Clause 63
9:30 am
Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister, Justice; Harborough, Conservative)
My hon. Friend has described the problem much more neatly than me. He has enabled me to cut short my remarks by some measure, which is a happy thing for the hon. Member for Wrexham. The Whips could be submariners—the silent service. Occasionally they pop up above the surface and fire off something, and the hon. Member for Wrexham has just done that. Returning to my point, my hon. Friend and I have described the issue, which now requires an explanation from the Government.
On a further point, I may be misleading myself that I have properly read subsection (9), but I want to be sure that, where it states that the qualifying offence must be committed by two or more persons, it is sufficient for the purposes of subsection (2), which will give the JP the power to make an order if they are satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the relevant conditions in subsections (3) to (8) have been satisfied by one person. It may be that it is too early in the morning for my brain to engage properly with the matter, but I need to have the numbers sorted out. Does the court need only to be satisfied that one person has committed a relevant offence—albeit that they are a member of a gang of two or more—or is there something else that I have missed through my lack of acuity?