Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment. Earlier this evening, we discussed similar issues. I was interested in one of the reasons that my noble friend Lord Faulkner gave for resisting the idea that airport operators should be able to tender for policing services either among adjacent police forces or the British Transport Police. One of the arguments he made was that airports are spread out. It occurred to me that railways are fairly spread out too. They go from the north of Scotland to Cornwall covering most places in between. There is also a need for specialist knowledge, which the British Transport Police clearly have, and they could easily have similar specialist knowledge for policing airports. I began to wonder why we call them the British Transport Police as they do not police the roads and are not even allowed to bid for policing airports. However, they do police the railways, so why not call them the British Railways Police, which I believe they were called long before I had any involvement in this matter? The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, gave a couple of examples. I think of the new station that is being built at Birmingham New Street at vast expense. I have read that £600 million of taxpayers’ and Network Rail’s money is going into that. I am sure that it will be another glorified shopping centre on top of the existing station with lots of platforms. I think also of the new Crossrail stations at Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road. Lorries are about to start trundling around London carrying spoil to build them. Where is the boundary between the station and the roads and shops above? Are agreements really needed between these different police forces before they can police these areas properly? When I hear the responses of my noble friend the Minister, I begin to think that there must be more to these issues than the Association of Chief Police Officers defending their patch as if it is a kind of gold mine against incursions. We should be co-ordinating these matters. I still believe that letting airports to go out to competitive tender to allow the BTP to police a bit more transport would be highly advantageous.