Part of Proceeds of Crime Bill – in a Public Bill Committee am 10:45 am ar 27 Tachwedd 2001.
It is early in the morning, and I hope that the Minister will forgive me if, following yesterday's late night, I have not clearly explained what was bugging me about the clause. We have clarified that by dialogue, which is what a Committee is supposed to do.
I am pleased that the Minister is not envisaging a different regime under clause 20 from that laid out under clause 6. However, my concern is that one might consider that there are advantages. I had not thought of the following point until we came to clause 20: if clause 6 might produce a situation in which a person whose confiscation had been assessed before sentence could say, after he has been sentenced, ``I also want 250 other offences to be taken into account,'' that would raise, for the first time, possibilities with regard to benefits from criminal conduct that had not been thought about before. That circumstance would be a strange consequence of clause 6.