Queen's Speech: Police Protections Bill

Police Protections Bill

“Police officers will be provided with the protections they need to keep the population safe.”

The purpose of the Bill is to:

• Recognise the bravery, commitment and sacrifices of police officers and ensure they are able to fully conduct their duties by providing them with additional support and protection.

The main benefits of the Bill would be:

• Establishing a Police Covenant on a statutory footing, protecting police officers and ensuring that Parliament has the opportunity to scrutinise progress made against the Covenant.
• Allowing special constables access to the representation and support afforded to Police Federation members, for example when a special constable faces disciplinary proceedings.
• Providing assurance to highly trained police officers that their enhanced driving skills will be taken into account should there be any investigations into the way they responded to emergencies or pursued offenders in the course of their duties, and thereby to ensure they have the confidence to catch offenders using vehicles and to protect the public.

The main elements of the Bill are:

• A statutory requirement for the Home Office to report annually on progress made against the Police Covenant.
• Measures to allow special constables (fully warranted volunteer police officers) to join the Police Federation so that they can benefit from the additional protection and support afforded to members.
• A new test to assess a police officer’s standard of driving, so this can be taken into account in any investigations into their actions.

Territorial extent and application

• The Bill's provisions would extend and apply to England and Wales.

• Only provisions related to introducing a new driving standards test for police officers are relevant to Scotland (as road safety framework legislation is reserved and extends across Great Britain).

Key facts

• The Government is committed to recruiting an additional 20,000 police officers over the next three years, with £750 million being provided in 2020-21 to make this happen.
• There are currently 10,640 special constables in England and Wales (excluding the British Transport Police). Special constables are fully warranted volunteer police officers and are becoming involved in an increasing range of specialist roles within policing.
• A 2017 survey of special constables (led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council) indicated that nearly 9 out of 10 special constables feel that regular paid officers are currently better supported if an issue arises.
• The number of police pursuits authorised during 2016-17 was approximately 10,000, with around 500,000 police response drives. 97 independent investigations into road traffic incidents were completed between 1 April 2012 and 30 September 2017. As a result of these investigations, two officers were prosecuted for pursuit related incidents and five were prosecuted following investigations into emergency response driving.