Baroness Hamwee (LD)

My Lords, I have Amendment 207 in this group. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, that it is rather odd that the serious crime prevention provisions are in this Bill. I wondered whether it is because the Crime and Policing Bill was “overloaded”—would that be the term to use? But that is the extent to which I agree with the noble Lord. I am not alone on these Benches: the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and I have raised a number of times over the years our concern about civil orders morphing into crime without any finding of guilt. The Bill extends serious crime prevention orders with the inclusion of electronic monitoring and the creation of interim orders, extends the list of parties who can apply for an order—the noble Lord, Lord Davies, would extend it further—and gives the Crown Court jurisdiction in this area. So it will be no surprise to anyone who has heard us before to see this amendment. It is not only the extensions that make the need for a review all the more important. There is very little evidence or data, if any, to show that the orders work. They overlap with other orders, so there is some confusion. There is inconsistency in their use, which I have become very aware of in the context of modern slavery and human trafficking, where it became clear that some police forces were not even aware that they could pursue equivalent orders. There is a lack of resourcing and infrastructure to monitor and enforce orders. Breaches are common, which is not surprising, because individuals do not have adequate support to comply with the restrictions and requirements that orders can contain and so, as has been put to us, they are set up to fail. The Joint Committee on Human Rights made recommendations with regard to these provisions: “Given the severe infringement on the right to privacy posed by the imposition of electronic monitoring, the test should be one of ‘necessity and proportionality’, not whether it is ‘appropriate’”, and, “To ensure respect for Convention rights, the prosecuting authorities and the courts must be careful to only seek and impose these interim orders where risks are imminent”. Rather than proposing those provisions specifically, we on these Benches feel that it would be helpful and important for there to be a review of prevention orders in the round before we make piecemeal additions to them, and a review would certainly extend to the issues of necessity and proportionality.