Violent Crime Reduction Bill

moved Amendment No. 161A:"Page 65, line 35, at end insert—" ““(2A) In subsection (3) (under which a banning order must, unless there are exceptional circumstances, impose a requirement as to the surrender of the passport of the subject) omit ““, unless it appears to the court that there are exceptional circumstances,””. (2B) Omit subsection (4) (where exceptional circumstances exist court must state in open court what they are).”” The noble Lord said: Amendments Nos. 161A, 162A and 169A would remove the court’s discretion to strike out passport surrender conditions when imposing a football banning order. This simply clarifies the current law. It does not prevent individuals being made exempt from such conditions if there is an appropriate reason for them to be so. At present, the courts do not have discretion to remove the international element of a football banning order; nor do they have discretion to exempt a banning-order subject from the obligation to report to a designated police station during a control period when instructed to do so by the enforcing authority. However, a small number of banning-order subjects have to surrender their passports when reporting during a control period, even though they are still prohibited from travelling to matches overseas. This creates the potential for unintentional breaches arising from the banning-order subject being under the false impression that removal of the passport surrender condition also provides exemption from the reporting and prevention of travel conditions. The enforcing authority and the police retain the power to exempt the banning order subject to the reporting requirements. These powers are used regularly when an individual can demonstrate that he needs to travel abroad, though not to a host or transit country, for work or family reasons during the control period. The Football (Disorder) Act 2000 report to Parliament, submitted to both Houses earlier this year, revealed that since the powers came into effect 1,109 exemptions have been granted with just 12 being refused on police advice. We think that that statistic provides strong evidence that there is already ample discretion to exempt individuals when there are strong grounds for allowing a banning order subject to travel. I beg to move.