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Child Q: Labour pledges mandatory rules around strip searching children

2 mins read Youth Justice
The Labour Party has promised to introduce mandatory rules and safeguards around the strip searching of children by police officers, should it win the next general election.
Yvette Cooper has also pledged to 'outlaw' the exploitation of children. Picture: Parliament UK
Yvette Cooper has also pledged to 'outlaw' the exploitation of children. Picture: Parliament UK

The move comes following a case earlier this year in which a 15-year-old girl, referred to as Child Q, was strip searched by police at her school in London while on her period, after being wrongly accused of possessing drugs.

At this week’s Labour Party conference shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Labour will strengthen police standards – overhauling training, vetting and misconduct procedures.

“And new mandatory rules and safeguards on the strip searching of children so that an awful case like that of Child Q, a black teenage girl in East London can never happen again.”

Analysis released by children’s commissioner for England Rachel de Souza last month found that 650 children were strip searched by Metropolitan police officers between 2018 and 2020. A quarter of these children were aged between 10 and 15.

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