Violent Crime Reduction Bill

moved Amendment No. 2:"Page 1, line 10, leave out ““or disorderly””" The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 2 deals with another vagueness in Clause 1. The order may impose any prohibition on the subject which is necessary for the purpose of protecting other persons from ““criminal or disorderly conduct””. That expression is used in a disjunctive way to separate two different types of conduct—criminal and disorderly. Criminal conduct is conduct punishable as a criminal offence by the courts. In terms of public order, we are already familiar, as I said a moment ago, with the concept of a person being guilty of the criminal offence of drunk and disorderly or of urinating in the street. Criminal offences arising out of a breach of public order are widespread: criminal damage; the use of threats of violence; harassment, including racial harassment; vandalism; the spreading of graffiti; the possession of dangerous dogs; and public disturbances. All those are criminal offences. So one has to ask the Minister: what disorderly conduct is not criminal? How do you distinguish between them? As Amendment No. 49, which is grouped with my amendments, suggests, does it mean conduct which is not in,"““the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress””?" Is it something that is done privately? Is conduct disorderly when nobody can see it? If we start introducing drinking banning orders for what somebody does when nobody can see it, we are going an awful long way towards interfering in people’s lives. In the amendments that I have tabled, I have sought to get away from this disjunctive phrase ““criminal or disorderly””. ““Criminal and disorderly”” might be better, but simply to leave it as ““criminal conduct”” would, in my view, be a better foundation for the imposition of orders of this type. I beg to move.