Serious Crime Bill [HL]

I want to clarify my understanding of what Part 1 achieves. It seems that we are all agreed that the first part of it is intended for those who have committed a serious crime and are now at liberty, for one reason or another. It will enable the court, without a great deal of trouble, to have their feet nailed to the floor so that they cannot carry on whatever activity the court thinks they are likely to participate in. Like the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, I do not have a problem with that—subject to a few safeguards. My difficulty, particularly after the answer the Minister gave me a few moments ago, is with the effects on those who have facilitated crime because of the way the Bill is drafted. There could be an entirely innocent action but with devastating consequences. The Bill is to be used to take out those facilitators who genuinely are criminal because they will not comply with anything and they will then be run down, which I do not particularly object to; but those who merely have their facilities used by criminals unwittingly will be turned into informers on the penalty of losing their business. That is going about things in a very heavy-handed fashion. There is a strong threat if somebody comes to me and says, ““We are entitled to take out one of these orders against you, unless you provide us with this information””. It compels businesses, in particular, but also, I imagine, individuals who are scraping a living on the fringes of the underworld to provide the police with all the information that they desire. As I understand it, that has not been our practice previously. The range of penalties under Clause 5 are extreme when applied to those sorts of people, although I can see that they are appropriate for the hardened criminal. I address my own Front Bench as much as anyone else in questioning whether this is really the right way to treat our citizens.