Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, Amendment 148 seeks to put into the Bill an annual renewal of the injunction. It is similar to the amendment that might have been moved, had he been here, by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow—but he put his in a different place, after Clause 35. However, the wording is the same. The Minister might feel that this amendment is unnecessary following the generous offer he made earlier to consider a finite time limit on these injunctions. We feel that it is still necessary, although the need for it has diminished somewhat given what he said. We should bear in mind what the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, said earlier somewhat in support of the Government’s approach—that these injunctions should be a temporary matter until something more finite can be done. If we are considering time periods of two or three years, or even longer as a maximum, it is only right that there should be an annual review because, as the Minister said earlier, the justification for having non-finite injunctions was that people could not anticipate what would happen to the behaviour of the respondent when the injunction was set. Behaviour can change, and certainly in young people it can change drastically and quickly. The Minister himself gave us an example of a young man going through a cadet programme whose behaviour was turned around in a short period of time. We know that these things can happen. Under those circumstances, if we are talking about two, three, four or five years, we still feel that there is a need for an annual review so that young people are given the opportunity to attend and to make written and oral submissions to the court that the injunction should be lifted. I beg to move.