Employment Rights Bill

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I say briefly that the principle in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, is absolutely right. He has made a cogent case for why special constables are indeed special, and for their contribution. Some 25 years ago, when I chaired the Metropolitan Police Authority in London, we reversed a situation in which the number of special constables was declining, and we started to increase the number—both because of the ability to put more people on the street but also in terms of public engagement with the process.

I will pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Rainow, although I will probably use it in a slightly different direction. He referred to the strategic defence review. That document, the national security strategy and the resilience action plan published last week all talk about a new mechanism of homeland defence and security, and the importance of using more people—more civil resources—to protect the community.

It is quite clear that we are facing a world in which we are confronted with more and more perils—some of them organised by hostile states and others simply the result of the nature of the world in which we live. Therefore, although the principle that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, sets out here is extremely laudable—people should be encouraged and given the opportunity for time off if they are doing this sort of public service—I would like to understand the context in which this will happen. Will we be able to say, in a year or two, that we have identified how we will use volunteers and the public in the defence of our nation, in terms of supporting the police and our armed services, in a much more proactive way? I suspect that that should be done holistically, rather than simply in terms of this single amendment to the Bill. Having said that, the principle is absolutely right: those people who give that service should be encouraged to do so and should be given the opportunity of time off.

[Lord Paddick (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my registered interest as a paid non-executive director of the Metropolitan Police Service. I fully support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. Special constables have all the powers of regular officers, and some are even trained in public order, able to engage in policing marches and demonstrations where violence is feared, reducing abstractions of regular community officers from their beats, to give one example.

In answer to the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, about whether this should be part of a broader look at the issues, I say that, at a time when there is cross-party consensus that there should be more visible community policing—and cross-party consensus that there is not enough money to fund the number of police officers we should ideally have—placing special constables’ time off from their employment on a statutory footing, at a cost of only expenses, deserves cross-party support.