Schedule 5 - Powers exercisable by accredited persons
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
12:45 pm
Mr Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)
Let us see whether the Minister will be more amenable to the amendments under discussion than he has been to some others this morning. He should be, as they increase the powers of accredited persons. He will notice that they have the support not only of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole but of Conservative Members.
I should have preferred to discuss the proposal having established that the officers were subject to a public or local authority, but that is not the case. Nevertheless, I am happy to move the amendment. It is right that, in cases of urgency, the police should use officers who, by the Minister's own account, will have been properly trained and will know the ins and outs of their areas of responsibility. We are talking about emergency powers: the carrying out of road checks, seizure of vehicles used to cause alarm, and cordoned areas.
If there is an incident in one of our towns—heaven forbid—surely we would want to call on all those who have responsibility to help in such limited circumstances. It would be odd if a range of people who were properly trained and accredited by the chief constable had to stand by while an emergency occurred. I would have thought that there was role for that group of people to help out.
The balance that I have tried to strike in the amendment is that the group should exercise their powers under the supervision of a constable, which is different from a CSO acting alone and using the powers that the Minister has persuaded his colleagues to give. That strikes the right balance between accountability and the ability to carry out effective tasks during an emergency. It would not mean that there would be one constable for each ACSO, but that a constable would be there or thereabouts in a specific area, such as a cordoned area, giving instructions with knowledge of what people were doing. That would provide an extra body of people to help in an emergency, while retaining the link of accountability that is necessary for individuals who would be employed by the private sector or a public authority.
I hope that the Minister will accept the amendments for the reasons that I have given. After all, we want to ensure that people who work for Tesco occasionally work in the public interest as well as the interest of that company.