A British Bangladeshi MP has said that Westminster security stops her on a “daily basis” out of what she described “in-built suspicion” of people of colour.
Labour MP Rupa Huq, however, is not the first to raise concerns about racism in parliament.
Speaking in a debate on police’s stop-and-search powers, she said BAME MPs regularly have their access to the House of Commons estate questioned.
“Because of our pigmentation, we are treated differently. The in-built suspicion of people and the idea that they can be stopped while going about their lawful business pervades all levels of society.
“And I can state here today that I have been stopped more times in this place since my election in 2015 than I ever had in 43 years outside.
“This still occurs on a daily basis, presumably because my face does not fit.”
The Ealing Central and Acton MP said a parliamentary police officer complained about her response when she objected to being stopped.
“I have the correct pass, and the last time I gave the rejoinder that I had every right to be here, a complaint was made against me through the office of the Sergeant at Arms,” she said. “We all face that kind of thing.”
Last year, shadow women and equalities minister Dawn Butler revealed that a fellow MP mistook her for a cleaner when she was attempting to use a lift reserved for parliamentarians.
The debate on Wednesday was led by Huq’s fellow Labour MP Naz Shah who said that she supported more targeted, intelligence-led stop-and-search measures.
But, she said, stop-and-search tactics were set “more by the culture set by chief officers than by local crime trends”.
She said: “Evidence shows that stop-and-search is a blunt tool for the prevention and detection of crime, and has a profoundly negative impact on police-community relations.
“Home Office research in 2000 showed that stop-and-search had only a marginal role in combating crime, because its use was not linked to patterns of crime, and that searches for drugs were fuelling unproductive searches of ethnic minorities, particularly young black men.”