Policing and Crime Bill

The new clause was tabled by the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Sharma) and me on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights in order to give effect to the recommendations we made in our 15th report. The Government responded to them only today. The amending provisions relate to the Bill's treatment of gang-related violence. In the report we expressed our concern about the fact that provisions highly significant for individual liberties and human rights appeared not when the Bill was first published, but only in the later stages of the Committee proceedings. During the Committee stage, the Government explained that provisions were needed because of a judgment by the Court of Appeal in the case of Birmingham city council v. Shafi. In that case, the council had sought civil injunctions against individuals who were alleged to have been involved in gang-related offences and public nuisance. The Court of Appeal noted that the terms of the injunctions sought were identical, or almost identical, to those of antisocial behaviour orders. It noted the "striking feature" that the local authority sought ASBOs against those aged under 18 and injunctions in identical terms against those aged over 18. The court recognised that Parliament had laid down a number of specific safeguards applying to the grant of ASBOs, some of which might not apply to injunctions granted at common law. The court held that the council should therefore seek an ASBO so that""the detailed checks and balances developed by Parliament and in the decided cases"" would apply. The court considered that it would be bizarre if a different standard of proof applied. As the order sought by the council was essentially the same as an ASBO, the lower court had been correct to apply the same standard of proof that applied in proceedings for an ASBO. The court had to be sure that the defendants had acted in the antisocial way alleged. The court recognised that there might be cases in which the injunctions sought were not identical, or almost identical, to an ASBO, or which involved more complicated facts. In such cases, the civil standard might apply. The first issue that we raised was the fact that there was no definition of what constituted a gang in the first place. Government amendment 60 deals with that, although I question whether it is sufficiently precise. I note that the Opposition have tabled an amendment on the same issue which is a little more precise. We were told that guidance would be laid before Parliament as soon as possible before the legislation came into force, for the purpose of interpretation. We were anxious to ensure that the provisions were not open-ended, and that they were necessary. Given the findings of the Court of Appeal, we asked the Minister to explain why the existing law was inadequate, and why it was proposed to use civil law to tackle what was effectively criminal behaviour. We requested an explanation of why the Government had opted not to require those seeking an injunction to explain why criminal prosecution in an individual case was impossible. That is the purpose of amendment 38. In our view, the Government have failed to provide a satisfactory explanation of the need for the provisions, including the rather bizarre clause 32(3)(b), which is apparently intended to protect the respondent from himself. The Government have not published any statistically robust evidence showing why the existing law is inadequate.