I do not have the list of exactly who proposed what. The Government amendment we have is neutral; the one that Labour peers supported in the other place was not tenure-neutral. I hope the hon. Gentleman agrees that that was a flaw in it, although the other principle was there.
I welcome the change, although I remain surprised by the position of the Opposition, who felt that the version that left this place was both too draconian and too liberal. I am glad that their position has moved in a more liberal direction. The new approach is far better than the failed system of ASBOs, which many young people collected as a badge of honour. A huge number
of people broke them; they simply did not work. I think that this non-criminalising approach will work much better.
Let me turn now to some of the other issues. Lords amendment 10 is important and concerns the principle that we should not be using these rules to throw children out of their own homes. The Lords pushed for that, and it is a shame that we did not manage to get it fixed in this place. The importance of care for the under-18s should have been emphasised more strongly during the Bill’s earlier stages, and I am glad that it has been emphasised more strongly now. This is another of the issues that were dealt with by the Home Affairs Committee. I am also pleased that Lords amendment 11 proposes the removal of clause 13, because it discriminated on the basis of tenure.
Lords amendments 23 and 24 deal with the rights of free expression and free assembly. The Home Affairs Committee recommended that we should ensure that dispersal powers were not used in a way that could damage those rights. Before my hon. Friend became a Minister in this Department, the Government moved some of the way towards this, and I am glad that he has now been able to persuade them to move the whole way, so that we can protect all forms of free expression and free assembly.
Lords amendments 59 to 64 deal with cases of riot. Riot is of course very serious, and we have already seen what it can lead to in this country. As a result of what happened, the Prime Minister said that he wanted stronger powers to deal with the families of people who were rioting. Many of us felt that, although we could understand the tensions that existed at the time, his suggestion went too far. It did not seem appropriate to throw everyone out of a house because a 16-year-old child had committed a minor offence where a riot was happening. I do not in any sense condone either the riot or the behaviour, but throwing an entire family out of their home seems to be a disproportionate response. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for his work in this regard, which has led to the proposal that an automatic eviction should take place only if the offence is committed by an adult, and only if it is a serious, indictable offence. A trivial offence that happened to be committed near a riot would not lead to such an eviction; nor would an offence committed by a child.
Finally, let me raise two issues that we had very little time to discuss during our initial debates in this House, and that were not particular topics of interest at that stage. The first involves surveillance and the Terrorism Act 2000. Lords amendment 102 and related amendments deal with the powers of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to deal with complaints about the surveillance commissioners and their decisions. The IPT does not necessarily work as well as it needs to, and it is not as transparent and open as it needs to be, but I am glad that we are taking a step towards more transparency. Surveillance oversight is an extremely important subject, and the Bill does not finish what we need to do about it. There is much more to be done, but although the amendments represent just a tiny piece of the jigsaw, I welcome them.
Lords amendment 100 and related amendments deal with schedule 8, which amends schedules 7 and 8 to the Terrorism Act. Schedule 7 became very topical at the time of the detention of David Miranda. I am pleased that, after a great deal of argument in this House, we
have managed to get some changes made in the House of Lords. People must be questioned within an hour of detention, reviews must take place within two hours of that, and people’s right to consult a solicitor is made clear. That fundamental right was omitted by the Terrorism Act when it was passed by the last Government. There is much more to be done about that as well, but I am very pleased with all the amendments. I commend the Minister and his team for their work, and look forward to our passing the amendments promptly.