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

My Lords, I absolutely understand why the noble Baroness and the noble Lord take this opportunity to tease about the chequered passage. However, I think it demonstrates how flexible, emollient and reasonable the Government are to respond so swiftly and effectively to issues arising. Opportunities to demonstrate that flexibility seem to come our way on a number of occasions. Perhaps I may start with the noble Baroness's questions, as the issue concerning the Bill is coming up. We will return to the issue on Report. The SIA and football stewards’ consultation was finalised in the middle of this month. The issue will be addressed on Report, which I think will now take place in spillover in the autumn. I hope that we will have a favourable and consensual resolution of the issue. On PCSOs, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asks whether anyone is working illegally at the moment. It is impossible to give a precise answer, but it is possible that some PCSOs are inadvertently caught by the Act if they undertake licensable activities in certain circumstances. Broadly speaking, those circumstances are where they are providing a service for a third party and where they supervise contractors. Therefore, PCSOs who are only partly funded by the police authority may be caught by the Act. It is a very technical catching. The noble Lord will remember that PCSOs were not conceived of when the Act was passed and came into being subsequently. The flexibility with which they have been used has changed over time, and it probably was not contemplated that they would undertake contractual work that would be outside of the straight contractual work undertaken by local authorities. I cannot say no outright as there is a possibility that some may have been doing that. However, I should hope in these circumstances, where it was never intended that they should be caught, that this will not cause any significant difficulty. The 2006 Act does not extend to the powers of detainee custody officers. It creates a new contracted-out role of authorised search officer to undertake the searching of freight vehicles. These ASOs are referred to in the order and are thus removed from the remit of the 2001 Act.