The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “I welcome the launch of this pilot which was a key commitment in my Action Plan to improve trust and confidence in the Met police. 

“We’ve listened and responded to the continued frustrations of Black Londoners, who are concerned that they are six times more likely to be stopped in a car than a white person, and this pilot will help us to begin to assess and address concerns about racial profiling and disproportionality in our city.

"Road Traffic Stops are an important tool the police have to keep Londoners safe but they can have a huge impact on community relations and deserve the same level of scrutiny as any other kind of police stop-and-search power. For many Londoners, that interaction is their defining experience of the police and that is why we are committed to carefully scrutinising the outcome of the pilot and acting on its findings. I have also written to the Home Secretary to ask her to make it compulsory for the police to collect and publish data on ethnicity for Road Traffic Stops because it is absolutely vital that our police service retains the trust and confidence of all the communities it serves.”

Photo by Shayan Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doorn, Wikimedia commons.