The proposed offence of trespassing on a designated site is superficially attractive, but we must carefully consider the implications of Parliament's actions in this respect. It has long been the principle in this country that trespass is a civil matter. There are exceptions, of course, such as entering certain designated sites restricted under various regulations, particularly highly sensitive places such as nuclear installations and the like. On the whole, I think the policy a good one, and if we are to depart from it, we must ensure that we do not widen the scope of the criminal law too much. We must also be careful to maintain a sense of proportion.

The amendments are essentially probing, to allow us to find out a little more about how the provisions will work in practice. The Secretary of State may designate sites in three categories under the Clause. The first is Crown land, the second private lands belonging to Her Majesty the Queen or the heir to the throne, and the third land that the Secretary of State believes it is appropriate to designate in the interests of national security.

What is meant by ''national security'' in that context? My definition of national security is pretty restricted, in that it relates to the protection of essential state security interests—for instance, major state installations. Could the concept be widened so that it includes anything that affects the day-to-day operation of the state? An obvious example might be a sit-down protest on Horseguards parade: it is not something that I would encourage people to do, but, while it might be disruptive, I would not associate it with a threat to state security. The Committee needs to consider how the issue will be addressed in practice.

Secondly, and as important, we are creating a criminal offence. Trespass usually involves going on to land to which members of the public have no right of access, but there are permissive rights for people to enter a great deal of the private land in this country.   Those permissive rights can be withdrawn, but the public's attitude to such land will inevitably be different from their attitude to other sites. Furthermore, as far as public opinion is concerned, it is one thing to climb over a wall of Buckingham palace and rampage round the gardens having entered in order to do so, and quite another to go for a walk in Hyde park. Most people regard those things differently and will understand that the law is likely to be applied differently, but we must be careful not to introduce a law that criminalises those who decide to go on to land that they normally associate with being open to the public.

That dovetails with the reasoning behind the next Amendment, which addresses the concern that if the site is land to which members of the public normally have access, there should be a requirement—one that does not appear to be provided for in subsection (7)—that such people should be informed that they are trespassing and that they should leave before the criminal law comes into operation. That is what the amendments are designed to probe. Two of them are duplicatory, and I do not know why they feature separately.

I hope that the Minister will respond to those points, because we are contemplating an important change to the law, and we should not let it go through on the nod.