Clause 14 - Effect of order on court's other powers
Proceeds of Crime Bill
2:45 pm
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. I am especially glad to hear from him because he and I have just spent an extremely enjoyable lunch attacking the media in general and the BBC in particular. I thoroughly agreed with everything that he said, and I believe from what he said that he agreed with some of what I said over lunch.
Had my hon. Friend and I had more time, and had we not been under pressure to table a lot of other amendments, some of which related to very substantive matters and involved a real party political battle, we would have liked to try to redraft subsection (7). The hon. Gentleman makes a serious point, and the answer to his question is that if we had civil servants helping us, or more time, we would certainly have had a go at redrafting the provision. However, we had so little time to table our amendments on the big issues, such as clauses 70, 75, 11 and 6 and the civil recovery procedures—there are five areas where the major thrust had to be—that we simply ran out of time. I would have loved to do a redraft.