Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I am afraid that I am going to ask the Minister to be a little longer still. As I understand the position from today’s debate, injunctions are mainly intended to be applied for specific events and, probably, for a short period. If that is the case, why is there no set maximum time to be imposed on the respondent? The current drafting appears to suggest not only that injunctions could be imposed without any time limit but that they could be reimposed repeatedly. Do the Government have a fallback position? Surely if the repeated imposition of requirements and restrictions does not prevent the respondent engaging in gang-related violence, other methods should be in the armoury. On the other side, the Minister talked briefly about renewal. How long is eligibility under Clause 33(2) expected to last? If any injunction has successfully prevented a respondent continuing to engage in gang-related violence for a period—perhaps several years—how long is he to be considered eligible for an injunction’s renewal? Despite the probing from the Liberal Benches on this procedure of injunctions, there are still many questions that we need to ask. I am not sure that we can achieve that this evening. We shall have to come back to this at a later stage in the Bill.