Remand in Custody (Effect of Concurrent and Consecutive Sentences of Imprisonment) Rules 2005

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for explaining in some detail how this order works and how it relies on the principle that if a person is already in custody on another offence, that should not allow the time to be deducted from the new sentence which is to be imposed. As I understand it, from the time that Section 240 came into effect until the making of this order, the courts would either have been able to direct that the   time spent on remand should be deducted from the sentence, while retaining the power to add those days to the sentence ultimately imposed, or they could have relied on Section 240(4)(b), stating in open court as required by subsection (6)(b) that they were of the opinion that no such order should be made because the offender was already in prison for some other offence for the period of remand. The only difficulty they might have had would be in cases where the remand extended beyond the period of the sentence, where the number of days the offender remained in custody after the expiry of the other sentence would still need to be deducted from the sentence now being passed. Without these rules, the courts had only two options. Either they could direct that the whole time spent on remand in custody should be counted against the sentence under the powers in subsection (3), or they could refrain from giving a direction under the powers in subsection (4)(b). In the case where the offender was in prison serving another sentence for only part of the time that he was remanded in custody, the only option would be to give directions under subsection (3), remitting the whole of the time spent on remand, and to add the number of days that the offender was serving the previous sentence on to the new sentence. I have already mentioned in passing another point to the noble Baroness, although we did not have time to finish our conversation. The order deals with cases where the accused is remanded in custody when he is   already serving a sentence of imprisonment for another offence, but not when he is remanded in custody on another charge at the point at which the court has consider his disposal on the new offence, or when he is detained in connection with other matters. I presume that that in the main is for the purposes of immigration control. In fact, Section 240(2) states explicitly that it is immaterial ““for that purpose””, which I take to mean for the purpose of the whole of Section 240, whether the offender has already been remanded in custody in connection with other offences. I am not too worried about this because it means that the offender will have those days on which he is concurrently remanded in custody for two completely separate offences knocked off the end of both sentences. According to the bar chart I drew for the noble Baroness just before we came into the Chamber, the days would have to be taken off the first sentence if he was being held in custody on remand concurrently on the two separate charges. As I say, it seems that that period would be knocked off the end of both sentences. However, I am not sure whether that is the intention of the order because it is not entirely logical to take that period off the end of both sentences, although I hope that we are not talking about a set of circumstances that arises very frequently. Unfortunately, the order does not affect the extent of remands in custody, under which 58,700 people were imprisoned awaiting trial in 2003, even though half of them subsequently received a non-custodial sentence and 22 per cent were acquitted. According to the Prison Reform Trust, the average length of time spent behind bars on remand was 49 days for men and 37 for women, but some 250 individuals were held for over a year. I hope that I am not out of order in saying this, as so frequently I am, but we should look at the experience of Scotland where a maximum period is set for a person to be held on remand. The average length of time is 24 days, less than half that in England and Wales. Scotland also has a procedure for tagging those accused of serious offences and making them subject to a movement restriction condition. Are not these matters on which the Home Office could learn from the Scottish experience? If it has worked there, we might be able to amend our own law accordingly.