Clause 36
Policing and Crime Bill
10:30 am
Vernon Coaker (Minister of State (Policing, Crime & Security), Home Office; Gedling, Labour)
Let us re-establish what we are trying to do. We are trying to prevent somebody who a law enforcement officer—essentially a police constable—believes is trying to get rid of property to avoid that property being restrained or detained, so that it can be realised in the future when the confiscation order is made.
“Realisable property” is not a new concept; it is included in the Proceeds of Crime Act. The easier way to define “realisable property” is to look at what it is not realisable property, and at what the court would say could not be used for recovering the proceeds of crime. We have therefore tried to define exempt property and say which things cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered to be realisable property. So we are doing it the other way round. Although the concept of “realisable property” is readily understood and has been used by the courts for a number of years, we are coming at it from the other direction by saying what sort of property cannot be used. We have therefore tried to define exempt property.
One of the problems of creating a list is that, as soon as it is completed, something will arise that is not on it. We shall see this later with some of the other amendments that the hon. Gentleman has tabled. The amendment relating to gangs, for example, tries to define “gang-related” activity. We have tried to tell the courts what exempt property is—namely, the things that we expect the court not to treat as realisable property. We then leave it to the court to determine what it means. Our approach has been to look at this completely the other way around from the hon. Gentleman’s point of view. I hope that that explanation helps him.