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Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 (Violent Offender Orders) (Notification Requirements) Regulations 2009

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions and support, with some questions. I recognise the principled position of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, and his party in respect of these orders. A number of points were raised which I will seek to address. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, pointed out that there have been, on other occasions, perhaps not the best of monitoring systems. For violent offender orders, it is intended that the information will be provided by the police and the police will undertake the monitoring of violent offenders. It is an annual monitoring in terms of the information required of someone with a static home, if I can put it that way. For homeless people, I do not think we have changed the legislation. As we said we would do, we have provided in secondary legislation, after consultation with the police and others, that a weekly notification is an appropriate monitoring period for people who are peripatetic or homeless. If people are moving around, they can no doubt inform the police where they will be in a week’s time and report to a police station in that location. If they are static for any period of time, it should not be too onerous an obligation to pop into the police station and say, "I am still here". Why three days? Much of what this order seeks to do in terms of notification for those travelling abroad—for homeless people it is automatic and applies whether they are travelling or not—is based on best practice from the regimes that currently exist for sexual offenders, who we monitor when they go overseas. Three days, after consultation, was chosen to be the most appropriate period. That has proved successful for another group of people monitored and hopefully will prove successful in this case. The noble Baroness raised the question of passport numbers, which are currently not required. However, we will keep that under review and, if thought necessary, it could be introduced by secondary legislation at a future date. The legislation enables the making of regulations to require more frequent reporting of a person of no fixed address. Thus, flexibility was always envisaged. It is preferable to set this at a period which is not too onerous on the individual concerned and yet gives the police the required monitoring information that they need. I hope I have answered the questions of the noble Baroness and the noble Lord. I commend the regulations to the House. Motion agreed.