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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I wish the noble Lord had taken part in our earlier debate. We have discussed the number of criminal justice Bills taken through by my Government and his. My reckoning is that his Government took more through than we have, but I accept the substantive point that we need to be sparing with legislation in the future. I accept that one of our considerations must be that people in the field, whether in the courts, in the Probation Service or among the police, are able to understand as clearly as possible what is meant by new legal provisions. Where I would disagree with the noble Lord is that I believe the provisions we have put forward are absolutely clear—but that must be followed up with guidance, hence my amendment which instructs the Secretary of State to produce appropriate guidance, and which I have already said will take account of a number of the matters that noble Lords have raised in our debate. While I am not going to comment on the specific cases that noble Lords have raised, I reiterate what my noble friends Lord Alli and Lord Smith said: the CPS policy of prosecuting cases of homophobic and transphobic hate crime was revised in November last year. I believe that the cases which noble Lords have raised all predate that guidance. Guidance has much to offer. The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, made a fair point about the nature of guidance. Neither the Government nor the Attorney-General would give operational guidance to the police. That would be quite inappropriate for us to do. He took me to task for not producing the draft guidance. Although the proceedings on the Bill seem to have taken a long time, they have moved very swiftly, and any such guidance would need to reflect the debates that have taken place in both Houses. It will need to be carefully considered, but it will cover the purpose and the need for the offence.