Clause 46 - Service outside Police Force
Railways and Transport Safety Bill
4:00 pm
Mr David Jamieson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Plymouth, Devonport, Labour)
The Police Act 1996 ensures that police officers who undertake a temporary secondment outside their own police force with a specified organisation whose work is relevant to policing are not penalised in terms of promotion or rank when they return. The Act also makes provision for how members of a police force would be treated for disciplinary purposes while on secondment.
The clause would enable the Secretary of State to make regulations that replicated that provision for British Transport police officers. However, it is perhaps not as wide-ranging as the hon. Member for Vale of York thinks it is. It is quite narrowly focused. It would allow British Transport police to be seconded, for example, to a county police force and vice versa. Police officers may be seconded to other police forces for particular purposes and for special reasons, although I will not elaborate at length on
those. The provision would protect their job and status when they return to the British Transport police.