Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill in his customary detailed way. I sympathise with him because I feel that this has become a legacy Bill now that the Home Secretary has announced her resignation. Every Home Secretary since 1997 has wanted to appear tough. In office, they instigate ideas that later in the cool light of the real world they realise are a big mistake. One example would be David Blunkett and ID cards. That wish to act tough has led the Government to put through more legislation, criminalising more and more actions. The first woman Home Secretary might have changed that, but she did not. The Bill is the 66th criminal justice Bill since 1997. Between them, they have created 3,600 new criminal offences. We feel that the Government have still failed to understand that you cannot solve social problems by making criminal offences of them; you simply fill up our courts and prisons. The prison population has reflected this, increasing from 61,114 in 1997 to 82,586 in February 2009, an increase of 35 per cent. The Bill does nothing to solve that situation. On the matter of principle, the Bill further blurs the line between civil and criminal sanctions by imposing orders, which, when not complied with, tip the individual from a civil sanction into the criminal. That is one of the reasons the courts and prisons are filling up. With regard to this Bill, it is sad—I would say even tragic—that the legacy of our first woman Home Secretary will be some legislation that unless we defeat it here makes the lives of some 80,000 women in this country more dangerous. I talk of course of women in the sex industry, working and selling sex. Institutions as diverse as the Royal College of Nursing and the YWCA oppose the legislation and the approach that the Government are taking, as do we. Far from making women safer, this legislation will force many back on to the streets, leave them more liable to be in prison, separating them from their children, causing those children to go into care and creating exactly the sort of vicious circle that should be avoided. We will oppose the Government’s approach.