If The Times put up its prices next week would it retain all its readers? he asked

"If The Times put up its prices next week, would it retain all its readers?" he asked.Baroness OppenheimBarnes, a Conservative peer, added: "I believe that every aspect of discriminatory discounting, when it is used as a blunderbuss to lead an opinion or wrongly to gain support, as no doubt is the case in the newspaper industry today, is wrong."Lord Judd, a Labour peer, said the amendment was dealing with the "lifeblood of democracy. what are we proposing , to put a newspaper like The Independent on a protected list?"Lord Harris went on to dismiss the issue of predatory pricing as an "excitable distraction" from critics outraged by Mr Murdoch's success.But Lord Borrie, also a crossbencher and a former director-general of the Office of Fair Trading, said The Times would have never been able to cut its price consistently over the years and coped with the costs of printing and marketing without the support of its sister papers. we are not talking about baked beans but a sophisticated product ... "They use insulting language, they are dismissive of victims of crime," he says. "And there is a tendency to regard all young Asian men as druggies and layabouts."Mohammed Amran, a youth justice worker, agrees. "It's the senior managers who work hard to build links with the community," he says.

Asian youths claim they are targeted by police because of their colour and families complain that police fail to take reports of racial harassment seriously.These are grave charges in a city where minority ethnic residents make up nearly 20 per cent of the population and suffer a high level of racially motivated crime - 213 incidents were reported to police in the year ending last March.Ishtiaq Ahmed, the highly respected director of the Bradford Race Equality Council, says many officers on the beat still demonstrate "canteen culture" attitudes. "People have started to work together to build bridges and to make Bradford a safer place."But here, as in other parts of the country, there is a yawning gap between policy and practice. The inquiry report concluded that officers lacked understanding of the mainly Pakistani community, and that they treated residents "with hostility and contempt"."A lot has changed since the disturbances," Insp Baines says. Images of young Muslim men hurling fire bombs and smashing shop windows were unparalleled.Since then, West Yorkshire Police have implemented a raft of initiatives aimed at improving community relations.

The city is awash with multi-agency panels and partnerships, with consultation groups, youth forums and cultural awareness programmes.Inspector Martin Baines, appointed to the newly created post of community and race relations officer for Bradford, says criticism of police made by an independent commission of inquiry into the riots was valid. The outside world was shocked, too, for these were the first violent confrontations between police and Britain's traditionally peaceful Asian community. Today, the Stephen Lawrence inquiry visits Bradford as part of its tour of the regions, seeking insights on the policing of minority communities.Among those giving evidence to the one-day hearing will be Lloyd Clarke, Deputy Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, who has acknowledged institutional racism exists within the force.The riots in summer 1995 were a severe jolt to Bradford, which had always prided itself on relatively good race relations. MOHAMMED, 19, is hopping mad. "I'm on a 10pm curfew for breaching my bail conditions, right?" he says.

"So the police come round my house at 10 to check that I'm in. Then they come again at midnight, 1am, 3am, ringing the doorbell over and over, waking my little sister, upsetting my mum. They're just taking the piss, man." Mohammed and his three friends are slouched outside Nasim Food Store in Manningham, an inner-city area of Bradford scarred by poverty and neglect. Three years ago, Manningham was thrust into the national spotlight when Asian youths clashed with police during two nights of rioting. The police are supposed to highlightany case if it appears the complaint "involves an element of racial motivation or any incident which includes an allegation of racial motivation made by any person".In the North West CPS, which covers Cheshire and Greater Manchester Police, only 15 per cent of such cases were identified, compared with 57 per cent in Wales.Alan Kirkwood of CPS casework services division, who compiled the report, said: "We are working with the police on measures to improve early identification of racial incidents, so that the right offences are brought before the court.".

The total rose to 1,324 prosecutions.Judges and magistrates were also found to be playing down race crimes by failing to use powers to impose stiffer sentences where race plays a part. They were found to have imposed a higher sentence in only about a quarter of the cases highlighted by the CPS as featuring a racial element.The CPS established its Racial Incident Monitoring Scheme in April 1995. The figures are the same as in the previous year. But the Racial Incident Monitoring Scheme Annual Report for 1997-98 did show a 10 per cent increase from the previous year in the number of race cases prosecuted in England and Wales. The remaining 63 per cent were revealed by the prosecution lawyers. The figures suggest that the police are still regularly failing to identify racial incidents despite the widespread publicity surrounding the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.