Clause 2 - Board's policing objectives
Police (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Mr Paul Goodman (Wycombe, Conservative)
I apologise to the Minister in advance if she has already covered the point that I am about to raise. If she has, I am sure that she will interrupt me and I shall sit down. Section 25(2) of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne has alluded, states:
''Objectives under this section may relate to matters to which objectives under section 24 also relate, or to other matters, but in any event shall be so framed as to be consistent with the objectives under that section.''
As I understand it, the Minister wants to amend the section so as to delete the words from ''but'' to the end. I ask myself the question that perhaps the Minister would address: let us suppose that the members of the board—whose names I look forward to seeing later today—following the proceedings of the Committee, see that they are no longer required to pursue objectives consistent with those under section 24 of the 2000 Act.
Is there a possibility that the Secretary of State, who has a duty to consider long-term objectives, and the board, which has a duty to consider objectives, may diverge in the objectives that each seeks to reach? If so,
I welcome the Minister's view. It seems possible that by deleting the words from section 25(2) as she seeks to do, she could introduce, perhaps unwittingly, a divergence between the objectives, which could damage the stability of policing in Northern Ireland.
Jane Kennedy rose—
Mr. Wilshire rose—