Policing and Crime Bill

Part of the debate – in a Public Bill Committee at 10:57 am on 27 January 2009.

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Robert Siddall: It is probably a more nuanced position. We accept that there is a degree of local decision making, because the whole process is based on MATRA, which looks at local threat and risk assessment. I would not say that we are set on some kind of central solution with regard to funding. However, that is a position that we have held because we got to a point where we lost so much faith in these arrangements, that we felt the only way to solve that was by some sort of central levy. There are two aspects: security is paramount and our first concern is absolutely that passengers can travel safely and securely. However, while that has to come first, we do have an eye to affordability, especially in the current climate, as Mr. Hutcheson has mentioned.

These arrangements create a problem, as it is not clear that there will be value for money. Despite what Chief Constable Whatton says, if you consider this objectively, you have to ask why would police forces not put lots of officers into an airport, apart from the fact that those resources might be limited, so a decision has to be made about that. There is only one case going through this process that has not obtained an agreement through custom and practice—Prestwick airport, which is one of the nine designated airports. If it had not been for the frenetic activity of officials in recent months, that case would be in dispute. Unsurprisingly, the problem is that the police would like to put a great many more officers in than the airport believes is appropriate. To me that seems to be a case in point.

That is one side of the coin. The other side is that we accept that airports should pay where policing is appropriate for risks that occur on the airport. However, a great deal  of the policing will be for counter-terrorism measures, which are somewhat subjective and perhaps more vague than other measures in terms of making the linkage as to what you get for what resource. We feel that that is also partly a threat against the state. We feel that that should be looked at in that way. We are not simply saying that we do not want to pay for any of this: it is a more complex picture than that.