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Serious Crime Bill [HL]

My Lords, when the noble Baroness responds on this amendment, I should be grateful if she could bring us up to date on the matter of the register. My noble friend Lord Marlesford has been raising this point for so long that I am beginning to wonder whether the Government have some sort of policy hang-up in this area. It is not possible to think of any good reason why this matter is still in limbo, so I ask myself whether there is a bad reason for it. If there is a bad reason, which I would define as a lack of commitment on this whole area of policy, perhaps we should know about it. The register is not the subject of the amendment, but the whole response of the Government on gun crime seems to be a little gently paced and I think that we need to see things moving rather more rapidly.