My Lords, I think that my noble friend has inadvertently answered the question of when it will be done. It is quite clear, reading between the lines, that the Home Office does not intend to do it ever. So do the Home Office, he and the Home Secretary still stand by the promise of the then Home Secretary in 2012 that this would be put on a statutory footing?
If I may say so, the Home Office, in drafting my noble friend’s speech, has been a bit disingenuous. It knows fine I am not opposed to the schedule. The schedule was the mechanism by which we could debate the principle of the college not being on a statutory footing. I discussed this with the Public Bill Office. I looked at various ALBs, including the two of which I am a member, and asked the staff whether I could lift 12 clauses from one of them, change the name to the College of Policing and lift the schedule. They said, “That would be 12 clauses to debate. It would be easier, Lord Blencathra, just to find a mechanism to say that the college must be put on a statutory footing before this schedule is approved.”
I am not opposed to the schedule—no one is. It was a mechanism in order that we could debate the principle. I must say that I am rather concerned by my noble friend’s reply—but also how delighted I am that, on this occasion, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and I are on the same side, despite some strenuous disagreements in the past few weeks. I must say to my noble friend that, if I had realised, and had had the nous and wit
beforehand to discuss with the Lib Dems and possibly the Labour Party what this amendment was about, we could have had agreement tonight and I could have forced it to the vote and won it. Of course, I am not going to do that tonight, but I can tell the Home Office that this issue will not go away. I detect the mood among other parties here, and I hope among my noble friends as well, that we must honour the Home Secretary’s promise to have this body put on a statutory footing.
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It may be jolly good that my noble friend Lord Herbert is doing an internal review to decide what should be done. Jolly good luck to him—but it is not up to the College of Policing to determine its own future and then tell the Home Office that it is quite happy to continue in the present guise. It is up to Parliament to decide the future of this organisation. An important point on which the Home Office has relied is that the 2014 Act gave the college the power to invent more regulations. It has the power to do it but it does not have the authority; just shovelling on more and more regulations, such as the one on pre-charge bail tonight, and giving the college more of that to do, does not legitimise its status. It simply adds more wrongs to the fact that a private limited company is in charge.
I am very grateful to my noble friend for his reply, because he has inspired me to let off steam. I think the Government have lost the argument, but they did not really make the argument tonight to justify this body still being a private limited company. We will return to this in due course—and, possibly, next time we will have votes on it. In that spirit, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.