Private Security Industry Act 2001 (Amendments to Schedule 2) Order 2006

My Lords, since the Private Security Industry Act came into force it has spawned 11 commencement orders, four sets of regulations, three other statutory instruments, two repeals and revocations, one exception order and one direction under Section 2(1), so it is not surprising that at that level of complexity both the Home Office and the Security Industry Authority have got themselves into a muddle—like most things that come out of the department. The Security Industry Authority is on permanent answerphone with a very irritating message that refers you to several options on its website, but does not allow you to talk to a human operator; it then cuts you off so that you have to start again from scratch. Five years after the Bill went through Parliament, the Home Office discovered that private security guards and others working under contract for the prisons, the police, the transport police, the civil nuclear constabulary and harbour and immigration authorities, including those carrying out escort duties, had been inadvertently covered by Schedule 2 and were therefore compulsorily licensable under the Act. Licensing became compulsory on 20 March, so the Government had to rush through a negative resolution which came into force on the same day pending the drafting of this order. After the consultation the order now before noble Lords covers a much wider range of guards and other civilians employed under contract for the police and so forth. No doubt the Minister will tell us whether those who were not covered by the 20 March order and whose position is now to be regularised have meanwhile been technically employed illegally. The Government say that the inclusion of all these groups in Schedule 2 is unforeseen, but I invite the Minister to agree that the error was an inherent consequence of the wording of Schedule 2 which came to light when it was properly construed. If that is correct, then it could have been foreseen at any time in the past five years and could have been dealt with accordingly in a single order instead of the two orders that we have now had to deal with. In Grand Committee in March on the then Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill, there was some discussion about the delegation to private contractors of functions previously carried out by trained immigration officers, particularly as regards the detention of children outside our jurisdiction at the juxtaposed ports of entry. The Bill, which has now come into force, conferred new powers of arrest, search and detention on detainee custody officers who were originally authorised under Section 154 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 only to hold persons who had been detained by immigration officers. Article 2 refers to the export or custodial functions covered by the 1999 Act but not to those that were added, for example, by Section 40 of the 2006 Act. I am advised that the reason for that may be that the commencement order bringing into force the relevant sections of the 2006 Act have not yet been laid. I would be grateful for the Minister’s confirmation that that is the case. Does this mean that when the commencement order is made, it will have to amend this order which we are now considering to ensure that the added functions conferred on these entrance custody officers are also exempt? In another place, the Minister, Mr Vernon Coaker, said that the activities of those who tow away vehicles on behalf of the police or local authorities were being removed from the scope of the Act. As the noble Baroness will be aware, there has been great concern in London about irregularities committed by parking attendants, which are being covered in some detail by the Evening Standard. The victims cannot raise these matters on appeal because the adjudicators are not obliged to summon witnesses from the contractors or from the employing borough, as I found myself—and I declare an interest—when I appeared before an adjudicator recently. One can win an appeal very easily on the facts but one cannot expose the extent of the practices, which anecdotal evidence indicates are widespread. Are ordinary parking meter attendants to be subject to regulation under the 2001 Act, and does the Minister agree that there is a need for much better supervision of their conduct than we have now?