Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

No, I was not suggesting that. The noble Lord and I know perfectly well that the problem is more likely to apply to the smaller shops. Getting hold of their management would be relatively easy. Getting hold of the management of a large supermarket is also pretty straightforward—one just goes into the supermarket and asks to see the manager. That is another matter. I am grateful for the noble Lord’s offer of guidance. I still do not understand why this matter cannot be dealt with in statute. As the statute currently stands, it would be possible for an over-zealous trading standards officer, no doubt trying to meet some target probably imposed by central government, to build up his record by not notifying the shop about the offence being committed. In due course, that shop would find itself prosecuted on the third occasion, not aware that it had committed offences on earlier occasions. The noble Lord says that those offences will have to be proven offences and that, in most cases, there had been a conviction. However, he also made it clear that there could be occasions when there had not been a conviction; that is, when he was tried for the third offence, they could show that he had committed offences on the earlier occasions. It would be more satisfactory, and more in keeping with natural justice, if the shop was notified on the first occasion so that it could improve the training of its staff and ensure that such offences do not happen again. I am sure the Minister will agree that, in the main, it is better to pursue an educative approach of that sort rather than add to the number of those acquiring criminal convictions when there would have been no need to do so if the proper approach had been pursued earlier. I am nevertheless grateful that the Minister has said that guidance will be available. Will he let me know in due course whether we might see some of that guidance before the Bill reaches the statue book, or can he offer at least some intelligence on when it is likely to appear? If he can respond now, I shall withdraw the amendment afterwards.