Coroners and Justice Bill

I added my name to the first of the noble Lord’s amendments, to leave out subsection (4), giving power to the Secretary of State to add or omit an offence. As the noble Lord implied, we suspect that Secretary of State will not be omitting any offences—he will merely be adding, and simply adding, omitting or modifying one of the other conditions. That presumably means bringing in baseball bats, or whatever, should that be seen as necessary, or extending the age limit from 30. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, that this seems a peculiar way in which to deal with criminal law, in that we are giving a power to the Secretary of State to amend it as he thinks appropriate by, I imagine, merely the negative resolution procedure. We suspect that the Government themselves feel that they may have gone a step too far in that, before any amendment was tabled by opposition parties suggesting that if there were to be such an order it might be more appropriate to have an affirmative resolution procedure, they came forward with that amendment, in Amendment 185A. That seems the absolute bare minimum, if we are to change criminal law; Parliament should have a good opportunity to discuss it, under the affirmative resolution. We all know that it is so easy under the negative resolution procedure for things to slip through without us noticing, try as we do to keep an eye on them. I have one other question to put to the Minister. Will the Minister tell us, with regard to the new offences created in these clauses, when the offence for someone to disclose information in contravention of an investigation anonymity order in Clause 64(10) will come into effect? If it is not going to come into effect when the Bill gets Royal Assent, what are the Government’s plans for bringing it into effect? As the Minister knows, I have a sneaking suspicion that quite a large amount of government legislation, particularly legislation that has come in the past from the Home Office and now comes from the Ministry of Justice, goes through both Houses of Parliament and is enacted and then takes some considerable time to come into effect. Sometimes it is repealed before it even comes into effect. I would be grateful if the Minister could deal with that point as well as the basic point about whether it is appropriate that the Secretary of State should make amendments in this way.