Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Henig Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Henig]

56QA: Clause 121, page 90, line 25, after “person” insert “who is licensed and who works for a company licensed by the Security Industry Authority and”

[Baroness Henig (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving this amendment I must first declare interests as a former chair of the Security Industry Authority, and as a current adviser to the British Security Industry Association and a Scottish private security company.

At this stage these are probing amendments to try to find out to what extent the Government are retreating from their commitments to the private security industry, first made three years ago by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, in this House, and again last autumn by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, at a Security Industry Authority conference, when he pledged that the Government would introduce business licensing of companies in the private security sector along with individual registration by the end of this calendar year—which is to say, in the next three weeks. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, also promised appropriate enforcement powers to back up the new arrangements.

We are in quite a novel situation. An industry is begging the Government to regulate its businesses with a range of proportionate penalties for non-compliance, and despite the promises and the Home Office consultation, which shows that the great majority of representative bodies and companies support that, nothing is happening. How strange, then, that in other arenas the Government are rushing to regulate: trade union activity, to give one example.

In the context of these amendments I must spell out why business licensing of private security companies that work alongside the police and of those that carry out extradition escort duties is so necessary and so important. It is because we need to continue to drive up standards across the industry. That started with individual licensing, which was introduced 10 years ago but which must continue, to protect the public and to win both their confidence and that of the strategic partners with whom private security companies work, such as the Government and the police.

We also need to tackle the continuing influence of organised crime gangs in this important sector and to focus regulation on companies while reducing the burden on individuals. The public need to be able to hold companies to account for failures and wrongdoing, not just individuals. Thus far, the Government have proposed only secondary legislation to introduce a form of mandatory approvals for businesses under existing legislation. They have not, they told industry representatives, identified the opportunity for the necessary primary legislation. Given the wide-ranging nature of this Bill, I am surprised that it has not proved possible to insert into it somewhere along the line business licensing for private security companies.

The need for primary legislation is urgent; the benefits that the change would bring are significant for legitimate businesses and for public safety. Furthermore, the uncertainty created by the failure to bring forward this legislation is having an adverse impact on businesses and industry leaders, because they have to cope with continuing lack of information as to how their industry will be regulated, if and when changes will be made, and how much it will cost. My amendments at this stage seek to ensure that companies working alongside the police, and those involved in extradition escorting must be regulated by the Security Industry Authority. My objective is to ensure that all businesses providing security services in the areas covered by the Private Security Industry Act are licensed and that there are powers available to the regulator to allow effective and proportionate enforcement of the regime.

The question that I want to put to the Minister and the coalition Government is this. Are you still intending to carry through the changes you promised in 2011 and said were so urgent that they had to be implemented by the end of this year, or have you decided to abandon them? If the latter is the case, can you please tell the industry and the regulator, so that we can decide how to respond? If you are still going ahead, please could you come back at Report with some appropriate amendments? If you are not able to do that, I and colleagues will be happy to draft some new clauses for you to adopt. But please make up your minds on this issue, which is very important, not just for the industry but for public protection. I beg to move.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD)]

I have added my name to this amendment, and refer Members to my former policing interests in the register. I have long felt that it was important to ensure that adequate training was given to anyone from the private security sector who would be working with the general public and, especially, the police.

Many years ago, when I was a member of my police authority in North Yorkshire, we pioneered doorkeepers, who were specially trained and motivated to work in a range of areas, in particular in nightclubs. Up until that time, it was customary to employ hefty and largely untrained men who would quickly get involved in any scuffles that were going on in the nightclub, or outside it, and who escalated the incident more often than not. Eventually, the police felt that they needed to do something about this and proposed that they trained the doorkeepers. They received a certificate at the end of their training, which became the basis of our having properly trained people dealing with potentially difficult situations, with the help and support of police officers who knew their abilities and limitations.

Fast forward a lot of years to the introduction of the Security Industry Authority, which regulated the private security industry and introduced individual licensing, which has proved to be an enormous success and gained, as we have heard, much support from both the public and police, who saw their registration as being a sign that they had been properly trained and accredited. But it should not end there, and this is the purpose of bringing this probing amendment to your Lordships’ attention. Accountability for actions must not be simply laid at the door of individuals. Companies have a great deal of responsibility in this area and they, too, need to be held accountable if they have been lax about ensuring the proper training and professionalism of their operatives.

We have, I hope, gone long past the time when we saw rogue companies getting away with questionable practices, and unless proper regulation is undertaken we may find ourselves once again in a position of trying to fend off organised crime, which will impact on legitimate businesses. You can be sure that the rogue operators will be looking carefully at what is proposed in the Bill so that they can bypass having to regulate their staff and businesses, especially those who will be working with the police.

However, the words in the briefing note—which was kindly sent to me by the Home Office and I thank it for that—do not really give me much comfort. The consultation proposed,

“a phased transition to a new regulatory regime of business licensing, together with some changes to how individuals are licensed to work within the industry. Following the consultation, the Home Office is enacting reforms in two stages, with provisions that require primary legislation being implemented later, so that the industry can begin to benefit from business regulation introduced by secondary legislation as soon as possible. We are working towards businesses being able to apply for a licence from April 2014”.

In the mean time, what has happened? Businesses do not need to bother ensuring that they will be able to comply with the spirit of regulation. The police need to have confidence in the people they are operating alongside. The public also need to be confident that private security personnel are properly registered and accredited and that companies which make a lot of money out of guarding, escorting and handling extremely important items and persons can be held to account for their actions. This was promised and I hope my noble friend the Minister will be able to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, who has an enormous amount of experience in these matters, that the proposals given to this House previously have not been abandoned.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for their contributions and for the concise way in which they have addressed this important issue. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, for presenting these amendments—not that I am going to accept them—as the SIA is one of my departmental responsibilities within the Home Office. She mentioned commitments that I made last year at the annual general meeting of the SIA. I made similar commitments by video link; unfortunately, I could not be there as I was dealing with a Bill and could not be in two places at the same time.

I reiterate our commitment to the SIA. No one knows more than the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, how important that body is, given her distinguished service as its chairman. We also appreciate the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, on the importance of business licensing for the development of the industry. We are at one in that aim and we have not been idle on this issue. There has been a public consultation on the process and we have published the Government’s response to it. As the noble Baroness may know, we do not need primary legislation —we do not need to put anything in the Bill—to introduce business licensing. It would be introduced by secondary legislation and would cover issues such as door supervision, security guarding, cash and valuables in transit, close protection, CCTV and public surveillance, and key holding—the traditional areas. However, noble Lords will be aware that one of the consequences of the Leveson report is that private investigators should also come within the ambit of the regulatory body—the SIA. Therefore, there is a lot to do. I reassure my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond that we are still very much on target.

I turn to the amendments. Amendment 56QA seeks to link the application of the complaints and misconduct framework overseen by the IPCC to SIA-regulated businesses. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, said, the police work with the private sector on many different aspects of their work, many of which are outside the security industry and, as such, it was never the intention that the provisions of the Private Security Industry Act would apply. I shall describe the sorts of thing that I am talking about. These include, for example, call handlers in police control rooms or inquiry office staff. In addition, forensic science work, which is, of course, integral to the police service, is regulated by the forensic science regulator, and would be excluded.

The intention behind Clause 121 is to ensure that the oversight of complaints and conduct matters by the IPCC extends to all private contractors, subcontractors and their employees carrying out functions for the police where those functions have been traditionally carried out by police officers and police staff, so that where there has been a move towards the civilianisation of police functions, these should be covered. Police forces are increasingly entering into contracts with private sector organisations—I come from Lincolnshire, a county which probably pioneered that—many of which fall outside the SIA-regulated regime, but which should, none the less, be subject to investigation by the IPCC for wrongdoing. I think that the public would rightly expect this to be the case.

Amendment 95ZA raises similar issues in the context of the transit through the UK of people being extradited from one country to another. Again, I understand the noble Baroness’s concern to prevent untrained and potentially unsuitable individuals being given delegated authority for facilitating these transits.

Although I agree with the intention behind the amendment, I believe that we can achieve all this through other, more workable means. I say that because the Government plan to amend this clause in recognition of similar concerns raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee—namely, that the power to specify descriptions of those who might in future facilitate the transit through the UK of persons being extradited from and to another country is cast in wide terms. The committee felt that this should be seen in the context of the powers of authorised officers, which include the power to detain persons in custody, and therefore that the delegated power should either be circumscribed in the Bill or subject to the affirmative procedure.

We have listened to the views of the committee and, in response, have tabled an amendment which will apply the affirmative resolution procedure to this order-making power. This will mean that the only categories of persons able to undertake escort duties will be those approved by both Houses. An example of the type of persons who might undertake this escort role is Border Force officials. Whoever is empowered to carry out the role will be subject to the extradition codes of practice, which are based on the equivalent PACE provisions. I hope that the noble Baroness will be reassured that there will be proper oversight and scrutiny of those who undertake quasi-police functions and exercise police powers, and that she will be content to withdraw her amendment.

In relation to the SIA, the Private Security Industry Act 2001, which underpins the SIA’s regulatory activities, specifically states that licensing requirements do not apply to activities carried out by a detainee custody officer and a prison custody officer, both as defined by the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Therefore, the effect of this amendment would be to create conflicting legislation, with a question as to which Act was supposed to apply to these people. The SIA currently has no remit for regulating this type of activity; nor is it the Government’s intention for it to do so in the future.

I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Henig—I keep thinking of her as “my noble friend”, although, according to the traditions of the House, I should not call her that—will accept my commitment on business licensing and on the determination of the Government to continue their policy objective of advancing the interests of the SIA. We see it as developing an increasingly important role in public protection in this country.

[Baroness Henig]

I thank the Minister for his response. I listened very carefully and particularly took note of the points that he made about escorting for extradition proceedings. However, I am somewhat disappointed with some of the general points that he made. He said that the Government had not been idle. Three years have passed and nothing has happened. I do not know what definition of “idleness” the Minister is using but in my book three years is quite a long time for nothing to happen. He assured the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, that the Government were very much on target. However, they clearly are not on target, because both the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, said that this whole process was going to be completed by the end of this year. Therefore, how can he say that the Government are very much on target when they patently are not? I am sorry but that is not very reassuring.

There was mention of secondary legislation. I have to say to the Minister that the problem with secondary legislation is that there cannot be a range of enforcement mechanisms; nor can there be appropriate sanctions. The industry has made it clear that to have business licensing without appropriate enforcement mechanisms is a recipe for disaster. It means that the good companies will go along with things and the bad companies will not face any sanctions. To businesses, that is a worse prospect than no legislation. They are very alarmed about that secondary legislation.

I know that businesses will be very disappointed with the Minister’s response. He has offered nothing. He has offered no assurances and has not said that the Government will bring anything back. We have here very appropriate legislation for something far more substantive. I have some sympathy for the Minister who I think would like to move further. I am quite sure that the problems are not necessarily in the Home Office but in other parts of government. None the less, the industry is disappointed because the opportunity is here to take a big step towards what it wants and what obviously would be of benefit to the public, but it is not being taken. I understand, and I sympathise with the fact, that industry leaders, probably even today, have made it clear that they will withdraw from a lot of co-operation with the Home Office because of the disappointment and frustration that they feel at the Government’s inability to take this forward. For the life of me, I cannot understand the problem with going ahead with business licensing in a proper manner through primary legislation.

At this stage, I am happy to withdraw this probing amendment but some of us may want to look at this issue again to see whether there are amendments that we could table on Report, which perhaps might find a more favourable response. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 56QA withdrawn.