Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has announced that Scotland Yard will “scale down” its stop-and-search anti-terrorism powers over fears that it is offending Muslims. The move was ordered after Sir Stephenson had talks with the Muslim Safety Forum and Liberty organisations.

The 2007 attempted car bombing of Tiger Tiger nightclub in central London, pictured, sparked an increase in the use of stop-and-search powers. The tactic will now be scaled back over fears it disproportionately targeted ethnic minorities,” Sir Stephenson said, ignoring the fact that these “ethnic minorities” are the “ethnic majorities” in large areas of London.

Government figures released last week showed that members of “minority communities” were more likely to be searched than whites. This led to the usual liberal handwringing, which refuses to acknowledge that such police tactics are based purely on who is more likely to commit a certain type of offence.

As one anonymous commentator on a major newspaper website remarked, “If nuns started robbing banks, it would not be unusual to see more nuns stopped and searched.”

* The impartiality of the police will soon be tested again after yet another allowance scandal involving a senior Muslim peer. Baroness Uddin, already exposed as claiming a housing subsidy for an empty flat in Maidstone – although she lives in London, has been plunged into a deeper scandal by the revelation that her London residence is rent-controlled social housing. This means that it is also subsidised by the taxpayers.

The average rent for properties such as Baroness Uddin’s three-bedroomed home in Wapping, which belongs to the Spitalfields Housing Association, is £104 a week, a sixth of the market rate.

Baroness Uddin was earlier revealed to have claimed £100,000 in allowances for her unlived-in flat in Maidstone, which she declared as her main home. By saying she lives outside the capital, she is allowed to collect up to £174 a day for overnight accommodation. In 2007-08 she claimed a total of £29,675 in this way.

She actually lives just a short distance from Westminster in social housing in Wapping. Bangladesh-born “Baroness” Uddin was a Labour councillor before being elevated to the House of Lords by the Labour Party as part of its programme to Islamify Britain as quickly as possible.

She has a number of well-paid directorships at key companies and is therefore far too wealthy to qualify for social housing. Doubtless this fact will be of interest to the police, unless they have been too cowed to act against a leading member of the Labour Party hierarchy – and a Muslim one to boot.