Clause 35 - Power to search school pupils for weapons
Violent Crime Reduction Bill
6:30 pm
Humfrey Malins (Shadow Minister, (Assisted By Shadow Law Officers); Woking, Conservative)
I shall speak very briefly to my two amendments, which are both probing. There is much to be said about the clause in a clause stand part debate.
Clause 35(3) rather implies that specific permission needs to be obtained separately for each search. That might be the case, but I am anxious that at least one member of staff should be authorised to carry out searches generally rather than authorised to carry out a particular search in a particular case, hence my amendment No. 57.
Amendment No. 58 relates to the issue of clothing. In effect, subsection (9) limits what clothing a searcher can require someone to take off. I asked the Minister how she came to define outer clothing as only
“an outer coat, a jacket, gloves and a hat.”
The subsection does not refer to shoes, but if the search is to be at all worth while, more clothes should necessarily be removed in order to ensure the efficiency of the search.
I pause only to say that we debated a similar measure on clothing in a Bill that is being considered along the Corridor. I apologise for erring from our debate slightly, but that measure relates to the ability of certain immigration officers and private sector employees employed by the Home Office to require certain passengers to remove certain items of clothing. It was most interesting that the list of items of clothing in that Bill—the attempt was to limit it—is not exactly the same as it is in this one, which caused a little consternation among the civil service and Home Office advisers next door and should cause a little consternation in this Committee, since the purpose behind each provision appears to be identical.