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Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 (Consequential Provisions) Order 2017

My Lords, I also thank the Minister for his introduction and explanation. I will explore one or two aspects of this because, as he said himself, it is complex. It is a mixture of devolved and reserved matters.

I will first look at reserved matters relating to human rights, because we have clearly had some controversies in Scottish policing over the last few years. The Liberal Democrats oppose the creation of a Scottish national police force. We believe our criticisms and concerns have been somewhat borne out, certainly in the early part, by the way the national force conducted itself and the fact it appeared to be under somewhat more direct political control than many of us would regard as appropriate and would be the case for police forces in England.

In particular, we saw a massive increase in the use of stop and search by the police in Scotland. In 2013-14, there were 450,173 “consensual” searches. The meaning of “consent” is rather subjective in that context. There were 192,470 statutory searches. Not surprisingly, this created a great deal of public reaction. The Scottish Government responded to that; I give them credit for that, but they needed to because it was a very strong reaction. Consequently, the figures the following year, at least from 1 April to 30 September, saw consensual searches drop to 888 from 450,000 and the statutory searches from 192,470 to 20,665. Consensual searches are now banned altogether, so that is a step in the right direction. I want to check with the Minister, where part of the reaction was not just that public concern but human rights implications that would fall on the UK Government, does this combination of Acts by the Scottish Parliament and this statutory instrument maybe avoid the possibility of that particular question of human rights being addressed again?

The other area is the issue of cross-border policing generally. The Minister mentioned the MoD police, civil nuclear police and British Transport Police. The Scottish Government have taken over the responsibility of the British Transport Police north of the border. Many of us felt that that was a retrograde step too.

I am a passionate home ruler, a passionate believer in devolution and supporter of the Scottish Parliament, but I believe that we should also recognise that, as long as we are part of the United Kingdom—which the people of Scotland want us to be—devolution should be to enhance and bring Government closer, but not to undermine the advantages of collective working across the United Kingdom. It seems to me that there will be circumstances where the transport police could be inhibited in their role in cross-border policing. Can the Minister give some clarification as to whether this instrument will affect that positively, negatively or not at all?

I do not have the capacity to go through the whole SI in detail, but there seem to be a number of issues that are really quite important, including to clarify how the devolved and reserved powers can work constructively together—which is why we are not opposing the instrument—but some clarification is nevertheless necessary of what that really means. There also needs to be an understanding, or perhaps appreciation, that the Scottish Government have learned a little bit about their excessive zeal in creating a national police force, which has led to quite considerable friction. I mention again the appearance of mounted police at highland league football matches and routinely arming police officers in rural villages. Things such as that are well within the devolved capacity of the Scottish Government but bring human rights issues into question, so they are not of some indifference to the United Kingdom Government, who have to answer if there are questions of human rights compromises by a devolved Government or Administration.

Having said that, and supporting the passage of the instrument, I would nevertheless appreciate it if the Minister could answer those questions.