My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hamwee and I had a meeting with the Minister yesterday, which was extremely helpful regarding various parts of this and for which we thank him very much. One of the things we talked about was our mutual wish to speed up this Bill a little and move into a gallop. The slightly languid, if not sleepy, feeling in this Committee means that it will not happen this evening. I apologise to the Minister, as these are two amendments that I intended to amalgamate with the previous group and I forgot to do so.
Amendment 22NC is to probe the meaning of Clause 40(6), which reads:
“A person issuing a community protection notice must before doing so inform any body or individual the person thinks appropriate”.
This is very vague. Who do the Government think that that should mean, by what means should this take place and, in particular, how will the Government ensure that this happens without actually stating in the Bill a little more about who should be consulted or notified?
Amendment 22QA makes this a bit more definite in relation to the local authority. It reads:
“Where a community protection notice is issued by an authorised person who is not the relevant local authority, the person must notify the relevant local authority of the issue of the notice”.
The reason is that it is absolutely essential that the district council or unitary council, which is at the centre of the community protection notice regime, should know what is going on. It is about the role of the district council—as I call it—or the unitary council in dealing with these kinds of things. If constables are to go off and issue them on their own, or indeed if other people designated by the local authority are to do this, there is a risk of duplication of effort—and a risk of confusion for the people subject to the problems that the activities are causing, particularly if more than two or three agencies are trying to deal with it. There is also the essential co-ordinating role of the local authority.
Under Clause 44, it is the role of the relevant local authority to take any remedial action. Whoever serves the notice, the local authority ends up with that role. So if you are a person who can issue one and you are not that local authority, simply having to notify the local authority seems like common sense. It would help if it were in the Bill. I beg to move.