Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has said that Nottingham knife killer Valdo Calocane should have been sectioned by health professionals.
She was responding to a question about the inquiry into the attacks, which heard that a psychiatrist had resisted sectioning him because she was worried that black people with schizophrenia were over-represented in mental health institutions.
Calocane went on to kill three people and attempted to kill three others in June 2023.
Badenoch told GB News: “On the Nottingham murders, what I would say is that this is exactly the sort of situation that we’re trying to prevent.
“If you have mental health issues and you need to be sectioned, and you need to be detained. You should be sectioned, you should be detained.
“No one should be counting how many other black people have been sectioned or detained, and say, ‘Well, this is too much, so we’ll let you go’.
“That is a complete absence of common sense, and we need to bring the common sense back. This is what I am pushing for.
“We know that there will be some cases where people are discriminated against, there are powers in the Equality Act to deal with that, whether you’re white or black.
“Let’s use those, but not this duty that basically tells people to ignore things that need to be dealt with.”
