Clause 89 - Confiscation orders by magistrates' courts
Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill
3:30 pm
Mr Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, Home Affairs; Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 216, in clause 89, page 52, line 1, leave out subsection (3).
I have a sense of déjà vu when I see the provisions of the Proceeds of Crime Act come back to haunt me. It is amusing and quite instructive to see circumstances—we shall consider them in a moment—in which it has been found necessary to tweak that legislation, despite the 36 sittings in Committee in which, I seem to recall, some of us here today participated.
The first tweak is rather straightforward. I may have misunderstood clause 89, but I thought that it referred to variations that the Secretary of State might wish to make for confiscation order purposes in relation to part 2 of the 2002 Act and part 4 of that Act in relation to Northern Ireland. When I saw subsection (3), I was a little startled to discover that any order that the Secretary of State chooses to make could
''amend, repeal, revoke or otherwise modify any enactment.''
That does not show much confidence on the part of the parliamentary draftsman that amending parts 2 and 4 would not have the most hideous knock-on consequences.
As the Minister probably knows, I think it a somewhat Henrician clause. In the circumstances, I am a bit troubled by it. I should be grateful if she could explain why subsection (3) was thought necessary. It appears to give the Secretary of State extensive powers, over and above what Parliament would normally give except with very good reason.