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Policing and Crime Bill

I support the amendment on the basis that I hope we will get clarity from the Minister about the successive repetition of the phrase, ""obtain the approval of the Secretary of State"." Is it intended to mean that candidates who are appointed will have been through the senior appointments panel before the appointments process or is it adding yet another stage to the appointments process so that after candidates have been through the senior appointments panel, having been short-listed and interviewed under a police authority process, they then have to go back for final approval by the Secretary of State? If it is the former rather than the latter, it seems a very cumbersome legislative way of expressing it. If it is the latter—that is, if there is a three-stage process with candidates first having to be vetted by the senior appointments panel, then being appointed by the police authority in consultation with the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis and then going for approval by the Secretary of State—I think that we will have created a new situation. It seems to me unnecessarily cumbersome, with an element of control-freakery, for the Home Office to control who fills senior office in the Met.