Violent Crime Reduction Bill

moved Amendment No. 108A:"Page 22, leave out lines 16 to 18." The noble Lord said: On many occasions, I look at government amendments and think to myself, ““What on earth are they going on about?”” When I look at Amendment No. 108A, I wonder ““What on earth am I going on about?”” I apologise to your Lordships because the amendment is defective as it is set down; if the Minister and those advising him could not grasp its purpose, that is because the second part of the amendment, which would have replaced the words on lines 16 to 18 on page 22, was not set down as well—I only noticed that this evening. The purpose of seeking to amend the closure notices provision is to change the way in which the matter is processed. The idea of the closure notice is that it is a sort of plea bargain before any proceedings are brought; a prohibition notice is a proposal to have a period not exceeding 48 hours during which a premises should be prohibited from selling alcohol, with any previous offences subsumed by the person concerned accepting the prohibition. That is a very interesting device, and it will be very interesting to see whether it works. But the relevant officers who issue the notices are defined as either,"““a police officer of the rank of superintendent or . . . an inspector of weights and measures appointed under section 72(1) of the Weights and Measures Act 1985””," sometimes known as a trading standards officer. The objection made to that by the Local Government Association is that pinning the power to the trading standards officer is a considerable limitation, for a number of reasons. First, local authorities have a problem in recruiting and retaining trading standards officers. Secondly, trading standards officers are employed only by unitary and upper-tier authorities, so the 238 district councils will not be able to contribute. When district councils, which have a great knowledge of the locality, feel that a closure notice might be a very good device to use in respect of a particular premises, they will not be able to act save through the police. The issue that I am raising, although I know it has been done in a defective way in the amendment, is to allow the definition of the relevant officer to be expanded from the trading standards officer to a person who is designated as the appropriate local authority officer by a local authority. In other words, a local authority would be able to say, whether or not it has a trading standards officer, that X is the person to consider the issue of closure notices. If that takes the Minister by surprise, I shall not be surprised myself. It may be a matter that I should discuss a little more fully on Report. I beg to move.