My Lords, perhaps I may say first that when those PCSOs arrived at the door of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, I am glad that they did not take him away. We would have been without his expertise and input in this Bill, so we are grateful for that. Equally, he made an important point in mentioning it. I come back to a point I made earlier: PCSOs are distinct from police officers, and I think I made that clear in my comments. What they do in terms of reassurance is something that the police themselves do. Again, speaking from my experience of working with neighbourhood teams when I was a local councillor, the police also did similar reassurance exercises.
I turn now to the specific questions that have been put to me. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked why we are proposing this now. Of course, we are responding in line with the scrutiny of the Bill in the Commons. My honourable friend Stephen Barclay raised the issue, but it did go wider and beyond the specifics of his amendments. This is not something that the Government have only just thought about. I referred in my earlier comments to a Labour police and crime commissioner, Paddy Tipping, who wants us to go further. We have consulted on this and we have looked at the position with relevant experts in the field to understand the implications of the change. We have included discussions with the police at both the operational and the strategic level, the College of Policing, the partnership agencies and, indeed, national police leaders. As I said in my earlier remarks, this is about enhancing the powers of PCSOs and not about taking away from their engagement. We believe it is right that the engagement role performed by PCSOs is vital in making police accessible to all, and we do not want to overburden them with enforcement powers that would detract from that. That is why we have taken a considered position on these new packages.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, also asked whether we will consider more powers. These changes will mean a significant increase in the number of powers available for designation to PCSOs. That is an important distinction: this is not something that is carte blanche; it is right that the chief officers should have the freedom to take account of local circumstances and priorities when determining how their PCSOs are deployed. That will be the case in these additional powers that are being proposed. That is why we have taken the time to consider and, while we will be exploring a wider role for PCSOs, the Government believe that their particular role is being enhanced.
I hope that I have covered the specific questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser.