Crime and Security Bill

Very slightly. I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, because it is very frustrating for the police to turn up and be told by, usually, the woman, "Yes, he thumped me, but I don't want to go ahead." However, the hon. Gentleman should know that even in those circumstances, where the police believe that an offence has taken place, notwithstanding the view of, usually, the woman, they can go ahead and make an arrest or bring a charge under the current law. The frustrations that exist in the scenario that he has outlined will be similar to those in the situation that is envisaged in the Bill, although I accept his general point. The Government say that there is a gap in the protection offered to victims of domestic abuse in the immediate aftermath of a violent incident. That is a Government argument, but I do not think that it is right, because of the ability of the police not only to arrest and charge someone, but, as was pointed out in an earlier intervention, to impose exactly the same bail conditions on a proposed defendant as those proposed in the Bill, or even more stringent ones. There is plenty of time for an injunction. When the Minister winds up, will he also set out the relationship between domestic violence protection notices and other non-molestation orders in our law at present? I refer in particular to orders under the Family Law Act 1996 and the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004, which give identical powers to what we are trying to achieve in the Bill. Is there a problem with those powers, or is there no problem with them? If there is no problem with them, what is the problem that we now need to address? Have those powers gone hopelessly wrong? Or is it—the Minister will intervene on me to clarify this—that one or more of those pieces of legislation have not yet been brought into play, like the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 on custody plus and custody minus? That was from 2003, when it was deemed terribly important to have new sentences through custody plus and custody minus. We debated them for months upstairs. It is now seven years later and none of those provisions has been implemented—what a waste of space that debate was—the reason being, of course, that there is no money to do it. Even today—I know that the Minister will correct me now if I am wrong—those provisions from the 2003 Act have still not been implemented.