Serious Crime Bill [HL]

I am getting more and more sympathetic to the Minister personally in her struggle to explain why the Bill is necessary. She has convinced me of the need for something that can be targeted in these cases. I do not go along with what we are being told by Liberal Democrat Members that, because the Bill is vague, we cannot have anything. I do not think that that is the case. But it is extraordinarily vague to leave to a judge of the High Court a decision about how to push this or that person about, Parliament not having agreed that that could happen. That is what we have got. The examples do not include parameters. That is the trouble and that is what my noble friend is trying to say. It is Parliament’s duty to ensure that the courts do what it decides and do not do what it does not decide. That is what we are here for, as I understand it, and I have always thought that it was an important and noble role. But it is not our job to say that we need any sort of an order to be possible because the variety of needs will be so great, and that we must let the judges decide everything. That is the trouble. I think that that is what Liberty is saying to us. That organisation has written an extraordinary document and to my mind has taken a lot of trouble to point out what the problems are from the point of view of lawyers. The ordinary citizen wants to know that Parliament is giving judges parameters, but there are none in this case.