Lord Kamall (Con)

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, for the excellent way he introduced his Amendment 11. I fully support everything that he said. The suitability of community treatment orders is an issue that has obviously featured heavily in the discussions on the Bill so far. I think that many of us came to the debates on the Bill, having read the Joint Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny report, thinking that we were going to support the abolition of community treatment orders or be very sympathetic to that idea. However, two contributions gave us a reason to pause and think. One was the personal story from the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter; the other was hearing the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, say that she previously believed that they should be abolished before realising that they are entirely appropriate for a small number of situations or cases. In fact, given that one of the principles of the Bill is imposing the least amount of restriction, maybe they are the least restrictive solution for some incidents. Having said that, very serious concerns obviously remain about the use of community treatment orders in their current form. Other noble Lords and I spoke in Committee about the overrepresentation of black males, which is what my Amendment 62 intends to address. It was a shame that the deliberations on this issue came so late at night, but I thank the Minister and her officials for their engagement. I asked three simple questions: what do we know about why black people are disproportionately detained? What do we not know? What research and work are we conducting—I know this sounds like a PhD research thesis seeking to generate the research questions so that someone can go from an MPhil to their PhD—and what is the gap in research to generate the questions for the primary research? I was very reassured by the responses from the Minister and her officials that they take this seriously. They set out in detail the work that they are doing. In fact, the Minister put a lot of that in a letter to me. It would be unfair of me to ask her to read out precisely what is in that letter, because we would be here for quite a few hours, but can she share some of those assurances with the House? It would be very helpful for other noble Lords to understand why, given that letter, I have decided that I will not push my amendment to a vote. As I said, the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has struck the right balance. The amendment acknowledges that there are issues with CTOs and allows for their continued use, under restrictions. It is really important that, in every case, there is a review, and 12 months would seem an appropriate time for that review, rather than cases just being forgotten about, people being caught up in other casework or cases falling behind the filing cabinet—if there was another analogy I could use, I would. If the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, decides to divide the House, these Benches will support him. I look forward to hearing some of the assurances the Minister gave to me and others on racial disparities. I hope also that she can address the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven.