It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse). I start by saying that I have always been supportive of the police; I was brought up to be. I can remember my mum telling me as a very young child that if I ever got lost the police were my friends and that I should always seek out a police officer, who would always try to find where my mum and dad were. That is hopefully an ethic that I have passed on to my own children. That, I think, is where we must start.
In this country, there is a degree of consensus about the nature of policing, because we have developed, over a long period, the concept of policing by consent. I think that Parliament, when passing legislation both here and in the other place, must do everything in its power to ensure that we do not move away from that important concept. A number of measures in the Bill deserve to be scrutinised properly before Parliament decides whether it is appropriate to extend the powers in the way that the Minister proposes.
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There are some very good proposals in the Bill, and I broadly support them. I would not like the Minister to think that that was not the case. I support, for instance, the proposal for improvements in the police complaints system, which has long been a bone of contention for Members in all parts of the House, and certainly for our constituents. I also support the proposed changes in the firearms laws and alcohol licensing. I know from experience in my constituency that there are some real shortfalls in the ability of the police to deal with certain aspects of the licensing regime, and I think it is right for us to tighten up some of the existing legislation.
Nevertheless, I have some serious concerns about, in particular, the way in which the Government expect the role of volunteers to develop. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), I support the inclusion of volunteers in the work of our police service, which is important and long-standing, particularly when it comes to the role of special constables. Indeed, I think everyone supports that. I hope, however, that the Minister will be able to allay some of my fears about the powers that she wants to extend to volunteers.
It should be borne in mind that special constables are precisely that: they are police constables. There is a big difference between them and other volunteers, which brings us back to the issue of policing with consent. Although special constables are volunteers, they are also fully fledged police constables, and one would expect them to have the powers that police constables have, because they wear the uniform of a police constable. That, I believe, is quite an important differentiation.