Clause 36 - Police regulations: cadets
Railways and Transport Safety Bill
10:30 am
Mr David Jamieson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Plymouth, Devonport, Labour)
Clause 36 replicates the Home Secretary's powers under section 52 of the 1996 Act to regulate the conditions of service for police cadets. It enables the authority to make non-statutory regulations for the British Transport police's cadets. They must be consistent with Home Office regulations; they may differ only in order to meet the transport police's specific needs. As I said in the previous debate, if Home Office regulations change, it will be the authority's responsibility to ensure that the non-statutory BTP regulations also change to fit as appropriate.
The hon. Member for Vale of York asked a number of detailed questions about the present arrangements for cadets. I imagine that anyone who had been a cadet for 30 years would no longer consider themselves to be one. The job is mainly intended for younger people, so the idea of retiring after 30 years would not apply. One would have thought that they would before then have joined the main service or become a special. Perhaps I should have spared the hon. Lady the agony of asking all those questions, as the Committee will recall from the debate on clause 25 that there are currently no BTP cadets. We were therefore unable to make the comparisons that she sought.
Clauses 35 and 36 allow the Secretary of State to make regulations that will apply to clause 34. Clauses 42 and 43 allow us to make regulations under the 1996 Act. We will need to make it clear that they are UK-wide, which explains amendments later in the Bill.