Serious Crime Bill [HL]

My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, in expressing concern about how the amendments arrived in this House. The Minister gave a handsome apology, and so he should have done. This is a desperately late stage to introduce extremely important amendments to the Bill. We are always being told about procedure in this House; in fact, Third Reading has become by and large a brief session because of the way in which procedures have been tightened by the Government. Therefore, it seems only correct and logical that where procedures exist, the Government follow them and do not leave us all in the serious situation of having to look at these amendments, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, said, will have a great impact on businesses. If it were not for the fact that there are some measures in the Bill with which we agree, I should be very inclined to agree with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas. I am not going to, but that does not stop me saying what I think needs to be said about these amendments. First, there is no time to give them proper scrutiny. We cannot do that today. We can make our observations, and no doubt the Minister will hazard some response to some of the questions we ask, but the fact is that this part of the Bill will go through unscrutinised either by the House of Commons or this House. Most of our role is to ensure that legislation is properly scrutinised where quite often it gets a brief scrutiny in the House of Commons. We have been denied that opportunity. Therefore, I believe that this part of the legislation will be less than adequate as a result. As has already been said, these amendments introduce substantial additions to the serious crime prevention orders, and they could, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, said, place untenable burdens on companies simply because they happen to be unlucky enough to get tangled up, perhaps unwittingly, in a web of serious crime perpetrated by another body or individual. They will then have a monitor beamed in and will have to foot the likely extremely expensive bill for that monitor. I appreciate the provision in subsection (7) that requires the court to consider the likely damage that would be caused by inflicting an authorised monitor on a company, especially on a small or medium-sized business. Will the Minister explain what the Government expect would constitute an inappropriate set of circumstances that would prevent an authorised monitor being sent in and the company having to bear the costs? There is nothing that says that the court may not inflict a monitor if it considers the potential payment to be punitive. I look to the Minister to reassure us that there has been adequate consultation not only with industry and business but also with the High Court on these issues. If the consultation has not taken place, will the Minister commit the Government to undertaking post-legislative consultation with the courts before these provisions are implemented so that it could be made clear that any punitive fine dressed up as costs is absolutely unacceptable? It is appropriate that these orders should not apply to companies unless they have been subject already to a serious crime prevention order. While everybody in the passage of the Bill has had their criticisms of serious crime prevention orders and how they are meted out, they are now going to be part of the legislation; that is that, so we will have to deal with them. However, these amendments seriously extend the application of the serious crime prevention orders, turning them into a far more punitive measure than they were before. Can the Minister elaborate on what percentage of serious crime prevention orders would come with monitoring orders? It would be helpful if he could give us an indication of a situation in which these orders might apply. The amendment proposes to force companies to admit an authorised monitor, but it makes no mention or definition of what an authorised monitor may or may not be. Can the Minister confirm who will be an authorised monitor? Who will choose the monitoring service, and what checks, balances and accountability will be placed on bodies that will effectively be doing the job of the law enforcer by proxy. It is not just this amendment that your Lordships have not had the opportunity to subject to the proper stages of debate, consideration and consultation. The previous Minister, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, was very clear in stating that the Bill went to another place in a state of good health. Indeed, she was most relaxed about it when she said on Report: "““We have done a great deal of work to obviate the need for more when the matter goes to the other place. We would have preferred to tie up all the loose ends””—" these are hardly loose ends— "““but I am not confident that we will be able to dot every ““i”” and cross every ““t””. I suppose it will give the other place a little something to do””.—[Official Report, 30/4/07; col. 880.]" The other place has not had quite enough to do, because it could have looked at these amendments in good time. We are very dismayed, as I hope I have made clear. I have asked the Minister some questions which I hope he will be able to answer. There are, however, enough virtues in the Bill not to vote today for the Liberal Democrats’ amendment, if they move it, which seeks to have these amendments to the Bill taken out. However, the Government need to take very seriously the point that they have breached the etiquette not only of this House but of the other place by tabling at the very last stages of the Bill a large group of amendments that need scrutiny and will not have it.