STOP and search tactics to tackle county lines crime should not be a tool for police to resort to “if someone looks a bit dodgy”, says the county's police, fire and crime commissioner.

Mrs Mulligan was asked at a meeting to clarify her attitude on the controversial method - especially in regards to tackling drug dealing gangs working across towns and cities - known as county lines. 

She told councillors that while the rate of stop and search incidents in North Yorkshire mirrored national trends in dipping over recent years, a dramatic increase in knife crime and the emergence of county lines has seen its use sharply rise. 

She said that officers in the county were now “using it more proactively than we were”.

But she urged caution regarding use of stop and search - saying a panel was being set up to scrutinise its use.

“We do have to be mindful…It’s not a random tool which police can employ if someone looks a bit dodgy, they have to have proper grounds to use it,” she told Harrogate councillors. 

She added that the independent panel, which her office will oversee, should be “up and running” by early 2020.  

It was one of multiple references to county lines crime during the meeting, and comes after Harrogate was last month named an area of concern by the National Crime Agency due to the proliferation of cross county crime coming to the district. 

Mrs Mulligan’s update comes as it was revealed that Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Andrew Jones was on patrol with North Yorkshire Police when they arrested a suspected County Lines drug-dealer earlier this month.

Kit Malthouse MP, Minister of State for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service, speaking in the House of Commons this week, said: “We absolutely have to provide support to young people to get them out of the habit or indeed prevent them ever getting into this trade in the first place.”