Police and Justice Bill

moved Amendment No. 62:"Page 82, line 12, leave out paragraphs 23 to 25." The noble Baroness said: The amendment, which is also in the name of my noble friend Lord Dholakia, would remove paragraphs 23 to 25. Under those paragraphs, the Secretary of State would set police authorities’ strategic priorities. We are talking again about strategic priorities, currently a major power for police authorities. Those provisions pose a threat. If one political party is dominant—less so now than in recent years, although still broadly the case—it might abuse the powers in the Bill to set policing priorities to its own advantage and to suit its own political agenda. We must imagine these powers in the hands of unreasonable people, not of reasonable, liberal people. In the end, the only civil liberties that matter are those that protect us against governments doing unreasonable things that we did not expect when those powers were drafted. We have been down this road before and were accused of being—what was the word the Minister used?