| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Lord Dixon-Smith: In principle we support the amendment, which is a more detailed reprise of the previous amendment.
Lord Rooker: I hope to give a serious reply, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, requested. Community support officers are not second class police officers. They will play a complementary role. That is very important.
Nobody can forecast all the circumstances in which they will find themselves, but it is not the intention that the role and powers of community support officers will require them to become involved in unarmed combat, as one noble Lord said. We all share the concerns of the noble Baroness that civilians designated under the clause should be properly and appropriately protected while undertaking their duties, but we do not think that we need to put that on the face of the Bill.
There have been some scare stories in the newspapers, but we do not envisage community support officers carrying CS spray and batons or getting into situations in which they might need to use such equipment. On the other hand, we have made it clear that, while we do not think that we need to specify appropriate means of personal protection in the Bill, a code of practice will be issued under this chapter that will include guidance on levels of protection for designated officers. In some ways, that will have the same practical effect as the amendment. The intention is the same, but we approach the issue from another route.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I thank the Minister for his reply. However, I am still concerned. We were told
categorically that community support officers would not be able to carry any form of protection. If that is true, we must have some reference in the Bill to protection for them. It would be very wrong not to do so.I emphasise again that no one can tell where they will have to confront a difficult situation. All the current attacks in London are happening unexpectedly, often in areas formerly considered safe. The police officer who spoke to us said that officers sent to one particular station which he mentioned were sent with full riot gear. That is fine. However, ordinary civilians who have been stabbed and killed were walking along streets in areas that they thought were safe.
I believe that we need this provision. Although I shall leave the Minister to think about it, I shall be considering whether to return to it myself. I feel strongly about the issue. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 192 not moved.]
Lord Dixon-Smith moved Amendment No. 193:
- Page 32, line 13, leave out from "duties" to "that" in line 15.
The noble Lord said: Clause 33(5) states:
- "A designation under this section shall confer powers and impose duties on the designated person by means only of provisions specifying the provisions of the applicable Part of Schedule 4 that are to apply to the designated person".
That implies, at the very least, that every individual might have a different designation; I do not see how it could imply anything else. That simply would not be satisfactory and could cause absolute confusion in the minds of the public. Although they are in a different uniform from that of the police, people in uniform could have variable powers taken from a basket containing a slightly larger number of powers. I do not think that that would be sensible. We do not like the devaluation aspects of the proposal, but if we have to put this type of sub-police into operation, we should ensure that there is absolute, crystal clarity about their function and how they are to work. I think that there would be great difficulty if we did anything else.
I suppose—just placing a saving bet; we have not tabled an amendment to this effect, but I offer it to the Minister to consider—that if a chief constable wished to pick from the basket of powers, at least in his force area, everyone should have the same powers. I think that that might reduce the potential for confusion. If different powers were held by each individual, and one of those individuals stopped or attempted to check someone, the first words that he would hear would be, "Show me your accreditation. I want to know if you have the power to stop me". I beg to move.
Lord Renton: I hope that my noble friend does not mind, but a very small drafting amendment would have to be made if Amendment No. 193 is made. It is that, in line 16, "of that Schedule" would have to be changed to "of Schedule 4".
Lord Mayhew of Twysden: I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith for moving this group of
amendments. I share his view that this part of the Bill gives the chief constable discretion to vary the powers that his designation shall confer upon the officer concerned. On page 110, one finds the related provision of Schedule 4. The issue becomes clear in paragraph 4(1), which states:
- "This paragraph"—
- "applies where . . . a designation under section 33 applies this paragraph to a person to whom any or all of paragraphs 1 to 3 are also applied".
Although it is a short point, it is one that is replicated in the case of accredited community support officers—to whose situation I perhaps rashly strayed in our previous debate. It is the same point. If the public are to be confident in this innovation, they will have to know what powers these people shall have. If these people are to convey and carry credibility, they should be able to explain quite simply to the person to whom they are addressing their powers, whether those powers are designated under Clause 33 or accredited under Clause 35.
I hope that I am not wrong—in the sense that this discretion is not granted—but if I am, I have to say that the drafting is very obscure. I do not believe that it makes that clear.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: I have no emotional capital tied up in the example that I gave on Second Reading, but I shall remind the House of it. There was a time in London theatreland when Camden Borough Council suddenly decided that it would put its parking regulations on a different basis from that of the London Borough of Westminster. Those who were parking their cars to attend the theatre were careless about the location of the borough boundaries, and they were extremely offended when they discovered that they were being penalised for parking their car one street away from where they would have been in perfectly good shape.
It is a genuine dilemma. It is wrong to put these officers—if the experiment goes forward, we would wish them extremely well—in a position in which, in the early stages, they could be penalised by the possibility of a misunderstanding. As I have acknowledged, there is some irony in these remarks in that we generally urge decentralisation on the Government and seek to avoid centralisation.
Lord Rooker: This group of amendments raises a useful point. It would, however, have a perverse consequence which I shall outline later. Although I cannot prejudge what will happen, I can well foresee different chief constables making different use of the "menu". If they make different use of the powers so that their community support officers have different powers, the public might well wonder why that has happened. The point, however, would arise when they went into a different police force area, and powers currently vary between different police force areas. I
should add that police authority boundaries usually coincide with main roads or railway lines, a bit like constituency boundaries do.I do not know whether, in designating the community support officers within his force, a chief constable would ever think it wise to give individual officers different levels of power. Although it is true that he is designating "persons", and assigning different powers would be technically possible, I do not think that such an arrangement would be a practical runner. I should develop the argument, however, as the matter is not that clear cut.
As I have said, subsection (5) of Clause 33 currently enables the chief officer to use appropriate parts of the schedule as a menu from which he can select the powers appropriate for the deployment. In theory, that could mean that all staff have different powers. However, we believe that, in practice, there may be only two or three groups of powers for each category of support staff. Therefore, across a police force, each designated category should have the same powers. However, there will be four levels of officer, which are outlined in paragraphs (a) to (d) of Clause 33(5).
As I understand it, the Metropolitan Police have indicated that they will establish just three categories of community support officer—dealt with in Clause 33(5)(a)—whom they have called auxiliaries. They include security auxiliaries, Transport for London auxiliaries and community auxiliaries, and they will perform the functions described by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith.
The powers extended to each category of community support officer would be appropriate to their function. For example, the Metropolitan Police's security auxiliaries would clearly need the powers in paragraphs 12 and 13 of Schedule 4 to enforce cordoned areas established under the Terrorism Act 2000 and to stop and search vehicles under Sections 44 and 45 of that Act. This may also be the case in other parts of the country. Different forces will have different functions for their CSOs and hence different combinations of powers. That is a slightly different matter to the parking restrictions in boroughs that were mentioned.
Similar arguments could apply to other categories of support staff. Chief officers might prefer support staff to have only some, not all, of the detention office powers in order to suit local policing arrangements. The clause enables chief officers to "mould" the designation of support staff to suit local needs. We want to retain that flexibility. The amendment removes that local flexibility.
By extending the full range of powers to support staff from the outset we would prejudge the roles that they are to fulfil. We have aimed throughout these clauses to enable rather than prescribe. The amendment would require that, for example, a detention officer who would be dealing only with handling people in custody would also have to be trained in interviewing suspects. As the designated officer may not be using all his powers his training
would become "rusty" for those powers he did not use. But there would still be the chance that he would be asked to use these powers in the future. He would have received training but would be out of practice. We need to trust that chief constables will exercise their discretion in specifying powers from the "menus". The code of practice under Clause 39 will help them achieve that.The noble Lord argued that the public will be confused if CSOs have different powers in different parts of the country. I do not accept that. That may be the case as regards different parts of the force. That is the real bones of the argument. I hope that the code of practice will resolve that matter. This is an important point. I am glad that it has been raised as it has enabled some of the issues we are discussing to be put on record.
7 p.m.
Lord Mayhew of Twysden: Before the noble Lord sits down, does he think it right that there should be an à la carte menu, as it were, for chief constables within their force, or within particular districts of their force, or should there be a set menu? The noble Lord said that he did not think that that difficulty would arise in practice. However, if it were made clear that everyone within an area should have the same powers, that would overcome the difficulty that some of us on this side of the Chamber detect. It is one which I mentioned in relation to safety officers under Clause 35. It is terribly important that these people should be able to state clearly, "I have the same powers as my colleague over there and my colleague over there" when asked for the authority by which they presume to interfere with someone's liberty in the street. That is the short point. I dare say that the noble Lord will not be able to reply to that point now, but I ask again whether it should be an à la carte or a set menu?
Next Section
Back to Table of Contents
Lords Hansard Home Page