My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and my noble friend Lord Attlee for explaining their amendments. I think it is clear that we all want the same outcome, which is protecting police officers who are pursuing dangerous criminals, but also protecting the public. The Government believe that Clauses 4 to 6 of the Bill achieve a sensible balance in meeting these objectives. We believe police officers must be able to do their jobs effectively and keep the public safe without fear of prosecution for simply doing their job in the manner that they are trained to do. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, pointed to some really quite poignant examples of exactly that.
Current laws do not recognise the training that police drivers undertake and the tactics they may have to employ to respond to emergencies and pursue criminals. The new test will allow courts to judge their standard of driving against a “competent and careful” police constable with the same level of training, providing assurance that their skills and training will be taken into account. The new comparison with a “competent and careful” police driver takes into account whether a police driver with the same training would have reasonably made the same decision under the same circumstances.
I was very moved by the personal experiences of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. Her Amendments 13 and 16 seek to specify that the new standard should apply only to “police pursuit purposes”, rather than all “police purposes”.
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As the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, pointed out, that would in effect exclude the bulk of police driving from additional protection and provide different levels of protection for officers simply based on the operational purpose for which a vehicle was being driven at the time. It would be difficult for those involved in a post-incident procedure to identify the moment that driving for the purpose of surveillance became driving for the purpose of a pursuit—again, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, eloquently explained.
I think it is worth expanding on the point made by my noble friend Lord Attlee about policing purposes, but not, for example, law enforcement purposes. The term “policing purposes” succinctly covers the types of driving that police officers would be expected to undertake, and that term would take its natural meaning. The term “law enforcement purposes” is more appropriate for the National Crime Agency, given that it is a law enforcement agency but not a police force, and that its activities may extend beyond policing purposes to wider law enforcement purposes. In either case, it would be for the courts to determine whether the driving in question was being undertaken for policing purposes or law enforcement purposes, as the case may be.
A fairer and simpler comparator is for all skilled police drivers to be compared with a peer who has undertaken the same prescribed training, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, noted. All police drivers should be protected if they are carrying out their police duties in a way that someone with the same level of training as them would do. If a police driver has not received the additional training, their driving would be compared to an ordinary motorist’s, as at present, as this is a more appropriate comparison for their skills.
Amendments 15 and 18, tabled by noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, seek to give the Secretary of State a power to designate other members of the emergency services by regulations. I suggest that the training and scrutiny of police driving are very different from those of other emergency services. The role of police drivers is more varied than that of the other emergency services, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, pointed out. In addition to emergency response, police officers are required to carry out surveillance, armed vehicle interventions, escorts, traffic enforcement and vehicle pursuits—for example, where a suspect is fleeing the scene of a serious crime or otherwise seeking to avoid arrest. For that reason, we do not consider it appropriate to extend these provisions to other emergency services.
Amendments 14 and 17, in the name of my noble friend Lord Atlee, would, as he has indicated, limit police driver standards protection under Clauses 4 and 5 to police officers and civilian police driving instructors. The Government have extended the protection to members of police staff because some civilian specialists may need to drive under emergency conditions and are trained to the National Police Chiefs Council standard to carry out advanced driving tactics. It follows that they should also be able to benefit from the new standard. As with the rest of the provision, the new standard should apply only to those civilian staff who
have completed the prescribed training. I think it is worth reiterating that if they have not, their driving will be compared to that of an ordinary motorist.
I hope that I have been able to persuade noble Lords that the approach taken in these clauses is the right one and that, on this basis, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, will be content to withdraw her amendment.