Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, we agree with the sentiments that have just been expressed. There are four amendments standing in my name in this group. Amendments 152APA and 152BEA would allow the airport operator to share the policing costs with airport users, including aircraft operators and anyone who carries out business in the aerodrome. Some airports will have very few such people and I am as concerned as other noble Lords about the ability of smaller airports, which will now be in a different regime, to bear the costs that are likely to be imposed upon them. My first question is: will airports be obliged to bear all the costs? Would it not be fair and right, where there are other users of the airport who benefit from the policing, to permit them to pass on some of those costs? Obviously that would have to be done in a regulated manner. The second question is: are the charges necessary and reasonable and how will they be controlled? We are in a situation where the regime which is about to be put in place does not provide internal control mechanisms of the kind we ought to have and in which we could have confidence. The airport operators who have made representations are concerned that, despite the existence of the risk advisory group and the security executive group, in practice the level of policing is likely to be dictated by the relevant chief officer of police. The Minister has given assurances, to which I attach great importance, that that will not in practice be the case and that this will be a truly regulated system. One of the important things the police should do in putting together their charges is to provide to the operators—and, indeed, publicly—a detailed breakdown of the resources and the costs to them of the agreement that is going to be put in place, which will have been drafted in response to the airport security plan. If there was such a breakdown, it would serve the purposes of transparency—people could see what the costs were—and enable a standardisation of costs to take place. Then it would be possible to compare what one police force in one airport was charging as compared with another police force in another airport. Although there would be diversity in the security conditions of those airports, it would enable some judgment to be made about the reasonableness and necessity of the costs, and help to create a climate in which policing costs were kept down and the police had an incentive so to do. It will be helpful to hear from the Minister what he thinks of that suggestion as a basis for moving forward. The mood of the Committee is that it is not an entirely satisfactory situation at the moment for providing a framework in which the costs of policing for the security of airports are transparent and reasonable.