Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I understand the anxiety of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, but I do not accept that it is merited on this occasion. Perhaps I may explain to her why. The key question is the intention of the Bill in relation to the powers of the police community support officers and whether the amendment improves it. The Bill’s intention is to bring clarity to the policing powers currently designated to community support officers. I welcomed the noble Baroness’s acceptance at the beginning of her speech that this was a reasonable aim, because if we are to have the benefit of using community support officers, we should know the ambit of what they are likely to do in any given area. There is great variation among forces, a fact with which the noble Baroness is all too familiar. Clause 6 allows the Secretary of State to propose to both Houses which of the existing powers available in the legislation should be designated as standard for all community support officers. The amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, would preclude from the consideration of the Home Secretary, this House and another place one specific power. We cannot accept that this is how we should frame the legislation. If the principle that a standard set of powers may be drawn up is accepted, we would not at this stage interpose our personal views into primary legislation and prejudge or preclude the consultation which the Bill requires, or the debate and the vote on the draft order. I reiterate that this Bill does not prescribe what the standard set of powers should be; it sets out a statutory process for determining the standard set—and it is a comprehensive process. If, after debate on a draft order, this House thinks that we have got it wrong, it may then reject the draft order, but we do not think that the Bill is the place to debate the individual existing powers or skewer the Bill’s intention. I am reluctant to discuss the merit of exercising the power or the reasoning for including it in a standard set because the key point is to safeguard the integrity of the existing clause. All policing powers, whoever exercises them, are coercive—that is their nature. CSOs are appropriately trained and recruited to a task from a wider and more diverse background than are police officers. Some 15 per cent come from minority ethnic groups, for example. Their nature is that they are local, immediate and known by people. It is quite clear that we want to retain that distinct and valuable flavour. Not everyone welcomed CSOs initially, but we all welcome them now as being a thoroughly good thing. They are not only to engage and to reassure, but they solve problems about anti-social behaviour that people face, and we should dispel the myth that they are not up to the job of doing that—because we know that they are. Noble Lords will be aware that we did a pilot study on the use of the power to require someone to remain for 30 minutes. The result was really favourable. It is an important sanction when a CSO is dissatisfied with the response given to a request for a name and address. Whether to exercise that power is at the discretion of the CSO and on the basis of local operational instructions. It is then for a constable to resolve the situation, not the CSO. The CSO may not restrain someone; that requires the designation of a separate power. We are having discussions with the police service on the shape of a list of standard powers and debating with it the merits and the composition of such a list. We are seeking to reach an agreement with the service on this and we will pursue this aim, if necessary, through formal consultation required by the Bill. For transparency’s sake, we published the previous Home Secretary’s proposal for a standard list in the annexe of the Explanatory Notes to the Bill, but it was never intended to be the final word. There is a lot of debate about what that core should be, where the dividing line should be and what should be left for local determination. That is a debate that we need to have. All the Bill proposes to do is to enable us to have a standard; it does not determine what that standard will be. The standard will depend on the consultation and on the iterative process through which we have to try to craft something. I hope that on that basis I can urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment. There will be scope for us to have this debate in due course after those consultations have come to fruition.