My Lords, I thought that at the previous stage the noble Lord, Lord Condon, had it right when he said he feared that,
“the real mischief they and we might seek to address is not the absence of suitable offences but the absence of action”.—[Official Report, 4/12/13; col. 255.]
I asked questions of my noble friend about sentencing, the aggravating nature of that type of offence and so on, and I am afraid that I have not changed my mind about those two aspects.
I am interested in the definition of “worker” in the noble Lord’s amendment. One qualifies, as it were—that is not quite the right term but he will know what I mean—only if one is “physically present”. Reading that, I wondered how that works with his requirement for malice in subsection (2) of the proposed new clause. When I saw the word “malice”, I thought that he had in mind, for example, someone who—possibly for very personal reasons—does not like people who work in jobcentres but then discovers that his neighbour works in a jobcentre. Is that malice towards all such people for that sort of reason or are we talking about something very personal? Does it mean being in the workplace or in the sort of situation that I have suggested, hanging around until one’s neighbour comes out of the house and having a go at him for that reason?
I was also interested in subsection (4) of the proposed new clause. If I remember rightly—I have not gone back to check—I think that on the previous occasion the noble Lord talked about “evidence from a single source”. That seems to be a matter for the courts. We should not tell the courts how to assess evidence. If he is saying that there is some restriction on the way they are working at the moment, it may be a different matter—but, again, that made me wonder where the noble Lord was going with this.
On the aggravating nature of the offence, we have to be careful not to devalue the importance of that approach to sentencing. This, of course, is not the only aggravating factor for the courts, but the Sentencing Council does a very important job in identifying appropriate aggravating factors.