Police and Justice Bill

I say again how pleased I am at the supportive comments that have been made from all around the Committee. I hope I will be able to reassure noble Lords about the benefit of the way we are dealing with this important issue. The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, is right. A large number of our community support officers are doing sterling work with young people. Indeed, when I went to Oxford, I had the pleasure of seeing two CSOs riding around on their bicycles, with a number of children chasing them because they all knew their names and had something to tell them. They are certainly well integrated into the community, and one of the benefits is that they are not frightening figures. They become well known and accepted, and they have a huge opportunity to gather information. I will not say that the two ladies involved were Pied Pipers, but I saw the similarity. It is important, if CSOs are going to continue to do this work, that they do it well. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that one of the important things is not to see the CSOs in isolation. They are going to be very much part of the neighbourhood policing team. If an officer graduates out of the CSO role into an officer role, that officer will not necessarily be lost from the team. I am sure the skills and the community approach will inure to the benefit of any police officer having gone through that. There has been a lot of concern about the training, but I can reassure noble Lords. To make it clear, the community support officers in the survey—which a number of noble Lords have referred to, but the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, referred to them first—were those who had been trained prior to the national training package, first launched in 2004. Noble Lords will remember that when CSOs were introduced there was no standardised training, but that has now been brought in. As we have said, the Police Reform Act 2002 already places a statutory duty on chief officers to ensure that all community support officers are adequately trained to perform the duties and exercise the powers that have been designated. There is already provision in the Police and Justice Bill at new Section 38A(6) to reaffirm this responsibility in relation to the standard powers and duties of community support officers. I hope that it will please noble Lords to know that the Central Police Training and Development Authority has developed a national package that addresses every element of the Every Child Matters report. This will be available at the end of the month, and has been fully incorporated into both the regular police officer training package and the community support officer training package. Community support officers already receive training in youth and child protection matters. This new package will ensure that they are trained in the common core of skills and knowledge for the children’s workforce, recommended as a result of the Every Child Matters report. There is no difference between the training that community support officers will receive under this module and the training that their regular police officer colleagues receive. We thought that this was important and it is going to be delivered. There is nothing to suggest that community support officer training is in any way inadequate. To enshrine for police training such a specific project in primary legislation would be, we respectfully suggest, unnecessary and would in due course fall into obsolescence as we change and move forward—considerations that your Lordships rightly take into account when scrutinising Bills before the House. I hear what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, says on mentoring and supervision. I have already said that the CSOs will be part of a team, and we will be able to look into those issues more closely. The noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, is right that we hope to increase the number of CSOs. We are committed to having 16,000 CSOs in place by April 2007, up from the current figure of 6,000. The Chancellor announced in his Budget a further £91 million to facilitate this improvement. The training—and the opportunity for us to get better and to deliver a high-quality service—is certainly there. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about line management roles. CSOs should always be tasked and debriefed in accordance with the national intelligence model, as part of a neighbourhood policing team. On a daily basis, they discuss with the team leader the issues and incidents that they come across. There is some evidence that young people relate better to the community support officers than to police officers, which may be due to the difference of the role. Community support officers tend to get to know their patch well. We hope that police officers will be better able to emulate that approach when neighbourhood policing teams, which we all encourage and endorse, come more on stream. The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, raised a question on Section 11 of the Children Act. I confess that I do not have that with me. I could guess, but it is safer if I write to him on that particular point. With that, I hope that the noble Viscount will feel it appropriate to withdraw this amendment.