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Community Order (Review by Specified Courts) Order 2007

I sometimes have considerable doubt as to why certain orders are affirmative rather than negative, and this comes into that category. It strikes me as an order which would have been far better if it had been left as a negative instrument rather than an affirmative one. I do not think that I was involved during the passage of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. As often as not, concessions are made by Ministers—normally allowing an order to become affirmative when previously it was negative. This is probably one of those occasions when, if that were the case, it would have been wiser for the Minister to have resisted calls from the Opposition to make it affirmative. Having said that, I do not have any particular questions. I am very grateful for the noble Lord’s explanation. I note that he, and the Explanatory Memorandum, made clear that the quantitative data so far to support the Liverpool and Salford evaluations is somewhat limited. We look forward to more data coming through and to the data coming through from the other magistrates’ courts that have been added, and in due course we look forward to hearing from the Government about the success of this scheme.