My Lords, I wish to add to the very sound arguments put by my noble friend Lady Hamwee and others on the question of the resources of the Crown Prosecution Service and the police. Surely there are many pressures on them and demands for resources. I was reading the other day that there are 5 million frauds against bank customers every year and lax attention by the banks. Given the extent of child abuse and sexual abuse and the explosion of problems online which the CPS is trying to react to and get on top of, is it right to make this an extra priority for the CPS when we ask so much of it in other areas?
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Is there not also a possible perverse result? If people are illegally in the country—I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about asylum seekers not being illegally in the country; I assume that we are focusing on those who are—is not the priority to seek their removal? The proceeds of crime proceedings that could be taken against them could be very lengthy, and you would be finding a reason to prolong their stay in the country at the expense of someone—certainly the criminal proceedings would be at the expense of the taxpayer. It would be very hard to remove these people and therefore say that they could not be present at their own criminal trial, so you would give a perverse extension of the stay of people in the country who should not be in it. This does not seem to be terribly wise policy-making, as regards both the resources of the CPS and the perverse incentives to prolong people’s stay in the country.