My Lords, there are two problems here. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, is partly right and partly wrong because it depends on what kind of public spaces protection order is being made. If the public spaces protection order is made to prevent dogs going into a children’s play area—the example given earlier by the Minister—there is no reason why that should require a formal procedure to consult and so on every three years because once dogs are banned from a children’s area they will be banned for ever. It may be controversial at first but, once it has been done, no one will complain about it afterwards. If, on the other hand, you are using it as a quick, easy procedure to close a right of way instead of going through the proper closure procedure under the Highways Act, it certainly should be reviewed. My noble friend and I are saying that it should be reviewed within a year or within six months if it concerns a right of way.
This is because of the nature of the right that you are taking away from people who are not guilty of any offences. You are reducing the liberties of perfectly innocent citizens, and the nature of that reduction ought to be subject to reconsideration. How can you differentiate in the Bill between the routine orders that no one is going to complain about—orders that would otherwise be in the local playground by-laws or other rules and regulations—and serious orders that take away people’s historic rights of access to particular areas? I would be happy with a provision that the prevention of access would have to be reviewed if the public spaces protection order involved the removal of people’s rights to access land that they would otherwise have access to. This would apply to any access, whether or not it was to a common or a green or whatever. That is fairly fundamental and would have to be reviewed.
As to the lesser protections that the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, referred to as not having to be reviewed, there is a way through that if it can be written into the Bill.