My Lords, I can now announce the result of the election for the office of Lord Speaker. Details of the votes cast are being made available in the Printed Paper Office. The successful candidate was the Baroness Hayman.

My Lords, I have the honour to notify your Lordships that Her Majesty the Queen, having been informed that your Lordships have elected the Baroness Hayman to be Lord Speaker, has pleasure in confirming your Lordships’ choice of her as your Speaker.

My Lords, I rise on a significant and special day for this House, that of the election of a Lord Speaker. As the House knows, the Lord Speaker replaces the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack.

I begin by paying tribute to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton. He is known for his unfailing good humour, patience and pragmatism, and he has helped to steer the House through a period of important change. My noble and learned friend has the distinction of being the last Lord Chancellor to act as Speaker in the House of Lords, and I am grateful to him for ushering in a new era with his customary charm. I have to say to the House that there have been occasions when I have seen my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack and have despaired because, despite the efforts of many, his wig never seemed to stay on straight for very long. I am delighted that my noble and learned friend will now continue to contribute to the business of this House from the Government Front Bench as Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs.

Some Members of your Lordships’ House will know that Robert Moy, the Lord Chancellor’s Purse Bearer, and Norah Dobinson, the Lord Chancellor’s Train Bearer, are due to retire after more than20 years of service to the department. Their service has been exemplary. I am sure that all noble Lords will wish to join me in thanking them for their service and wishing them a long and happy retirement.

I now turn to the new Lord Speaker. I am delighted to welcome the first elected Speaker of the House of Lords. The House now has its own representative as Speaker, who has been chosen by its Members. I have known and worked with my noble friend for many years. She has enormous respect for this House, its traditions and its contribution to the working of our bicameral Parliament. I am sure that, as she has said, she will be an energetic, diplomatic and persuasive ambassador for the House, its value and its values. We all look forward to working with our new Lord Speaker.

My Lords, on behalf of the Opposition, it gives me the greatest pleasure to congratulate and welcome the noble Baroness on her election as Lord Speaker. She will know that it is a mark of the respect she has in this House and our confidence that she will represent this House with distinction outside and respect its authority and self-regulation inside.

I hope she will understand that in the past I had some reservations about the necessity for and the cost of this new role, but I fully accept the House’s decision and share the feelings of the whole House, demonstrated this afternoon, that this first term of a Lord Speaker will be successful, as I am certain it will be in the noble Baroness’s hands.

It would be wrong to allow the passing of the historic role of Lord Chancellor to go without comment. It was a unique office, a typically British anomaly that worked wonderfully well, one that protected the judiciary and lent grace and authority to this House. It was held by that remarkable succession of individuals whose Arms surround us in this Chamber. I will not list them all, but I confine myself to the names of Becket, More and Bacon, among Lord Chancellors of England, and Hardwicke, Halsbury, Birkenhead and Hailsham among chancellors of Great Britain. The roll-call of the centuries speaks for itself.

Now no more Lord Chancellors will follow in that distinguished line. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, has achieved what he undertook on the day his predecessor resigned. Now the House can let him disrobe and depart in peace. He may now be able to enjoy a rather longer lunch than he has been able to until now, but we hope that we will see much more of him on the Front Bench.

I echo the words of the noble Baroness the Leader of the House in giving our appreciation to Bob Moy and Norah Dobinson, who held the posts of Purse Bearer and Train Bearer with such dignity and grace over so many years.

Now we must close that book and turn to the future. Let us hope that, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, a line of Speakers as long and distinguished as the line of Lord Chancellors now opens up. Let us pray that this House goes on in unity and common purpose to serve our country for many centuries to come.

My Lords, I echo the optimism with which the leader of the Opposition finished his tribute. We on these Benches were enthusiastic supporters of this change as part of making this House, to use the current phrase, “fit for purpose” in the 21st century.

I can take great pride in assuring the new Lord Speaker that I voted for her, which demonstrates the inherent cunning of the House of Lords in devising such an election method. It is also a real pleasure, and I hope that she took great encouragement from the growl of approval from all parts of the House. I have known her a longish time and have always seen her as a kind of Julie Andrews figure in politics. It may well be that in her new role, she needs something of the skills of a nanny and of a singing nun—we will have to see. But it is the beginning of a new era and I can think of no one more fitting to start us on that road.

We say farewell to the Lord Chancellor. When I first came here, 40 years ago, the Lord Chancellor was Gerald Gardiner. I cannot remember anyone referring to him as “Gerry”. But it says something for the way in which the Lord Chancellor has humanised the role that many call him “Charlie”—and they do so with a familiarity and a fondness for the way in which he has carried through his task. I hope the speed at which the wig was removed does not mean that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has already put it on eBay. He will be remembered not only as the last Lord Chancellor to occupy that position but as one who has done great service to the House as its Speaker. We wish him well in his new position as a member of the government Front Bench.

As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said, this is a new and exciting beginning. We could have no better person to lead us into it.

My Lords, the choice by the House of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, as our new and first elected Speaker will be very widely welcomed in Parliament and, on behalf of almost 200 Cross-Benchers, I very warmly join in that welcome. The noble Baroness is more than qualified by her long experience in committee work, as a former MP and as a Minister in three testing jobs, in health, transport and agriculture. It is a particular pleasure for me, who served for many years in the Ministry of Agriculture, to see on the Woolsack the noble Baroness, who had a very hard dossier there and emerged from the Ministry of Agriculture safe and sound. Her work on charities and other organisations gives us complete confidence that she will fulfil the role that we now foresee for our Lord Speaker in representing our interests outside Parliament, and she will be, as she said in her own short statement, an energetic, diplomatic and persuasive ambassador for the House.

I also wish to express the Cross-Bench Peers’ appreciation for the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and, with him on this occasion, the Train Bearer and Purse Bearer. I pointed out when I spoke about the Speakership in January that the title of Lord Chancellor can be traced back to Angmendus in 605 AD. It is rather sad that the noble and learned Lord with that title will, from today, no longer sit on the Woolsack. But the noble and learned Lord’s ability and personal qualities—apart, of course, from a certain tendency to reform the House—have always been appreciated by my Cross-Bench colleagues, and when we say goodbye to his occupation of the Woolsack we again record our appreciation to him at the same time as we welcome our new Lord Speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman.

My Lords, we on these Benches add our thanks to the Lord Chancellor for his duties on the Woolsack in recent years and our congratulations to the noble Baroness on her election as Lord Speaker.

There were nine candidates from all sides of the House, apart from these Benches. That does not mean that the duties of the Lord Speaker will be in any sense unspiritual; quite the opposite. It seems to me that the role bears something of a spiritual trust for the great traditions of this House, and I know that the noble Baroness is ideally placed for this important task.

I am told that one or two Bishops gave at least a passing thought to standing and were tempted—though without sin. In fact, any Bishop who did stand and was successful would immediately have had to resign their bishopric and from the House, so that is perhaps why they did not stand in the first place.

But to what might we compare the role of the Lord Speaker? The noble Lord, Lord McNally, suggests Julie Andrews; I had wondered about the Archbishop of Canterbury, who also presides, with much honour and influence but not much direct power, over a self-regulating institution known as the Church of England. One might have forgiven the Archbishop in recent weeks if he had indeed thought of standing.

The Archbishop's task in the Church has been likened to trying to manage a herd of cats: the harder you try, the more they scatter. The new Lord Speaker will not have quite such a difficult task, but it will be a sensitive and delicate task. We all wish her well as she settles down to the task.

The Jewish and Christian faiths hold the Psalms in common, although they are, of course, of Jewish origin. I end by adapting a verse from the Psalm that I read during Prayers, to the task of our new Lord Speaker: her work is worthy to be praised, and had in honour, and may her righteousness endure for ever.

My Lords, this is a hugely important day for your Lordships’ House. For me, it has been one of the greatest privileges of my life to serve your Lordships' House as its Speaker for the past three years. This House is one of the great institutions of our country. Despite how it may appear to some outside, it has always proved able to change and to adapt and, for the good of the country, to secure its place at the heart of our constitutional legislative arrangements.

Today is one of those days of change. Rarely do we have such days when the change is so visible. These are days of great sadness. For centuries a Lord Chancellor has sat on the Woolsack and 345 years ago his position was formalised in Standing Orders. Throughout those years the role of the Lord Chancellor has changed dramatically. My great17th century predecessor, the Earl of Clarendon, sought to ensure that judges never exhibited signs of independence and the Lords did the Crown’s bidding. Now the judges rightly look to the Lord Chancellor to protect their independence and the Lords look on the Executive as someone constantly in need of a critical friend. I often wish the emphasis were more on “friend” than “critical”.

We change with the times. These changes carry with them the seeds of our future. We are a respected, effective second Chamber, constructive in our approach and keen to do as good a job as we can in scrutinising legislation and holding the Executive to account. Today, the House loses two of its most popular and effective servants, my Purse Bearer, Bob Moy, and my Train Bearer, Norah Dobinson. The House has always held them in the highest possible regard. Between them, they have served five Lord Chancellors, stretching back 20 years. They have ensured both the dignity of the office and that the office has been fully informed of all current gossip in the House. I thank them profoundly for all that they have done.

Others have supported me in my role as Speaker of your Lordships' House. The Clerk of the Parliaments has ensured that I am properly briefed on the business of the day. He always arrives promptly at 2.15 pm each day; I invariably arrive late. The Doorkeepers and the security staff ensure that we can work in a safe and orderly environment. They carry out their duties with such diligence that they have, on occasion, halted my procession and asked for my security pass, which I have not had. Finally, the staff of the House work to ensure that the business proceeds efficiently and that your Lordships are well supported.

We are indeed lucky to have as our first elected Speaker the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. She carries the support and good wishes of the whole House. She will both respect our traditions and look with new eyes on the office of Speaker.

This is a very different place from when I joined. No doubt it will change further as a result of today’s changes. Our voice has changed; we stand for new and more varied things; our membership has changed so much; our viewpoint and our voice frequently differ from the Government’s and also from the Opposition’s. It is the voice and viewpoint of this House; it connects to the world outside. Despite the very sincerely held opposition to the changes to parts of this House, throughout the three years this place has been consistently warm and affectionate to me and to my family. I thank every Member of the House profoundly for that. Life for me will never be the same again. The most important “thank you” is to the House for all it has done to support me in my role as Speaker. I thank the House for giving me the honour of serving it.

My Lords, may I be permitted to make an observation? As one who has been against the change from the beginning, I nevertheless congratulate the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on achieving what he set out to achieve. It was a very considerable task. He persuaded your Lordships' House; he persuaded the other place; Parliament agreed. We congratulate him on that. However, I have a sneaking feeling that, somewhere in the depths of his heart, a little tear is being shed for the role which he played and for the office in which he participated, which is now to be no more.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, the new Lord Chancellor. Whatever the past—

Speaker!

My Lords, I beg your pardon. I would not like to usurp her authority already. I congratulate her on her achievement. She has been chosen by the whole House and she will be warmly welcomed and warmly supported, whatever views we might have had about the change in the past. We wish her the greatest success. She will do her task with elegance and charm, and great graciousness as well. I know that she will rely on the goodwill and the friendship of all of us in your Lordships' House.

Hear, hear!

My Lords, nobody could take up the position that I have done today without a sense of honour and a sense of history. It is customary on these occasions to say that your predecessor is a very hard act to follow. When you have to talk about several centuries of predecessors who are enormously hard acts to follow there is a tremendous sense of responsibility. I feel that sense and I will do my utmost to live up to the responsibilities with which the House has entrusted me.

One of the things made very clear to me during the debates about the change to a Lord Speaker was that the last thing that the House wanted inside its confines was long speeches from the Woolsack. That mistake I will not make today. However, I wish to add my thanks for, and my tribute to, what has been said already and the very kind words that have been addressed to me.

I am always slightly nervous when one is congratulated and told of one’s qualities, even if they are about being a singing nun, in advance of having performed any function whatever. However, they are very gratefully received. I am grateful even to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, although when he spoke about voting for me, I was reminded that, on election day, I met one of his Front-Bench colleagues going into the Moses Room to vote. He said, “The alternative vote, it’s a wonderful system. You start with the bottom number and the person you really dislike most”. So even if that was the spirit in which the noble Lord, Lord McNally, voted for me, I am seriously aware that the wonderful thing about this election was not only the spirit in which it was conducted—and I pay tribute to everybody who stood and everybody who was involved in the election—but also that, your Lordships' House being what it is, what it was and what it will be, no candidate could have won it without support from all round the House. That is what will sustain me in the time ahead, when I try my very best to do the job well and when, inevitably, I do not do it perfectly at the beginning.

My Lords, as a Back-Bencher I congratulate the Clerks on the way in which they have carried out this election. Many of us thought that we would have read who the new Speaker would be in the Sunday newspapers. I have lost a considerable amount of money on betting that we would have heard before now. The way in which they have carried out the election has been first class. On behalf of all Members of the House, I congratulate the Clerk and his staff on how they have done it.

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

What discussions the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has had with the Government of the United States about climate change and the need to curb greenhouse gas emissions since her appointment earlier this year.

My Lords, following her appointment, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has not yet had direct discussions with the Government of the United States about climate change. She looks forward to visiting the United States in the near future to discuss climate change and other issues of mutual interest. She has announced that the FCO will play an increasing role in delivering the Government’s international objectives on climate change.

My Lords, I can see that the Minister shares my bemusement that climate change is not regarded as being equally important to what happens in your Lordships’ House. However, does he think that, when the Secretary of State has had these discussions, a measure of success would be that Independence Day was no longer celebrated and “Interdependence Day” in our globalised world was celebrated instead? Before that stage is reached, would he agree that, as Al Gore told the noble Lords and MPs who went to hear him, the US Administration still have a mountain to climb in recognising climate change as a serious issue and in taking policy action on it? Will the Government make that issue their number one Foreign Office priority?

My Lords, as it is Independence Day, I certainly shall not do anything other than congratulate the United States on one of their great celebrations. There are areas of policy where we disagree with the United States, and we say so. Kyoto is an obvious example, as are the International Criminal Court and the death penalty. We will continue to work with the United States wherever we can and wherever we disagree—perhaps that is the most important place to work with people. It is best that we do so, and it is best that we build a trusting and close relationship on these issues, because, in the final analysis, the United States will be critical in achieving global targets on climate change. I think that that is the burden of the point made by the noble Baroness, and I agree with it.

My Lords, when the Secretary of State discusses issues with the American Administration, might the most practical course be to concentrate on energy security? Is it not the position that the Americans are, at last, beginning to take very seriously the need to reduce radically their oil consumption—both oil imports and oil production generally? Of course, that is a first achievable step, which, if successful, will vastly reduce carbon emissions in the long term and achieve two objectives in one: it will increase energy security and give our children and grandchildren better control over climate change.

My Lords, I agree. There is conspicuous evidence that energy security has risen rapidly up the agenda of the United States. At state level and often at municipal level, leaders in the United States speak about the issue with increasing frequency. President Bush himself has described the reliance on oil as akin to an addiction. The reality is that the United States will have to look at ways in which their use of energy not only is secure and more efficient but accords with the need to decrease carbon emissions to the atmosphere.

My Lords, does the Minister accept that part of our problem with the United States is that substantial chunks of American opinion, including in Congress, are still in denial about climate change and pollution? I understand, for example, that half the world’s car emissions come from within the United States. Given that we have a special relationship with the United States, is it not important that Ministers, including our Prime Minister, appeal to American public opinion, rather than just consulting the US Administration?

My Lords, the public campaigns about climate change and carbon emissions have been prominent. That may be—I hope that it is—one of the reasons why so many states, including California and its governor, have taken such a robust position on the question. There may be many in all countries who believe that economic interests could be damaged by having stricter rules about carbon emissions, but the reality is that the way in which carbon emissions—particularly from the United States, but also from China, India and other countries—are poisoning the atmosphere will be a far greater problem than anyof the perceived economic problems that people sometimes plead in aid.

My Lords, is it not possible to explain to the United States that it is to their advantage to acknowledge the problem? The United States are, if nothing else, extremely technologically inventive. There are already buses in Washington and Sacramento which run on hydrogen. The Americans are on top of the problem; we ought to encourage them to make money out of cleaning up the atmosphere, rather than lecturing them on Kyoto.

My Lords, we have advocated that everyone should adopt and abide by the Kyoto agreement—it is an important international agreement—but I think that the noble Earl will find that there has been a direct appeal to the inventiveness, commercial opportunities and changes that may well boost parts of the United States economy if it proceeds in that way.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that at the recent Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Edinburgh the United States delegation refused to accept the words “climate change” in the final communiqué and insisted that the phrase should be “climate volatility”?

My Lords, I was there for the beginning of that conference but unfortunately did not stay long enough to hear that extraordinary turn of phrase. I rather regret that, because I suspect that I would have left in better humour. Whatever words they choose, the United States must come to recognise that carbon emissions, at the current rate, are probably doing the most serious harm of almost any threat or challenge to our globe.

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

What plans they have for the 350 women prisoners displaced as a result of the decision announced on 24 May to appropriate HM Prison Brockhill and HM Prison Bullwood Hall for male prisoners.

My Lords, Brockhill and Bullwood Hall had 282 women prisoners allocated to them on the day of the announcement. The Bullwood Hall prisoners have all been transferred to other women’s establishments. The transfers from Brockhill are still in progress. Transfer plans focused on individual assessment and on careful case management of those women identified as having complex needs and vulnerabilities. Closeness to home was a main consideration.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that helpful reply. However, does she accept that in spite of what she has told us, the disruption to the treatment of these 282 women is likely to be considerable? Can she confirm that, in 2004, the Home Office dismantled its separate management structure for women prisoners? Does she agree that such short-sighted policy decisions as the appropriation of these prisons for men might be prevented if there was a senior person in the Home Office with operational responsibility for women prisoners?

My Lords, I reassure the noble Baroness that there has been minimal disruption of treatment for each of the women. A care plan was carefully worked out with each woman prisoner before the move and an assurance made that appropriate arrangements for continuing treatment were available. In relation to the separate management, I think I have said from this Dispatch Box before that the team is specially identified as dealing with the women’s estate. I assure the House that the women’s issues in our prisons are well and fully managed.

My Lords, how affected by the changes are the prisoners’ families?

My Lords, that is one of the issues that we considered. We looked at distance; we looked at need. The prisons to which the women have been returned are of a good order—the newer prisons have been specifically built—and those issues were very much taken on board.

My Lords, I declare an interest, having carried out an inspection of the treatment of women in prison some years ago for several of the prison NGOs. Is the Minister aware that in 2004 the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, told the House that the case for a women’s justice board to deal with women offenders was very strong? Does she accept that the time has come to establish such a board to prevent women's special needs being subsumed by the overwhelming demands of the men’s prisons?

My Lords, I do not accept that a women’s justice board is necessary at this time, but that is predicated on the changes that we have already made to the management of women in our prisons. Noble Lords will be aware from the debate that we had last week that we have specific programmes now in relation to the rehabilitation and settlement of women, and those issues are being energetically pursued. However, the issue is not closed.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware of the report from the independent monitoring board of 2005 on Brockhill prison, which noted that the staff there had built up many years of expertise in reducing self-harm? Would she now expect the level of self-harm to rise as a result of the dispersal of the women prisoners from Brockhill?

My Lords, I hope not, because the new regime that we have put in place appears successfully to have reduced the level of self-harm. All the prisons to which the women have been transferred have had those issues highlighted. It is a matter of acute concern which we have monitored with the greatest of care.

My Lords, Bullwood Hall is in my diocese, so I should be grateful to hear the Minister’s comments on the effects of these hasty decisions on a wider community of people. She may know that, for example, a new woman chaplain was appointed with a view to serving the prison as it was and that dozens of people have been preparing themselves as volunteers to work in the visit centre. What does the local community need now to prepare itself to accept and seek to support? Would she accept that the decisions, made in such haste, can undermine the confidence of the local community in its local prison?

My Lords, of course I can understand what the right reverend Prelate says, but we hope very much that the community will not be undermined. I regret to say that there is a great deal of work to be done with offenders in the community and in our prisons. I hope that good work could be done with those willing volunteers, better to support offenders when they come out into the community and better to support the men who will be going to Bullwood Hall and their families.

My Lords, one problem frequently raised in poor prisons is the standard of training of staff. What has happened to the staff who have been trained to work with women at Bullwood Hall and Brockhill, particularly the staff who looked after the young offenders at Bullwood Hall, whose activities were so praised by the chief inspector in the most recent report?

My Lords, the noble Lord will know that there is a clustering process for these prisons, so that a number of officers who were in one prison will be transferred to another. I reassure noble Lords that the use and skill of those trained staff will not go to waste.

My Lords, the Minister has assured us of the steps that she will take to keep the families as close as possible to the prisoners. Can she assure us that the practice of churning, which is so unsettling, particularly to women prisoners, will be abandoned as soon as possible?

My Lords, it is always important to keep the level of churn to a minimum. Your Lordships will know that one of the prisons was used as a remand prison in the main, so people would be moved anyway. Some of the prisoners who were moved are longer-term prisoners who will now be settled in a way that is appropriate. I reassure the House that I ensured that each individual woman was spoken to and that her particular interests and needs and those of her family were considered before any move. I am assured that each and every person got the prison of their first choice, although of course there is a limit to how many one can choose from.

My Lords, is my noble friend aware how delightful it is to hear about such meticulous trouble being taken with regard both to distance and to families? Will she confirm that none of the women with children under 16 is to be held more than100 miles from home?

My Lords, I believe that that is so. The information that I have been given—I will confirm it—is that, although the distance may have increased, the speed with which one can travel to the new prison is greater. I am told that for many of the families the travelling has become easier because of the proximity to arterial roads and matters of that sort. I will write to my noble friend if what I have said is in any way inaccurate.

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

What have been the receipts from gold reserve sales since 1997; and what would be the current market value of the gold reserve sold.

My Lords, 395 tonnes of gold were sold from the reserves between July 1999 and March 2002. The total proceeds were around$3.5 billion, equivalent to around £2.3 billion, using exchange rates at the time of the sales. On 3 July, the current market value of the gold sold was around$7.9 billion, equivalent to around £4.3 billion. The programme was part of a restructuring of the foreign currency and gold reserves aimed at achieving a better balanced portfolio. As a result of the programme, a one-off reduction in risk of approximately 30 per cent was achieved as measured by value at risk.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. What securities were acquired with the proceeds of the gold sales, and what is their current market value in the same denominations as he gave in the original Answer?

My Lords, the proceeds from the sales were invested in interest-bearing foreign currency assets in proportion to the then held reserves: 40 per cent dollars, 40 per cent euros and20 per cent yen. The current aggregate position of the reserves is included in the exchange equalisation accounts, which are published annually, and there is a monetary report on the reserves. It is not possible at this stage to unpick the particular transactions from that time, but the accounts show the aggregate position and do so on an annual basis.

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that the case for a more balanced foreign reserve portfolio is well made, regardless of the present price of gold? The plain fact is that an unremunerated, risky and volatile asset like gold is better reduced in the foreign reserve portfolio. Indeed, there is a case for reducing it even further. Does my noble friend accept that we made an agreement in the European Union—with 14 member states as well as the European Central Bank—that there would be a sale of no more than 2,500 tonnes over five years? What proportion of that total would be available for us to sell over the next five years?

My Lords, I agree with the first part of what my noble friend said. This was about change and getting a more balanced portfolio. We achieved that 30 per cent reduction in risk as a result. It is wrong to evaluate the success of the programme in terms of the short-term movements in gold prices. The Government have no plans for further disposals of gold. We think that the arrangement in the portfolio is now about right.

My Lords, at a time of floating exchange rates, what is the purpose of the gold reserve at all?

My Lords, my noble friend makes an interesting observation. The importance of gold generally in the reserves of this and other countries has lessened. So far as the UK is concerned, because we have a strong monetary and fiscal framework, we allow the market to determine what exchange rates are going to arise.

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that at the time the Treasury said that the decision on gold sales did not involve taking a view on gold prices. It was vastly mistaken to sell off gold when the price was at a 20-year low. Does he accept that, had the Treasury held on to it until the market rose, it might now have been able to sell it to realise an additional£2 billion?

My Lords, I believe that is the wrong analysis to make, as I have said earlier. Gold is extremely volatile in its price. It was about $100 above its current price a month ago, and$45 below its current price when the first draft Answer was produced for me to give to the noble Lord. That underlines the volatility of gold prices.

My Lords, would the Minister admit that with hindsight the timing of the sale of gold seems a little eccentric?

No, my Lords, I would not. Again, you have to evaluate this in the long term. If the noble Lord is inviting me to say something about this Government’s stewardship of reserves in comparison to their predecessors, I am happy to do that. We do not need to go back very far. On16 September 1992, we sold £28 billion of reserves on a single day and £40 billion of reserves were sold in August and September of that year. Information released fairly recently under the Freedom of Information Act shows that the cost of that mismanagement of the economy was £3.3 billion.

My Lords, would it not be a good idea to increase the holdings of euros, anticipating future entry?

My Lords, I think it was suggested at the time that this process was part of softening the approach to entry into the euro, and the Government’s position remains unchanged on that. If it were to be the case, and we were looking to enter, the last thing that we would want to do with our foreign currency reserves would be to get euros. That would be our functional currency.

My Lords, the Government claim to have removed about 30 per cent of risk from their reserves portfolio, but the other side of reducing risk is reducing returns. Do they think that giving up more than £4 billion of gain in the value of their gold reserves represents a good risk/reward calculation?

My Lords, you have to make that evaluation in the long term. The process of dealing with risk does not always mean that you have a less risky portfolio with smaller returns. Part of the process of evaluation is to get the best of both worlds.

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

What representations they have received about modifications to the extradition treaty with the Government of the United States.

My Lords, we are unaware of representations about modifications to the treaty with the United States. There have been representations to amend the law that deals with extradition requests from the United States, and many of these have called for the United States to provide prima facie evidence with their extradition requests, as they used to do. However, we think that this is misconceived. The respective evidential requirements, having previously been unbalanced—placing a greater burden on the US than on the United Kingdom—have now been broadly evened up.

My Lords, does it not shriek with injustice and is it not grossly unfair that British citizens can be extradited to the US by the expedited process under the treaty, when the UK Government will have to provide prima facie evidence to the US? That is not, as my noble friend suggests, a rebalancing. Should we not have ensured at the time of negotiation that there was reciprocity in the coming into operation of the obligations? Would it not make sense and be just for us to give adequate notice to our US partners under the treaty that we intend to suspend its operation until such time as the US Senate ratifies it and puts the same obligations on their citizens as we have imposed on ours?

My Lords, as I have now said on a number of occasions, I understand the concern expressed by my noble friend, but the point is in fact flawed. The new arrangements enable us to have a comparable system to that in the United States. This is a rebalancing that makes the system fairer, as opposed to the unbalanced situation before, in which they had to provide prima facie evidence to us and we did not have to provide prima facie evidence to them.

My Lords, where does the Minister get the extraordinary idea that the test of “probable cause” that the Americans apply is much less demanding than the test of showing that there is a case to answer, which we applied until 2003, when the Government made the new order? Is it not clear that, in the present extradition arrangements, there is a substantial unbalance that needs to be remedied? Will the Government now get around to revoking their 2003 order and the 2003 treaty itself?

My Lords, no. The noble Lord and I enjoyed ourselves enormously during the 2003 debates on that Bill, as did a number of noble Lords. We went through the matter again and again. Nothing appears to have changed since we enjoyed those lengthy debates.

My Lords, is not the present unbalance a consequence of the failure of the Government to foresee, as they should have done, the possibility that the United States Senate would not ratify the treaty?

My Lords, the issues were foreseen. There are difficulties, which we explored when we debated the issues on other occasions. The Senate has its processes that have to be gone through, and we have, of course, strenuously encouraged our American partners to deal with the matter as quickly and as expeditiously as possible. We continue to press that case in a very direct way.

My Lords, on the last occasion when this question was raised, were we not told that it made no difference in practice that the treaty had not yet been ratified by Congress and that extradition continues to take place and will continue to take place both ways, as one would expect?

My Lords, extradition continues both ways. The noble and learned Lord is right. Whether under the old or the new treaty, proper cases are still going forward.

My Lords, many people are puzzled as to why it is proper to extradite British citizens to the United States for offences committed in this country. Could my noble friend explain the rationale for that?

My Lords, the issue is whether there is an offence in another country that falls within our current extradition rules. If there is such an offence, the treaty would bite and, applying those provisions, the extradition would take place. We have benefited greatly from those provisions, as do our partners. The United States are in the same position as every other country in the schedule of which they are part.

My Lords, does the noble Baroness not see the unfairness? Three bankers were extradited for something that the Americans accused them of doing in this country, which our Crown Prosecution Service took no notice of and said that no offence had been committed. The noble Baroness simply looks away and cannot understand the unfairness of it. That is what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, is driving at and that is what irritates so many of us on this side of the House.

My Lords, the noble Earl has been in the House longer than I have. Therefore, I am confident that he understands the rules of sub judice, just as every other person in the House does.

My Lords, does the Minister accept that the opposition in Congress to ratification was based very much on American domestic politics and, in particular, the views of the Irish-American lobby, which resists anything that could extend British jurisdiction over cases in that country? Are the Government making representations to say that it is not an issue of British/Irish-American relations but a much broader set of judicial issues?

My Lords, the noble Lord touches on issues that are, of course, sensitive to the United States. We have made it absolutely clear that the issue should be dealt with expeditiously. When I saw the Deputy Attorney General very recently, I impressed on him that very point. Those matters are being pressed with our American partners at every possible opportunity.

My Lords, the Minister says that the case was sub judice. Has she taken any advice from the House authorities to prove that that is so?

My Lords, those cases are currently being debated judicially. I have not taken advice, but we know well that we are not entitled to speak about cases that are currently being dealt with by the courts.

My Lords, does the Minister accept, notwithstanding the extreme robustness of her response, that there is huge disquiet on all sides of the House about the situation? As there is before the House a Bill that would seek to redress what many of us see as an issue that needs to be resolved, does she also accept, again notwithstanding the robustness of her response, that that opportunity should and, I suspect, will be taken by this House to ask the Commons to think again about the matter and to seek to change the view of the Executive?

My Lords, I understand the sentiment that is being expressed. The law is as it currently is; obviously, it is up to this House to debate the issue, as I dare say it will when the matter comes before it later.

My Lords, I beg to move the nine Motions standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft regulations and orders be referred to a Grand Committee.—(Baroness Amos.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Rooker on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:

Clauses 1 to 14

Schedule 1

Clauses 15 to 17

Schedule 2

Clauses 18 to 26

Schedule 3

Clauses 27 to 30

Schedules 4 and 5

Clauses 31 to 33.—(Baroness Amos.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Health Bill has consented to place her Interests, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

Bill read a third time.

Clause 5 [Vehicles]:

moved Amendment No. 1:

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Monson. The implementation of Clause 5 reflects all that is wrong with the Bill because nowhere is the Government's response proportionate to the risk. It does not matter whether you look at the global situation or the fact that 25 per cent of the adults of this nation smoke and still want to smoke—no provision is made for them. The noble Lord mentioned passive smoking, but not once have the Government conceded an iota that the alleged death sentence from passive smoking is highly speculative and highly unlikely to happen.

In this case, the Minister rightly says that this is a mobile place of work and that, in this circumstance, drivers must snuff out their cigarettes. But the question that Parliament has to ask itself is: who is going to enforce this situation? Will it be the police? We know that the police are not the least bit interested in enforcing this position—understandably, as we read daily in the press how stretched they are. Will it be the local authorities? I have spoken to my local authority and it is not in the least bit keen to take on this new burden.

The conclusion—the Minister has not yet said this but it is the only logical conclusion—is that we are going to have a whole host of mobile community protection units, presumably on motorcycles and mopeds, checking on whether those who are smoking in their cabs are sole drivers. It is totally unworkable, and that is the problem with so much of the Bill. The central thrust of the Bill is fine; it is the unworkability of certain sections that, frankly, makes a mockery of what this is all about. We all know what happens with seat belts in taxis—no one fixes their seat belt in a taxi. People are also busily using their mobile phones while driving up and down the country, and now we are going to add another restriction. It is a farce. The issue of long-distance drivers, who have a place behind them in the cab where they sleep, is still unresolved. Is that a place of work or is it a home? I do not know. The Minister does not know. Nobody knows.

Instead of slavishly following Scotland’s left-wing, do-good and frankly pretty useless Government, why can we not just for once take a close look at what they do all over the continent, find out which is the best procedure for this situation, and implement that? That seems a sensible way forward. That is why I very much support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Monson. I hope that the Minister will respond positively, and that he will not do what happened after Report. In the newspaper the next morning I read that we will have “no smoking” signs in every bus shelter in the United Kingdom, 98 per cent of which are open to the air. But perhaps the Minister was misreported. I very much support the noble Lord.

My Lords, I take the opportunity afforded by this amendment—which I support because I think it is sensible—to make one short, final intervention in this debate, which has gone on for a long time. A number of colleagues—notably the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, across the Floor on the Labour Benches, to which we know he always shows great loyalty; the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, who has just spoken from the Conservative Benches; and myself from the Liberal Back Benches, my Front Bench having given the Government unequivocal support—have consistently opposed the part of the Bill dealing with smoking, which I regard as draconian and repressive legislation quite unnecessarily and unjustifiably restricting freedom of choice.

None of us—including the noble Lords, Lord Naseby and Lord Monson—has denied that smokers, despite the pleasure that they derive from the habit, of which there has been little mention in the debate, face a risk of cancer. That is a fact that we accept. None of us has denied the right of non-smokers to enjoy smoke-free conditions in their workplace, in public places and on public transport—although bus shelters, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, said, may be slightly different. But I think that all of us continue to believe that the extent of damage to health from so-called passive smoking, difficult as it is to quantify and evaluate, is, in the terms of the Scottish legal verdict, non-proven. Nevertheless, our amendments have accepted that which we doubted, in the interests of seeking a fair and balanced solution. Separation, we have argued, provided both protection and choice. This has been rejected with uncompromising zealotry—though the Minister is not really a typical zealot; it’s a bit out of character. But it is the same logic: the same logic that led to alcohol prohibition in the United States and that led to the burning of shops which sold alcohol in Beirut. It is an intolerant logic and it is wrong.

I know that the majority are against me and that those on my own Front Bench consider me politically incorrect and misguided. I do not care. I care about freedom.

My Lords, I have put my name to this amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Monson. I could not agree more with him. It is the degree of inconsistency of the Government’s smoking policy—in that one is allowed to smoke in old people’s homes and in prisons but not elsewhere—that seems so extraordinary. I hope that the Minister will accept this very small amendment.

My Lords, having tabled a similar amendment at previous stages of the Bill, and having argued at some length in favour of it, I am more than happy to give this amendment my support for the reasons so eloquently expressed by other noble Lords.

The root premise of the Bill is that prolonged and substantial exposure to environmental tobacco smoke carries with it unacceptable risks to health. To say that the cab of a lorry in which a single driver has previously been smoking presents an unacceptable health risk to anyone subsequently getting into it seems absurd. No arguments have been advanced by the Government to persuade me that we should take that proposition seriously. Indeed, it seems to me that in this matter the Minister has relied much more on assertion and arbitrary demarcation lines than on sound science.

We have said before, and it is worth saying again, that this is not a Bill to protect the public from any quantity of environmental tobacco smoke, no matter how tiny. It is a Bill that attempts to address what one might call the larger picture. We are at risk of taking the Bill to unworkable extremes if we insist that a farm worker on his own in the cab of a tractor, or a company executive driving alone in a pool car, may not have a cigarette. The Government have made it clear that work vehicles that are only ever used by one person will not have to be smoke-free. How it will be possible in all cases for enforcement officers to distinguish that situation from the kind that I have just mentioned is not at all clear. I, for one, would argue that for the law to seek to make that distinction is pointless.

My Lords, I want to make just three points to make the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench position clear. I do not regard my noble friend Lord Russell-Johnston, of whom I am very fond, as politically incorrect; he is just incorrect on this matter. As we have said in previous debates, residual smoke stays for a very long time. The level of danger which that poses to an individual who goes into a confined space, of which a car is one, may vary, partly on the condition of the person, such as whether he has an asthmatic condition which triggers it. Nevertheless, the smoke is present for some considerable time.

My second point concerns the accusation—I think it was an accusation—that the Scottish Executive, of whom the Liberal Democrats are part, are do-gooders. I think that doing good in this case is right, as it does good for the many people who wish to have clean air.

My final point, which is the one that sways me, is that people at work often have to put up with other people's behaviour, such as other people’s smoke. They often feel that they are not in a position to challenge it, but they do not want it because it is unpleasant, irritating or damaging to their health.

For those three reasons, it is right for us to come down on the side of caution in this matter and to support a measure that will make life healthier and more pleasant for a great many people.

My Lords, at first sight this amendment looks acceptable, but it is acceptable only in a superficial way. Although I can understand fully the arguments that have been posed by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, and supported by the noble Lords, Lord Naseby and Lord Russell-Johnston, let us think, for example, of a hospital car transport service, where in between transporting patients to and from hospital the driver decides to have a smoke when he or she is alone. The car is then filled with smoke before the patient gets on board to be taken to or from the hospital.

Let us look at a taxi driver or a driver of a private hire vehicle who, between taking individuals from one place to another in the course of his or her work, fills that car with smoke. Let us think of a school bus driver who, having taken a group of children to school, fills the bus with smoke while driving back to the depot and picking up another group of schoolchildren to take them to school. It is possible to argue that the level of pollution remaining in those vehicles could well be below that likely to be hazardous to the individual, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe argued, but we cannot be certain that that is the case. I entirely agree with the view that if a vehicle is only ever used by one individual at work or at other times, it is perfectly acceptable for that individual to be able to smoke in that vehicle, but when it is also used to transport others, this amendment falls, and I would not support it.

My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that there is nothing in my amendment to prevent health or local education authorities making it a condition of employment that drivers of ambulances and school buses do not smoke when they are in their vehicles?

My Lords, as the noble Lord is not going to reply to that, I shall say a few words on this amendment from the Spiritual Benches rather than the Labour Benches, and from the point of view of an independent Labour Member of this House rather than that of a Labour Member.

This is such a mild amendment that I would have thought that the Government would try to retrieve some of their reputation for authoritarianism by agreeing to it. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, outlined the circumstances when it might be used: when a car which might be used during the course of work is then used out of work by the driver and perhaps his daughter, and because it is a place of work his daughter, son or wife would not be allowed to smoke in it. That is carrying things to the height of absurdity. It is a lunatic proposition.

I believe that the whole Bill is lunatic in concept, but this amendment brings it into complete and utter disrepute. I cannot understand why the Government will not accept reasonable amendments. I do not smoke, and the reason I am opposing the Bill is because of its intolerance and its removal of personal freedoms that people have enjoyed for hundreds of years. That is why I and many others have been opposing the Bill—not because we are smokers or have an interest, but because we believe that smoking is legal and that people should not be harassed as they are being.

The Bill is supposed to be about protecting people from second-hand smoke. There is no real clinical evidence that second-hand smoke hurts anybody, but even assuming that it does in some way, the propositions that have been put forward throughout the Bill are to protect non-smokers’ health—and indeed, their inconvenience—and at the same time to protect the right of people to assemble in public places, if they wish, provided there is separation. I know that the amendment is not totally about separation, but I want to emphasise the fact that the opponents of the Bill have been trying to be fair to both sides of the argument. However, the Government and the anti-smoking lobby will not listen to what is reasonable under all circumstances in what is supposed to be a democratic country.

I should have thought that, this afternoon, the Government would at least say to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, “We are prepared to make this tiny concession to you at the end of the Bill”, but judging by the look of the Minister, he has absolutely no intention to do so. He will stand by his extremist view that he has echoed throughout the passage of the Bill, the view that because the House of Commons and the Government have supported the measures—despite the fact that it was not a manifesto commitment—this House must accept it as it came from the House of Commons.

Frankly, I think—I believe—that this has been a wholly disreputable exercise in this House. Those people whose bigotry over a long period has demonised smokers and made them pariahs have based the Bill on junk science and are now allowing a most irrational measure to go through this House. I am thoroughly ashamed of this House and the House of Commons for what they are doing in the Bill.

My Lords, it was certainly not my intention to intervene, but having been, I assume, one of the people to whom the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, refers as bigoted and a zealot on these matters, I think that I should come to the Government's defence and say that I very much hope that my noble friend has no intention of accepting the amendment.

References were made to the science on second-hand smoke. The danger is that we will repeat earlier debates on the Bill—indeed, Second Reading debates—but I commend to the House the very latest report from the United States Surgeon General, published last week, in which he states that the science is clear: tobacco-smoke pollution is a serious health hazard. He identified a series of illnesses, especially those caused to children, as a result of second-hand smoke. Exposure of adults to second-hand smoke has immediate adverse effect to the cardiovascular system and causes coronary heart disease and lung cancer. The scientific evidence indicates that there is no safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke. Eliminating smoking in indoor spaces fully protects people from exposure to second-hand smoke. Separating sections, air-cleaning systems and ventilating buildings cannot eliminate the risk of exposure to second-hand smoke. The Surgeon General stated:

“The debate is over. The science is clear. Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance but a serious health hazard”.

My Lords, will the noble Lord give way?

My Lords, I am sorry but I shall continue, if the noble Lord does not mind.

This attempt to imagine that we should exclude work vehicles, such as refuse vehicles where a gang of people may be at work and where people are coming and going all day long, because it is somehow safe if a couple of people smoke and it will not do any harm to the others is just absurd. The science does not support that point of view.

The Bill is about freedom—the freedom of people to enjoy clean air when they work. The sooner that we defeat the amendment and pass the rest of the Bill, the better.

My Lords, I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate on the amendment, but I am so incensed by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, that, with the leave of the House, I must speak. He quoted a long spiel, which I am sure that he read accurately, but the significant point that he cited, which I heard very clearly, referred to indoor spaces. Is the noble Lord referring to a vehicle as an indoor space?

My Lords, as someone who was described by one journalist as part of the anti-smoking Taliban, I suppose I should be quite pleased to be described by the noble Lord, Lord Russell-Johnston, as a zealot behaving untypically. That is a kind of promotion really.

We have accepted all reasonable amendments, if I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, but we do not regard this amendment as one of those that we should accept. We have examined the Government’s intentions in this House in respect to smoke-free vehicles in much detail during both the Committee and Report stages of the Bill. Again I make it absolutely clear that the Government have no intention to include private vehicles—including rental vehicles for private use—under smoke-free legislation. The Government will propose in regulations that the only vehicles to be required to be smoke-free will be those used for the transportation of members of the public or for work purposes by more than one person. This means, as I said on Report, that smoking will be permitted in vehicles that are for the sole use of the driver and are not used for work purposes by anyone else, either as a driver or passenger. We have been absolutely clear and consistent on that throughout the passage of the Bill.

The Government have listened very carefully to the arguments that have been brought forward about smoke-free vehicles and remain entirely convinced that vehicles used for work purposes by more than one person, regardless of whether they are in the vehicle at the same time, should be required to be smoke-free at all times. I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, put the point extremely well. The reasons for this are logical and simple: we wish to create consistency in the level of protection from second-hand smoke that this legislation would provide between people working in vehicles and those working in non-mobile workplaces.

Through this amendment, people could still be exposed to second-hand smoke. Some suggest that windows could be wound down to let in fresh air. Perhaps they could be—but how can an employee be assured that the person before him who had smoked in a work vehicle would let in fresh air? Indeed, what would happen when the smoking employee handed a vehicle over to a non-smoking employee at the end of a shift? Are the noble Lords who propose the amendment suggesting that there should be some time lag before the vehicle can be used again, to let the smoke clear? That would also require windows to be left open, which could present problems with security. What would be the cost to industry?

The noble Lords who tabled the amendment are suggesting that people who use a vehicle for work should be given less protection from the risks of second-hand smoke. I fail to see a single defensible reason why a person who uses a work vehicle should be at risk of exposure to hazardous second-hand smoke when an equivalent worker in a non-mobile workplace is protected from these proven health risks. I emphasise again that they are proven health risks.

I shall provide two examples to demonstrate my point. Let us look at a security guard who works alone on shift in a security cabin. At the end of his shift, another security guard takes over. If in this example the cabin was not required to be smoke-free at all times, smoking by the first security guard in the cabin would result in the second security guard being exposed to the health risks of second-hand smoke. For this reason, we have made it clear that the workplace needs to be smoke-free at all times.

Let us now look at a driver working alone on shift in a delivery van, which is his workplace. At the end of his shift, another driver takes over. If in this example the van was not required to be smoke-free at all times, smoking by the first driver could result in the second driver being exposed to second-hand smoke, as there can be no guarantee that second-hand smoke would have cleared entirely from the cabin. For this reason, we have made it clear that the mobile workplace needs to be smoke-free at all times. The situation between the delivery van driver and the security guard is exactly the same: one is in a mobile workplace; one is not.

We have examined exhaustively the scientific and medical evidence for this legislation. I recognise again, despite giving all the sources to a number of noble Lords, that we have failed to convince them. I shall not go through all the evidence again. People can read the sources in the reports of the Committee and Report stages.

My noble friend Lord Faulkner has drawn attention to the most recently published report—over 700 pages—by the United States Surgeon General. He examined in great detail the evidence and made a number of conclusions. He made it absolutely clear in those conclusions that second-hand smoke has immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and causes coronary heart disease and lung cancer. That report confirms and adds to the extensive body of evidence of the health risks associated with second-hand smoke.

We also know that second-hand smoke, even in small quantities, is the second most common asthma trigger in the workplace. Asthma UK found that:

“20 per cent of people with asthma feel excluded from parts of their workplace because other people smoke there. This inhibits their daily life as well as opportunities for promotion and development”.

Suppose someone with asthma had to use a work vehicle in which someone had previously smoked and where second-hand smoke was still present. Given that there are over 5 million people living in the UK with asthma, and given that we know that second-hand smoke can linger often for extended periods in enclosed spaces, there could be a real health risk.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the incidence of asthma has increased and that at the same time the incidence of tobacco smoking has decreased? Explain that.

My Lords, I do not have to explain it. I have already explained that second-hand smoke is a trigger for asthma. That is all we need to know in the context of this Bill. Second-hand smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals in the form of particles and gases. The WHO and the United States Environmental Protection Agency have both classified tobacco smoke as a known human carcinogen. We must remember that 85 per cent of second-hand smoke consists of invisible, odourless gases.

It is essential to retain the Bill as it is to protect people in their workplaces. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, about Scotland. In Scotland all vehicles that are for use for work purposes by one or more persons must be smoke-free at all times. We have not modelled this legislation on Scotland. We propose offering leeway for smoking in vehicles that are for the sole use of the driver and are not used for work purposes by anyone else as a driver or passenger. That is different in content from the Scottish position.

The Government’s intention on smoke-free vehicles has been made absolutely clear. It is right to give workers who share a vehicle that same protection from second-hand smoke exposure as people who share other kinds of workplaces. I explain to the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, who raised the subject of lorry drivers with a bed in the back—as I believe he put it—that if the lorry is used by just one person, smoking would be allowed. However, if it is a workplace for more than one person, it would have to be smoke-free. We are absolutely consistent on that.

One can see that the Government’s intention on smoke-free vehicles is entirely consistent with our approach towards smoke-free public places and workplaces. The amendment, as I believe I have made clear, would be totally unacceptable to the Government and could leave workers in vehicles at risk from the hazardous effects of second-hand smoke in the workplace, which is wrong in principle and wrong in practice when having regard to people’s health. The Government do not accept the amendment.

My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in favour of the amendment from almost all quarters of the House. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, for reminding us that this part of the Bill will largely be unenforceable and, accordingly, will bring the law into contempt, which is surely not desirable. I am grateful too to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, for reminding us of the value of fairness, surely a particular British virtue. But the Minister stands totally firm and unyielding, sadly but not surprisingly. I point out to him and to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, that if second-hand smoke in motor vehicles were as lethal as they claim it to be, I and my siblings would have been dead long before we reached our teens.

Alas, the sensible Dr Reid is no longer in the driving seat on this matter. The present incumbent seems to prefer a doctrinaire and unyielding position to flexibility and common sense. It is true that even if this amendment is agreed to, the Bill will remain much more severe and draconian than anything proposed in the Labour election manifesto. Still, even a minor move in the direction of genuine liberalism, as represented by the noble Lord, Lord Russell-Johnston, his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, and by many noble Lords on other Benches in this House, is better than total illiberalism. Accordingly, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

moved Amendment No. 2:

After Clause 73, insert the following new clause—

“PRESCRIPTIONS: LABELLING SHOWING ACTUAL COST

(1) The National Health Service (Charges for Drugs and Appliances) Regulations 2000 (S.I. 2000/620) are amended as follows.

(2) After regulation 11 insert—

“11A PRESCRIPTIONS: LABELLING SHOWING ACTUAL COST

(1) The packaging of any drugs or appliances supplied in accordance with regulations 3 to 6A shall carry a label showing the full cost to the National Health Service of those drugs or appliances.

(2) Paragraph (1) applies irrespective of whether-

(a) there is an exemption from charging under regulation 7 or 7A, or

(b) a valid exemption certificate under regulation 8 is in force.””

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have read with great care and interest what the Minister said last week. I should also like to place on record my thanks to him for his very full follow-up letter. He will, I am sure, be delighted to see that I have slightly changed the wording of my amendment for this afternoon’s proceedings.

I remind the House that the purpose of this very simple amendment is twofold: to encourage patients to finish their prescribed drugs and to realise what outstanding value for money they are getting. I have consulted widely on this subject—it appears to have met with support from the medical profession and, indeed, from all the pharmacists with whom I have spoken. I do so hope that, with the revised wording, the Minister will now be able to accept the amendment. I beg to move.

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, on tabling the amendment, which has a great deal of merit in it. He is right that many patients obtain repeat prescriptions without thinking about whether they need them and accumulate boxes of different drugs, some of which are expensive. The trouble is that some of the most responsible and sickest patients will look at the price of their drugs, feel horrified and feel honour bound to the rest of the population to stop them. Therefore, there is a tension between this action coming out of the blue and remaining with the status quo. As far as I know, there has never been a large-scale study of the merits or otherwise of pricing up the drugs for patients. There are merits too in terms of giving information to patients.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, will accept that the amendment is probably a little before its time and that when a definitive study has been carried out—many people have the hunch that he will be proved right—it may then be a good measure in terms of informing the public about the drugs that they are taking and openness of information.

My Lords, on Report I was happy to support the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, in the case that he made for transparency of pricing on medicines. Having listened to him again I still think that the idea has merit. Indeed, I was encouraged that the Minister himself acknowledged that there is benefit in patients having access to as much information as possible. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has made an extremely important point. We are to a large extent treading into the unknown and it would be nice to have more information than we do on some of the key issues rightly raised by the Minister in his letter to the noble Lord, notably the reaction of patients to seeing prices on the medicines that they were taking. Some patients indeed would react by adhering to the medicines all the more rigorously. On the other hand, other patients might not do so: they might be deterred from seeking medical help in the first place. We would not wish to see that second result.

While the noble Lord’s idea has more than a germ of merit to it, it is perhaps premature to consider it seriously in the context of the Bill. Nevertheless, I hope that the Minister will consider the idea seriously as he takes the Bill away.

My Lords, at first sight I too found this an attractive amendment. One of the problems that we have encountered over many years in the National Health Service is that patients have had little information or understanding of the cost of many of the procedures to which they are subjected, not least in relation to the cost of drugs that they receive. At the same time I share some of the anxieties expressed by my noble friend Lady Finlay about the amendment. It seems to me that the Minister might consider the possibility that at the right moment a limited pilot study of the effects of something similar might be well worth carrying out in order to inform the public and to inform government policy at some time in the future.

My Lords, I indicated during our earlier discussions that we, too, have a great deal of sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. I believe that he has the basis of an extremely good idea here. I support it not because it is likely to dissuade patients from taking medicines that they are prescribed but because it might enable them to have a far more informed discussion with the different people in different parts of the NHS who are involved in prescribing medicines and taking medicines away and who frequently give patients conflicting instructions that do not seem to make sense. Anything that informs patients is positive. Some patient groups are incredibly well informed about medication, while others are not. But if this enables that to happen and sometimes presents a challenge to clinicians, it is not a bad thing.

The noble Lord, Lord Walton, suggested the setting up of a pilot study. Would that require primary legislation or could a pilot study go ahead without it?

My Lords, as I indicated on Report, I had a good deal of sympathy with the thinking behind this amendment—and I still have that sympathy. I must acknowledge that the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, has made some effort to improve the amendment and has taken on board my comment that it would be easier to indicate the cost of medicines to the NHS than the full retail cost. As I said on Report, I agree that patients should be as well informed as possible about NHS services that they receive. However, as a number of noble Lords have said, my greatest concern is that this measure could lead to some patients, especially older people, stopping taking or failing to reorder vital medication that they know to be expensive because they do not wish to be a burden on the NHS. We simply do not know. We do not have the evidence about how people would react and it is not appropriate to put a change of this kind in primary legislation before we have that evidence.

I shall not repeat all the points that I made in my letter and to some extent on Report about some of the practical issues. There are practical issues involved in implementing a system of this kind. It is not quite as simple as one might think. There are issues about prescriptions coming from different sources and how you deal with those; there are issues about appliances, prescriptions from walk-in centres and resulting from patient group directions, and so on. We know that there would have to be a consistent system of computer upgrades to cope with a system of this kind, the cost of which would certainly run into tens of millions of pounds. We are not saying that that makes it a showstopper or that it makes it impossible, but we need to consider the practicalities before going forward.

We also have some doubts as to whether amending the NHS charges regulations is the correct vehicle for a change of this kind. This is not the most obvious place to make a change of this kind. However, to give some comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, and to other noble Lords who have indicated a degree of qualified support for the amendment, I can say that my colleague, Andy Burnham, the Minister of State for delivering quality, who is actually responsible for this policy area in the Department of Health, is considering, outside the Health Bill, further work to see whether indicating the cost will discourage patients from taking vital medicines and, if it does not, will look to see whether it would be justifiable to introduce a similar but more limited flexible arrangement to that which would be established by the amendment.

The noble Lord has certainly gained Health Ministers’ attention with the amendment. We want to take the issue forward with a proper study and I congratulate him on pursuing with some tenacity his views on the issue, with which, as I said earlier, we have some sympathy. In that context, I hope he will be willing not to proceed with his amendment.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply and I thank my noble friend Lady Finlay for her comments. I have often been called premature in my life.

I am heartened by what the Minister said about his colleague in another place looking into this whole subject. It has concerned me for at least 20 years, particularly the terrible wastage of the amount of drugs that must simply get thrown away. On the premise that the Minister will give me his unqualified support and ensure that something will be done about looking into this issue, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Schedule 3 [New Schedule 12B to 1977 Act]:

moved Amendment No. 3:

moved Amendments Nos. 4 to 6:

moved Amendments Nos. 7 to 11:

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass. I thank all those who have taken part in our debates over the past four months, particularly noble Lords on the Front Benches. My noble friend Lord Faulkner and the noble Lord, Lord Walton, have given us a great deal of informed support and help with this Bill. Their contributions have always been constructive, informed and helpful. I thank my noble friend Lady Royall for her help, particularly during Grand Committee.

It has been a privilege to have been involved in this important and historic Bill, and to have brought it through the House. Its impact on protecting the health of the public will be significant.

Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Lord Warner.)

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Warner for his kind comments and congratulate him on the skill, patience and good humour with which he has taken the Bill through the House. I think he would agree that his task would have been rather more difficult if the Bill had come to this place in exactly the same form in which it entered the House of Commons, with the exemptions it then contained. Now, though, we have a Bill which in my view, and, I think, in the view of the great majority of noble Lords, will do more for the public health of our country than almost any other measure since the introduction of the Clean Air Acts. I am delighted to support it.

Because we are passing a Bill that contains comprehensive smoke-free provisions, I am able to tell the House that the private Bill I introduced on behalf of the city of Liverpool to make it smoke-free will no longer be needed, and the formal steps to withdraw the Liverpool City Council (Prohibition of Smoking in Places of Work) Bill will be taken by the promoters’ parliamentary agents. I understand that formal Member approval is required first, and that that will be obtained later this month.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland, will make a similar statement in respect of the London local authorities Bill which she introduced. She and I and the promoters believe that these two Bills played some part in winning the debate for smoke-free provision, and we are grateful to all noble Lords who supported us at Second Reading on 20 July last year.

I should also mention the third local authority private Bill on smoking, the Merseyside Local Authorities (Prohibition of Smoking in Places of Work) Bill, which was introduced into this House on 23 January. The promoters of that Bill also propose to withdraw it on the basis that the Government’s Health Bill achieves virtually all they hoped for from theirs. That Bill would have been the responsibility of the late Lord Chan, whose untimely and sudden death earlier this year was widely mourned in this House and across Merseyside.

Lord Chan’s greatest legacy lay in developing child health in the developing world, and the work he started is being continued by the countless students he trained. He will be most remembered on Merseyside for his commitment to tackling health inequalities and helping those who suffered from deprivation. He saw the provision of smoke-free workplaces as an essential element in that. Lord Chan would have been as delighted as I am to see this Bill pass today.

My Lords, I am happy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, in his celebration of a full ban on smoking in the Government’s Bill. I also celebrate the role played by the Liverpool and Merseyside private Bills, and particularly the role of my friend, the late Lord Chan, whom I miss greatly in this House.

I remind the House of the role of the London Local Authorities (Prohibition of Smoking in Places of Work) Bill, which was promoted by the vast majority of local authorities in London through the Association of London Government. The Bill, which was considered at the same time as the Liverpool Bill on Second Reading a year ago, gave this House an extensive opportunity to discuss the merits of a full ban on smoking in places of work.

Credit should be given to the London boroughs, as well as to the Liverpool and other Merseyside local authorities, for their work in pushing forward the debate in favour of a full ban. We must remember, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has mentioned, that at the time of the debate on the London and Liverpool Bills the Government had not yet brought forward legislation and were suggesting a partial ban. I was personally delighted that the Government listened and changed their mind for the better—that is what modern democracy is truly about.

Now that we will have a Health Bill providing for a full ban, I have been advised by the Association of London Government, speaking on behalf of the London boroughs, that it will take steps to instruct the withdrawal of the London local authorities Bill from Parliament. I thank this House and the Government for ensuring that legislation exists to protect all workers from the harmful effects of second-hand smoke. In particular, I thank the Minister for his extraordinary patience through this long Bill.

On Question, Bill passed, and returned to the Commons with amendments.

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

House in Committee accordingly.

[The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Baroness Gould of Potternewton) in the Chair.]

Schedule 2 [Amendments to the Police Act 1996]:

On Question, Whether Schedule 2 shall stand part of the Bill?

I gave notice of my intention to oppose Schedule 2, as I retain significant concerns about several aspects of the schedule. We had a full debate on those matters on our first day in Committee and I do not intend to repeat what was said. We covered such matters as the way in which BCUs would be organised and their coterminosity; the possibility of a change to operational technique that might not be to the benefit of the police; the problems that could accrue in the membership of police authorities; and the possible extension of the intervention powers of the Secretary of State in police forces and how he will be able to give directions.

My concerns were founded on the comment made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee at paragraph 20 of its report that it was inappropriate for the Bill to leave so much to subordinate legislation. I agree, but I also made it clear at the end of our many debates on the last occasion that I would not divide the Committee when we reached this stage. I welcomed the Minister’s offer of discussions over the summer months to see whether some of those issues could be resolved between us.

It would be normal for me now to withdraw my opposition, but mine is not the only name on the Marshalled List. I consulted the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, and know that she still wishes to raise some substantial matters that were not properly addressed last time. Although I am not content with Schedule 2, I thought it proper to leave my comments on the record and to invite the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, to continue the debate at this stage.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, for introducing my disquiet by opposing Schedule 2. We believe that the proposals in the schedule would negate all the changes to the 1996 Act.

During the debates on amendments to Schedule 2, we raised concerns about the changes that have been made to the operation of the 1996 Act and the plethora of centralising powers that are being placed in the hands of the Home Secretary. We have severe concerns about the whole matter of governance under the schedule. The changes envisaged around BCUs and, particularly, the many changes to police authorities, where the Secretary of State may, by regulation, make provision in relation to the membership of any police authority, aim to alter the way in which police authorities function. That will interfere with local priorities and police authorities’ plans and reports and it would alter their consultation duties.

Since we had the advantage of discussing the detail of the Bill, I had hoped that we would have arrived at a better understanding of the import of this part. Of course I hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, says—her view is that this is “meddling, fiddling, irksome legislation” and that it gives carte blanche to the Secretary of State. I firmly disagree with that assessment. We will have further opportunities in subsequent amendments to discuss much of the detail of these provisions, so, in this debate, perhaps I may say a few words about some of the recurring themes that we have encountered. I hope that, in doing so, I shall meet the issues raised by the noble Baroness.

I know that the noble Baroness suggests that the provisions in the schedule are evidence of an overly centralising tendency and that this is somehow the last swipe of the departing Home Secretary. However, that is an unjust assessment of the way in which Charles Clarke behaved. One thing that we are all able to rejoice in is that he was very reflective, considerate and considering in the way in which he addressed these issues. I can assure the noble Baroness that her concerns about his approach are not accurate.

If one looks at the provisions in the Bill—

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. It was in fact a former Secretary of State, not the last one.

There have now been three, but the comments that I make are equally applicable. I remind the noble Baroness that we are doing a number of things in the schedule that do not centralise but go quite the other way. For instance, we are abolishing the statutory national policing plan; reducing the Home Secretary’s role in the appointment of police authority membership; removing the requirement on police authorities to send three-year strategy plans to the Home Secretary; removing the requirement on crime and disorder reduction partnerships to send an annual report on their performance to the Home Secretary; and transferring a number of operationally focused functions of the Home Office to the National Policing Improvement Agency. The noble Baroness has applauded all these moves and I hope that she will accept that they are decentralising in nature.

Moreover, we are empowering local communities by strengthening the effectiveness of police authorities and CDRPs, introducing the community call for action and ensuring that police community support officers and local authorities have the powers that they need to tackle anti-social behaviour. All these measures give more power to those who wish to take action. I therefore cannot accept the charge that the measures in the Bill undermine the tripartite relationship between the Home Secretary, police authorities and chief officers, through which policing in this country is governed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The tripartite relationship is founded on the respective roles and responsibilities of each of the partners. The Bill does not fundamentally alter the balance of these responsibilities, nor does it tip the scales in favour of the Home Secretary. Indeed, we are strengthening the functions of police authorities and taking steps to ensure the resilience of the command structure in strategic police forces.

I take as an example the membership of police authorities. The Bill simply confers a power on the Home Secretary to prescribe the membership of police authorities in secondary legislation. There is nothing particularly unique or remarkable in that. Legislation in the health and education spheres provides for the detailed arrangements for appointments to primary care trusts and school governing bodies to be similarly set out in regulations.

Moreover, it is already the case that certain aspects of the arrangements for the constitution of police authorities are subject to secondary legislation. For example, the size of a police authority may already be varied by order. The key point is that councillor members should constitute the majority of the membership; this principle continues to be provided for in primary legislation.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. What she is trying adduce here is that there are other circumstances where it has been perfectly proper in statute that the Secretary of State for other departments has been allocated a power that he or she may or may not apply in particular cases. However, there is a feeling on this side of the Committee that, when it comes to the policing of this country, we are in a different circumstance. We all jealously guard the delicate balance in the tripartite relationship and believe that that balance could be undermined. Perhaps that does not pertain in the health and other services to which she referred. Would the Minister reflect on that?

This intervention may give the Minister an opportunity to think about the reply that she may wish to give to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. The position that we advocate is supported by the Association of Police Authorities and by Ken Jones of ACPO. More important, we on these Benches have consistently taken this position on a number of reforms. This is not the place to go into all the details, but I am grateful to the Minister for what she has said. I take it that soon we will have a discussion on this matter to tease out what the Government have in mind and where we stand on this issue. However, I hope that that will not be during the Summer Recess but after it.

We can probably all say “Amen” to that if the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, is of a similar view. I reassure her that we, too, jealously guard the delicate balance of this tripartite relationship and our intent is not to disturb that. The relationship has endured to the benefit of the citizens of our country because we have a better opportunity to do what needs to be done for their better protection. I understand what the noble Baroness says about that, but similar arguments about the need to be careful and judicious were also made in relation to the other situations, as was made clear by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. It is something that we are going to work through. I hope that the noble Baroness is encouraged, as the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, should be, by the fact that we are ready to give the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee on this provision favourable consideration, as I indicated earlier. I hope that we can move in the direction of the committee’s proposals in time for Report.

I think that we have all very much enjoyed the fact that we have had a real debate during this Committee stage. We have given real consideration to some of the issues, which have been seriously taken on board, and we will be able to come back to see how well we can do.

A number of noble Lords echoed the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, about the Home Secretary’s reserve powers to intervene in poorly performing police forces and authorities. I want to reiterate one point: these are not new powers but a simplification and modification of the powers first introduced 12 years ago in the Police and Magistrates’ Courts Act 1994 and updated four years ago in the Police Reform Act 2002. As is now the case, those are powers of last resort, and I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, will agree that, except on one occasion, they have never had to be used, as we would expect.

The Bill seeks to improve on the current powers, based on recent learning, to better reflect how policing failings are identified and addressed. As is already the case, these provisions allow the Home Secretary to require a chief constable or police authority to take specific steps to address any serious failing which has been identified.

The non-statutory process by which the Police Standards Unit supports underperforming forces will continue as before. That will not change, and I assure the Committee that there is every expectation that the new inspectorate will continue, as now, to provide professional advice to the Home Secretary when an intervention decision is being considered. On that basis, I hope that noble Lords will withdraw their opposition to Schedule 2.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 [Delegation of police authority functions]:

moved Amendment No. 80:

The Minister will not be at all surprised to hear that I support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. We support the amendment because we want to take out a subsection which once again allows the Secretary of State wide discretion to specify police authorities’ powers. Such provision is completely unnecessary, inappropriate and undemocratic. It does not give police authorities parity with other local authorities which already have powers of delegation without central powers being reserved in this way. This is about delegating powers—probably to BCU level in order that decisions can be taken at the appropriate level; for example, projects involving community participation or CDRP projects. These are local issues and need to be dealt with locally, so that delegation is actually beneficial.

I am going to complete the trio of assent and support the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. When I saw her amendment on the Marshalled List, and then looked into the Explanatory Notes, it was a revelation regarding the Government’s intent. Here we have a consequence of the Government’s own plans to force mergers on police forces: they have had to recognise in statute the fact that police authorities, which will now cover extra-large areas, will need some way of delegating powers to smaller areas. There will have to be more bureaucracy; and I certainly hope that the Government will think again on mergers. But if those mergers are to take place, particularly when they are voluntary, it is essential that no remoteness is felt by the old areas that comprise the smaller constabularies. They still feel they have an important part to play in the wider police authority.

The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, was right to point out two facts, in particular. First, police authorities are mature bodies. We entrust them with significant responsibilities, which they fulfil remarkably well. We are very fortunate in the service that we have from them. It will undermine our apparent confidence in them by saying, “Yes, you can delegate powers, but we are not going to treat you on a par with local authorities; we are going to tell you how you may delegate those powers”. The Minister may say that it is last resort and that the Government will not really intervene, but the difficulty is that it sends a signal, saying, “We are putting you out on a dog leash but we will tug you back when we need to”.

This part of the Bill is misguided. The second point made by the noble Baroness was that there are other last-resort powers that the Government could call in, which I think would be more appropriate. It is right that our attention has been drawn to this subsection, and I hope that the Government will look carefully at the proposal made by the noble Baroness, Lady Henig.

Perhaps I can offer the Government some succour, too. If the noble Baroness is worried about a lovely big fat juicy Home Office Bill shrinking, I have amendments later on that would add extra clauses, so if she takes this subsection out, I could extend the Bill with other matters.

Will the Minister explain why, if Section 107 of the 1972 Act is working effectively, it is necessary to introduce further powers? Is it again the previous argument about establishing much more control from the Home Office, rather than allowing police authorities to function as they have been doing adequately and effectively so far?

On these occasions one should always start with a positive, if one can. I welcome my noble friend Lady Henig’s support for Clause 3, which, as she rightly acknowledges, will allow police authorities greater flexibility to delegate their functions to area committees of the authority or to individual members’ offices.

In making this change to the Local Government Act 1972, we have made it clear that we would be concerned if this additional flexibility led to a proliferation of bureaucratic area committees, which also overlap with the role of crime and disorder reduction partnerships, which we acknowledge and celebrate as working extremely well. We do not want additional overlap with the local overview and scrutiny committees.

Clause 3(3) contains a reserve power designed to guard against such a possibility. It will enable the Home Secretary to regulate the functions that may be delegated to area committees and the membership of such committees. We hope that it will not be necessary for this power ever to be exercised, but we believe that it is necessary to include it in the Bill to guard against things malfunctioning. I am sure that we can think of one or two occasions in history when sometimes these things have not worked as they should. In a perfect world they would quickly correct themselves, but the world does not work like that.

This reserve power is not without precedent. A similar power is contained in Section 18 of the Local Government Act 2000, which relates to the delegation of functions by local authorities operating under similar executive arrangements. It is not unknown in local government. The world of local governance is actively familiar with it, and acknowledges that there is some value in it.

It is not a power that we want to use; it is there to be used in extremis. It is a reserve power that we hope will not have to be activated. My noble friend, like me and others involved in these debates in the House, would expect that when things go slightly awry they can be properly corrected at a local level without the need for external intervention. But we think that the power is important to guard against the odd occasions when that reserve power will be necessary.

I hope that, with that assurance on the reserve nature of the power, my noble friend will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

Two questions have arisen as a result of the Minister’s response. First, with regard to the laudable objective of not having too many bodies doing the same job, does the Minister accept that if we trust police authorities to know their patch and its needs, we should trust them to decide what functions should be carried out by an area body that they nominate? Would it not be strange if they wanted to take over the functions of partnerships that are working well? Furthermore, is the Minister saying that the Government do not want the area organisations that are to be created in this way, to which functions are to be delegated, to cross over with other bodies’ functions or to cover the same geographical area as those bodies? Are the limits that the Secretary of State will be able to control functional or geographic?

The Minister said that one does not want things to go wrong locally and that this power would be a matter of last resort. In the best of all possible worlds, organisations can set off on their own course, and it is difficult to rein them back, but how quick is quick? What do the Government see as a quick response to put things right if this is to be a power of last resort? Are police authorities to be given the Wayne Rooney red card immediately or will they be given time in which to redraw their plans before the Secretary of State imposes his will upon them? I appreciate that that will be part of guidance, but we need to have a flavour of what the Government intend because the Secretary of State is giving himself direct power over police authorities.

I will endeavour to answer the noble Baroness’s questions as best I can. Her final point related to rapidity of response. In such a situation, there will clearly be some sensitivity. I am sure there will be a history to what has emerged; there always is. In those circumstances, the response would have to be measured. I am sure that will create the time for dialogue between the centre and the locality. If something is obviously not working, there will be a need for swift action, but such matters will have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I do not think it would be reasonable to respond in any other way. The response will be determined by the circumstances.

The noble Baroness also asked about functions and geography. Primarily, we are concerned with overlapping functions. In a previous life, I was involved in local government for long enough to know that there are benefits and beauties to complementarity and additional activities being taken on by different bodies and organisations, but when working at local level it is irritating when it is impossible to get to the root of who is responsible for what. It is important to ensure that there is not too much overlap. But these things can be considered. We need to avoid rushing in to make an order under Clause 3(3). If we had concerns, we would want to discuss them in the first instance with the Association of Police Authorities because that would make a lot of sense and would ensure that we understood what was happening in the locality. That underlines the trust we have not only in the APA but also in local organisations to sort themselves out.

That may not be an answer laced with precision, but I am trying to look at this in a workable way. One must consider what actually happens on the ground in the locality to feel how a power such as this may be used sensitively and intelligently to produce an outcome that I am sure most of us want.

I do not want to be unkind to the Minister, but he was a member of a local authority when I was a member of the police authority for Sussex. If he analyses the work that the police authority did then, he will find that there were no complaints whatsoever. Why does he want to introduce something new at this stage?

As I explained earlier, this is not something novel, it is designed to deal with things at the margins where there is an element of dysfunctionality and where it is important that there rests with the Home Secretary an opportunity to help to sort things out, when that is what is required to enable the organisation better to perform its duties. If you like, it is a benign reserve power. I really do not think that the Committee should get hung up on the notion of there being a desire for creeping centralisation. That is not the purpose. It is a reserve power designed to sort things out and be helpful.

I have listened very carefully to everything that has been said in this very interesting exchange. My noble friend may not be surprised when I say that I am not really very reassured. If the problem is now of the sort about which we have heard, I should have thought that Home Office guidance, which we have on all sorts of issues, would have sorted it out. I should have thought that it could be dealt with at that level.

That would be highly desirable. Perhaps I did not talk about guidance, but guidance is there to ensure that these things can be properly resolved. My noble friend is probably right: that is how things will be resolved. However, there may be situations where the reserve power has value and importance.

If we come to the reserve power, perhaps we have a difference about the function of the Home Secretary. I believe firmly that a Home Secretary's role in general terms is strategic. If there are problems such as those to which my noble friend referred, they should be dealt with through tripartite discussion with ACPO and the APA. I hear what he says about this being a benign power. I must say, as a historian, that a benign power today can become an antagonistic, centralising or, even worse, autocratic power tomorrow. That is also my concern.

I am surprised that the Government feel the necessity to have this reserve power. For someone like myself, who is trying to be constructive throughout this debate, because there is so much good in the Bill, clauses like this unfortunately reinforce the view that the whole balance is shifting and that it is not just at this level but at every level that the Home Secretary is taking greater powers. I shall not press my amendment at this point, but I maintain considerable misgivings about the necessity for this particular reserve power. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Clause 4 [Police authorities as best value authorities]:

moved Amendment No. 81:

I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendment and I endorse much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, said.

Based on my experience as a former chair of a police authority, the best value duty was an important one. It enabled police authorities to scrutinise and become familiar with detailed aspects of policing which some chief officers would previously have guarded as matters of operational independence. It gave us access to some of those dark and dusty corners which had previously escaped rigorous scrutiny. Indeed, police authority involvement in best value reviews actually helped to strengthen relationships with the force and gave officers greater confidence that authority members understood the issues and challenges facing them.

Of course, it also involved a great deal of red tape and bureaucracy. This was mostly due to the guidance issued by the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. When the APA and the Home Office together produced some guidance specifically for the police service, much of that was swept away.

Best value, as such, may now have had its day; I know that colleagues in, for example, the Metropolitan Police Authority are using other forms of scrutiny very powerfully to achieve the same ends. However, the difficulty with what the Government are proposing is that it places police authorities between a rock and a hard place. They will still have a duty to secure best value; they will still be measured against best value measures, or SPIs, as they are now called; and they will still be inspected against the duty. But they will no longer have the levers or the tools to fulfil that duty—that is, the power to carry out best value reviews. If best value is dying, let us kill it off altogether. We do not want to leave authorities with a duty and no power. Powers to inspect police authorities are already being taken elsewhere in the Bill. The Government continue to have powers under the Bill to set strategic priorities and appropriate measures. Why do we need to continue to apply these provisions?

The amendment is best described as rather curious. As I understand it, the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, and my noble friend Lady Henig have explained that police authorities continue to support the notion of best value and want it retained. It has been argued fairly that leaving in place the overarching duty to promote best value while removing the tools provided for best value reviews and best value performance plans might leave police authorities somewhat hamstrung.

The noble Baroness's solution is simply to disapply the entire best value regime for police authorities. That is a strange solution to what is seen as a problem. I do not see it as a problem at all. I cannot accept the analysis. In repealing the duty to undertake best value reviews, all we are removing is fairly acknowledged as an overly bureaucratic and resource-intensive process. Those are terms and words that I would have thought would be more than a little familiar to the noble Baroness, Lady Harris; I recognise them as terms that she might use to describe best value at its worst, when best value becomes more overbearing than useful in getting good value for money from any organisation. As I understand it and as I attempted to make it work in my time in local government, that is what best value is about.

Of course, police authorities, as with any other statutory body corporate, may do anything consistent with the exercise of their functions. They do not, therefore, need express statutory powers to undertake reviews in order to do so. I would have thought that an element of good practice in any organisation involved in local government or in police authorities is that it is important at all times to review the way in which the organisation operates to secure good value for money. Furthermore, police authorities can continue to draw on their powers in Section 22 of the Police Act 1996 to request a report from their chief officer. In other words, the chief officer has a continuing commitment and obligation to ensure that good value is provided through the police authority.

Police authorities will still be able to discharge their general duty to secure continuous improvement in the delivery of police forces’ functions. That general duty is well worth retaining without the cumbersome bureaucracy that best value can have associated with it, although it has often been shown to be positive. In those circumstances, I am puzzled why the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, takes agin what I would have thought would be recognised as a government move that provided for some freeing up.

My noble friend Lady Henig has acknowledged that the Metropolitan Police Authority is using other tools of scrutiny to secure best value. In a sense, that makes the argument for the Government. If that is the case, what is to stop other police authorities acting in a similar way? They do not need the cumbersome nature of some best value practices to carry out reviews or assess performance plans. I would have thought that this would be a welcome change of approach, because it would enable some scope and some use of imagination in how reviews can be carried out to benefit the police authority and ensure that it continues to deliver the services that it is asked to provide at good value.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, for her support. I am disappointed that the Minister finds it a curious amendment. I do not know whether he understood my first sentence in speaking to the amendment. It is still very important for police authorities to secure best value, but the Bill will remove the power to enforce that duty. I heard what the Minister said about police authorities’ ability to get other forms of help in securing best value, but one of my main points was the power of that extraordinary body, the Audit Commission, to inspect the authority. Will it have the wherewithal to say what sort of best value it ought to apply to police authorities? Will it advise them on how they should best seek this advice? It certainly does not have the experience to do that.

When the Minister looks again at what I have said, perhaps he will consider a little more carefully what encouragement I am trying to give the Government.

I do not know whether this is the right thing to say, and it is certainly not in my brief—I know it is always risky—but having heard what the noble Baroness said, I am thinking back to a time when I had the privilege and good fortune to act as the leader of my local authority. Every year, we used to receive something called the auditors’ management letter, which the noble Baroness will no doubt be familiar with. This was long before the days of best value and during what I thought was a rather heavy-handed regime called compulsory competitive tendering—although I freely acknowledge that it had its benefits. What I used to find particularly helpful was not so much the letter itself, but what preceded it: external invigilation and review of important functions of the local authority, including, perhaps, its housing benefits system, occasionally its poll tax or council tax, or whatever regime it was. That acted as a catalyst for a good deal of internal thinking about processes and good management.

I did not require a regime for that to happen. I enjoyed the fact that there was some pressure on the organisation and management to think about how we procured and secured and how we made organisations, functions and processes work. I guess that in this case we are aiming to achieve something not entirely dissimilar. So, yes, police authorities will have a duty to secure best value, but they will have some freedom and responsibility to do it in a way which is most appropriate. That is what we are trying to get at. I hope those comments are helpful and give some colour and understanding to what we are about.

I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. I remember with fondness many management letters during the20 years in which I was a county councillor. I also remember CCT very well. As I said, it has all failed. It has cost billions of pounds because it has not been used and understood properly. It works in the private sector, but it does not work in the public sector. Therefore, it needs to be looked at again. I still feel very strongly that the Audit Commission should not have any hand in this whatever, because it has neither the necessary experience nor the expertise. It would be wrong for it to be involved. The processes have failed. Having heard what the Minister said, I do not want to labour the amendment much longer. I will withdraw it, but I may well come back to this issue on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 4 agreed to.

Clause 5 [Standard powers and duties of community support officers]:

moved Amendment No. 82:

Page 3, line 31, at end insert-

“( ) In making an order under subsection (1), the Secretary of State shall have regard to the desirability of maintaining the discretion of chief officers of police to designate the powers of community support officers to the extent they deem.”

The noble Viscount said: Clause 5, as the Explanatory Notes tell us, inserts a new power into the list of powers in the 2002 Act that may be conferred on persons designated as community support officers. The Explanatory Notes go on to state:

“If designated with the power set out at new paragraph 4C, CSOs will have the power that constables already have under section 16 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to deal with truants. This power would allow CSOs to remove young people of school age that they believe are absent from school without lawful authority from specified areas and to take them either to their school, or to a place which has been specified by the local authority”.

The amendment in my name and that of my noble friend would insert a new subsection into Clause 5 to make certain that,

“the Secretary of State shall have regard to the desirability of maintaining the discretion of chief officers of police to designate the powers of community support officers to the extent they deem”.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, refers specifically to,

“the power to use reasonable force to detain or control a person”.

The amendments to some degree overlap, the aim being to probe the nature and extent of the powers which the Secretary of Sate might want to introduce in standardising the powers and duties of CSOs under this clause. The Home Office’s consultation demonstrated that there was general agreement that some standardisation of powers is desirable. However, a range of organisations have expressed concern about whether too much standardisation is proposed. Indeed, the APA argues that the consultation that it undertook last year demonstrates that police authorities support only a minimum set of standard powers and maximum local flexibility.

I commend CSOs for the work that they do. It is clear that they bring some reassurance to the public by their presence on the street and help provide local flexibility. Indeed, they can adopt a targeted approach to each area in which they work. I will discuss their important role with children in the next amendment.

Organisations such as the APA, however, are worried not only that, by increasing the CSOs’ automatic powers, particularly the power of detention, the Bill will erode the cost differential of training for full officers and CSOs, but also that the latter will spend less time on the streets and more time behind desks completing paperwork. ACPO has made similar noises, stating that,

“the standardisation of powers for CSOs will bring some clarity to the public as to what CSOs are for. However, we need to guard against them being given powers that lead to abstraction from their major role in providing high-visibility contact with the public. More powers mean more training, equipment, and office time dealing with those powers and Chief Constables must retain discretion in how best to deploy them”.

I remind your Lordships that the Home Affairs Select Committee commented that a reduction in the street presence of CSOs would be counterproductive. I hope that the Minister will explain to the Committee in full the powers that the Government wish to standardise and those that they do not, and to what degree standardisation is removing more discretion from chief constables.

Perhaps I may use this opportunity briefly to discuss truancy. I know that some organisations such as the Police Federation welcome the extension of the power to deal with truants to CSOs—indeed, they highlight the enormity of the problem and the time it consumes. But do these powers really answer the question? The Children's Society has questioned the efficacy of truancy sweeps as a way to tackle non-attendance at school, highlighting that the National Foundation for Educational Research concluded that, while sweeps had raised awareness of the issue, it was,

“less certain of the long-term impact on individual pupil attendance”.

Despite a plethora of initiatives, national rates of unauthorised absence have not changed in 10 years and they increased in 2004-05 to more than 0.8 per cent of available school days. I hope that the Minister will inform us what the Government are doing to re-examine their strategy for tackling truancy and to shift the balance away from enforcement measures in favour of more strategic initiatives that respond to children’s and young people’s reasons for not attending school. They should focus more on some of the good early-intervention initiatives which address family difficulties such as those seen in Kent and recognise that this is one of the more likely roots of the problem. If we can address the causes of truancy, we can help cut the amount of time our officers and CSOs need to spend addressing it. They can then focus on other areas that require more skills. I beg to move.

I rise in support of Amendment No. 82 and will also speak to Amendment No. 84, which stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Dholakia. Amendment No. 82 raises the argument about whether it is better to have standardised powers—which the Secretary of State would be able to impose anyway—or the power of a chief constable to allow local flexibility in determining what powers a CSO should have.

We know that the power to detain will be made standard, so that everyone will recognise that all CSOs, like police officers, have this power. I am opposed to their having this power, because I think it could cause immense problems, especially if an energetic and enthusiastic CSO gets it wrong. There is greater likelihood of that, because their training is minuscule and their experience far less than that of a fully fledged police officer. However, as the Government seem to think it is a good idea to allow power to creep to them, let us at least make sure that they all understand what is expected of them.

I much prefer the stance taken by the APA, which would give chief constables discretion to decide whether their CSOs should be deployed in this manner. I hope chief constables would decide that in consultation with their police authorities. In 2002, when we discussed the powers of CSOs—how well I remember that—ACPO said that CSOs were,

“best seen as a complement to, not a replacement for, the role of sworn police officers”.

In its view it was only for sworn police officers to deal with circumstances where,

“there is a clear likelihood that a confrontation will arise … where there is scope for exercise of a high degree of discretion—for example, where a situation is complex owing to a number of different parties involved … where police action is likely to lead to a higher than normal risk of harm … where there is a clear likelihood that police action will include any infringement of a person’s human rights … where the incident is one which is likely to lead to significant further work”.

We can see that there are clear boundaries to the role of police CSOs. Local flexibility is the key to using them. I hope the Minister will agree that this amendment helps forces get the best out of their CSOs and use them as local policing style dictates. That can only be decided by each force and police authority.

Amendment No. 84 is a probing amendment intended to discover the nature and extent of the powers that the Secretary of State might want to introduce under the clause. It is rather strange that extremely detailed powers are included in Schedule 4 to the Police Reform Act 2002, explaining exactly what powers CSOs can exercise: issuing, in effect, fixed penalty notices; detaining, for up to 30 minutes, suspects who fail to give details; and using reasonable force to detain people in those circumstances. As I said, I am opposed to the power to detain anyway. It always assumes the use of force, however light, and the repercussions of that could be horrendous, even litigious. Apart from the fact that CSOs are not trained sufficiently—nor will they be—in the gentle art of detention, it is entirely wrong that they should be given the power to use force to enable them to undertake it. Apart from anything else, their own safety could be badly compromised; far better that this power be given to a fully trained police officer, who knows when and how to apply force appropriately.

One of the reasons why I want to speak to this amendment is to pay tribute to the Home Office. Heaven knows that in recent weeks the Home Office has not had many friends in this House. I want to take this opportunity to point out that CSOs have been one of the big success stories of the last three years. The Home Office has to take some of the credit for that, both for securing the finance and for making sure that all police authorities came on board and realised their usefulness. That has to be said, and I wanted to begin by saying it.

In Lancashire we saw very early on the value of community support officers. We asked for a lot of them right at the start. I think we had the highest number outside London and Manchester. We used them throughout Lancashire and they were a very effective part of our extended police family. In the next three years, community support officers will be an invaluable and integral part of the rollout of the neighbourhood policing initiative, which both sides of the Committee will welcome. That is why it is so important that we look at that role, see how they have been used, and use them most effectively. They have been successful and will be even more so.

Lancashire was one of the forces to have a pilot scheme in relation to detention powers. CSOs operated with powers of detention in two divisions in Lancashire. In one division it worked very effectively; in the other division it did not. Interestingly, at the end of that experiment, Lancashire Constabulary felt that it did not want powers of detention for CSOs. I think that is a point worth making, because it tried all this. My own preference—although I would not push it too vigorously—would be for the chief constable to have discretion over these areas. I say that only because, as I have already argued, these community support officers are going to be an absolutely essential community resource in the next few years. We need to try, as far as we can, to get the relationship and powers right so that we can use them to maximum effect. While I would not strenuously oppose what is suggested, I would like it noted that I think maximum flexibility and discretion may well be the most effective way forward here.

That is precisely the reason why my noble friend said that this is very much a probing amendment. We really want to see exactly which powers will be vested in community support officers. This was discussed very substantially during previous legislation. We certainly support everything the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, has said.

It might be useful to cast our minds back to look at the extent of the conflict police officers find themselves involved in when detaining people. Many of us are used to seeing this on CCTV and many programmes on television. If those powers are to be used by community support officers it is vital that they are properly trained for that purpose, rather than be expected to perform a task that needs years of police training. If we do not tread carefully, the sympathy that exists at the moment in relation to community support officers will gradually disappear if there is a confrontation between them and the individual being arrested. It might be very helpful if, at this stage, the Minister could indicate two things. First, will community support officers receive adequate training—meaning as good as that given to police officers? Secondly, will they also be subject to the discipline of the Independent Police Complaints Commission?

I thank my noble friend Lady Henig for the compliment she paid the Home Office. It is a rare moment and I will savour it for a long time. I say with all humility that on this occasion it is perhaps justified only because of what has been said by other Members of the Committee, not all of whom were as enthusiastic when CSOs were originally introduced but who have now become stalwart converts to their benefits. I had the great pleasure last week of speaking to a head teacher who had been extremely antipathetic to the thought of working with police officers or indeed with CSOs, and is now extolling their virtues and benefits. We have converts it appears not only all over the Committee but all over the country, which we must of course celebrate.

It is right that people are jealous of that success, because PCSOs have added colour, flavour and intimacy to the way in which the community can respond, which we value. I wish to reassure the Committee that our seeking to standardise some of the powers under which CSOs will operate is only to bring clarity. It is not to bring rigidity or to try to undermine the efficacy of the way in which they work. It would therefore be right to make it plain, in response to the question of the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, that the list of the powers that the Government propose to confer are set out as standard in annexe B of the Explanatory Notes. None of the proposed powers is inappropriate to CSOs. They are already in legislation, which is what the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, indicated, so we should not see PCSOs abstracted from the community as was feared. I understand what the noble Viscount says about their visibility, accessibility and importance. An approach that took them away from that front-line role would be extremely regrettable.

I am not sure whether I misheard, but I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, referred to powers of arrest. I remind the Committee that CSOs do not have a power to arrest, although they have a power to detain. I thought that he did not intend that. The power to detain is worded as a requirement to wait with the community support officer for up to 30 minutes. The use of force is therefore not inevitable. It has been piloted successfully. The power to use reasonable force is separate and will not be a standard power. I particularly endorse the views expressed by my noble friend Lady Henig that the way in which it can be delivered has been found successful in many situations, and on other occasions not so. The power to use reasonable force is a separate power that needs to be judiciously used.

I turn to the truancy sweeps that the noble Viscount raised. They are only one element of the strategy that we intend to use: there are issues on how we respond to truancy in terms of educational welfare, the assessments made at school, parenting orders, the attempts to engage the parents in relation to it, and the now greater connection between the wraparound services and the agencies working together in partnership to identify need and interventions which will encourage children to remain in school. Special programmes for children are being developed. Some of the groups teach them in a slightly different way, which is more interesting and likely to retain their presence at school, one hopes. All those matters have to be undertaken. This is but one extra step, which cannot ever be a panacea but can be an additional support.

Children who are truanting are disproportionately likely to be engaged in anti-social behaviour and disproportionately often at risk. The training for PCSOs is not minuscule; it is often around four weeks and the chief officer has a statutory obligation in that regard to ensure that they have proper training. Training is an issue to which we will return on a number of occasions. It is also right to say that the reason why we are not persuaded that Amendment No. 82 adds value to Clause 5 is that there is, as I have already indicated, provision in the clause that requires the Secretary of State to consult police authorities and chief officers prior to exercising the order-making power. In putting our proposals for consultation, the Secretary of State will in any event need to strike a balance between the benefits of a standardised set of powers for community support officers and the advantages of according chief constables a degree of local flexibility, which has already been echoing around the Committee as one of the benefits that we have been able to derive to date.

The Home Secretary will then have to consider carefully the comments made in response to that consultation. We have been candid about the whole process since last summer. The proposed set of standard powers for community support officers has been formulated following a formal public consultation in which the Association of Chief Police Officers was specifically invited to comment. Our intentions, which will be subject to debate in this House, are set out in annexe B of the Explanatory Notes. The Bill recognises that it is desirable for some powers to be standard and for some to remain available at the discretion of individual chief officers. In deciding which powers should be standardised, the Secretary of State will take into account the relevant factors and views. We believe that the duty to consult achieves the ends sought by Amendment No. 82, and I hope for that reason the noble Baroness, Lady Harris—at whom I am looking, but my remarks are also intended for the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman—will be content not to press the amendment, as it is not necessary. As I said, we understand why it was tabled.

Amendment No. 84, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, who has spoken to it, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, singles out one particular power that will for ever be excluded from the standard set of powers. That is at odds with the approach taken in Clause 5. All powers remain at the discretion of chief officers of police, save those designated as standard powers. We see no reason to single out the power to detain for special attention. If, as Parliament accepted in 2002, CSOs should be capable of exercising a power of detention, that power should be one that could be included in a standard suite of powers.

We have already indicated that we will omit the power to use reasonable force to detain an individual from proposed standard lists of powers for community support officers. That power should remain in the discretion of chief officers of police, but detention is a key enforcement power that can contribute to the effectiveness of community support officers. The clause as it stands provides flexibility while ensuring that any order is subject to full consultation and parliamentary scrutiny through the draft affirmative procedure, which provides sufficient safeguards. Accordingly, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, will be content not to move their amendment.

We on this side are a generous lot and would like to associate ourselves with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, about the CSOs; I shall endeavour to do so. Certainly they have been a great success in many ways. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, for her support for the amendment. I am glad that the probing amendment was spoken to because that enabled the Minister to give an explanation. I am grateful for her remarks about truancy. We shall read her remarks about the balance between local discretion and standardisation with care, but in the mean time I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

moved Amendment No. 83:

I rise to support this amendment wholeheartedly. I hope noble Lords will forgive me if in some respects I echo what the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, has said. Although she is no longer in her place, I echo the very favourable remarks that the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, made about the development of CSOs, which is clearly very important, constructive and necessary.

We are all agreed that the presence of CSOs can make a very positive contribution to policing and potentially represents a bridge between disaffected young people and the police. We also know that a great deal of CSOs’ time is spent with young people. Over half do so daily and 81 per cent at least weekly. It follows therefore that it is vital that they are properly equipped for this role and for the appropriate exercise of their powers. The noble Viscount referred to their safeguarding duty. It is vital that that should be properly discharged and explicitly included under Section 11 of the Children Act 2004. We hope to get some reassurance on that.

Training is clearly central, as is consistency of approach. The Common Core of Skills and Knowledge, published by the DfES, is the obvious starting point. Indeed, without it, it is likely that many CSOs will be significantly disadvantaged, and the chances of failing to deal properly or adequately with what are often very challenging situations can be very high. As we have heard, many CSOs do not feel adequately trained or prepared and as many as 59 per cent have been in situations that they felt not adequately prepared to deal with. This is very pressing.

The common core of skills consists of six basic areas. They are excellent areas. People have spent a lifetime doing PhDs on each one of those basic areas, which go to the heart of what is involved in dealing with young people. None of them can be acquired without considerable time and thought. That raises questions about the time, level and intensity that will be applied to the training of CSOs. We need reassurance from the Government that they will commit explicitly to a training programme for all CSOs and tell us what it will consist of.

It would also be helpful to know what plans are in place for training not only the current CSOs but the 24,000 new ones that are planned to be recruited. Does the Minister have a timescale for that? What is the figure for the financial resources that will have to be committed, as they will be quite considerable? What will the training programme be, and how long will it take? Without clarity for such plans, the expansion of the number of CSOs—on the face of it, a potentially very positive development—is likely to lead to serious problems.

I strongly support this amendment. If I may, I will speak from my script in the interests of brevity.

Given their close contact with children and young people, it seems vital that community support officers are equipped with the common core skills already described. I seek assurances from the Minister on the other elements of a community support officer’s development that will enable him to set good, clear boundaries for children and young people: mentoring for these officers; the initial training, which has been referred to; and good supervision.

I hope it will assist your Lordships if I give a little psychological and social background to the work of these officers. Speaking very simply, boys growing up without interested fathers or other important positive role models are particularly at risk of developing dissocial behaviour. The Commissioner for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, has spoken of his particular concerns that black boys lack sufficient positive male role models, and that not enough black fathers are involved with their sons. I acquainted myself with some young black men in such a position. I am concerned that some of these boys face uncertain futures for lack of such a positive male role model. I know this is also a problem among white families, but it seems particularly apparent in black communities. It seems most unfair that some of these children may grow to be lawless and be punished for that, when they have had no father to show them the right path.

The Home Office assessment report finds that CSOs have a greater ethnic mix than the police force. They tend to be older individuals with a wide range of experience. The report, as has been made clear around the Committee, is positive about what the CSOs have already achieved, but it highlights inconsistencies in their training and development. In particular, the mentoring, which many found so helpful, was available only to 60 per cent of them. One CSO, who received no such support, said:

“I was thrown in at the deep end … they didn’t know what I was supposed to do … it was an absolute nightmare”.

I quote further from the report:

“while there is clear support for it”—

that is, mentoring—

“views in case study reports were mixed regarding the feasibility of mentoring large numbers of CSOs. One force thought formal mentoring would be useful with the imminent rise in CSO numbers, while another thought it would be unsustainable on a larger scale”.

In my view, that mentoring support for the first one or two months of a CSO’s placement in a community is vital, for this reason: if these men and women are to be successful at setting boundaries for children and young people, they must know their own professional boundaries. I quote:

“It was also felt that more clarification of the role in terms of what CSOs can and cannot do was required. For example, one officer said: ‘They need more training about boundaries … they haven’t been given clear training.’ This view was reinforced by other force personnel (constables, duty inspectors and BCU commanders) during the fieldwork”.

Perhaps that reflects in part police officers’ understandable concerns at the undermining of their own professional status, but it also carries with it what would be my paramount concern in this matter: that CSOs properly inhabit their particular role and do not seek either to overreach themselves or to neglect their duty to provide discipline. Good initial training, adequate mentoring and good continual professional development, including expert supervision, are required to build on the initial success of this new role.

I say again how pleased I am at the supportive comments that have been made from all around the Committee. I hope I will be able to reassure noble Lords about the benefit of the way we are dealing with this important issue.

The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, is right. A large number of our community support officers are doing sterling work with young people. Indeed, when I went to Oxford, I had the pleasure of seeing two CSOs riding around on their bicycles, with a number of children chasing them because they all knew their names and had something to tell them. They are certainly well integrated into the community, and one of the benefits is that they are not frightening figures. They become well known and accepted, and they have a huge opportunity to gather information. I will not say that the two ladies involved were Pied Pipers, but I saw the similarity.

It is important, if CSOs are going to continue to do this work, that they do it well. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that one of the important things is not to see the CSOs in isolation. They are going to be very much part of the neighbourhood policing team. If an officer graduates out of the CSO role into an officer role, that officer will not necessarily be lost from the team. I am sure the skills and the community approach will inure to the benefit of any police officer having gone through that.

There has been a lot of concern about the training, but I can reassure noble Lords. To make it clear, the community support officers in the survey—which a number of noble Lords have referred to, but the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, referred to them first—were those who had been trained prior to the national training package, first launched in 2004. Noble Lords will remember that when CSOs were introduced there was no standardised training, but that has now been brought in.

As we have said, the Police Reform Act 2002 already places a statutory duty on chief officers to ensure that all community support officers are adequately trained to perform the duties and exercise the powers that have been designated. There is already provision in the Police and Justice Bill at new Section 38A(6) to reaffirm this responsibility in relation to the standard powers and duties of community support officers.

I hope that it will please noble Lords to know that the Central Police Training and Development Authority has developed a national package that addresses every element of the Every Child Matters report. This will be available at the end of the month, and has been fully incorporated into both the regular police officer training package and the community support officer training package. Community support officers already receive training in youth and child protection matters. This new package will ensure that they are trained in the common core of skills and knowledge for the children’s workforce, recommended as a result of the Every Child Matters report. There is no difference between the training that community support officers will receive under this module and the training that their regular police officer colleagues receive. We thought that this was important and it is going to be delivered.

There is nothing to suggest that community support officer training is in any way inadequate. To enshrine for police training such a specific project in primary legislation would be, we respectfully suggest, unnecessary and would in due course fall into obsolescence as we change and move forward—considerations that your Lordships rightly take into account when scrutinising Bills before the House.

I hear what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, says on mentoring and supervision. I have already said that the CSOs will be part of a team, and we will be able to look into those issues more closely. The noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, is right that we hope to increase the number of CSOs. We are committed to having 16,000 CSOs in place by April 2007, up from the current figure of 6,000. The Chancellor announced in his Budget a further £91 million to facilitate this improvement. The training—and the opportunity for us to get better and to deliver a high-quality service—is certainly there.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about line management roles. CSOs should always be tasked and debriefed in accordance with the national intelligence model, as part of a neighbourhood policing team. On a daily basis, they discuss with the team leader the issues and incidents that they come across. There is some evidence that young people relate better to the community support officers than to police officers, which may be due to the difference of the role. Community support officers tend to get to know their patch well. We hope that police officers will be better able to emulate that approach when neighbourhood policing teams, which we all encourage and endorse, come more on stream.

The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, raised a question on Section 11 of the Children Act. I confess that I do not have that with me. I could guess, but it is safer if I write to him on that particular point. With that, I hope that the noble Viscount will feel it appropriate to withdraw this amendment.

The Minister has been positive. In relation to what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, are there systems for monitoring the training? I am not talking simply of HMI reporting regularly on its inspections. To make the system more effective, could the Children’s Commissioner look at the adequacy of the training and comment on what precisely happens when people are trained? That might be helpful to take this exercise forward, but I am grateful for the comments that the Minister has made.

If the noble Lord is talking about training in relation to children, I will certainly take that matter back with me. Every Child Matters seeks to ensure that every discipline approaches these issues in exactly the same way. We are increasingly understanding that we can take these issues forward only through partnership working predicated on the core issues that have been identified in Every Child Matters. We can already do monitoring on performance management, efficacy and other such matters, as we have discussed on a number on occasions. I will take the suggestion back, although I do not know whether it will be appropriate. I will certainly record the fact that the noble Lord raised the suggestion.

I am most grateful for the support that I have had from the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and I am grateful to the Minister for her full explanation of these training methods. The noble Earl remarked on possible progressions from CSOs to the police force. That needs to be encouraged. Being a CSO is in many ways a form of cadet training for some people, so I hope that this will be borne in mind. Certainly the integration of the training of police officers and CSOs is important. So that noble Lords are fully in the picture, I remind the Committee that the parliamentary bike ride last week was accompanied by two officers, both on bicycles. One was a sworn officer and the other a community support officer. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 84 not moved.]

Clause 5 agreed to.

Clauses 6 and 7 agreed to.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Clause 8 agreed to.

Schedule 4 [Police bail]:

moved Amendment No. 84A:

The noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, has done us a service in raising this issue, because it will be the first of a long series of debates that we will need to have on the implications of the Bill as regards younger people. I wish to put on record my gratitude to the Standing Committee for Youth Justice for its briefing on this and other matters and, in particular, for coming along as a group last week to brief noble Lords on a range of issues covered by the Bill.

We now come to a difficult issue. Certainly, we on these Benches do not oppose the use of street bail. It can be extremely useful, not only to the police, for obvious reasons, but to the person who receives it. If I was stopped at midnight as a young person under 17, perhaps I should not have been out, or perhaps I was out because I had been at work—who knows? But it may not be convenient for me to appear at a police station immediately. So, street bail has its practical good uses. However, as soon as conditions are applied to it, we get into greater difficulties. I shall not stray into the issues that I shall raise in my AmendmentNo. 85, but this amendment focuses our minds on the appropriateness of making a wide range of conditions available to the police to apply to young people, for the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, has adduced.

We can all underestimate the ability of young people. They can be perfectly able to commit the most amazing and gratuitously wide range of crimes and can be unable to remember, apparently, something that they have been told a moment before about a condition that they may need to obey. But we have to cope with all those who may fall foul of street bail. We have to realise that some may genuinely be unable to understand conditions and that, for them, such conditions may be inappropriate. It is important that the Minister should explain how this power will be used proportionately in relation to young people.

Can the Minister elaborate on the position of a responsible adult? I understand that it is almost impossible that in all circumstances a responsible adult can be present when a person is being granted street bail, and the Government state that a responsible adult should be informed as soon as is practicable. Do the Government envisage that a constable would have power to alter the bail conditions, following representations by a responsible adult, because sometimes young people cannot understand the conditions, whereas a responsible adult may be able to help further?

Before I give a detailed response, perhaps I may say that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, is absolutely right about the possible benefits, both to the officer in dealing with these matters expeditiously and properly, and to the person who is stopped. It may not be necessary to take a child even of 17 to a police station and there could be an important opportunity to do something that may better safeguard the child. There is a positive approach in that, and I thank the noble Baroness for what she said.

I will go through the amendments, but I wish to mention how we see these steps working in practice. If a child is stopped, they may expect first to be asked to phone an appropriate adult, if a mobile telephone or telephone is available. If they do not have a means of getting home, would it be appropriate for the officer to take them home to see whether there was an appropriate adult there to take charge of them? So, there is an issue of safety for the child. Street bail should be looked at in a practical way.

I shall deal with Amendments Nos. 84A, 84B, 84C and 85A together, but I ask the Committee to bear in mind the practicalities of the issue. I absolutely understand the sentiments behind the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, regarding the balance that is required. We intend to consult this summer on the potential for extending to 17 year-olds the PACE safeguards that are currently available to those under 17. I am sure that noble Lords will wish to contribute to that consultation.

I do not seek to minimise in any way the fact that the potential for a young person, or, indeed, any person, to spend time in a police cell is a crucial consideration, because I know that the noble Baronesses, Lady Linklater and Lady Anelay, and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, have often debated the importance of avoiding that, unless it is really necessary. The use of street bail is specifically intended to reduce the need for a person to be taken to a police station, put before the custody officer and placed in detention. Where street bail can be issued, it means that the officer can determine a date which best suits the needs of the investigation; pre-arrange for legal advice, appropriate adults or interpreters to be available when the person answers bail; remain on the street rather than spending time travelling to the police station, processing the suspect and travelling back to their area of duty; and, equally important, remove the need for the person to be taken into custody—and to spend less time in custody when they answer bail, as the officer can better plan the investigation, particularly if there is vulnerability through age.

PACE and the PACE codes significantly recognise the special considerations and protections for people under the age of 17—and I know why the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, raised that issue. We recognised that in guidance, in Home Office Circular 61/2003, which was issued when street bail was introduced. The circular emphasises the need for special consideration to be given when dealing with a juvenile or other vulnerable person. The same emphasis will be made in guidance accompanying the commencement of this measure; in particular, the importance of risk assessing the individual and of ensuring that conditions are proportionate will be emphasised. Again, as in 2003, we will consult the Children’s Charities’ Coalition and others on the content of the guidance.

It has already been indicated in the other place that we would not envisage electronic tagging as a condition of street bail. However, attaching other conditions to street bail is about raising officer confidence that steps can be taken to minimise the opportunity for the person to further offend while on bail or to interfere with victims or witnesses.

As I explained, street bail aims to keep people out of police detention unless they really need to be there. Attaching conditions proportionate to the offence will increase the use of street bail and should lead to fewer situations when it is considered necessary to lock up a juvenile in a cell. We believe that that is an important objective. With that reassurance, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

I thank the Minister for her reassuring response. In relation to the presence of the appropriate adult, which is a crucial element when dealing with children, I said that the one acceptable condition is attendance at a police station. I understand the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, made about the proportionate use of bail—using it intelligently and in the interests of everyone concerned. We clearly share the same concern, which is that the priority is to do everything that we can to minimise any kind of custodial situation for young children. I am delighted to hear about the consultation that is being proposed and, in particular, about the review of the PACE conditions as they apply to 17 year-olds. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 84B and 84C not moved.]

moved Amendment No. 85:

Page 90, line 22, at end insert-

“( ) A constable may impose the conditions of bail under subsection (3B) only if he has undergone appropriate training or he is under the command of an appropriately trained officer.

( ) For the purposes of the above subsection, “appropriate training” means training equivalent to the training given to a custody sergeant regarding the proper imposition of conditions of bail.”

The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 85 would require constables to have the appropriate training before they impose conditions on street bail. Currently, a police officer may attach conditions to bail only when a person has been charged or referred to the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision to charge. Clause 8 and Schedule 4 would change that to enable the officer granting bail to consider attaching conditions that the Government intend should be relevant and proportionate to the suspect and the offence. In her response to the previous group of amendments, the Minister made that point with regard to younger people, to which it would also apply—that is the Government’s intention.

The conditions that can be imposed must be necessary to secure that the person surrenders to custody, does not commit an offence while on bail, and does not interfere with witnesses or otherwise obstruct the course of justice. Where the offender is under the age of 17, conditions may also be applied for their own welfare or in their own interest.

The Government argue that there is no need to be concerned about the extension of the process of imposing conditions on to street bail because the proposed measures reflect the bail provisions already available at the charging stage of the process. That is exactly why we think there should be concern about extending this power to the street, away from the custody sergeant, at the time of the charging process. When bail is granted in the police station, the custody sergeant, who has specialist training and expertise, performs a semi-judicial role in deciding whether bail conditions are justified. By definition the custody officer would not be present when street bail is given and instead the officer responsible for deciding on the conditions to be imposed would be the investigating officer, who would not necessarily have the training and experience of a custody officer. It is this matter of deciding whether to impose conditions that concerns us.

We shall pass on from the matter of street bail, which we support in its broadest sense. If one imposes conditions, it is a decision that involves difficult judgments about the suspect’s likely behaviour and about the proper balance between the aims of the conditions and the rights of the suspect. Officers who impose conditions on street bail should have the training to enable them to make these decisions effectively. That seems only common sense.

When the matter was debated in another place, the Minister said that she accepted the argument that training would be needed:

“Of course we will expect officers exercising such powers to be properly trained. We expect that with any powers that the police are given. They have extensive training, and we will expect them to be properly trained in those powers”.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 21/3/06; cols. 134-35.]

The problem is that saying is not the same as guaranteeing. It seems sensible to put the requirement for training on this important matter into the Bill, which is why we have tabled this amendment. I beg to move.

Although my name is not attached to this amendment, we support it. The Minister accepted the argument put forward on similar lines in Committee in another place, saying:

“Of course, we will expect officers exercising such powers to be properly trained. We expect that with any powers that the police are given. They have extensive training, and we will expect them to be properly trained in those powers”.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 21/3/06; cols. 134-35.]

The point at issue is that, given that extensive training is expected, there is no reason why that should not be included in the Bill, as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said. The crucial area is the powers that the custody officer has—some of us have visited police cells. The custody officer makes an important judgment balancing what the constable says with the rights of the individual. It is a very difficult decision in many circumstances, and he does not necessarily follow everything police officers say. In this instance it is important that that element is specified in the Bill.

I understand the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. However, there is a difficulty because training in all areas is important. We have just spoken about training in Every Child Matters, which is essential. As I have indicated, it will be available at the end of this month and will form part of the training of officers and CSOs. From time to time there will be additional issues, each of which will need training, have their own merit and therefore will have to be undertaken. I am sure that the noble Baroness would not suggest that we list in a schedule every single element of a police officer’s training. If we did, we would probably have the Centrex introductory list, and we would have everything—all of which is important, all of which Ministers will say is essential, and all of which has to have priority.

Chief officers are required to ensure that their officers and staff are suitably trained, competent and able to carry out the range of tasks required. Not just training but guidance will help officers know how to discharge that duty. In the same way, we had interesting discussions about the sort of training that officers should have to issue fixed-penalty notices, cautions and such matters. Guidance and training in these areas are absolutely necessary and I wholeheartedly support that sentiment, but I do not think it would be necessary or right to specifically create a statutory provision for a single area of training nor do I think that street bail would be the only aspect to which such a provision would relate if we were to do so. Attaching conditions is not the exclusive domain of street bail; the noble Baroness is right to say that the station sergeant quite often does that.

We are left in an interesting situation because, at the same time, we are saying that street bail is a good thing and we need to encourage it to be appropriately used on occasions when it is safe and in the interests of justice for it to be undertaken as regards both the potential victim and the offender. We certainly see the merit of that.

If we were to take the provision further, we would have to ask who would give the direction. Would it be the chief constable, the BCU commander or the officer’s immediate line manager, and what would happen if such an officer were not immediately available? There is no provision in the Bill to provide a power to detain in order to await the attendance of a trained officer in command. We would hope that all officers who were able, and asked, to discharge this duty would have the appropriate training.

The aim of street bail is to minimise the time that an officer spends dealing with a situation on the street and, importantly, to limit the period that a person has to be detained by the police. I hope that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord will be reassured by that and by the fact that we very much understand their concerns about getting the conditions right. I have indicated that we do not propose to have tagging or matters of that sort, which would put us into a slightly different league, but, as the noble Baroness rightly said, asking someone to attend, to live at an address and not to commit further offences in the interim all fall within the Bail Act. I respectfully suggest that it is reasonable to expect anyone given bail to comply with those minimum conditions so that we know where to find them if they do not happen to honour their duty and turn up.

I am grateful to the Minister. As I said originally, we do not oppose the idea of street bail, but I think that we make a step-change when we apply conditions to bail. I recall my time as a magistrate—it now seems a distant memory—when one considered whether bail should be granted. Of course, the circumstance was different but the same kind of constructive approach still has to be taken when one considers the safety of the public—and the safety of the individual being bailed, because any breach of bail conditions can have significant consequences for that person.

I assure the noble Baroness that I do not want the Centrex list of when certain training should or should not be given. However, there are moves in the Bill to take us forward to an unknown and untried area which could cause difficulties, and this is one such move. The noble Baroness very properly puts on the record that the Government do not intend one of the conditions to be electronic tagging. But we are left with the practicality of the officer on the beat, and we all want him to be able to do his job effectively, dealing with a person and moving on. But when he goes through the decision-making process, presumably he has to try to deal fairly with a number of people. That decision is highly complex, involving a judgment of the precise conditions.

In that respect, and only because I have concerns about the whole issue of conditions on street bail and how they may be applied proportionately in these circumstances, I will, unusually on these matters, seek to press the amendment.

Before the noble Baroness does that, I should like to understand better why she would do so. The whole point of making street bail possible with conditions attached is that the officer is likely to be risk-averse. If there were a question of either the safety of the individual or the safety of the public, it would be appropriate not to grant bail on the street but to remove the individual to the police station and to carry out an assessment there. Street bail should properly be restricted to cases where it can be delivered safely, speedily and efficaciously without the risk of it being improper. It is a risk-averse process, which will be assisted with training and guidance. I ask the noble Baroness to think very seriously about taking the opinion of the Committee on this matter. She is of course absolutely free to do so but it would be unusually perverse of her in view of her good sense, which normally prevails in such circumstances.

My good sense is going to remain and I will need to press the matter. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness’s intervention. The whole point is that the officer must indeed be able to make a risk-averse decision for his own safety and that of the public, but he also needs to be confident about making the decision to impose the conditions where that is the right thing to do.

This will be one of a rolling number of amendments on which we shall need to express our concerns, although not necessarily by pressing them to a Division. However, this is not a matter to which I intend to return and I wish to resolve it. The noble Baroness has done her own Benches a great service by giving the Whips a little time in which to page people to ensure they are in position and not caused too much discomfort by having their meals interrupted. I therefore wish to test the opinion of the Committee.

moved Amendment No. 86:

Page 90, line 25, at end insert-

“( ) Conditions of bail imposed under subsection (3B) shall expire on the earlier of-

(a) the time at which the person attends at a police station; and

(b) 72 hours from the time at which he was released on bail.””

The noble Lord said: Our amendment would restrict the maximum duration of conditions on street bail. It specifies that a condition will expire either three days after the person was released or when he attends a police station, whichever is earlier. We do not object to the use of street bail, which has existed since January 2004. It can be beneficial for both the police and the suspect. We do not wish to see people taken to a police station at times that are inconvenient for them or the police. Neither would the amendment stop conditions being imposed on street bail.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights concluded that these provisions would not give rise to a significant risk of incompatibility with the rights in the Human Rights Act 1998, in the light of the legal right of the suspect to apply to have bail conditions varied. Regardless of whether a convention right would be violated, as a matter of strict legal interpretation, we consider the power to impose a condition of an unlimited duration to be unacceptable and to give rise to a serious risk of abuse, for a number of reasons.

First, the conditions attached to street bail could severely restrict an individual’s liberty, including curfews, tagging or restrictions on who they can speak to or meet. As street bail is likely to be used in relatively minor cases, it would be disproportionate to impose these kinds of restrictions for lengthy periods. The conditions themselves could have a more severe impact on the suspect than any sentence imposed for the minor offence. Secondly, there is a risk that these conditions could be used in lieu of a criminal charge and prosecution. If reasonable time limits were imposed, it would remove that risk, requiring the police to investigate the case as quickly as possible and to decide whether to charge the suspect.

The suspect may not appreciate the right to appeal against the condition. If they did understand their rights, they may feel unable to initiate such an appeal for fear that it would jeopardise their case. Including a time limit in the Bill would ensure that the suspect attends a police station, where they will receive legal advice and the quasi-independent involvement of the custody officer.

These concerns were raised in the Commons but the Minister failed to provide satisfactory answers to them. Indeed, she accepted them, saying:

“It is clearly important for our police service to be able to get cases moving along as quickly as possible, and to make sure that cases are referred to the Crown Prosecution Service and that charging decisions are made as quickly as possible”—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 21/3/06; col. 138.]

It is precisely for these reasons that we believe that time limits are needed: to ensure that there is an incentive for the police to investigate crimes as quickly as possible, and to decide whether to charge a suspect. The Minister also suggested that the Home Office circular on street bail would provide safeguards. In reality, the circular illustrates the risk that the conditions will be used as long-lasting measures if reasonable time limits are not imposed in legislation. The circular poses the question:

“What length of time should a period of street bail cover?”

It provides the following response:

“As long as is necessary to carry out investigations but we would not anticipate any period longer than six weeks and, in most cases, much sooner”.

Those are our concerns. I beg to move.

I shall speak to Amendment No. 87, which is a probing amendment grouped with Amendment No. 86 that would impose a generous time limit of four weeks on all pre-charge bail from a police station. We are simply suggesting that that is more than enough time for the police to carry out investigations and ascertain whether there is enough evidence to charge a suspect. In moving his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, referred to some of the issues that have to be taken into account when we have pre-charge bail conditions.

Charging is a significant stage in the criminal justice process, and it is only at that stage that the police need to decide whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute. The power to impose restrictions on a person's freedom, whether as a condition of bail or detention in police custody before that evidential hurdle has been reached, must be limited. It is important that suspects should know the nature of the case against them and that they will ultimately appear before a court. The Magistrates’ Association stressed the importance of a safeguard as it applies to post-charge bail, pointing out that:

“Magistrates consider bail conditions very carefully in court and require as much information as possible”.

We are trying to attach a reasonable period, and within the context of 28 days. In the context of the terrorism Bill of 2005, Parliament rejected arguments for more than 28 days—the number should be burned in my brain. Indeed, tomorrow the relevant statutory instrument will put that 28-day limit into effect. Parliament rejected arguments for more than 28 days’ pre-charge detention in terrorist cases. If more than 28 days’ detention is not justified in terrorist cases, we do not see why more than 28 days’ pre-charge conditional bail would be needed to enable the police to investigate a non-terrorist case to determine whether a suspect should continue to have those conditions applied.

I note that when the then Minister—Hazel Blears—in another place responded, she said that,

“street bail should be for as short a time as possible, and states that we”—

the Government—

“should look to a maximum of four to six weeks”.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 21/03/06; col. 140.]

We therefore think that our amendment fits in rather nicely with the Government’s intentions and hope that it would be adequate time to satisfy the Minister.

I would be delighted to be satisfied by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, but I regret that on this occasion I cannot accept her offer. Neither can I be seduced into accepting the offer made by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia.

Amendments Nos. 86 and 87 both relate to time limits. Bail in the context of street bail and pre-charge bail is used respectively to prevent the need to bring a person immediately into custody or to enable the release of a suspect from custody while allowing the police to continue with their investigation.

Attaching conditions is about raising the ability and confidence of the police to release people from custody for a period sufficient to enable the necessary further inquiries to be completed. I appreciate that the amendments reflect your Lordships’ rightful concern that bail conditions issued by the police rather than court may be seen as an arbitrary use of powers.

That is why, in the case of street bail, we have made provisions which allow a person the right of appeal to a custody officer in the first instance and then to a magistrate. In the case of pre-charge bail, the person is entitled to appeal to the magistrate. That right will be made clear to the person at the time at which the bail is granted and conditions imposed, and a written notice of these rights will also be provided. The police focus must be on progressing cases and determining whether there is sufficient evidence to refer matters to the Crown Prosecution Service for a charging decision.

The application of conditions must be proportionate and stand up to scrutiny. The period for which conditions apply must be relevant to the progress of the investigation. I can see little benefit in applying an arbitrary time limit to the lifetime of bail conditions, although I understand and endorse what my right honourable friend said in the other place in relation to the normal expectation, which might be for that time, but we want to do things as expeditiously as possible and not bring people back unnecessarily early if that would be for no good purpose. We would simply have to bail them again to a time when the investigation was complete.

I respectfully say to both the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that it would be preferable if the officer had discretion to enable a person to be released on bail either with or without conditions rather than holding the person in custody when they can quite safely be released. Imposing a time would in effect result in the officer having suspects return to or enter custody at a time when there may be no real prospect of the investigation being proceeded with sufficiently, or when the decision can be made on whether or not to proceed.

I did not promise that this was a probing amendment, but as there is still plenty of time before the dinner break I shall say that I am grateful to the Minister for her comments. The matter was brought to our attention by Liberty, with which I shall discuss the Minister's response. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 87 not moved.]

Schedule 4 agreed to.

Clause 9 [Power to detain pending DPP’s decision about charging]:

moved Amendment No. 88:

I understand the noble Lord’s concern, and he is right to say that three hours was the time limit referred to by my honourable friend in the other place. The only difference between us is whether the limit should be on a statutory basis or in guidance, and I shall explain why. The noble Lord will know that, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, a custody officer is required to charge a person if there is sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for the offence, or to refer that person to the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration under the statutory charging process.

A sensible reading of PACE allows detention for a relatively short and reasonable time, for the purpose of referral to the CPS for a quick charging decision to be made. However, as the noble Lord knows, PACE is not explicit in providing for that detention, and we introduced a government amendment on Report in another place to provide that clarification. We could have left the position as it was, but we did not think it right.

We then indicated that guidance would be issued making it clear that such a period of detention awaiting a decision from the detention officer would be for a maximum of three hours. We remain of the view that guidance is the most appropriate vehicle for dealing with this issue. There may be occasions when the decision takes, say, 10 or 15 minutes more than three hours. If the matter is laid down in legislation, the person would have to be released prior to the expiry of the three-hour period, bailed and asked to return at a later date. That is bureaucratic and benefits neither the police nor, for that matter, the suspect. I am sure the noble Lord will be familiar with circumstances when that has happened.

The basis of the guidance and the three-hour suggested maximum is to require the custody officer and the prosecutor to consider at the very earliest stages the likelihood of a decision being reached within that period. If a decision is not thought likely, the presumption must be to bail that person at that time and not wait until the three-hour period has been reached.

The guidance will make it clear that this is not simply a means to keep a person in police detention and that suitability for bail is to be given first consideration. It will also place a requirement on the custody officer to provide the reasons for any period of detention in which bail was considered suitable but for which the person was detained for up to three hours to await a decision, and for those cases in which a decision was not reached within that period and the person was detained further or granted bail.

Setting a statutory time limit has its attractions, but as we are seeking to ensure that suspects are dealt with quicker and more effectively, we see merit in providing a degree of flexibility and allowing an element of discretion on the part of the custody officer when it is of benefit to the detained person. The way we see it is that if it is going to mean that we see a person more quickly, we should let him go and require him to come back at an appropriate time. That must be to everyone’s benefit, and we do not want to be unnecessarily bureaucratic when an extra five minutes may mean that the person can be charged, bailed and dealt with without having to come back again. Although I understand why the noble Lord has brought this matter back for us to debate, I invite him to withdraw his amendment.

I thank the Minister, but the difference is that custody officers still have powers to take a decision, despite the fact that the CPS may not have reached a decision or may be late in reaching it. I shall take this matter up with the advisers who suggested this amendment to us and discuss it with them. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 9 agreed to.

I think this might be a convenient moment for the House to be resumed. I suggest that proceedings in Committee recommence not before 26 minutes past eight. I beg to move that the House do now resume.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

House resumed.

rose to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the regulations, laid before the House on 23 May, be annulled (S.I. 2006/1380).

The noble Lord said: My Lords, in rising to move this Motion for an humble Address, I hope that the Minister will be able to resolve my concerns over certain parts of these regulations. We accept the need for proper control of contaminated land and the necessity of preventing water pollution, if at all possible. That said, there are one or two matters about the way in which these regulations are drafted that require clarification.

I shall first raise two relatively small matters about the drafting. On page 1, there is a list of the sections of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Contaminated Land (Enabling Powers) (England) Regulations 2005 that authorise the contents of the regulations. That is completely understood and is a normal and helpful clarification. My problem relates to paragraphs 4(1)(i) and 4(1)(j) on page 4 that state that guidance is issued under Section 76F and Section 78F, which are not mentioned at the start of the regulations. It may be that that is not necessary because of the context, but I ask the Minister for an assurance that there is no problem with that.

The second drafting question arises in Regulation 5 on page 5—it is interesting how the numbers run together in this. Paragraph (2) reads:

“Where it appears to the enforcing authority that the contaminated land in question is in such a condition by reason of substances in, on or under it that there is imminent danger of serious harm or serious pollution of controlled waters being caused, the enforcing authority must send any copies of the notice pursuant to paragraph (1) as soon as practicable after service of the notice”.

My view is that that is tautology. If that is not written into the Act, I would be very surprised. It does not really matter whether it is there—that may be a peccadillo, but it seems very peculiar to me that that should be written in the regulations when I would have thought that, in these circumstances, it was absolutely standard procedure and did not require to be stated in the regulations.

The questions of substance that I want to raise are, of course, more serious. On page 2, in Regulation 2, we are dealing with land that is required to be designated as a special site. Sub-paragraph (l) deals with land that is adjoining or adjacent to land which is contaminated by substances which appear to have escaped from designated land. As far as it goes, that is absolutely fine and I can understand the problem. The real question is: how far does “adjacent” go? In Essex, about five years ago, we had rainfall that was a one in 800-year event, as described by our local people responsible for rivers, river basins and flooding. The consequence of that was—I merely mention it as a statement of how severe it was—that six inches of water fell in three hours and buildings were flooded that had never been flooded in the500 years since they were built.

That is the case. It has nothing to do with the issue here, which is that if you get that sort of precipitation on a contaminated site, pollutants are almost certain to leach out of the contaminated site, properly designated, into the adjacent area. Then the question is: how far can the designation be extended, bearing in mind that the pollution is likely to be relatively slight and possibly temporary? I know that it was an extreme event that brought this to my mind—it is difficult when you consider extreme events, but extreme events happen. Regrettably, pollution is a movable commodity in particular circumstances, especially if it is soluble. So there is a question there. If the Minister could give me some reassurance that any extension of the contamination designation would be temporary, on the basis that the pollution would be likely to be temporary and that the designation would last only as long as the pollution could be identified, that would help.

On page 3, Regulation 3 deals with the pollution of controlled waters. Sub-paragraph (a) deals with waters being used for human consumption and refers to where they are affected by the land and, as a result, require a treatment process or a change in the treatment process. My concern is whether that argument could be used against nitrate run-off from agricultural land, which would of course have profound implications, which the Minister will understand as rapidly as I do.

The difficulty is that concentrations of nitrates above a certain level are properly required to be removed from the water before it is supplied to the mains system. The question then is: because that requires a particular process, could the argument be reversed so that, because of the particular processes required, the land should therefore be designated as contaminated?

I hope that the Minister will tell me that there is absolutely no intention that that could possibly be the case or that the argument could possibly be turned around in the way that I suggested. Given the present state of agriculture, a farmer faced with such a proposition would be on a very quick road to ruin. I look forward to the Minister's reply and hope thathe will give me the assurance that I seek. I beg to move.

Moved, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the regulations, laid before the House on 23 May, be annulled (S.I. 2006/1380).—(Lord Dixon-Smith.)

My Lords, the House will no doubt be pleased that I shall be brief. I first came across the regulations as a member of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee. As they passed through our committee, we saw no problem with them. As I understand it, they consolidate several sets of regulations. One of the things the committee has said is that we want more of that because one of our big worries about regulations such as these—in a sense, the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, has highlighted this point—is the ability of people outside this place to understand exactly how they work and what they are about. The process of consolidation is an attempt to help that.

As I understand it, the regulations make provision for an additional description of contaminated land that is required to be designated as a special site—land that is contaminated as a result of radioactivity in, on or under the land. I also understand that they extend Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and that it has been a long-standing ministerial commitment to extend that part of the Act to apply it to land contaminated by radioactive substances. I also understand that part of the provision is to comply with obligations under directives from the European Union. We on these Benches accept what the Government are trying to do. I understand that the changes in respect of radioactivity do not alter the way in which Part 2A currently works for non-radioactive contamination.

I know from studying the regulations as a member of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee that consultation was carried out with local authorities, environmental regulators, industry and many other stakeholders, including radiological specialists and environmental groups. We accept that they felt that this was the right way to go—notwithstanding the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, has also considered the matter in great detail. As I said, it is often difficult to get to grips with the legal language and exactly how the regulations will work.

Although I am not an expert on legal matters, we have a lot of rather good legal brains on the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee. In this instance, they were not able to point out to us any great difficulty. We support the regulations and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

My Lords, I am pleased to confirm that all the understandings of the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, are correct. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, asked about the list at the beginning of the order. It sets out the powers of the Secretary of State to make regulations in the exercise of the powers conferred upon him by all those sections. The fact that Regulation (1)(i) refers to Section 78F(6) is not relevant because that is a reference to a section in an Act. It is not the provision that gives the power to make the regulations. The power to make the regulations comes from that other list, but it does not mean to say that the regulations will not refer to other sections in Acts of Parliament. I think that I have that correct; if I have not, I shall be corrected.

I hope to address the noble Lord’s concerns. The noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, made a far more succinct speech on the regulations than the one I have in front of me. As she said, the regulations honour a long-standing government commitment with regard to land contaminated as a result of radioactivity and bring the law into line with what we are required to do. To the best of my knowledge they have been fully consulted on and there is nothing controversial about them. But, nevertheless, that is what this place is for—to scrutinise the Government.

This is one of a series of regulations dealing with the extension to radioactivity of Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. These particular regulations deal essentially with procedural matters. They do not affect the scope of the contaminated land regime in terms of the seriousness of harm or pollution which is covered, nor do they affect the remedies or the liability of individuals. The regulations are substantively the same as those originally made in 2000 when Part 2A was brought into effect, with a limited number of changes. The clarifications being sought relate to the features of the regulations unchanged from 2000.

We are not opposed to these regulations or the—I am sorry, my note does not make sense and I will not read it. That is my fault.

However, to clarify the specific points, the noble Lord has had discussions with officials and has told us of his concerns in relation to Regulations 2, 3, 4 and 5. Regulation 2 provides descriptions of land which, if and when they are found to be contaminated land as defined in the Act, are to be regarded as “special sites”. The approach of the Act is that it is always the local authority’s job to identify and formally determine the land as contaminated. If, in addition, the land meets a description in Regulation 2, then it must designate it as a “special site”. This simply means that it becomes the job then of the Environment Agency rather than the local authority to take the subsequent steps of enforcement, which are, notably, identifying who is to pay for remedial work and ensuring that it is undertaken.

There may be special sites where the condition of the land is also leading to adjoining or adjacent land being contaminated by substances migrating or escaping from the special site. Regulation 2(1)(l) simply ensures that these problems are also handled by the Environment Agency, rather than being regarded as a separate case to be handled by the local authority, which, of course, may have other priorities or views. This is simply a matter of good administration and ensuring that there is only one regulator at work enforcing in such cases—namely, the Environment Agency—rather than two. It does not bring with it any differences in, for example, who might be liable for remedial work or the remedial standards which would apply.

This mirrors what will happen in any other case under Part 2A where the condition of one piece of land leads to substances leaching or migrating on to another piece of land and causing a problem. Here, too, the approach is to regard this as a single case to be addressed because, of course, land contamination does not respect property boundaries and action may need to be taken in respect of both locations. The term “adjoining or adjacent” is not defined, so the words will carry their normal dictionary meanings. Of course, if a row occurs about that, it will be a matter for the scientists to go before my learned friends and explain matters.

Regulation 3 sets out the special site descriptions in respect of contaminated land which is causing pollution of controlled waters. The effect is to provide which “contaminated land” cases, once found, are then taken over and enforced by the Environment Agency rather than by the local authority. In the case, for example, of chemicals such as nitrates used on a farm, if these escape from the soil and into ground waters, or into surface waters, then it has long been the case that this may amount to “pollution of controlled waters”. The regulations here do not change that situation.

In some of these pollution cases the Environment Agency is better placed to enforce under Part 2A than the local authority. Regulation 3 provides the description of such cases. Broadly, these include cases where a source of drinking water supply is affected so badly that the test of wholesomeness of supply can no longer be met; where a statutory environmental quality standard can no longer be met; or where a classified dangerous substance is getting into a strategically important aquifer.

The Government intend to limit the scope of the Part 2A regime in future so that it would not apply to a case of trivial pollution of controlled waters but only to pollution which is “significant”. Work on this is proceeding and there will be a public consultation on detailed proposals in due course.

Regulation 4 sets out the matters which are to be included in a remedial notice, in addition to those matters set out in the Act itself, in more general terms. The power to prescribe the additional content is provided by Section 78E(6), and this power is cited on the front of the regulations. The power of the local authority to treat someone as not being an appropriate person to bear the cost of something by way of a remedial action, in certain circumstances, derives from Section 78F(6). This is the reason that Section 78F(6) did not need to be cited as a power on the face of the regulations. I knew that I had read it somewhere, and I worked it out as the noble Lord was speaking.

This is because the regulations are merely concerned with what has to be shown in a remediation notice in order for the recipient to know what he is required to do and on what basis. The content of a notice simply reflects the outcome of the allocation of liability, which is governed by the primary legislation and its related statutory guidance, not by the regulations.

The final regulation questioned by the noble Lord, Regulation 5, concerns the sending of copies of a remediation notice to people additional to the “appropriate persons” upon whom notices are formally served under the Act. The additional copies are provided for information purposes. In the cases where a remediation notice is served in respect of imminent danger, there is a requirement that the additional copies are sent as soon as practicable after service of the notice itself on the appropriate persons.

It would have been possible to deal with the service of these additional copies in the Act, but, generally, the approach taken is that matters of a procedural nature—which is what I have said these regulations are—are often elaborated on in regulations under the Act rather than in the primary legislation itself. This appears to have been the approach adopted here in 1995 when the Environment Act was first enacted.

I hope I have answered the noble Lord’s points and that it will be quite useful for people who are subject to these regulations to have this explanation on the record in Hansard.

My Lords, the Minister has been most helpful. The concern, of course, was immediately for the people who are adjacent to sites of this nature and, therefore, might be caught. The Minister said that nothing in these regulations changes the position that existed in law before they were promulgated; nor, indeed, do they change anything. That is the reassurance that I was seeking and I am most grateful to him for that.

As to his remarks on the additional notices, I hear what the Minister says. But if we have to put into regulations what should be an automatic and standard procedure anyway, I find that slightly touching but also slightly peculiar and, as I said, tautologous. I am pleased to be able to tell the Minister that I am satisfied with his answer. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 8.26 pm.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

[The Sitting was suspended from 7.49 to 8.26 pm.]

moved Amendment No. 91:

The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, has been very consistent in his concern about this matter. I well recall supporting some of his moves in respect of registered firearms. He is quite right to point out that my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford supported one of his amendments and that we voted for that amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, has tried a number of avenues to bring attention to this very serious problem, including during discussions on the Violent Crime Reduction Bill. I say to him and the Minister that we support the principle behind this amendment. As the noble Lord rightly points out, gun crime has grown at an alarming rate in this country, doubling since 1997. The number of crimes involving imitation firearms has quadrupled.

The vast majority of gun owners use them legally and responsibly. The aim of further changes to the law must be to tackle the threat from weapons held or used illegally. Gun crime is obviously a complex matter; tackling it requires a holistic approach. We need intelligence-led policing to attack the organised criminal gangs responsible for many shootings. In order to achieve a better conviction rate, we need to improve the protection offered to vulnerable witnesses to encourage more people to come forward.

I have studied this amendment carefully. While its aim is to be commended, I have some reservations about its wording, although, as I said, not its principle. We worry that the amendment, as currently phrased, may be too broad. The police, quite rightly, already have the power to stop and search people of whom they are reasonably suspicious. However, the amendment appears to give them the ability to stop and search anyone living near or standing beside the person of whom they are suspicious. Given that the area that the police may seal off for this purpose is completely undefined, this stop and search could be extremely extensive.

Setting all these issues aside, I believe that we need to take forward and discuss this matter. Bearing in mind our concerns, I ask the Minister whether she would consider it appropriate—in order to tease out some of the issues reflected in this amendment—for the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, and a number of us who share his concerns to discuss this matter further and to see whether the existing provisions are appropriate. If not, is there anything else that we can do to draw attention to the serious problem that we face in this country and together to reach a solution on Report? To do anything at this stage could be counterproductive. We are aware that there are laws, but I think that we need meetings in which the situation is explained so that we can take this issue forward. So, the support is there, but we need far more information from the Minister. This may not be the appropriate time to talk about these issues. I press the Minister to say how she will respond on this matter.

I strongly support this amendment, to which I have added my name. My noble friend Lord Marlesford has indeed shown admirable persistence in bringing this matter forward for debate and he is absolutely right to do so. He has raised the matter on three previous occasions: in March 2002; in October 2003, during discussions on the Criminal Justice Bill, which was the first occasion on which I had the opportunity to take part in these important debates; and, most recently, during our debate on the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, just before the Whit Recess.

The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, is right to stress that the majority of firearms are legally held and responsibly used. None of us is trying to target legislation at those groups. My noble friend Lord Marlesford was also right to point out how real the fear of gun crime and the illegal use of guns is for people in some areas. It makes life unpredictable and, sometimes, unbearable. Firearms used for illegal purposes are the scourge of a generation in some areas. They are perceived to be a great threat. Even if that is not true in all areas, it is certainly perceived as such. Often it seems that guns are used on our streets by criminal gangs, often those trading in drugs or people-trafficking. They have no regard for their trading enemies’ lives and little if any regard for the safety of the public on the street. It is that by-product of their violence that we also seek to contain.

The considerable merit of the amendment is the simplicity of the statement of the powers that my noble friend seeks to confer on the police. I know that there is always a tension in legislation and that one wants to achieve a clearly defined result by giving a simple body of powers—it gets more and more difficult to define such powers effectively so that one does not give rise to unintended consequences. I am aware that powers already exist that enable the police in certain circumstances to search people, but those powers are to be extracted from a number of legislative instruments. If the Government wish to give a clear message about crime—perhaps I should say “continue to give”, because I know that they, especially the Minister, have been trying to give that message—my noble friend’s amendment would assist them to do precisely that.

I am interested to hear that my noble friend has been in contact with ACPO and that he has had a positive indication from its members that they would welcome a clarified and simpler power. I appreciate the difficulties that police officers face in trying adequately to protect the public while at the same time responding rapidly to violent circumstances. It is the prevention of crime that is so important and that my noble friend is trying to achieve by his amendment. I know that the Government in other measures are seeking to prevent the carrying of weapons. We can see that in the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, in which they are giving teachers greater and welcome opportunities to search pupils for bladed weapons. I was interested to read in the press this weekend that Mr McNulty, the Minister in another place, is minded to see whether he can widen the provisions in the Violent Crime Reduction Bill that have already gone through Committee stage in this House. We await his proposals with interest.

The Government will not find us churlish in responding to measures that they put forward that will properly give powers of search, whether to the police or to other responsible and appropriate bodies. It is right that we should focus our attention on my noble friend’s amendment for its positive attributes, but I also fully respect the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. I am grateful to hear from him that he supports the principle behind the amendment and that he is keen to work with my noble friend to see what can be achieved by way of better drafting. I understand what he says with regard to his concerns about the power appearing to be too broad. I say “appearing”, because I know that my noble friend’s intention is that the power would not be too broad and that there would not be leakage across the border of a defined area—I know that he is trying to get a carefully targeted area in which the police can operate. I am sure that my noble friend will be at one with the noble Lord on that point.

Of course it is absolutely vital that in giving any new power to the police in sensitive times—and, indeed, on any occasion—we should ensure that we do nothing to inflame sensitivities in various communities about how they may be treated differently or disadvantageously as opposed to other communities. There is no way that one wants to upset community relations. On the other hand, the best communities are well regulated, secured and protected from people who carry weapons.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, even if she is not able to accept the amendment tonight. Given her past responses, I think that we are going to be disappointed, but I hope that instead of full disappointment we will receive some encouragement. I hope that we will hear from the Minister that she wants to engage in discussions over the summer so that we can by agreement come up with an amendment that can go in the Bill in the autumn to achieve on Report what my noble friend justifiably wants: the greater protection of the public.