What has really happened since Macpherson's report

It has been 20 years since the publication of a report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager who had been stabbed to death in a racist attack in south-east London.

After his murder, a public inquiry - the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry - was ordered by the government.

Led by retired judge Sir William Macpherson, the inquiry published its findings on 24 February 1999.

But out of the 350-page report, two words had the biggest impact.

Sir William labelled London's Metropolitan Police as "institutionally racist".

Twenty years on, what do people think of the police service he criticised with such force?

Yvonne Lawson says she is "disheartened and appalled" to hear what young people think of the police.

She is the founder of the Godwin Lawson foundation, set-up after her 17-year-old son, Godwin, was stabbed to death in 2011.

In January, her foundation - aimed as reducing gang and knife crime - published a report after speaking to young people in Haringey, north London.

"We interviewed over 70 young people who expressed the same concerns I had 20 years ago.

"Most of the young people we spoke to said they didn't trust the police and wouldn't even call them when they or their friends were in danger."

She says not enough is being done to bridge the gap between black and ethnic minority communities and the police.

"One young person was even convinced the force didn't hire black people," she says.

"This is why we need more diversity. More young people from these backgrounds need to feel like they can identify with the police.

"This issue of trust kept coming up and once you identify with someone, you immediately start trust them more."

'They are still institutionally racist'

Leroy Logan, 62, is a former Met officer and ex-chairman of the National Black Police Association.

Twenty years after Macpherson, he says the force remains institutionally racist.

Logan says improvements were made post-Macpherson, such as hate crimes now being identified, but adds: "We still don't have the promotion of equality and justice in the organisation.

"Black officers are disproportionately subjected to discipline compared to their white counterparts.

"You still see black staff hugging the lower ranks and they aren't breaking through to the upper levels of the organisation."

He adds: "We still have disproportionality in stop and search, where a black person is five times more likely to be stopped by police than their white counterparts.

"They are 20 times more likely to be stopped under section 60 roadblocks and you are more likely to be Tasered if you are black.

"So even if this is unconscious bias, the fact the police force know these figures but have not decided to question why this is happening and haven't addressed it - it is institutionally racist."

Logan runs a leadership programme called Voyage Youth and says the young people he works with have the same attitude towards the police as he did in his younger years.

"They say they are over-policed and under-protected. They don't feel safe."

He adds: "In London we have white British gangs, Bengali gangs, eastern European, you name it.

"So why is it that 80% of them on the [police] gangs matrix is black? What happened to the rest of them?"

ir William Macpherson, a retired high court judge from rural Scotland, led the public inquiry into Mr Lawrence's murder and wrote the final report, and the findings he still stands by.

"I couldn't work miracles about making the police behave better or improving the relationships between black and white people.

"But I hoped that the inquiry might assist," he said.

At the time, the public inquiry heard from more than 80 witnesses and considered 100,000 pages of documents.

Sir William said the police needed to re-establish trust with minority ethnic communities.

He says he recognised there was a problem within the force, which was "worse than individual acts of racism".

Sir William says that he has been through his initial report "over and over again" since 1999 and stands by the recommendations he made.

He says the report allowed police to take a step in the right direction, but adds: "There's obviously a great deal more to be done."

'More accountability'

Image copyrightPA

Gwenton Sloley, 35, served three years in prison for armed robbery before going on to become one of Britain's leading anti-gangs advisors.

He has helped set up witness protection programmes, trained Met police officers, and had national contracts to work with young people.

But he too says the police are still institutionally racist.

Mr Sloley says the 1999 report gave minorities "a voice at a time when a lot of people were suffering in silence".

But he says there still needs to be "more accountability".

Tim Head, 25, is a volunteer for Hackney's Stop and Search Monitoring group and the Youth Independence Advisory Group, (YIAG).

"The impact of the report is felt in many ways and still talked about a lot, I think in terms of the rhetoric it's had a huge impact.

"In terms of actual changes on the ground, it's difficult to measure."

Despite the Met's claim that today's force is "utterly different" to 20 years ago, he says "a lot of the issues raised by Macpherson are still present".

"This isn't about officers using racist slurs, its about something much wider, much more structural. It's about the way demographics are policed.

"You can have very well meaning officers, who still support racist structures, even if their own personal beliefs aren't racist."

Cressida Dick, Britain's most senior police officer, believes the Macpherson Report was "the most important thing that's happened in my service".

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner says Macpherson "defined my generation of policing", adding: "We're not at all complacent."

Currently 14% of Met officers are from BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) backgrounds.

However, 40% of London's population comes from BAME backgrounds.

This means, if the Met continues to recruit at this rate, it will take 100 years to build a workforce that truly reflects the community it serves.

Despite this, Ms Dick says she does not believe the force is still institutionally racist.

"I simply don't see it as a helpful or accurate description. This is an utterly different Metropolitan Police", she claimed.

Amber Peat: Father vows to continue 'personal fight' for her

Pic-Mr Cook said he was not told when his daughter's surname was changed

The father of a 13-year-old girl who was found hanged said the authorities "let her down considerably".

Amber Peat left the Nottinghamshire home she shared with her mother and stepfather after a row. Her body was found three days later, on 2 June 2015.

Assistant coroner Laurinda Bower said agencies missed 11 opportunities to prevent Amber's death.

Her father Adrian Cook and his wife said those responsible for looking after Amber needed holding to account.

The inquest at Nottingham Coroner's Court heard the opportunities missed by schools and agencies in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire could have resulted in a referral to social care.

Mr Cook said: "In my mind they let her down considerably.

"It's a personal fight for me. I'm standing for Amber.

"Amber wasn't the first and she certainly won't be the last. It's disgraceful."

Mr Cook said he last saw Amber in 2013 when he took her for a meal.

He said he found out Amber, who lived in Mansfield, had gone missing when his wife saw something on Facebook.

After the three-week inquest, Ms Bower said Amber's mother and stepfather, Kelly and Daniel Peat, had given "very little, if any, consideration" to her welfare.

She also said she considered whether to return a conclusion of suicide but she could not be sure Amber intended to die.

During the inquest, Mr and Mrs Peat said allegations about her enduring punishments and excessive chores were untrue.

They called her a "drama queen" and said she had behavioural issues.

"I don't know how people can sit there and say their daughter is a liar," Mr Cook said.

"I don't think it was puberty that caused all the problems."

The coroner said the fact Amber saw Mr Cook only twice after her parents separated on Christmas Eve 2012 "would, no doubt, have had an emotional impact on Amber and a destabilising effect on her life".

Mr Cook said the Peat family would often move around without him knowing and he was not told when his daughter's surname was changed.

Amber's stepmother, Lynda Cook, who has been married to Mr Cook for four and a half years but never met Amber, said they were not made aware of the problems the teenager was having.

She said: "Just because Amber's not here to say physically what happened; she told people and spoke to the right people, who should have protected her and done something about it.

"Anyone who was supposed to be looking after her needs bringing to account. Hopefully that will be done," she said.

She added: "The first time I saw her in the chapel of rest, I said to Amber, 'We'll get justice for you'.

"It's what she deserves."

PM May seeks more time - promises Brexit deal vote by March 12

British Prime Minister Theresa May promised on Sunday to offer lawmakers a vote on her Brexit deal by March 12 in the latest delay to her attempt to win approval for a plan to ensure Britain’s orderly departure from the European Union.

As the United Kingdom’s labyrinthine Brexit crisis goes down to the wire, May is making a last-ditch effort to negotiate changes to the divorce package, though lawmakers could try to grab control of Brexit in a series of parliamentary votes on Wednesday.

British parliament voted 432-202 against her deal in January, the worst defeat in modern British history, prompting May to promised to seek changes that would allow lawmakers to ratify the agreement and avoid a potentially disorderly exit.

On her way to Egypt for an EU-Arab League summit, May said further meetings in Brussels on securing changes to the deal ruled out a so-called meaningful vote in parliament this week.

Instead, the new ‘high noon’ for Brexit, May and the British parliament will be on March 12, only 17 days before Britain is due to leave on March 29.

“We won’t bring a meaningful vote to parliament this week but we will ensure that that happens by the 12th of March,” May told reporters on board her plane.

“It is still within our grasp to leave the European Union with a deal on the 29th of March and that is what we are working to do.”

In Sharm El-Sheikh, May tried to win the backing of EU leaders to secure the changes and ease increasing frustration in Europe over Britain’s political impasse over a deal that was agreed with London in November.

TUSK CALL FOR CLARITY

European Council President Donald Tusk told May that the EU needs clarity that what the bloc might offer would command a majority in the British parliament before a summit of EU leaders scheduled on March 21-22, an EU official said.

The EU has ruled out reopening the Withdrawal Agreement, though both sides are looking at a possible legal addendum to reassure lawmakers who worry that the Irish border backstop could keep Britain trapped in the EU’s orbit for years to come.

“We’ve had good progress, constructive discussions with the European Union,” May said, adding that British negotiators would be back in Brussels on Tuesday.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, however, expressed fatigue with Britain and its Brexit crisis.

“You need two to dance tango, and I know how to dance,” Juncker said when asked if he was running out things to give on Brexit. “I have a certain Brexit fatigue.”

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said he could not accept a post-Brexit border backstop that has a time limit or a unilateral exit clause, ruling out a suggestion from British Environment Secretary Michael Gove.

“We are not playing chicken, we are not playing poker; we are just standing by our position, which has been solid since day one,” Varadkar said.

“A backstop that includes a time limit isn’t a backstop at all. Nor would a unilateral exit clause work for us.”

With the clock ticking down to March 29, Britain is in the deepest political crisis in half a century as it grapples with how, or even whether, to exit the European project it joined in 1973.

Both Britain’s major parties fractured last week, losing lawmakers who cast aside their former parties as broken remnants of a political system that was in meltdown.

LABOUR REFERENDUM PUSH?

Some lawmakers will seek to grab control of Brexit in a series of votes in the British parliament on Feb. 27, though such attempts have previously been defeated as May sought more time to get a deal.

Before she set off for Egypt, three members of her cabinet publicly split with government policy and said they would side with rebels and opposition parties to stop a no-deal Brexit.

“We have around the cabinet table a collective, not just responsibility, but desire to actually ensure that we leave the European Union with a deal,” May said.

Senior figures in the opposition Labour Party said on Sunday that it was moving closer to supporting another Brexit referendum and could do so as soon as early as this week.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has so far stuck to Labour policy to keep the option of a second referendum “on the table” if May’s government fails to secure a deal with Brussels that can break the impasse in parliament.

But when asked whether this would be the week Labour comes out in support of a second referendum, the party’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, told BBC TV: “It might be ... We are getting closer to that point.”

Bangladesh commandos kill purported hijacker of Biman Bangladesh plane

International correspondent,Dhaka(Wp/reuters):::

Bangladesh commandoes shot and killed a purported hijacker who had tried to enter the cockpit of a Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight on Sunday, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing, airline and aviation authority officials said.

The purported hijacker, who told the pilot he had a personal issue with his wife and wanted to speak to Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, died when the commandos stormed the plane at Chittagong’s Shah Amanat International Airport, officials said.

“We tried to arrest him or get him to surrender but he refused and then we shot him,” said Major General S M Motiur Rahman of the Bangladesh Army.

Before the commandos moved in, all 142 passengers and most of the crew had been let off the aircraft unharmed. One crew member had been kept as a hostage, the officials said.

Air Vice Marshal Nayeem Hasan, chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh, said the man appeared to have a pistol and had explosives around his body. It was not immediately clear if the pistol or the explosives were real.

The man appeared to be in his 20s, was probably Bangladeshi as he was speaking Bangla, but his identity was not yet clear, the officials said.

The Boeing 737 aircraft was scheduled to go from Dhaka to Dubai via Chittagong. The purported hijacking happened after it had taken off from Dhaka.