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Policing and Crime Bill

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, and it is a sign of the failure of this Government's policies that so little progress has been made over so many years despite so much legislation being brought on to the statute book. It is a sign that the Government must focus not simply on passing Bills through this House, but on getting the job done out there, and must recognise that often when they micro-manage—or interfere or misjudge their powers—matters are made even worse. In addition, clause 30 seeks to give the police enhanced powers to give young people a direction to leave an area where there is a risk of an alcohol-related disturbance. It will now extend to children over 10, rather than those over 16. This raises serious issues to do with children being placed at risk by being made to leave an area with which they are familiar when one would have expected the police to take a younger child home or into protective custody if there was a serious enough problem to move them out of the area in the first place. We will wish to look at this in detail. Do we really want the police to be moving on 10-year-olds, rather than addressing the problem and getting them home to their families? We will want to hear more about the Government's thinking on this in debate in Committee, and we will need a bit of persuading that the approach in this part of the Bill is the right one. Then we have the now annual exhortation by the Home Secretary to seize the assets of the Mr. Bigs of the criminal underworld. The intention is laudable, but it does not always work, as the Home Secretary knows. In its short life, the Assets Recovery Agency recovered a mere one third of its running costs in criminal assets, and the record of the Serious Organised Crime Agency has been little better; it has missed most of its targets. Yet again, this Government are proposing to introduce yet more law, which can never compensate for basic failures of law enforcement. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that some of this law has a draconian quality that must be questionable. The distinction between restraint of assets on arrest and seizure for confiscation after conviction is being blurred, and the level of judicial oversight reduced. It is unclear why this is being done, and it raises serious issues of fairness and interference with property rights without due process of law.