Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to her speech of 30 November 2016 to the College of Policing, what estimate she has made of the additional resources required to enable police services to transition to the proposed new national licensing scheme for specialist officers.

As my Rt Hon friend the Home Secretary indicated in her speech on 30 November 2016, the licence to practise is expected to cover specialist high-risk roles, such as those responsible for investigations into child sexual abuse and domestic violence. It will be for the College of Policing, as the professional body for policing, in consultation with policing stakeholders, to propose those roles to be subject to the licence to practise scheme.