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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

The noble Baroness raises a very good point. These orders, which will go through a list of assessments, will be looked at by the judiciary and then be applied, will probably number about 100 a year. That is the sort of number that we are looking at. I could go into the centre of lots of towns—I dare not mention one, because it will no doubt appear in the media—and find several hundreds, if not thousands, of people behaving in ways that I would find slightly extraordinary. We are looking here at people who are a real risk to the public. That is what we are aiming at and that is why the risk assessment is done. As I said, I have faith in the common sense of our judiciary and others to make this assessment. If this saves just a few lives, it is worth doing. If it makes our public feel safer, it is worth doing. That is why it is important. Our assessment is about 100 people a year. It is yet another arrow in our quiver of different ways in which we can tackle this problem. There is no one easy answer, I am afraid. We are actually reducing the number of violent crimes, but violent crime remains an appalling thing and is a blight on large areas of our inner cities. This measure will do something to tackle that.