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Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 2005

I hope that I can answer the noble Lord from my Q&A notes. These offences are being made arrestable to rectify an omission in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 which should have made the offences arrestable, as they are in England and Wales. When the 2003 Act was introduced, those offences were extended to Northern Ireland. The Act makes consequential amendments to Schedule 1A, which covers the specific arrestable offences of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, making such offences arrestable without warrant in England and Wales. A similar consequential amendment to the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 was overlooked at that time. I do not think that this covers the issue that the noble Lord raised. Therefore, the new offences as they apply to Northern Ireland are not arrestable without a warrant. The order provides the first opportunity to correct that situation. The notes refer to 1989. I am assuming that that is correct; 2005 is 16 years later, and I cannot believe that this is the first possibility there has been for dealing with this. These offences need to be arrestable without warrant is to enable the police to take immediate action to stop the offending behaviour and apprehend the offender. Why were these offences extended to Northern Ireland when so many were not? The answer is that Northern Ireland was not included in the review of the law which underpinned the Sexual Offences Act. Some offences were extended to allow for full operation of the notification requirements—the sex offender register provisions of Part 2 of the Act. When will sex offence law in Northern Ireland be reformed? The answer is that work is ongoing and proposals will be published in due course. This is not the end of the matter. Unless I hear anything to the contrary, I do not think that what I have read out covers the issues raised by the noble Lord.