Member

I respond to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, who obviously, as I know from personal experience, has considerable knowledge and experience in the leadership of policing. Where, however, I disagree with him is in his suggestion—I do not think he quite meant it like this—that there is no role for policing in safeguarding and protecting children. I do not think that was what he meant. Therefore, it is wholly right to consider that, in order to build that whole picture of children, you would want and need to have police officers with a particular expertise in that type of work. My recent experience in children’s social care was in the West Midlands, where the police determined that certain police officers would take a specific responsibility around child protection. I understand that different forces might want to have different ways of responding to that, but that may well be a way that police forces will respond.