Scotland Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

41: Clause 42, page 46, line 17, at end insert—
“( ) There shall be an agreement between the British Transport Police Authority and the Scottish Government to ensure that the British Transport Police continues to police railways and railway property in Scotland.”

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 41, I shall speak also to Amendments 42, 43 and 44. I express my appreciation to noble Lords in all parts of the House who have supported Amendments 41 and 42, and I am happy to support my noble friend’s Amendment 43 and Amendment 44 proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Empey. These amendments give the Government a sensible way out of the dilemma that became very clear in relation to the role of the British Transport Police in Scotland when these difficulties were identified by noble Lords in Committee. I was interested in what my noble friend Lord McFall said about the previous amendment—that the Government had listened carefully to the points made in Committee. It is a great pity that on the British Transport Police issue the same understanding does not appear to have manifested itself. Following that debate, the Minister wrote to all of us who participated in Committee and yesterday he convened a meeting on this subject. I am very grateful to him for taking such trouble, but I am afraid that the letter that he wrote falls short of what is required to safeguard the future of transport policing in Scotland, not least because it contained this sentence:

“As policing of railways is to be devolved, it will be a matter for the Scottish Parliament to decide whether the policing of railways should continue to be carried out by the British Transport Police Bodies, or whether these functions should be carried out under a different operating model”.

The Government’s position was made rather clearer by the three officials from the Department for Transport whom the Minister brought to yesterday’s meeting. They told us that they have been in discussions with the Scottish Government for some time about how Police Scotland will take over the responsibilities for policing the railways in Scotland from the British Transport Police.

What has been happening is that the Government have interpreted the report of the Smith commission in one way, and one way only, in respect of transport policing in Scotland. They appear to have given no consideration to the views of the British Transport Police Authority which have been expressed in documents sent to the Scottish Government, and also to its Public Audit Committee. I do not know how much those documents have been considered by UK Ministers. In particular, I would draw the House’s attention to the BTPA paper headed Options for the Devolution of Transport Policing in Scotland. The first option introduced a non-statutory devolved model of governance and accountability for specialist transport policing in Scotland. The second option dealt with a statutorily devolved model of governance and accountability, and the third one described what would happen if BTP’s Scottish division was fully integrated within Police Scotland.

Let me deal first with option three, and particularly with the operational considerations, because this appears to be the course the Government are adopting. This section in the BTPA statement starts with this sentence:

“There is an accepted argument for Britain's railways to be policed in a manner that is not constrained by the geographic boundaries of other police forces or legal frameworks that the rail industry cuts across. Currently, BTP’s boundaries cover the total policing environment of the British rail network, and the structure of BTP provides a single point of contact and consistency in policing standards across the Scottish, English and Welsh railways. This includes working across two legal systems, which is important in day-to-day terms. For example when a crime or disorder occurs, often the exact location of the incident cannot be pinpointed. As BTP is responsible for policing the whole network, it currently does not matter a great deal at what exact point of a rail journey the crime took place. If the policing of the railway network were to be carried out by two bodies, there is a risk for confusion to arise over who would record and investigate crimes, which would be highly distressing for victims and cause unnecessary delay”.

A little later on, under the heading “Specialist Operational response”, there is a paragraph which reads:

“Fatality management, counter-terrorism, cable theft, dealing with people in precarious positions on the railway are examples of areas where BTP’s approach to policing on the railway has ensured that passengers are kept safe and are faced with the minimum of disruption to their journeys and has saved the industry billions of pounds over ten last ten years”.

There is a great deal more in the same vein in the authority’s options paper, which at this late time of night I do not have time to cover.

I shall just mention one other paragraph:

“Terrorism remains a high security concern for the UK as a whole, and the long-standing threat to transport infrastructure is very real. By raising the threat level in August 2014 to ‘severe’, the Home Secretary confirmed the increased risk to the public owing to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, where terrorist groups are known to be planning attacks against the West. In addition to that, the nature of the threat is changing, with a heightened risk of ‘lone-wolf’ attacks in crowded places including railway stations. These developments have underlined the need for a more coordinated and integrated approach to counter-terrorism. The efforts to combat terrorism and extremism must be cross-border – an attack on Scottish soil may well be stopped in England. Equally, any perceived vulnerability arising from fragmented jurisdiction will be exploited by those planning an attack, and jeopardising the ability to police the network as a whole could well result in greater risks to passengers”.

I stress that these are not my assertions, but the views of seasoned policing professionals whose work is widely admired not just across Great Britain but abroad as well. These are men and women who know what they are talking about. We would be ill-advised to ignore them. We should heed their concerns and rule out what the BTPA describes as option 3, the complete integration of the British Transport Police into Police Scotland.

Its options 1 and 2 are consistent with the findings of the Smith commission, as are our Amendments 41 and 42 for they accept the devolution of transport policing in Scotland to the Scottish Government, but make it clear that it is a function that should still be carried out by the BTP reporting to Scottish Ministers. They also make the point that if our friends in Scotland do not like the word “British” applied to any organisation that operates north of the border, the force could easily be renamed “Transport Police Scotland”.

Option 3, which the Government are adopting, files in the face of every objective assessment of the role, functions and effectiveness of the BTP over the past 15 years. The reports in 2001, 2003 and 2004, the report from the Transport Select Committee in another place, the Government’s White Paper The Future of Rail and the BTP’s triennial review all stressed the need for a dedicated national railway police force.

Our amendments are not inconsistent with a desire to achieve further devolution in Scotland as set out in the Smith commission report and enshrined in the Bill. Indeed, the amendments make it clear that in future Scottish Ministers and the Scottish Government may have the same relationship with the BTP and its chief constable as Ministers have in England and Wales now. All that we seek to do is ensure that arrangements to police our railways that have worked well for nearly 200 years through the operation of a dedicated and unified transport force, which has kept passengers and railway staff safe north and south of the Scottish border, are not put at risk through action that is hasty and ill considered. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dunlop]

I will repeat what I said: it is entirely possible to put in place the necessary arrangements to ensure that the service remains as effective as it is today.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, this has been an extraordinary debate. The hour approaches midnight and we have been debating the British Transport Police in Scotland for more than an hour, with an extraordinary range of very well-informed, powerful speeches on these amendments. I thank everybody who has taken part in the debate.

Obviously, there is not time to go through each of the speeches but the most important point the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made was that this is a United Kingdom issue, not just a Scottish issue. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, talked about the no-detriment principle. I do not think that we got an answer on that from the Minister. The noble Earl also asked for a commitment to some form of government amendment at Third Reading; we were told that that will not be offered.

I should thank the noble Lord, Lord Empey, for bringing this issue up in the first place in Committee because it was not spotted in the other place when the Bill went through there. It was his tabling of the amendment in Committee that allowed us all to realise what was actually being proposed for transport policing in Scotland. His point is that this is an attempt to fix a problem which does not exist and that there is nothing wrong with the operation of transport policing at the moment. To make these changes is free of neither risk nor cost.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, talked about the functions not being properly safeguarded and the possibility of security being diminished. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, made a very important point about what the Smith commission said on the subject, which is not consistent with what is being proposed in the Bill. My noble friend Lord Berkeley, using his great experience from the railways, talked about the specialism of the British Transport Police.

I would like to be able to say that the Minister came some way towards meeting all these very important points but I honestly do not think that he did. If we allow the Bill to go through in its present form, and do not make our voices clear tonight that we are very unhappy with what is to happen not just in Scotland but to transport policing throughout the United Kingdom as a result of this change, we will regret that. With great reluctance at this very late hour, I therefore beg leave to test the opinion of the House.