Violent Crime Reduction Bill

I start with a positive sentiment: that we have achieved a degree of consensus across the Committee on this issue and I appreciate the careful thought and consideration that the noble Baroness has given in speaking to some of her amendments, which do not replicate ours. I am grateful to her for the way in which she has done that. The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, referred to the comments made by my noble friend Lady Scotland at Second Reading. We believe that her comments were consistent with the amendments tabled. We do not seek to distinguish between a teacher and some other responsible adult employed by the school, which was implicit in what she said. As regards exclusion, we do not want a person to be able to conduct or to be present at a search merely because they are 18 or over, such as a visitor on the premises or even a passer by. We want to ensure that we exclude in particular that class of person. The provision relates to the staff in schools; namely, teachers and other responsible adult employees such as teaching assistants. With something as tricky as this, we have had to undertake careful consultation with school staff unions. That took place at length and largely through working groups such as the school security working group and the working agreement management groups. With regard to some of the noble Baroness’s other amendments, in particular Amendments Nos. 135, 141 and 145, if we removed the power to authorise staff generally to search, leaving only a power to authorise a particular search or a description of searches, we think that it might make it harder for staff to search without checking at the time whether they were authorised. The effect of such a limitation is modified for schools and FE institutions by opposition Amendments Nos. 136 and 141. They provide for a deputy to authorise if the head teacher or principal is away. But, critically, the amendments omit to provide for a deputy in attendance centres. We are therefore troubled by those amendments. I should make it plain to the Committee that head teachers can authorise staff in general to search, so to define heads further we do not believe is entirely necessary. It would only be necessary if each authorisation were for one specific search. So there is a complexity to be thought through there. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for tabling the amendments, but we do not believe that they add greater clarification to the way in which we have phrased our amendments. We are also grateful for the way in which the debate has been conducted through the Commons and at Second Reading here. That has given us the opportunity to refine some of our thinking on the issue and we accept that it is not easy to resolve. We need to get the level of responsibility as properly defined as we can. I hope that that answers some of the points raised by the noble Baroness. If not, I am happy to have further discussions with her outside the confines of the Committee.