Clause 7 - Licensing criteria
Private Security Industry Bill [Lords]
10:00 am
Mr Bruce George (Walsall South, Labour)
That is fine. One of the dangers is that often people—although not my hon. Friend the Minister—see the industry as a homogeneous entity with one body sitting on top to represent it. However, the industry is worse than the Conservative party and the Labour party used to be in terms of diversity and in-fighting. Even choosing the people to consult will be a delicate decision. There is wide experience of drawing up such regulations in other areas of Home Office responsibility and, above all, many countries have gone through such a process in their private security industries, such as South Africa, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Spain. It is superfluous to reinvent the wheel; we should see how other countries have drawn up regulatory schemes, look at their application forms and note what criteria they have drawn up. I am sure that from a wide-ranging national consultation and a reasonably wide-ranging set of letters sent to regulatory authorities elsewhere, a great deal will emerge to strengthen the provisions.