Clause 35 - Police powers for police authority employees
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
9:30 am
Mr James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman is right; there is a difference. People can usually establish fairly quickly what the law is in a particular place. They can do so by reading notices, which are often put up, or by going to the police station or town hall, or by many other means if they are interested in knowing whether they can get drunk in a particular street and wave alcohol about.
However, there will be no way for people to tell what powers a CSO has if chief officers grant different CSOs different arrays of power from within schedule 4. They cannot even go to the police station to ask about it unless they have the name and number of a particular CSO. They will not have any means of understanding what the situation is from the uniform.