I chair the Stop and Search Scrutiny Implementation Panel at the Metropolitan Police Authority. This session is about training and so the head of training and various other Met officers are present to give evidence. I suppose the argument of the day was a continuation of where stop and search policy and implementation will sit in the Met.

Commander Brian Paddick is now heading their working group and hopefully he can ensure the issue is dealt with properly. If it doesn’t find a home and isn’t led by someone with clout – it will go the way of all Met good intentions

The other interest of the morning was on training. I bring up a recent occasion when several of us went to the Commons and passed through the new security scan and body search. One of our number was extremely roughly treated – curt and unpleasant.

I ask whether there is any central emphasis on not being friendly, keeping a formal distance and a sort of roughness and authoritarian manner being a requirement? Oh no – said a very, very senior officer – but you know (and I paraphrase) some of the people going into the Commons behave extremely arrogantly when we have to search them – and after you have had a few of those, well – the people doing the searches are only human…

There was a kind of shock amongst the panel members. For though quite possibly the case the implication was there were lots of rude toffs and we were dismayed that such minor encounters could bring forth such unprofessional behaviour. The implication for how police would behave in a more confrontational stop and search situation was pretty poor.

I point out that we are trying to get to a standard of training where the professional behaviour mitigates against natural instinct – otherwise we will never eradicate discrimination in stop and search.

Also, my personal view is that what goes around comes around, and until the police learn to be a bit better at all their encounters the problems will not get better. It is frustrating at this stage to see how superficial some of the warm words are.

Evening of paperwork and email. Election correspondence is building – and flooding in!