Schedule 5
Policing and Crime Bill
6:15 pm
David Ruffley (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Bury St Edmunds, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment 258, in schedule 5, page 133, line 8, at end insert—
‘(8) In relation to disputes to which this section applies, the Secretary of State shall require that the police provider provides all parties to the dispute full and transparent information about the resource deployments and justifications for those deployments.
(9) In determining disputes under this section, the Secretary of State shall have regard to the principles of transparency and accountability in relation to the policing costs that are reasonable to be born by the aerodrome manager.
(10) Such principles will have regard, inter alia, to the following—
(a) whether an alternative police provider would have made different operational resource judgements based on the identified risks (and such comparison may include references to other airports with similar risk profiles);
(b) whether an alternative police provider would have provided those resources at a lower cost.’.
Clause 61 and the introduction of schedule 5 are important. Schedule 5 will omit sections 25, 25A and 25B of the Aviation Security Act 1982 and insert new text. It will change the current regime and remove the system of designation whereby only some aerodrome operators pay for policing at their aerodromes. All airport operators requiring a dedicated police presence at their aerodrome—not all do—will have to pay for services provided by the police. There must be agreement on whether police services are required at an aerodrome.
Dispute resolution, which has been alluded to in a different context, is at the heart of amendment 258, which I tabled with my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch. It would amend the schedule so that in relation to disputes,
“the Secretary of State shall require that the police provider provides all parties to the dispute full and transparent information about the resource deployments and justifications for those deployments.”
It also states:
“the Secretary of State shall have regard to the principles of transparency and accountability in relation to the policing costs that are reasonable to be born by the aerodrome manager.”
As was alluded to in earlier debates, there must also be regard to
“whether an alternative police provider would have made different operational resource judgements based on the identified risks”
and to
“whether an alternative police provider would have provided those resources at a lower cost.”
In short, the purpose of the amendment is to tease out once again the transparency of policing costs and the requirements that must be met in that regard.
The Minister should give a full reply to this debate because cost is an issue that most concerns those who have contacted Committee members. What has struck me is not that aerodrome managers and operators are going to die in the ditch over the concept that they have to cough up for policing. Some think that it is totally iniquitous, but many believe that the principle in the Bill is sound. However, they wish to ensure that any payments they must make are levied in a transparent way. I gave examples earlier of operators who have suggested that under the current regime some police forces will merely say, “This is a security risk and this is the level of policing. Now pay your money.” The purpose of the amendment is to tease out how we might improve the current regime, which appears to be inadequate for many operators.