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Serious Crime Bill [HL]

I congratulate the noble Baroness on moving the amendment as she did, because it neatly juxtaposes fishing and armed robbery in a very clever way and invites the sort of debate that we have had. I have been entertained listening to the debate for the past 20 minutes. It has had more merit than I expected. I will reverse how I deal with the issues raised because of how the amendments worked out in debate. I shall deal with Amendments Nos. 49 and 51 first and then come back to the fishing amendments. I have listened with great care to what has been said about the armed robbery amendment, if you like. There is considerable merit in it. It must be right that we look at that again. I accept the arguments about it. We are consulting stakeholders to ensure that the schedule reflects those offences for which it would be appropriate in all circumstances to place an order. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, made the point about including firearms; again, we will take that point on board. In a sense, our discussion has underlined the point I made on the earlier amendment: just as we as a House can disagree over what should be included in a list of matters to be considered serious, we need that flexibility because, at different times, seriousness will come into play and different and new offences will raise their heads. It is right we have a schedule, an order-making process, and that we keep under careful review what should be in the schedule.