Labour MPs furious at Blears' comments
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Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister, faced a backlash from Labour MPs yesterday over her comment that Muslims were more likely to be stopped and searched by police under the Government's anti-terrorist measures.
Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister, faced a backlash from Labour MPs yesterday over her comment that Muslims were more likely to be stopped and searched by police under the Government's anti-terrorist measures.
Ms Blears said Muslims should accept that they will be targeted by police because the new laws were geared to dealing with Islamic extremists.
Labour MPs were said to be "hopping mad" with Mrs Blears for her stance, which drew immediate condemnation from Muslim groups.
The Labour backbenchers said they feared that her remarks could put Labour MPs in marginal seats at risk, because they will further alienate Muslim voters who were already threatening to desert Labour because of the war on Iraq.
Alice Mahon, the retiring Labour MP for Halifax, a West Yorkshire seat with a high Muslim population, wrote a protest letter to Ms Blears last night, saying she was "dismayed" by her comments to the Home Affairs Select Committee.
Ms Mahon said: "It is wrong for the security service to single out any section of our community disproportionately.
"Your remarks will anger and isolate the Muslim community, who are already being unfairly blamed for the actions of a few extremists."
Tory MPs privately said they were going to make political capital out of Ms Blears' gaffe. A Conservative frontbencher said: "Labour MPs are furious. They are storming around hopping mad but Tory colleagues with Muslim voters are going to use Mrs Blears' words on their election leaflets. It is a gift."
The Prime Minister's official spokesman defended the minister. He said: "You have to be clear about what it is that Hazel Blears was saying. She understands there is a perception that stop-and-search powers are aimed particularly at one community, but ... what is happening is that those powers are aimed at those who are suspected of carrying out or planning certain activity who happen to come from one community. It is not police policy to aim these powers at a particular community."
Massoud Shadjareh, who chairs the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said Ms Blears' comments would be "music to the ears of racists". Mr Shadjareh, who sits on a Home Office advisory panel on stop and search, accused the minister of "playing an Islamophobia card".
Inayat Bunglawala, the spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said Mrs Blears was "scaremongering" to help get anti-terror laws allowing control orders on terror suspects on to the statue books.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission described her comment as irresponsible.
Raj Joshi, vice-chairman of the Society of Black Lawyers, said: "On the one hand we are told that we have made great inroads to deal with the spectre of racist and Islamophobic targeting and yet we are now told that perfectly innocent citizens can be stopped on the street, searched and, in the context of the debate going on in Parliament, locked up."
STOPPED BY THE POLICE
Abdurahman Jafar, 32, London barrister
"My wife and I were driving through King's Cross. Police were stopping [non-white] people. I asked a policeman why. He said, 'There are a lot of people dealing drugs here'. I said, 'What's that got to do with me'? It was insulting. Just because I'm a certain colour ... the fact that he pinpoints me is horrible. It's humiliating. You don't feel part of the country you grew up in and love."
Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, 47
"Twice I've been stopped at British airports. Once I was travelling to the US from Heathrow with the Mayor of Lahore. We both had beards and brown skin. Out of 65 mostly white people we were picked out. The other time I was travelling from Birmingham to Saudi Arabia with my wife and was asked if I was taking any money with me. When I said I was, they wanted bank receipts to prove it was mine."
Michael Eboda, 41, editor of New Nation
"I was stopped and searched by 30 armed officers in 2003; I was told it was because I was black and driving a high-value vehicle. If it really was intelligence-led policing and improved communities that would be one thing, but it just antagonises people. The chance of stopping a person who is an Islamic terrorist is minimal. It is a waste of police time."