The Earl of Minto (Con)

My Lords, I, too, have signed both of the amendments tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich because I believe that they have identified two important gaps in the law. Section 90 of the Police Act 1996 creates the offence of impersonating “a member of a police force or special constable”. The Act is concerned with civilian police forces in England and Wales established under it and related legislation. The definition of “special constable” is limited to one appointed for a police area. Members of the service police forces are not members of the territorial police force and are not special constables; they are members of the service police under the Armed Forces Act 2006. As a result, the person pretending to be a service police officer would not obviously fall under the wording “members of a police force or special constable” in Section 90. I believe that this is clearly an omission and needs to be rectified. On Amendment 60, I believe that I am correct in saying that the definition in Section 3 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 could include service police officers. Subsection 1(b) states that “a person (other than a constable) who has the powers of a constable or is otherwise employed for police purposes or is engaged to provide services for police purposes” is included within that definition. Service police officers are clearly engaged to provide services for police purposes; it might be useful for the Minister to confirm whether that is the Government’s position. However, more importantly, that Act applies only to England and Wales, not to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scotland has a corresponding law: the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005, which creates specific offences of assaulting, obstructing or hindering emergency workers and those assisting them. The protected categories include constables, fire and ambulance personnel, and, in certain circumstances, prison officers, coastguard personnel, RNLI crews, social workers executing child protection orders and mental health officers. Like the English and Welsh equivalent, the Scottish Act does not expressly mention service police officers. However, service police can sometimes be treated as constables when exercising powers conferred by service law or civilian legislation. Whether the 2005 Act applies to a particular service police officer will depend on the precise capacity in which they were acting at the time, thus the position regarding service police is not clear. Northern Ireland does not have a direct equivalent of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 that creates a single overarching offence of assaulting emergency workers. Instead, it has a mixture of general assault offences and occupation-specific offences. A member of the Royal Military Police, Royal Navy Police or Royal Air Force Police would not automatically fall under any general “emergency worker” definition in Northern Ireland because there is no equivalent statutory definition. The problem here is that the service police work across the United Kingdom, so the differential treatment under the law of the different jurisdictions causes confusion and uncertainty. This, coupled with the fact that service police officers are not expressly covered by the relevant treaties of legislation, means that service police are not treated as equivalent to civilian police. I think that this requires some thought from the Government; I welcome an opinion on these matters from the Minister.