The British Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, yesterday announced tough new measures to eliminate "the obnoxious taint" of football hooliganism which will be rushed through Parliament this month ahead of England's forthcoming international fixtures.
Under proposals outlined by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons, anyone receiving a domestic banning order preventing attendance at football matches will have the order extended to ban attendance at international fixtures. Everyone subject to a banning order will be forced to surrender their passport while overseas games are being played and police will be given new powers to prevent people from leaving the country if they are suspected of planning violence. When police prevent someone from leaving the country that person will be brought to court where a decision will be made on whether to impose a banning order.
The government promised further measures to tackle football hooliganism after hundreds of England fans rioted in Charleroi and in Brussels during the Euro 2000 championships. Mr Straw told MPs that the violence had "shamed England's national game and England's national reputation" and such incidents demonstrated that football hooligan
ism was no longer confined to a small minority of troublemakers. "There is now, instead, strong evidence of a larger number of England supporters getting involved in violence, drunkenness and disorder and few of them are known in advance to the police nationally as football-related offenders," Mr Straw said.
The new measures are expected to be in place, with the support of the Conservatives, when Parliament's summer recess begins at the end of July, in time for England's next international game against France on September 2nd. But the timetable was already in some doubt last night when the shadow Home Secretary, Ms Ann Widdecombe, said while the Conservatives would support the emergency legislation, the Bill would need "thorough scrutiny", especially in relation to extending police powers to propose banning orders.
The civil rights group, Liberty, said police powers operating on the basis of "we know he's going to do it but we can't prove it" should alarm anyone concerned about justice and fairness. The organisation's director, Mr John Wadham, said: "The proposals to ban people from travelling risk undermining the presumption of innocence, if they are based on non-conviction information." He added: "Banning violent individuals from specific matches is just common sense. But under these proposals some people may be banned from travelling anywhere abroad at all for long periods: this is a serious sanction and one has to ask whether it is proportionate to the offence."
In the Commons, Ms Widdecombe also challenged the Home Secretary to explain why the Opposition's suggestion to introduce similar emergency legislation, which was made before the Euro 2000 championships, was not taken up by the government.