---

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 23: 23: Clause 4, page 5, line 6, leave out from ““intentions”” to end of line 7 The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 24A. I wish to make it clear that I have brought these amendments back in order to give the Minister the opportunity to carryout a commitment she gave in Committee. These amendments probe the relevance of a person’s mental state to the ability of a court to impose a serious crime prevention order on them. They ask the Government to define what is meant by the term, "““any other aspect of his mental state””," which is not clear in the Explanatory Notes. Clause 4 appears to treat those with mental incapacity or mental ill-health inappropriately. It supplements Clauses 2 and 3 and contains further provisions for a situation where a third party is accused of facilitating the commission of a serious crime by another person, in some circumstanceseven where that offence is not actually committed. Subsections (2) and (3) require the court to ignore the intentions and other aspects of a respondent’s mental state at the time of the act in question. The court must ignore the person’s mental state. When I moved these amendments in Committee, the Minister stated, at col. 763 on 14 March, that the reference to mental state is a reference to intention, not to mental ill-health or incapacity—that one does not need to intend the consequence of that which is sought. The Minister said that she would be happy to write to me, with copies of the letter to Members of the Committee, setting out the examples of how the provision should be implemented. Despite the welcome confetti of Home Office letters and e-mails in the past 24 hours, I have not yet received a letter referring to this specific point. Therefore, I left this amendment on the Marshalled List and invite the Minister to give further clarification. I beg to move.