Part of Proceeds of Crime Bill – in a Public Bill Committee am 4:45 pm ar 27 Tachwedd 2001.
Bob Ainsworth
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
4:45,
27 Tachwedd 2001
We must read all of subsection (7), and not just paragraph (b). It states:
``If the amount found under the new calculation of the defendant's benefit exceeds the amount found as his benefit for the purposes of the confiscation order the court—
(a) must make a new calculation . . . and
(b) if it exceeds the amount required to be paid under the confiscation order, may vary the order by substituting for the amount required to be paid such amount as it believes is just.''
The subsection applies in instances in which the recalculation increases the amount of benefit from the original confiscation, and it allows the court to decide that, if circumstances arise, it might not be just to increase the confiscation order to take in the whole of that increase. I do not believe that the subsection allows the court to decrease the amount from that prescribed in the original confiscation order.
A parliamentary bill is divided into sections called clauses.
Printed in the margin next to each clause is a brief explanatory `side-note' giving details of what the effect of the clause will be.
During the committee stage of a bill, MPs examine these clauses in detail and may introduce new clauses of their own or table amendments to the existing clauses.
When a bill becomes an Act of Parliament, clauses become known as sections.
