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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

First, I congratulate the noble Baroness on getting that legislation passed, because I understand from everything that I have been told that it has been extremely valuable, even with the proviso that this order will resolve the problems that have been found there. The issue of a council apartment, flat or house being empty for three months is a very good point; I do not know the answer off the top of my head. I assume that it will be kept available for those people. Perhaps I may go away to think about that so that we can return to it in later debate. I am not sure what the position is. I know that at the moment we have the ability with council housing finally to move people on. It takes a huge length of time, by which time the impact on the local community and the fact that we have not been able to get social services fully involved with the family causing the difficulty constitute a real problem. We have not historically been able to do that with private housing. Sometimes, private housing has been used for things like cuckooing, as has been mentioned. The issue of the housing being kept open is a valid point. I have to say that I have not asked that question, but that may come up in debate later and I will be able to address it then. The noble and learned Lord asked whether we could include the amendments because he felt that just giving guidance to magistrates was inadequate. I still feel that trying to articulate too many of the details in the Bill will make the statutory test very difficult. We will be caught up in court and unable to take the necessary action as readily as we should. As I said, by that stage, we will have used such things as acceptable behaviour contracts, parenting contracts, injunctions, ASBOs and community impact orders. All of those things will already have been tried before we move down that road. The vulnerable people, the vulnerable children about whom the noble and learned Lord was rightly talking, are at risk because of the things going on in some of those houses, yet the people involved are unwilling to let those people who could help them get involved. This provision will make that happen. Clearly, all our statutory obligations to look after children will be enforced and we will have to look after them. I hope that that answers those points.