Private Members' Bills
4 Anti-social Behaviour Bill
| Date introduced to the House of Commons
Current Bill Number
Previous Reports
| 29 June 2004
House of Commons 128
None
|
4.1 This is a Private Members' Bill introduced by Mr Wayne David
MP. The Bill would allow persons designated under the Police Reform
Act 2002,[142] as community
support officers, the power of arrest without warrant in circumstances
prescribed by the Secretary of State by regulations (clause 1).
It would also allow the Secretary of State to make regulations
conferring additional powers on community support officers in
relation to the confiscation of alcohol (clause 2).
4.2 The conferring of powers of arrest on community
support officers engages Article 5.1 ECHR, the right to liberty.
In order to comply with Article 5, any regulations allowing for
the exercise of this power would need to make it subject to sufficient
safeguards to ensure that it is exercised in accordance with law
and is not used arbitrarily or in a discriminatory way. In order
to satisfy the conditions in Article 5(1)( c), it will also be
necessary to ensure that any power of arrest is only available
where there is reasonable suspicion that the person arrested has
committed, is committing or is about to commit an offence. These
important limits on the width of any power to arrest should really
be set out on the face of the primary legislation, rather than
left to regulations which will not receive the same degree of
parliamentary scrutiny and debate.
4.3 Although the terms of any additional powers for
the confiscation of alcohol to be provided for in regulations
are unclear from the face of the Bill, such powers would engage
property rights under Article 1 of Protocol 1 ECHR, and would
need to be justified as a proportionate interference with such
rights.
142 Under section 38 of the Police Reform Act 2002,
persons may be designated to perform certain police functions
by Chief officers of police or Directors General Back
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