Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

Possibly that, too. Perhaps Labour Back Benchers have legislation fatigue. I mentioned in an intervention that 34 Home Office Bills had been repealed, repealed in part or not fully implemented. That is bad enough, but let us consider the sort of Bills they are. I am not going to recite all of the 34 out of the 64 Bills for which the Home Office has been responsible since 1997, but I will give just a few examples. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 contains 43 sections and two schedules that have been repealed in whole or in part. The Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 contains 15 sections and one schedule that have been repealed in whole or in part. Half a dozen of its sections and schedules are not yet in force, and it was passed seven years ago. The Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 has 21 sections and two schedules that have been repealed in whole or in part, and an equivalent number of sections from the Police Reform Act 2002 have not been brought into effect or have been repealed in whole or in part. The Criminal Justice Act 2003, about which my hon. and learned Friend and I had a brief discussion, contains four sections and two schedules that have been repealed in whole or in part, and approximately 50 sections and 17 schedules that are not in force. What is the point of the Government’s coming to the House to tell us that legislation is essential to the public good, ramming it through and not allowing Public Bill Committees to discuss it? Bills are guillotined, the work has to be done in the other place, and in the end the legislation does not come into force. I shall speak briefly about part 1, although the brevity of my remarks should not be interpreted as a sign of any lack of enthusiasm for my arguments. What we are discussing is a form of civil injunction to prevent a crime. It seems that things have changed, but I was always taught that it was not possible to obtain an injunction from a High Court judge to prevent an anticipated crime, because the criminal law was sufficient injunction in itself. That was the deterrent: that was the way in which our behaviour was regulated in relation to criminal activity. It would not be possible to go to court and say to the judge ““I want an injunction to prevent the defendant, or respondent, from committing an anticipated burglary, an anticipated murder, or some other anticipated crime.”” The judge would simply say ““The law is on the statute book. Common law already exists. That will do.”” Equally, I was always led to believe that the criminal law was not part of contractual law. A person could not commit a crime on the understanding that he could do it as long as he paid the fine or did the time; the criminal law did not work in that way. Now, however, we are watching the Government quietly—I say quietly because no Labour Back Benchers are here to listen to this, or to listen to the Government’s justification of their intention—move huge chunks of criminal law and procedure into the civil jurisdiction. As my hon. and learned Friend pointed out, the consequences of such action will not be slight. I fully understand the political reasons for it: it must be cheaper, I presume it must be quicker, and it must be assumed that it will have some deterrent effect. Nevertheless, as my hon. and learned Friend said, it will have deleterious and damaging consequences for our constitution and the balance between the state and the individual, and I find that somewhat worrying. My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs was entirely right to give the Bill only a conditional welcome. The fact that we will not divide the House this evening does not mean that aspects of the Bill—this aspect in particular, I hope—will not receive the closest examination in Committee. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs and my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) are nodding in assent. We must be extremely careful. As I have said, we are providing for a form of injunction against crime when the criminal law already exists. I do not suggest that that is a wholly novel concept—people are bound over in the courts not to commit offences, and we have observed the somewhat troubled system of control orders, so the wall has been breached to some extent—but this is a mighty step, and a huge leap over that wall.