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Lord Rooker: My Lords, I shall take advice on that and respect the point the noble Lord raises. I shall come back to it because I know that the noble Lord would like to debate it further.

The noble Lord, Lord Monson, said that police officers exercise authority over others. I accept that. Those special powers and responsibilities are set out by Parliament; they are not unfettered. The underlying question is whether it is right that non-British nationals should exercise authority and power over British nationals. But they already do. That is the point. Irish and Commonwealth citizens who are police officers exercise such authority on a daily basis. We are not inventing the wheel.

We are no worse off for those of our fellow citizens being in the police service. So the exercise of these powers and authorities will be a matter of training and judgment and it does not matter where a person was born or what his or her nationality is. Public support will not depend on the nationality of the officers. If they have got through the process of becoming an attested police officer—in Clause 68 the form of declaration is being substituted—they will offer full protection to the public and full loyalty to serve the Crown and the country. It is not second rate.

The people we are discussing will be living in this country. No process is being set up to facilitate entry to being a police officer. They will have put their roots down here. They may not be British. As I pointed out in an earlier debate, there are good reasons why some people in this country cannot take British nationality; for example, their own nationality may not allow dual nationality. It may be that because of family circumstances, property rights and inheritances back home, they cannot take British citizenship. For instance, India is a non-dual nationality country and Pakistan is dual nationality. Many Indian citizens in

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this country would like to be British but for many reasons they cannot give up their Indian nationality. They have generations of families in this country with loyalty to the British state and to the Crown. We should not hold it against them that they are not able to give up their first nationality in order to take British citizenship. They are as loyal as anybody else.

For the reasons I have given we are wholly opposed to dropping the clause. I end as I started. All the police services—in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the British Transport Police, the parks constabulary, the UK Atomic Energy Authority and the Special Constabulary—all want to remove that unnecessary restriction. I hope therefore that noble Lords will allow the clause to remain in the Bill.

Lord Monson: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, for reinforcing my general arguments so tellingly, and grateful also to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, for giving such vigorous support to Amendments Nos. 237 and 238 in particular.

Curiously, the Minister described these as "anti-foreigner" amendments. They are nothing of the sort. If they are anti-foreigner, then almost every other country in the world is being anti-foreigner. From what he said, I deduce that we are almost unique in proposing the course of action the Government appear to be set on.

Take the question of guns. Most police in this country never carry guns—94 per cent or more. Suppose someone were to be shot by someone who joined the police from Chicago or Marseilles. They may be justified in the shooting and may have had no option. But I doubt that that is the way the press and the public would see it. I wonder too, reverting to the question of precedent, how many Englishmen, Welshmen and Scotsmen are serving in the Irish Garda. I imagine very few.

My noble friend Lord Erroll referred to the necessity of recruits speaking English well, and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, gave some assurance on that point. But it goes beyond that. It reverts to an appreciation of our common law traditions. It is a bad idea in principle that the police should not be steeped in the traditions of the country which they are policing. The Minister may be aware that when Franco came to power in Spain in 1939 he instituted a policy of sending Andalucian police to Galicia, Galician police to Catalunia, Castillian police to the Basque country and so forth. The idea was that the fewer roots the police had in the part of the country they were policing, the more ready they would be to club citizens over the head if they stepped out of line. That is the last thing the Government have in mind, I am sure. But I have read two excellent novels, one from a Left-wing and one from a Right-wing perspective, which envisage a state of affairs in 15 or 20 years' time in which European riot police will be clubbing people over the

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head in this country. The Minister may feel that that is fantasy but who can tell? Stranger things have happened.

We have time to reflect upon the Minister's response and put our heads together before the next stage to produce something which is even more of a compromise. For that reason I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 235 to 238 not moved.]

Lord Renton moved Amendment No. 239:

Leave out Clause 67.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have at least five reasons for tabling this amendment. First, it would be bad for our reputation as a nation if other countries could say that the British cannot find enough of their own people to maintain law and order. That would be most unfortunate.

Secondly, in various parts of the United Kingdom our native police find it hard enough to get co-operation and support from all the public. If some of the police were foreigners, support would be even less forthcoming—so crime would increase still further. Thirdly, even if foreign officers had enough knowledge of written and spoken English, most would still have foreign accents—which would reduce public support for them. It would be clear to the public that such officers were not native.

Fourthly, although foreign officers may have a considerable knowledge of written and spoken English—I hope that would be a requirement—they might not understand the local dialects and accents that arise in various parts of the United Kingdom, in the way that local, native British constables do and always have done.

My fifth and last reason is best explained by quoting my noble friend Lord Peyton in Committee. He said that,

"the Government's insistence that Clause 60 be included in the Bill conveys a rather sombre message: either that our own citizens lack a sense of duty or service, or that the terms offered to them for performing that service are so inadequate that they cannot afford it".—[Official Report, 12/3/02; col. 747.]

I know that flattery will get me nowhere but I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for the clarity with which he puts the Government case and the understanding that he has shown always of our arguments for or against the Government's case. However, I implore the Minister to realise that his comments about support for the clause are not accepted everywhere. Since Committee stage, noble Lords on both sides of the House have told me that they were glad that I and others raised doubts. Several police officers to whom I have spoken and others outside also have doubts about the Government's intention. I earnestly hope that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, along with his government colleagues, will undertake to leave out Clause 67 altogether or modify and improve it. I beg to move.

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7.15 p.m.

Lord Bradshaw: My Lords, I will have no truck with the noble Lord's proposal, which has no support on these Benches. The reputation of the force is very much made up of the quality of the service that is given. I know of one police inspector in Oxfordshire who is French. I do not know how he came to be in the British police force—presumably he is naturalised. He is very efficient and well liked. I have never heard anybody criticise that officer for speaking English with a slightly broken accent—but better than many native-born Englishmen.

In places like Slough which have large populations from other countries the absence of native-born officers who can speak languages such as Urdu is a severe impediment to effective policing. I am sure that the public would co-operate. For example, many of the staff in the Tea Room are Italian and speak with a broken accent but that does not detract from the assistance that we receive from them or the esteem in which we hold them.

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, I understood the Minister's argument in Committee and today, together with the Explanatory Notes, except for one point, on which the Minister was kind enough to write to me. I understand also paragraph 6.16 of the White Paper and the support for it from the police service of these islands. To be fair, that single sentence in the White Paper expresses a principle rather than explains the detail. The view of the police service presumably relates to the principle, not to the detail and procedure.

The Minister rejected Amendments Nos. 237 and 238 on the ground that it was not desirable for Clause 67(4) to be mandatory. I am not a lawyer but my understanding is that the regulations for entry are cited in subsection (3) and that subsection (4) is intended to reinforce it—perhaps for reassurance. The Minister cited the views of the BBC and the tabloids, their prejudices and, occasionally, their ignorance. It would be helpful if the Minister could spell out why it is not desirable for subsection (4) to be mandatory. Were it to be so, that would to some extent spike the guns of the Government's critics.

I end on a more cheerful note. I remind your Lordships of the episode in one of Sir Peter Ustinov's set pieces. On being pulled over by the police on a highway in the United States for some apparent traffic offence, he falls into an admirable act of being a visiting Italian. He speaks fluent Italian to the police officers—and receives a reply in fluent Italian. That is the kind of benefit that we are likely to get from Clause 67. I have no difficulty with it, except for subsection (4) not being made mandatory.

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