Serious Crime Bill [HL]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Marlesford has pursued this matter throughout the course of the Bill. I congratulate him on his tenacity in doing so. When I had the pleasure of meeting the noble Lord, Lord West, about a week ago, I came away with a great feeling that perhaps we would get somewhere at last for the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. The noble Lord, Lord West, said—I hope I am not misquoting him—that the Government were at least sympathetic to the amendments and were considering how they could help. In the interim, I believe someone has lost heart because, as the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, has said, and as the noble Lord, Lord West, pointed out, the amendments affect a situation in which an offence has been committed or where an offence is anticipated. However, it does not enable the police to stop someone because they anticipate they might have gun on them. The trouble is that those who carry guns use them in an ad hoc way and probably not when the police expect them to do so. While I agree that the amendment moves us at a snail’s pace along the road that the House clearly wants to follow, which is to give the police a wider power to stop someone to see whether they are carrying a gun, I do not believe that they do that. Nor do I think that the amendments do quite what my honourable friend James Brokenshire was looking for in the House of Commons with his amendment, which was to create a new right for police sergeants to authorise stop-and-search of pedestrians and vehicles in a specific area for a period of up to six hours. That would have brought down, within the hierarchy, the right of police to stop. That amendment has the support of the Police Federation and would have provided communities with greater protection as, indeed, would the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. It is six of this and half a dozen of that with this amendment. I am grateful to the noble Lord for having listened—because I know that he has—and perhaps he has himself managed to inch us along this path. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Marlesford will not leave this alone: he will come back at a later stage to try to harden up the Government’s determination on this. In the mean time, I support him and thank him on behalf of the House and a lot of people, for his efforts, particularly in coming back from America; I am not sure whether he was meaning to come back for today, but he has.