The noble Lord is absolutely right, and we aired these concerns when this was debated in Committee.
It is interesting to note in the submission made by the British Transport Police Federation to the Scottish Parliament Devolution (Further Powers) Committee that:
“In 2001, the government response to the DfT consultation which led to the BTPA’s creation … stated that: ‘The Government therefore considers that the national railway network is best
protected by a unified police force providing a dedicated, specialist service and able to give proper priority to the policing of the railways’”.
The memorandum to the committee of the Scottish Parliament goes on to quote the Transport Select Committee of the other place in 2004, which,
“looked at the reforms to the BTP’s governance arrangements … It concluded that: ‘The British Transport Police is not a Home Office Force, and nothing we have heard suggests that it should become one. The railways are a specialised environment, with specialised needs, and need a specialised Force’. They continued: ‘The steady reduction of resources allocated to traffic policing leads us to agree with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary that unless there is a national force dedicated to policing the rail network, the task will not be given the priority it needs’”.
Our concern is that if, having devolved and lost control of this area and the Scottish Government exercise the devolved powers that they have to bring it under the direction of Police Scotland, the very concerns that were expressed by the BTPF and others will be borne out. The specialist services which the British Transport Police currently deliver could be lost over time, and therefore what the Smith commission argues is that the functions possibly could no longer be exercised.
Noble Lords have referred to a number of those functions, in particular tackling terrorism on our transport network. One I particularly note is that:
“The British Transport Police has created specialist teams with responsibility for the management of multi-agency support for local and national suicide prevention, mental health interventions and vulnerable persons encounters. An ongoing force-wide operation (Operation Avert) has so far achieved a 30% reduction in suicide attempts compared to the same period the year before”.
These are very profound specialist functions that the British Transport Police provide.