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Counter-Terrorism Bill

I strongly support the amendment. In fact, over the many years that I have been dealing with police issues, I have always asked for the office to be of a higher rank than the Government have proposed. I have failed every time to get the Government to accept that, so when I saw this amendment I was very pleased to be able to support it. Young and new PCs, who admittedly have gone through their training, could be in the position of going into premises and searching for these documents, but they may well not have the knowledge to ascertain whether the documents are prime articles for removal. It is important for someone with greater experience to go in and say, ““Yes, this is a document that should go somewhere else””. Therefore, in this part of the Bill there is a big issue about training PCs. Again, I would say that inspector is certainly the lowest rank that should be expected to work on this aspect of removing papers. It is important that we support the amendment.