimed with comments Dick made to the BBC Asian Network on Tuesday. The commissioner said police were using the tactic fairly: “In London about one in three stop and searches result in something being found. That shows we are not just doing random work.”

Amber Rudd conceded that stop and search had been used badly in the past. Photograph: PA

Figures show black people are six times more likely than white people to be stopped by officers. However, asked about concerns that people were being searched because of the colour of their skin, Dick said: “We need to fight that perception; we are absolutely not doing that. It has no place in modern policing. Our outcome rate – one in three positive – is the same whether you are black, white or whoever you are.”

Dick reiterated those comments in an article for the Times (£), writing: “I want officers to feel confident to use this power. It must, of course, be lawful, done courteously and subject to proper scrutiny.

“I will support my officers if the number of stop and searches rises in the fight against knife crime and street violence. I believe the vast majority of the public will too.”

The new approach was not criticised by Labour, but Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, warned that an increase stop and search would not make up for reductions in the number of frontline officers. “Labour supports evidence-based stop and search, not a return to the bad old days of discriminatory stops that focus on particular communities,” she said.

“The government should stop trying to con the public by attempting to cover up their failure to tackle rising violent crime. When the crime stats were released they insisted crime was falling, but now they want to increase stop and search.”

Ben Summerskill, director of the Criminal Justice Alliance, a coalition of 120 groups, said it was misleading to suggest a reduction in the use of stop and search was linked to the recent rise in knife crime.



He said: “Stop and search has fallen at the same time as a long-term reduction in knife crime, until a year ago. So there’s no certainty at all that the two are linked in the easy way suggested by the home secretary.

“The chance of a black person being stopped is now six times that of a white person, up from four times a year earlier. Amber Rudd should be aware that such disproportionate use was identified successively by the Scarman report, the Macpherson report and after the 2011 riots as hugely corrosive to future community relations.”