Policing and Crime Bill

I cannot give my hon. Friend any estimates off the top of my head, but I shall find out that information for him. He will know that when similar provisions were introduced in other legislation, a time scale of 72 hours was mentioned, but it was felt to be too long. We sought to introduce the phrase "as soon as practicable" to make the time scale shorter than 72 hours. In some people's eyes, it opens up the measure to an indefinite extension, but that is not what we propose. Given that a prostitute may be picked up on a Friday, with little prospect of going before a court until the following Monday, we believe that the measure is an appropriate response.