I echo the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, in my thanks to the Minister for having gone so far to meet the case made very forcefully in Committee last July. As I said briefly then—I shall not be any longer tonight, I assure the House—I found the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, advanced on that occasion to be absolutely incontrovertible. Like him, I am disappointed that the Minister has not gone the whole way.
I listened with great care to what the Minister said about why the Government have found it necessary to retain those restrictions, as they indeed are, on the British Transport Police’s activities in Section 100(3)(b) of the 2001 Act. Frankly, I find the suggestion that a British Transport Police officer will somehow be distracted from his primary duty of policing the railways because he finds it more exciting to do things, as it were, off his main beat, to be a frivolous argument. I am sorry to sound a bit condemnatory, but I simply cannot see how it could conceivably happen.
I have not seen any of the correspondence that the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has had and from which he quoted a few moments ago. However, one of those letters made it absolutely clear that the writer, a very senior officer in the British Transport Police, regarded this as so unlikely that it ought not to be seriously considered. That is exactly my view and I am very sorry to hear my noble friend advance that as an argument.
One knows that behind this is the long-standing argument between my noble friend’s department and the Home Office, which is responsible for the constables in the rest of the country, except of course in London. However, to try to compromise with that department on this issue is something that no noble Lord in this House or Member of Parliament in another place would feel was reasonable. For that reason, I very much hope that my noble friend—I recognise that we are not going to vote tonight; it would be a slightly weird Division—will reconsider this between now and Third Reading and bring forward another amendment, or, as the Bill was first introduced in this House,
consider with her colleagues whether she might put this nonsense right in another place. Having got this far with something for which Parliament has argued and waited over many years, falling at the last fence would be very sad indeed. I beg my noble friend to recognise that her argument does not carry much weight and she should face up to the Home Secretary and say, “I’m sorry, we are going the whole way. We are going to repeal paragraph (b) also”.
9.15 pm