Clause 4 - Standard powers and duties of community support officers
Police and Justice Bill
4:45 pm
Martin Horwood (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment No. 6, in clause 4, page 3, line 18, at end insert—
‘(7)The standard powers and duties of community support officers shall not include the power to use reasonable force to detain or control a person, under Paragraph 4 of Part 1 of Schedule 4 of the Police Reform Act 2002 (c. 30).’.
I fear that we may tread on some similar ground, in discussing my amendment, to the ground that we covered in considering the previous one, as the confusion surrounding the clause continues. The amendment is a probing amendment, intended to discover the nature and extent of the powers that the Secretary of State might want to introduce under the clause. It is rather strange that, as the Minister has already begun to explain to us in some detail, extremely detailed powers are included in schedule 4 to the Police Reform Act 2002, explaining exactly the powers that PCSOs can exercise: issuing, in effect, fixed penalty notices; detaining, for up to 30 minutes, suspects who fail to give details; and using reasonable force to detain people in those circumstances—I think. The Minister may well correct me.