Part of Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 1:45 pm on 18th January 2007.
Briefly, and on the same lines as I questioned the Minister on why it is necessary to extend the powers of the police under clause 20—I was desperately searching through the Terrorism Act 2000, but we reached clause 21 before I could find the relevant provision—will he explain why it is necessary at this stage to introduce powers that I think he said do not exist for Her Majesty’s forces, given that we are supposed to be moving towards normalisation?
My second question concerns subsection (1), which begins:
“If a member of Her Majesty’s forces on duty reasonably suspects”.
Are we going to continue to use “suspects”, or will it be “believes” in future? I am struggling to understand what subsection (2) means. Perhaps the Minister will clarify the situation.