Extension of Jurisdiction

Part of Clause 31 – in the House of Commons at 7:45 pm on 2 April 2001.

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Photo of Paul Keetch Paul Keetch Liberal Democrat, Hereford 7:45, 2 April 2001

This is the crux of the Bill. As the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) has said, the special Select Committee spent a great deal of time discussing it. I am delighted to see the Chairman and other members of the Select Committee here tonight.

The concern that we have expressed on a number of occasions is that there has been, as the hon. Member for Salisbury said, a degree of mission creep in what the MDP have been doing. We have heard conclusive evidence from journalists, from Tony Geraghty and Gill Linscott, of previous actions that the MDP have already undertaken. We have heard of concern about the MDP's existing powers. Therefore, if we are to accept that there should be an extension of the MDP's jurisdiction, the House should be absolutely sure that the limitations placed upon it are right.

I support what the hon. Member for Salisbury said about the crimes that the MDP will be investigating. In our Committee, the Minister made it clear that he did not believe that the MDP should investigate murder, rape, attempted murder, attempted rape, and so on. He believed that there should be a way in which such offences should automatically be offered to the local county constabulary for it to investigate. I should be interested to hear whether he says that now and how he suggests that that should be done.

I should also be interested to hear the Minister's comments on the report of the Armed Forces Bill Committee. We said: We believe that there is a case for giving MDP officers greater powers". We must remember that these officers are dressed like civilian police. If they are going about their duty and they see a crime being committed, of course they should intervene and come to the support of the civil powers. They will also want to be involved in assisting at floods and other such incidents. However, we were right to say in the Committee: we would be completely opposed to the MDP actively seeking to increase its involvement in general policing duties which are the proper responsibility of local police forces. There has been a consistent train of thought, throughout the evidence that was taken, that the MDP are seeking to extend their powers because they want to justify their existence. Indeed, when we were in Cyprus, members of the joint Cyprus military police force voiced their concern that the MDP somehow wanted to extend their powers on to their turf. This is the key point of the Bill.