Violent Crime Reduction Bill

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for his answer, even though it did not take us very much, if at all, further. I made it clear at the beginning that my amendments are probing and I stand by that. They were intended to tease out from the Government the extent of prohibitions. I have failed singularly in that, in a sense, because the Minister was kind enough to say that I had given interesting examples in Amendment No. 3 and that they were of a type that the court could properly consider. He said that he would expect the court to look at all the circumstances of the offence and the individual. That raises the very question that was addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford—the hybridity of this matter, whereby we are talking about offences in one breath and a civil order in the other. That is an unhappy hybridity. The whole point of my amendments was that I was trying to ask the Government what else could be given as guidance today, with regard to what would properly come within this provision. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, was seeking to do much the same thing by imposing the requirement of appropriateness with his amendment. I was trying to tease out some guidance about what might be appropriate for our future debates. The Minister says that the Bill already allows for what I was seeking to achieve. Of course it does; the Bill allows for just about anything on this earth to be done, within human rights legislation, of course. That is why I find it unsatisfactory that the noble Lord should say that patience is to be rewarded and the guidance will make it clear—the Minister nods sagely. Well, when? The Bill came to this House on 15 November, I think. That is a heck of a long while ago. Before further stages, we will be asking the Minister and his Bill team what progress they have made on guidance. It is a matter that we will return to time and again throughout the Bill. We will be particularly keen to get some idea of that guidance, because without it we will find that little has been achieved between the start of the Bill’s passage in another place last June and its completion some time in June this year. Against that background, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.