Violent Crime Reduction Bill

moved Amendment No. 47:"Page 9, line 13, at end insert ““and" (   )   the senior officer of any military police unit in whose area the conduct to which the application relates occurred”” The noble Viscount said: The amendment would add to the list of appropriate persons who should be consulted by a relevant authority seeking a drinking banning order under Clause 2. The amendment would add the military police authorities to the list of consultees, mainly to address the issue of garrison towns, such as Aldershot and Catterick, where the military police may be heavily involved in trying to control alcohol-fuelled disorder and may be in a better position to advise the relevant authority about the scope of any order. But it also addresses the question of whether visiting services personnel cause problems in a locality and then return to their units, or even abroad, and there may be a need to consult the military authorities to ensure that the scope of any drinking banning order is sufficient. It might be that the Ministry of Defence would argue that it is not the duty of the military police to provide assistance to the civilian authorities in this way and that in the vast majority of cases no service personnel would be involved and, therefore, no need to consult. As such, it is only a probing amendment, but it also raises the further question of what is the purpose of such consultation. The ““appropriate persons”” in Clause 11(1) are the relevant police forces, where the disorder occurred and where the individual resides, and the relevant local authority. If a relevant authority is already intending to apply for a DBO against an individual, is the point of consulting the police to gain further information on the individual and his behaviour or is it to find out from the police the effectiveness of any previous order or any future order? As such, one wonders whether consultation is necessarily the correct way to term how the local authorities and the police should be working together. It might be better to place the duty on the police to inform the relevant authority of any evidence that it has that might lead to an award of a DBO. I beg to move.