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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I want to be sure that I understand what lies behind the Government’s proposal here. As I understand it, the Government’s amendment changes interim VOOs from being limited to four weeks but renewable to being unrenewable, but without a specified time limit. The time limit will be set at the time of the making of the order and is intended to be tied to the date the court expects to be able to impose the full VOO. That is the Government’s position as I understand it. Is this really practical? We all know that there are problems about the timing of court hearings and that garnering evidence in the circumstances of assessing a future risk is an extremely complex matter. How can the Government be sure at the time that the time limit is set that it will be adequate for the authorities to assemble all the evidence they will need to make their case at the full hearing? If they are unable to assemble their case at the full hearing, what will they do? They cannot renew the interim order. I hope that the Government will take this observation as being entirely practical, not coming from any particular direction of the political compass. The Government ought to be very clear about whether, from a practical point of view, this is really what they want to do.