| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Lord Dixon-Smith: The Minister has done his best to relieve our concerns with regard to this clause, but I am bound to say to him that in doing so, he has not convinced me of the need for the clause to be kept in the Bill. I do not think that we can call in aid the White Paper, which covers many matters that do not require legislation. It has been pointed out previously that the White Paper was published only five days before the Bill. Matters not requiring legislation set out in that paper no doubt are already being implemented. However, the relationship between the White Paper and this Bill has nothing to do with the argument.
I accept that the CPTDA may well become a very effective free-standing body and I think that that is what we all hope for it, but it is not yet in place in its final form. I still have a tremendous fear of the old cliché which states that the man who pays the piper, calls the tune. When I was in local government, I always found that if I controlled the finances, and possibly also the manpower, I had every department exactly where I wanted it. The same applies to government, so we should not wholly set aside our worries.
The Minister is right, Parliament must approve any regulations made in this way—but parliamentary supervision of regulations is less thorough than the supervision that we give to primary legislation. We have the opportunity to accept it or refuse it, and that is as far as it goes. If the mood that prevails in the Committee continues, I suspect that regulations brought forward under this clause will never pass, which comes back to the issue of whether there is a need for the clause in the first place.
The Minister referred to the national intelligence model as being appropriate for regulation. I do not believe that it is necessarily appropriate. While I agree that there is every need for the national intelligence model to be spread as rapidly as possible across all the police forces of the country, we come back to the business of the best way to do things and I doubt whether a regulation could be worded in sufficiently good form to bring that about. We are talking about the spread of best practice and, generally speaking, that is not a matter for regulation but for persuasion. I doubt whether people would need a great deal of persuading on that point.
Although the Minister has gone some way towards alleviating our concerns, he has not shown that the clause is necessary to the Bill, which is a different thing. We will consider what he has said.
Clause 7, as amended, agreed to.
Lord Bradshaw moved Amendment No. 69:
- After Clause 7, insert the following new clause—
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 69, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 183. The amendments are, to some extent, related because they both refer to special constables. It is an old subject which has been debated previously in your Lordships' House on at least two occasions since I have been here.
The needs of the police service are very much for manpower on certain specific occasions—for example, on Friday and Saturday nights, at football matches, race meetings and so on. Such events require a lot of manpower—sometimes to direct traffic, sometimes to control crowds—and a mechanism whereby we could employ more people as special constables than we do now is highly desirable.
The county in which I live employs people as retained firemen. In fact, more than half the firemen in the county of Oxfordshire are retained. They are paid for two hours training on a Wednesday evening and when they turn out, as required, for a fire. In the Thames Valley, we employ about 400 special constables—we have weeded out of the force those people who do not attend very often or who may be too old or inactive—but they constitute a very small part of the force.
One of the reasons for that is that we do not pay them. There have been suggestions in your Lordships' House that special constables should be given a bounty akin to that enjoyed by Territorial Army soldiers, who are paid for a fortnight's camp and whenever they are required to turn out. Alternatively—the method we prefer because we are looking for younger people and we wish to make the service modern—people should be paid to attend for training and to turn out regularly as required. The Home Office has always said that this would be very difficult, but I know that most police officers support the idea of an enhanced special constabulary.
I am not proposing in Amendment No. 183 a specific method of remuneration because some people may prefer to pay a bounty, others some kind of lump-sum payment, and others may prefer for special constables to be paid by the hour when they attend for duty. However, bearing in mind that the fire service throughout much of the country relies on volunteers, as I call the retained men, to attend when required, it is time that we allowed police authorities the freedom to employ people to turn out.
If this were to happen, I am sure that instead of having about 400 special constables in Thames Valley we would have a lot more. In my home town there are 10 retained firemen but there are no retained constables. That situation prevails in much of the county. If special constables were to be paid it would make a big difference.
I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about the proposal. It is not prescriptive but allows authorities a choice. I know that in London it may be more difficult to recruit special constables, as it is to recruit retained firemen, and it may not be possible there, but it could have application in much of the country. I beg to move.
Lord Mayhew of Twysden: I am grateful to the noble Lord for bringing forward the amendment. It gives an opportunity for us to hear what the Government have to say about building upon a body of long-established men and women who are now accepted by the regular police service. That was not always the case, but the misgivings and suspicions have now been overcome.
We should certainly carefully consider this issue before we get to the provisions in the Bill which provide for detention officers and community safety officers, who, in the latter case, will not have powers of arrest. They are neither fish nor fowl, nor even a good red herring. I am not saying a decision about them should be taken now, but we certainly should hear what is wrong with a proposal to build upon the special constables.
The noble Lord's analogy with the retained firemen was a very good one, as all of us who live in the countryside have reason to acknowledge.
Lord Carlisle of Bucklow: I support what my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, have said. Surely what we all want to achieve is a situation where there are more policemen noticeably on the beat. Therefore, the area of special constables—who are recognised as such, who wear a recognisable uniform and have recognised powers—is where we should look first to get that increase in numbers so as to have more policemen visible on the streets of this country.
Just as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said that he believed that in Oxfordshire, in the area of the Thames Valley, a considerable increase could be achieved, I have no doubt that in other parts of the country more special constables could be recruited if the terms of employment were more attractive than they are at the moment. As my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew said, I hope that the Home Office will tell us what is its attitude towards special constables and whether it agrees that this is an area in which it should give special encouragement.
Lord Condon: I, too, want to encourage debate on the role of special constables. Without going into all the history, one has only to go back 20 or 30 years and in most police forces there were as many, if not more, special constables than there were regular constables. Some county forces had almost twice as many. They were an integral part of the policing of county forces.
Events have moved on, and it has been harder to recruit and retain special constables, particularly in the big city environment. That is not just because of pressures of work. It is partly a question of lifestyle. If a man or woman works in London and is thinking of becoming a special, his or her first thoughts are about having to travel home from work out of London; therefore, people think about becoming Specials in the area in which they live. A great many pressures prevent people from becoming Specials in big cities.
As to payment, when most existing Specials are asked whether they wish to be paid, they say categorically no. But that is based on the experience
As the Minister and others have said, the special constabulary in the big cities mirrors the ethnic diversity and richness of big cities much better than the regular force. Specials are an important means of encouraging diversity involvement in policing. There are worthy reasons why the situation regarding Specials should be reviewed and why they should be given important consideration—not as a total alternative to community safety officers or to other provisions in the Bill but because of their history and because of the valuable part that they can play in modern policing.
"SPECIAL CONSTABLES
(1) The Police Act 1996 (c. 16) is amended as follows.
(2) In section 51 (2)(d) after "constables;" there shall be inserted—
"(dd) the payment to special constables of an annual bounty;"."
6.15 p.m.
Next Section
Back to Table of Contents
Lords Hansard Home Page