Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, Amendment 152 seeks to remove the ability of the courts to consider evidence of violence perpetrated against property and to replace that provision with a requirement for the violence being considered to be "serious". I am very wary of getting into the classics—Castor and Pollux, Scylla and Charybdis and things like that; it is far too dangerous territory, I would have thought—but the reason that the Government have included violence against property is so that the court may consider as evidence instances where a "violent" act has been perpetrated but nobody has been hurt or injured. I admit that this sounds fairly unusual, but it is seen surprisingly often in gang warfare; for example, an incident where it is widely reported that, in an act of intimidation, one gang member has discharged a firearm at the house of a member of a rival gang, but has not actually hurt anyone. We have instances of that. We want the court to be able to take that into consideration when considering the respondent’s past conduct on the balance of probabilities. We also want the court to consider the likelihood of similar property-related incidents occurring in the future when deciding whether it was necessary to prevent future gang-related violence under Clause 33(3). The amendment would remove both those abilities and therefore potentially limit the effectiveness of the injunction. The Government’s position is that, although aspects of the injunction are targeted at very serious violence, it is a flexible tool that can also be used to help break down gang culture. This includes using prohibitions and requirements against the "lower-ranking" gang members, who are likely to have engaged in behaviour that was violent, but not necessarily so violent that the court would consider it "serious violence". I question whether it would be right for us to accept an amendment which could effectively allow lower-level gang members to go untouched until the point where they committed an act of very serious violence. This is not in keeping with our desire to tackle gang-related violence at an early stage where reasonably possible. I remind noble Lords that the evidential test still requires proof of past violence and the court to be satisfied that the injunctions provisions are necessary. I therefore ask that the amendment be withdrawn and that the courts be allowed to consider evidence of violence as set out in the existing provisions.