TORY MP Philip Davies defended discriminatory police use of stop-and-search powers yesterday by claiming that black people were “more likely to be murderers.”

He said the frequency of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people being frisked had plummeted as a result of “politically correct chatter” and fear of police of being “branded racist.”

Mr Davies said: “When it comes to the most serious offences of all, murder, it is clear that black people, in particular black males, are far more likely to be victims. They are also more likely to be murderers.”

Bradford West Labour MP Naz Shah, who brought the debate, intervened by saying that right from the offset black people were being stopped and searched more than white people.

She condemned stop and search as a “blunt tool for the prevention and detection of crime,” adding it had a “profoundly negative impact on police-community relations.”

She said: “For many in our BAME communities, racial profiling and discriminatory policing is real. It is corrosive and it is undermining trust in public institutions.”

Figures for 2017, she added, estimate that black people were searched at over eight times the rate of white people.

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott also intervened, asking Mr Davies: “For the avoidance of doubt, are you saying that the disproportionate levels of stop-and-search exercises on black people, on Muslim people, people from south Asia, is because we are more criminal?”

Mr Davies replied: “For certain offences black people are more likely to be found guilty of offences than white people, that’s a fact.”