My Lords, I rise notionally to support my noble friend Lord Rosser and his amendment, but first I record that I have recently completed for the Mayor of London a review of London’s preparedness to withstand a major terrorist incident. As part of that review I looked at the policing of the River Thames. I became aware of a lacuna—or at least what I understood to be a lacuna—that appeared to exist in the legislation, which these clauses fill and deal with by making it possible for police to stop and search boats on the River Thames. I was therefore delighted to see it. My recommendations on that were couched in those terms.
However, it appears that it is possible for anyone to sail up the River Thames without having any licence or even permit, which seems an extraordinary gap. While we were tidying up some of these matters, I would have thought it useful to tidy up precisely that one. Given that one is expected to have a licence to drive a car, with the car being required to be of a certain standard, it is surprising that there is no such requirement for sending a boat up the Thames.
I come to the specific question that I wanted to ask the Minister—she can answer the first one if she wishes. An hour and three-quarters ago, I received an email from Nigel—I suppose that I am taking a leaf out of the book of my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition here. Nigel said:
“I’m an old retired police officer”—
so he must have been there with Brian—
“and I may be out of date but back in 1967 when I joined The Met, one bit of legislation they kept drumming into us was Sec 66 of The Metropolitan Police Act and it read police may stop, search and detain any vehicle, vessel, boat, cart or carriage in or upon which anything stolen or unlawfully may be found”.
At what point in the various reorganisations of London government and policing legislation was Section 66 of the Metropolitan Police Act repealed or changed? It may still be there, in which case what does this provision add to it? The Minister may not have that information immediately available in her brief, so I would be quite happy to receive a note at a later stage.