Violent Crime Reduction Bill

I am grateful to the noble Viscount for setting out his concerns. I agree with him: it would be wrong if a series of interim banning orders were activated at the behest of the police or the local authority in the way in which he suggests. As he says, that would be an abuse of process. I think that he said that it would be a cloak for inefficiency, which is a pretty precise description. The amendment would require guidance to set out the factors to which the court should have regard when deciding whether applications for renewal of an interim order should be granted. I can offer this much assurance: we will produce guidance on drinking banning orders, which will have to be supplemented, where necessary, by court rules. Clearly, they will need to address that issue. I cannot tell the noble Viscount this evening exactly how we will do it, but it is on our ““to do”” list and I assure him that it is something that we will need to cover, because we want those matters to be brought before the court in an efficient and expeditious fashion. We do not want authorities to get into the habit of using a lazy process; we want to be as rigorous as possible. It is right that the interim process should be exactly that and that authorities are obliged fully to satisfy the court by making a proper application for a permanent drinking banning order. We will need to address that issue in the way in which I described. For those reasons, I hope that the noble Viscount will feel able to withdraw his amendment.