Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Bill

I welcome the Minister and congratulate him on his new job. I also welcome the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight). They are both new to the proceedings on this Bill. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the friendly and co-operative spirit in which he expressed his point of view. New clause 1 and amendment No. 13 offer contradictory approaches to how we deal with defences. The original Bill included a series of listed defences that was not all-encompassing, so on Second Reading we made a conscious decision to go for a term that the Home Office lawyers assured us was a common term which would enable the court to take reasonableness into account instead of having to look for defences in the Bill. If we were to take the route of new clause 1, we would reinsert all the defences that were deleted in Committee, without any opposition, in order to go for the catch-all reasonableness excuse. The advantage of that is that it provides a legitimate defence for someone who obstructed a person without realising that they were an emergency worker. The problem with amendment No. 7 is that many ambulances do not have flashing blue lights. That also applies to coastguards and lifeboat crews deploying to undertake rescue work. The amendment would preclude them from the protection of the Bill. The right hon. Member for East Yorkshire said that amendment No. 8 is probing in nature. I am glad to reassure him that preparation to respond to an emergency covers only immediate preparations such as putting on protective gear, opening garage doors and so on. It does not mean training sessions, as I suspect that he fears. I hope that allays his worries. On amendment No. 10, the offence would not apply where it was not an emergency. Again, we would prefer not to include such a provision because it would be an absolute defence. If it were an absolute defence, the nature or the extent of the offence that may have been committed would not be taken into account. We believe that it is better, therefore, to stay within the encompassing protection of reasonableness of excuse. I oppose the amendments.