My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his courteous endorsement of my intention to be helpful on this occasion. I suggest that my espousal of the current arrangement for police and crime commissioners will have to wait for another occasion; we are certainly not going to get there tonight.
I have some difficulty with his response. It is very useful that he set out for the record the Government’s commitment that the use of the powers under the terms of the Bill should be very much part of local planning in terms of the preparation and delivery of community safety plans and in terms of police and crime commissioners setting out their objectives. The reality is that most police and crime commissioners have said, “Yes, this is one of our priorities”. They have not—partly, of course, because the legislation has not been passed—specified exactly how they intend to approach these issues. But of course, at the moment, there is no obligation on them to refer to the content of the Bill. That is what would be changed.
My noble friend Lady Smith talked about the dispersal order powers. This is one example of where we beg to differ on the subject of whether there should be prior consultation with local authorities. If there was at least a formal agreement and protocol on the circumstances in which both sides will expect those powers to be used, that would be helpful to the legislation and might avoid some, although I fear not all, of the problems that were identified when we talked about this on a previous occasion.
I do not think that the Bill requires the sort of collaboration that I think is necessary and that the Minister thinks is necessary. I think it is unfortunate that the Bill is so silent on how this fits in with community safety plans and police and crime plans, but I am at least grateful to the Minister for what he has said on the record today. In the light of that—I will read the debate carefully to make sure that he has not left too many gaps—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.