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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I welcome this clause on disturbances on hospital premises. I know full well that A&E departments can be a nightmare at night, as they can be at any other time as well; that there are occasions when not patients but their relatives cause trouble in hospitals; and that people who come in for treatment—though I notice they have been removed from the provision—can also sometimes cause trouble. This part of the Bill is specific about how disturbances on hospital premises are to be managed, and that is why I have some slight difficulties with the amendments. Although there would have to be a specific offence of causing a disturbance on hospital premises—it will have to be a new offence; I hear what the noble Baroness says—there will also have to be a way of addressing the offence in reality. Security staff in hospitals will presumably be given extra authority to deal with difficult patients—to restrain and hold them until the police arrive. So they will have a power to hold if not a power to arrest. I am struggling to see how you can do that on premises of that scale and with that security. I have no difficulty with the proposal that any member of NHS staff looking after patients should not be subject to violence. I am simply concerned with how to bring that to reality, and how to bring police to the premises to deal with the matter.