---

Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, Amendments Nos. 96 and 97 to 99 seek to narrow the scope of violent offender orders by requiring that they can be used only for the purpose of protecting a specific named person or persons from the risk of serious violent harm caused by an individual. The effect of this amendment would be that violent offender orders could not be used to protect the wider public from the risk of serious violent harm. As the House knows, the purpose of those orders is to provide a means of protecting the public at large from the risk of serious violent harm by a dangerous individual. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is correct that this risk will sometimes be targeted at a specific individual or individuals within the public and therefore that the person in need of protection will be easily identifiable. However, as I have made clear before, there will be times when this is not the case. As the noble Lord mentioned, we have powers available to protect named individuals from harm in terms of non-molestation orders. He is correct to say that those have to be asked for by the person involved, or by members of his family, to put them into force. Statistics show that in 2005-06, 46 per cent of victims of violence—about half—did not actually know their attacker. To my mind, this statistic is evidence enough that it will not always be possible to identify a specific individual who is at risk of serious violent harm, a point well made by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. Instead, there will be times when this risk is targeted at a wider group of individuals; for example, in a pub or in the case of hate-related crime, and times when it is simply not possible to predict any individual target. We must not close our eyes to the cruel reality of violence that exists on our streets and in our communities. Just because a risk does not exist against one specific named individual, it does not mean that such a risk does not exist at all. I am certain that everyone in the Chamber will be able to think back to at least one violent unpremeditated attack on an innocent member of the public within the past year. There have sadly been a number of such attacks reported by the media. Worse still, following such attacks, the media have often reported—and it is subsequently found to be true—that the attackers were known to pose a risk of serious violence but that nothing could be done or was done to manage that risk. That understandably causes huge public concern. In many cases, the victims of the attacks were not targeted in advance by their attackers and it would therefore have been impossible to predict their specific risk of victimisation. If my earlier statistic were not evidence enough, we must learn from these tragedies and finally accept that we must put measures in place to protect the wider public from the risk of serious violent harm. I believe that the public expect that of us as a Government. I agree that we must be able to protect specific individuals from serious violent harm when we know that such a risk exists. However, we must also be able to protect the wider public. Violent offender orders, as currently provided for, enable us to do this. We have a duty to protect the public and it would be highly damaging to narrow the scope of the violent offender orders. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.