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Policing and Crime Bill

The purpose of Amendments 145, 150 and 151 is to ask the Government why they think it appropriate to give a local authority the power to make an application for an injunction. In my 20-something years as a councillor with local authorities, I would not have found this an appropriate power for members or officers to have been given. I cast no aspersions on local authorities at all, but the granting of these injunctions, which are a very serious matter, is better discussed by community safety partnerships. The local authority would need to be involved in those discussions and might well initiate them, but the application for an injunction should really come from the police because a standard of evidence will need to be gathered. The police are likely to be much more in the front line of this evidence gathering and it is very difficult to make the case—I will be interested to hear whether the Minister can—as to why a local authority should be the body that makes the application. I beg to move.