Schedule 3
Serious Crime Bill [Lords]
6:30 pm
Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)
As a brief reminder for those who have not read it recently, the schedule contains a list of offences that can be considered encouraged or assisted offences only when D intends them to take place.
Government amendments Nos. 140 to 143 are additions that we should like to make to the schedule. The original list of offences was taken from the Law Commission’s draft Bill. It did a lot of work on identifying offences that ought to be excluded as belief offences, and we were grateful for that. During the Bill’s passage through Parliament my officials have been conducting a trawl of existing legislation, as officials do at such times, to see whether the Law Commission managed to identify all the offences that ought to be in the schedule. They have found a number of additional offences. We added some on Report in the other place and indicated that we thought there might be more to come, and the amendments contain the extra offences that we have discovered. They are all consistent with those included in the original Law Commission draft Bill.
I hope that these further additions will provide us with a final, complete list. It is a hostage to fortune for me to have said that, but I hope that these are the last amendments that we will need to make to the schedule. Amendment No. 140 will add the offence under section 2(2) of the Landmines Act 1998 of encouraging, assisting or inducing an offence. Amendment No. 141 will add a list of offences from the Terrorism Act 2006.
Amendments Nos. 142 and 143 will add offences under section 13 of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1973 and section 21(6) of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1974 with regard to assaults on officers. Amendments Nos. 138 and 139 will restrict the offences in the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act 1919, set out in paragraphs 5 and 6 of the schedule, to the attempt to perform an act. Amendments Nos. 144 and 145 are minor drafting amendments.
The amendments are simply tidying up, and I hope that they are not controversial and that the Committee will feel able to support them.