Clause 67 - Nationality requirements applicable to police officers etc.
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
9:30 am
Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)
On the first point, about the exclusion of subsection (4)(c) from the requirement to make regulations, the feeling is that that approach is too prescriptive, because it seems to require before the event a list of each rank and position in the police service in order to determine whether it would be covered if we wanted to exclude it. It would be more sensible to retain the power to exclude specific posts as, in the light of experience and focus on particular posts, that becomes necessary.
It would be rather a large-scale exercise to produce for each police service, before anyone had been recruited, a list of every post, rank or position that could or could not be occupied by someone of different nationality. However, there is no difference between us about the intention of the policy, which is that there must be the ability to reserve posts of particular sensitivity.