NORTH Wiltshire MP James Gray has questioned the Home Secretary Threresa May on why police officers are employed to ask for the ethnicity of people they stop.

Speaking in Parliament he said: “A couple of years ago, I was stopped for the fairly inoffensive crime of failing to clear the frost from my windscreen. The police officer who stopped me inquired what my ethnic origin was.

“Will the Home Secretary therefore tell me whether there are officials locally, regionally or in the Home Office itself collecting that information? Would those people not be better deployed catching criminals?”

Theresa May responded by explaining that police officers might ask the question in a number of circumstances, including for stop-and-searches.

The Home Secretary added that these kinds of questions were how that in stop-and-search cases people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds are six times more likely to be stopped than young white males.

She concluded: “Such information has enabled us to bring about changes in stop-and-search, which I believe are absolutely right, to ensure that nobody on the streets of this country is stopped simply because of the colour of their skin.”