My Lords, Amendment 181M is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. I tried to make it clear in Committee that the specific offence of being a suspected person loitering with intent to commit an indictable and later an arrestable offence under that specific part of Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824 and how it was used against the black community is seen by the black community—and by many others, myself included—as as much of a clear historical wrong as the offences that we have just debated.
In Committee, the Minister suggested that, without looking at the facts of individual cases, it is impossible to know whether the conduct in question would still be an offence today. In Committee, I described exactly how, in circumstances where a person behaved in a way that would have amounted to an offence today, they would have been charged with a substantive offence—for example, attempted theft of or from a motor vehicle, or attempted burglary. I suggested that it was only when behaviour did not amount to an offence under other legislation that individuals would have been charged with an offence of being a suspected person under Section 4.
These offences are important and symbolic to the black community and how they have in the past been, and continue to be, discriminated against in the criminal justice system. I beg to move.