Serious Crime Bill [HL]

As always, the noble Baroness sounds extremely reasonable and very convincing. However, I am not a lawyer and therefore I find these things rather more complicated than she does. Listening to the first part, at least, of her speech, I turned to Clause 5 and kept asking myself howany of the examples of prohibitions, restrictions or requirements that may be imposed on individuals listed in Clause 5(3) could have anything but a pretty serious impact on people. Then the noble Baroness did what she has done on a number of previous occasions: she produced an example—that of the bookmaker. She argued that that was a case in which someone would not be significantly harmed. As a non-lawyer, I am very worried about legislation that depends on the giving of examples by the noble Baroness—some openly and others rather more discreetly in correspondence because they may give clues to real criminals about how to get round the Bill. I am worried about legislation that depends on the giving of examples to produce clarity where clarity does not exist in the wording of the legislation. Reading Clause 5(3), it seems to me that almost all those requirements will have a significant impact. It is hard to see how they cannot have a significant impact. Therefore, I still feel very unhappy that the word ““significant”” should be removed, that somehow the whole thing should be left to trust and that from the point of view of the ordinary individual everything will be all right. The noble Baroness is a reasonable person and she assures us that it will be all right. I am confident that, if the noble Baroness is the person responsible for interpreting the thing on the day, it will be all right because she is an entirely reasonable person, but I am less convinced that that will always be the case in the real world. Therefore, I say to my noble friend that I hope that, whatever he decides to do tonight, he will think carefully about this issue before we return to it at a later stage of the Bill.