My hon. Friend is exactly right. In all the surveys of public opinion about the visibility of the police over the past couple of years, the public have complained more and more that they no longer see their police officers or PCSOs, that they no longer have contact with them, that the police no longer have roots in the community and that neighbourhood policing is being progressively hollowed out. People want neighbourhood policing—the bedrock of British policing—to be rebuilt, but not using volunteers.
4.45 pm
The specials’ support of the police force has been a success because it has been accompanied by mandatory training and appropriate support and because specials are sworn officers and Crown servants. However, the Government have done nothing to reassure us that the use of their brand-new police volunteers will be accompanied by appropriate training, scrutiny and accountability. Indeed, the Opposition tabled an amendment in Committee explicitly to guarantee that there would be a duty on the College of Policing to issue guidance to chief police officers on the training of volunteers, but the Government did not support it.
On that point, let me pray in aid the outstanding police and crime commissioner for Northumbria, Vera Baird, about whom the Police Minister also asked waxed lyrical. She said:
“Volunteers have a very important role to play in supporting policing, but not to place themselves in potentially dangerous situations. When the Home Secretary consulted on her proposals to increase volunteers’ powers, I said at the time she was trying to provide policing on the cheap.”