Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

My hon. and learned Friend is right. I was about to cite one example. Barely two years after the money laundering offences were enacted in the 2003 Act, they were rewritten in the 2005 Act. What on earth happened between the time when the 2003 provisions became effective and the 2005 Act was drafted to make it necessary to rewrite all the money laundering provisions in that earlier Act? As my hon. and learned Friend said, perhaps the truth is that legislation is not receiving the quality of attention that should. If these fundamental principles are not simply being tinkered with in a lightweight spirit, that does no credit to this Government or the systems of government in which we are engaged. The Bill must be seen against the background of a Government who wish to introduce identity cards and ensure that the citizen must do the bidding of the state at appropriate times in his life so that his biological data can be recorded. Under those proposals, a citizen would be obliged to go to a particular place under the direction of the state to give up his personal details. Under the Bill’s provisions, the consequences of almost all convictions, and certainly all of them that matter, will be visited on that individual without due process and without trial. In my respectful submission, there is no reason for us not to criticise, not constructively to inquire and not to probe the Minister for a better justification than he has given to date. I am certain that he and his colleagues are motivated by a desire to combat serious crime. We should make no bones about that and, frankly, I concede it. However, I ask the Minister to reflect on the idea that what is at stake is not trivial or light; it is a tradition and principle of liberty for which his political ancestors as well as mine have fought for hundreds of years and which was always considered to be, and I believe still is, one of the most valuable inheritances to which all of us, on both sides of the House, have the privilege of acceding. That is why I ask him to reflect very carefully, before the Bill is allowed to pass through the House, on the real justification for it, on the logical bases put forward in the consultation paper, and on whether or not it does not amount to a very significant invasion of our liberty and one that the House should not pass.