Clause 35 - Police Powers for Police Authority Employees
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
3:30 pm
Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)
I believe that the hon. Gentleman will find that having two on a bicycle is an offence, although whether a person can be arrested for it, I am not sure.
The hon. Gentleman concedes the point. I did not suggest that anyone was proposing that rural police officers should not have powers of arrest. I was merely making the point that in many circumstances police officers must exercise their powers with discretion, using their judgment about whether they would be in a worse position by doing so. Similar issues arise in the exercise of the much more limited powers of detention available to CSOs, and the same discretion will need to be used. The debate has been characterised by the assumption that no discretion would ever be used, rather than that it would be reasonable to assume that it would be.