COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 3 April 2003)

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 22.

The amendment provides for a limited exception to the 50:50 recruitment arrangements. The Chief Constable will therefore be able to address the current shortage of experienced officers with special policing skills at the rank of constable. A number of your Lordships have raised this question. The amendment was put forward by the Policing Board, with the unanimous support of its members. I welcome the fact that they have responded so constructively. It is a great credit to the board members that they are working in such a way, so co-operatively. that they came to unanimous agreement on such a sensitive issue.

1502 The provision will allow the Chief Constable to bring into the police service a specified number of officers with specialist policing skills where he can demonstrate that there is a significant shortfall—for instance, detectives. He can use it only when certain criteria established by the board have been met, and where the board members unanimously approve its use.

These exceptional arrangements will be available for two years, starting from Royal Assent. The Secretary of State may extend the life of the provision on one occasion only, to allow it to operate for a maximum period in all of four years. Such an extension would require the unanimous agreement of the Board.

This route of entry will be very much the exception. We see it as a temporary measure to plug the skills gap, about which a number of your Lordships were concerned, created largely as a consequence of the severance scheme. It is in no sense a watering down of, or fundamental departure from, the 50:50 requirement.

I commend the amendment.

Amendment No. 22C would enable the measures to be activated with the approval of a majority of the Policing Board. The board has shown great maturity on this and earlier occasions—for example, on symbols—and I am sure that it will do so in the future. The detail of this exceptional mechanism has been the subject of lengthy and painstaking consideration by the board, which of course includes representatives of the Ulster Unionist Party, and it has expressly requested that its unanimity be a precondition for the mechanism's use. We are eager to honour the board's wishes in this regard, and I therefore invite the noble Lords concerned not to press the amendment.

Amendments Nos. 22A, 22B and 22D, taken together, would require the Secretary of State. if asked by a majority of the board, to make an order suspending the 50:50 provisions. Given the strength of support for Amendment No. 22, both here and in the other place, I very much hope that their Lordships will be prepared to withdraw these amendments. We discussed this matter at length earlier. It would be much too radical a departure from 50:50, which is the cornerstone of our policy.