Policing and Crime Bill

The Minister justifies the production of a framework Bill on the ground that speed is needed. It is difficult to talk about speed when the judgment was in December last year. The Government could have proceeded more speedily than they have. Given the Government’s attitude to some of the legislation, they should have known that others would not be happy with them introducing a framework Bill and that there would have been a very lengthy debate and an attempt to amend. I can see why the Government have withdrawn the proposal. However, the UK, in the face of great criticism of the legislation in this country, is taking an excessive time to amend its legislation to conform to a judgment of the European court. The difficulty which we now face is that even if the Government produce legislation in the next Parliament, we may find that we cannot get it through so there will be further delay, which in our view is not acceptable. That is why we wish to speed up the process and try to bring forward legislation which has been well proved in another part of the United Kingdom—in Scotland—and which we believe would work well in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Obviously, we cannot proceed this evening with the Government’s legislation, so for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 152BL withdrawn. Amendment 152BM not moved. Clause 96 disagreed. Clauses 97 and 98 disagreed.