Draft Armed Forces (Tri-Service Serious Crime Unit) (Consequential Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations 2022 Draft Armed Forces (Court Martial) (Amendment) Rules 2022

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Mike Penning

Monday 21st November 2022 General Committees

[Dr Murrison]

The thing will be stood up on 5 December. I confess I have not visited it yet, but I intend to do so very soon. It will have very senior service policemen plus support staff. I cannot give the hon. Lady a figure, but it will be pretty comprehensive. It will include reservists because they are in large part civilian policemen. Although some police choose to join the reserves and become something completely different, the bulk of them continue to serve as police. There is no question of training them up; they are trained already, and the flow of expertise is the other way round, that is to say, from the reservist police to the defence serious crime unit. That comes back to my earlier remark about the need to ensure that we have a level playing field, and that best practice in the service criminal justice sector and the civilian criminal justice sector are broadly speaking the same. I have no reason to suppose that they are not, and Henriques, and before him Lyons and Murphy, suggested that they are.

Nevertheless, it is important that the two sectors operate more or less on the same level, and in particular that some of our service police are exposed to College of Policing disciplines. That is one of the intentions behind the formation of the unit. There will be training— that is ongoing—but I would not want to suggest to the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood that we need to train people specifically for this task. For the most part, they will be doing this already. It is just that we are standing up this separate unit to deal with serious crime. That recommendation stems directly from Lyons, Murphy and Henriques. I hope that that is of some help.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that it was excellent news that a former Policing Minister changed the rules so that serving police officers could serve in the reserves, and bring that expertise across—not that I, a former Policing Minister, would have any knowledge of that?

[Dr Murrison]

My right hon. Friend knows a lot about the issue; indeed, he is too modest, and I entirely agree with the point that he makes. In the time that it has taken him to make his intervention, my extremely good officials have told me that the answer to the question from the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood is approximately 370, which is good. There is significant resource being put into this. I look forward to meeting some of them when I visit Southwick Park very shortly.