Clause 1 - Repeal of provisions ofFootball (Disorder) Act 2000
Football (Disorder) (Amendment) Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Illsley. Like the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), I feel that there is little that one can do to amend a Bill that is so short that it may well be possible to deal with all the points arising in one sitting. Before I proceed, I should apologise for the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) who, as we speak, is participating in a sitting of the Select Committee on Home Affairs.
Amendment No. 4 has been tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, but I am equally sympathetic to the amendments to which the hon. Member for Beaconsfield has just spoken. A reasonable range of options has been put to test the Government.
Like the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, I shall not take up the Committee's time by repeating points made on Second Reading. However, in Committee we are meant to be able to get detailed answers to detailed questions; something that has been notably lacking. I shall make a point of principle and stress where my party comes from, which, in this respect, is not a hugely different place from my Conservative colleagues and some in the Labour party.
The Bill proposes not only that people who have been convicted of criminal offences should have their liberties restricted—that is a perfectly normally procedure that we all accept—but that people who have had either no relevant conviction or no conviction at all should have their liberties restricted. We are not discussing liberties that are incidental or peripheral, but two liberties that have always been regarded as important. The first, that one should not be detained without due cause and that there should be a limit on one's detention, is dealt with in traditional English law through habeas corpus, subsequently through statute law and, more recently, through the European convention on human rights.
The second, that there should be free movement within the European Union, is a right guaranteed by both tradition and European Community law. One is given a passport, unless there is a specific state security reason for not having it. Whatever its colour—I have just given up my blue one that lasted longer than most, but I now have a red one like most other people—inside there is still a request from the Foreign Secretary that one should be entitled to travel freely, which is something that we have recently confirmed in law.
The Government obviously have in their sights the mischief caused by people who travel to cause trouble. However, restricting the right to travel, let alone the right to travel abroad, is an important matter. Restricting one's right to have one's passport and to travel freely is a very important matter. We should do that only when we are certain that it is justified. That is where my party comes from, and we regard taking away the right to travel abroad by removing passports from those without conviction as being unjustified in principle.
The procedure is also wrong in practice. Had there been lots of evidence that, since the introduction of the existing legislation, many people had been found to have no criminal convictions but the courts had upheld banning orders, it would be persuasive. However, there has been no such evidence. On Second Reading, I asked the Minister how many people who have had bans have never had convictions for violence-related offences.
I have always made it clear that I do not consider the only relevant offences to be football-related. When the former hon. Member for Taunton, Jackie Ballard, and I worked on the first Bill, we argued that any violence-related offence should be relevant. Many of the offences that the Minister cited on Second Reading were violence-related. We have seen the courts restrict the liberties of those who have a history of violence that, to use the word of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, is ``proven''. I am happy with that. I am not happy when there is no proven record of violence. We cannot move to a criminal justice system that acts on the basis of no offence, as opposed to acting on the basis of some offence.
There are differences between this and the case for an injunction. In most cases—indeed, in nearly every case—injunctions have been granted where there has been some record of an offence, or at least an arrest and charge for domestic violence. There has almost always been an offence that has persuaded the courts that it is justified to grant a personal protection injunction to restrain a person's liberty.
As far as I am aware, injunctions never mean that one cannot visit a place, but that one is detained and that the freedom to travel abroad is taken away. I stand to be corrected, but I believe that in 99 per cent. of cases where injunctions are issued, either detentions or restrictions on freedom to travel have been produced as a consequence.