My Lords, I congratulate those still here. We end, of course, with commencement, because that is the tradition. In moving Amendment 146 I will speak also to my Amendments 147 and 149. I also support Amendment 148 from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and Amendment 150 from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and my noble friend. We are dealing with the tension between ever more police powers on the one hand and the lack of equivalence in resources, training and vetting for policing on the other hand. This tension has been more and more exposed in graphic terms in recent months and years.
We began this evening with the eloquent speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who spoke powerfully about incidents of abuse of police power in relation to journalists. We were assured, I think sincerely, by the Minister that it was far from the intention of the Government that those things happened. The Government apparently agreed with me that those were wrongful arrests, yet they have happened more than once. There are some in the police community who hold the view that this is a legitimate thing to do to prevent serious disruption, which is undefined in statute. So, with the amendments, we are seeking to ensure that there is some check on the new blank cheque that we are putting on the statute book, in addition to blank cheques that have already been put there by broad concepts such as conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, et cetera. That is what we are trying to get at.
Amendment 146 prevents the commencement of most provisions of the Bill until there has been
“a report by His Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire Services on improvements to the vetting, recruitment and discipline of specialist protest police officers”.
In another group, the Minister said, “If they’re trained, they’re trained”. So this is about ensuring that that is the case before additional power is granted. Amendment 147 is consequential to that.
Amendment 149 is crucial at a time when more than one police force is in special measures. It provides that provisions should
“not be brought into force for any area in which the police service is under special measures, the engage phase of monitoring, or other unusual scrutiny … by His Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire Services.”
That seems to be a perfectly reasonably check on the new powers and a perfectly reasonable request to make of Ministers, so I beg to move.