I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for tabling the amendment and for providing me with the opportunity to explain the rationale behind the provision of powers to chief officers of police to make applications for slavery and trafficking prevention orders. The orders have been designed to manage the risk of harm that would be caused by an individual committing a modern slavery offence. Because the orders relate to risk of future harm, the relevant police areas are those that the individual is believed to be in or intending to come to for the purposes of triggering an application.

As the right hon. Gentleman said, cases in which an individual no longer lives in an area but the chief officer of police has reason to believe they are likely to return there, would be covered by the existing provision. In the few cases in which an individual posing a risk is unlikely to return to an area, it would be appropriate for the police to inform the National Crime Agency or the police force where the individual resides so that it could take steps to manage the risk. I see another role for the anti-slavery commissioner, which we will be debating later, in ensuring that police forces throughout the country talk to each other and to the National Crime Agency to gather all possible intelligence and information.

Given that the force that is best able to manage the risk is the one in which the future harm is likely to take place—the one where the suspected offender is residing or likely to reside—we believe that the chief officer of police for that force is the right person to make the decision about the order. For that reason, the clause as drafted provides appropriate powers for police in relation to slavery and trafficking prevention orders.