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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I hear and endorse much of what the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, have said in these matters. Earlier I raised a question as to whether one of the motivations for a VOO was that the default position was no longer the criminal law in circumstances where for generations it would have been the obvious line to go down, and whether the purpose of VOOs was to circumvent the criminal law because, for one reason or another, it is not possible to bring a criminal case. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, made an important point about the heritage and the history of the law. Very often the argument is made: ““Well, we are living in different times and are facing different challenges””. But any cursory reading of the novels of Dickens would suggest that London was not exactly a safe place in Victorian times and that violent crime was not unknown in the capital city. Yet those who sat on these Benches 150 years ago would have been appalled at the thought that we were putting to one side the criminal law and bringing in much lesser tests for bringing people to justice for behaviour that society found unacceptable. You do not set aside that heritage and tradition that has been built up for perfectly good and sound reasons as simply as we are being invited to do in our debates this evening. Although the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, does not propose to seek the opinion of the House, he has raised important points. It would be interesting if the Minister could indicate whether the Government believe that the default position should be the use of the criminal law, rather than the use of some civil procedure to get round it. It is a dangerous road that we are travelling down if the criminal law is to be set aside simply because it is not convenient.