Police and Justice Bill

The hon. Gentleman slightly misheard what I said. I said that conditional cautions had been trialled in a number of areas, and that the results from those pilot areas had shown the trials to be successful. We want to extend the scheme to include a broader range of offenders, including those who admit drunk and disorderly offences, which damage the community, and those who have already received a fixed penalty notice for similar offences and whose offending therefore requires a tougher sanction. Furthermore, we want to include instances where direct reparation is not possible, perhaps because the damage has already been repaired. By including punishment as an explicit additional aim of the scheme, clause 12 will enable indirect reparation to be required as a condition. It therefore opens the way to community justice, which certain Liberal Democrat Members have in the past professed to welcome. Clause 12 is a sensible and considered addition to the conditional cautions scheme. It was widely debated in Committee, and it provides the opportunity to deal fairly with offenders who are willing to admit their guilt and are ready to make amends for their behaviour. However, amendment No. 32 would do away with the clause, so we would welcome its withdrawal. Amendments Nos. 33 and 35 seek to remove the option of imposing a financial penalty as a condition of a caution. In the view of practitioners, financial penalties are a useful option, because they ensure that reparation is made to the community, especially in cases where the community itself is the victim. Amendment No. 34 sits quite oddly with amendments Nos. 33 and 35, as it provides that in every case where a conditional caution is given a financial penalty must be included as one of the conditions. Although we believe that there are good reasons to extend the scheme to include financial penalties, we do not think that such a penalty should be compulsory in every case. Amendments Nos. 36 and 37 seek to remove the Secretary of State’s order-making powers to amend the maximum levels of attendance and financial penalties under the conditional cautioning scheme. Without these powers, it would be necessary to introduce primary legislation if, in the light of the experience of operating the extended conditional caution scheme or with the passage of time, it proved necessary to amend the maximum levels specified in the Bill. The purpose of the order-making powers is to ensure that the conditional cautioning scheme will in practice be sufficiently flexible and that it can be updated quickly. For example, attendance at a specified place may require slightly over 20 hours. On financial limits, we propose to provide a fractional link to summary conviction penalties. The power to change the alternative minimum is needed to help us to keep the legislation up to date with any changes in summary conviction levels passed by the House. I understand the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green about the appropriate protection of offenders, but I hope that I can give her some comfort. The code of conditional cautioning will provide that the conditions must represent an appropriate and proportionate response to the offence. Furthermore, one of the strongest safeguards will be that a conditional caution can always be refused by an offender. For these reasons, I urge her to withdraw her amendments to clause 12. The hon. Lady has also tabled a number of amendments to clause 13. Amendment No. 38 seeks to impose a time limit of 12 hours on the period during which an offender can be held in police detention following a suspected breach of a conditional caution. Clause 13 does not specify a maximum length for the detention period. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Hazel Blears) made clear in Committee, the powers of arrest and detention provided for in clause 13 are intended to provide a speedier alternative to a summons for suspected breach of one or more conditions attached to a conditional caution. This power is important because, in some cases, police officers might need to make inquiries—for example, to verify information given by those arrested about possible excuses for the suspected breach. We do not want offenders spending a disproportionate length of time in custody, and we believe that 12 hours would be excessive in the overwhelming majority of cases. In Committee, the arguments against imposing an arbitrary time limit on detention were rehearsed at some length, and I hope that I can give the hon. Lady some reassurance that there is a powerful safeguard in new section 24A(7) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, as inserted by this clause, which provides that the suspect must either be charged with the original offence, or released without charge with or without bail ““as soon as practicable””. Police officers would be acting unlawfully if they acted in an unreasonably slow fashion in the discharge of this requirement. I do not doubt for a moment that the courts would be competent to enforce the requirement if called upon to do so by an aggrieved detainee. In practice, the Crown Prosecution Service and police say that the length of detention would be limited, and would, for example, merely involve a phone call to check evidence. Clearly, when the CPS is not available, custody officers routinely bail people. PACE provides a safeguard, under which an offender cannot be detained without charge for more than 24 hours, subject to specified extensions. In addition, a review of offenders held in detention is carried out by an inspector after six hours and then at regular nine-hour intervals until the 24-hour deadline has been reached. As I have said, it is highly unlikely that inquiries will require the offender to be held for anything like that length of time. The hon. Lady also tabled amendments Nos. 39 to 41. The intention behind them is to introduce safeguards to protect the offender from misuse of powers. Amendment No. 39 would place a bar on re-arrest for the same suspected breach of a conditional caution. However, that could be problematic if, for example, on an earlier occasion, the offender gave a false explanation that was accepted in good faith by a custody officer who then released the offender. The purpose of the new power of arrest—to ensure quick and effective enforcement—would be severely undermined if a further arrest in the light of fresh evidence required an application to the court for a warrant. For that reason, I oppose the amendment. Amendment No. 40 seeks to ensure that any decision to charge, release on bail or release with no further action should be taken by the CPS prosecutor rather than the police. I should make it absolutely clear that once an offender has been arrested by a police officer, a prosecutor would determine whether the offender had failed to comply with the conditions attached to the caution. It would be the decision of the prosecutor to charge the offender for the original offence. That is beyond question, and is made clear in the existing provisions in the Criminal Justice Act and in the conditional caution code of practice. The amendment is therefore not required to secure that aim. Amendment No. 41 makes explicit provision to ensure that a person arrested for suspected breach of a conditional caution may be released on bail pending further investigation into the suspected breach. Again, the amendment is unnecessary, as the power is already available under new section 24A(2)(b) inserted by clause 13. That includes an option for a person to be"““released without charge and on bail to enable a decision to be made as to whether he should be charged with the offence””." I hope that that will be enough to persuade the hon. Lady to withdraw her amendments to clause 13. Finally, in relation to the hon. Lady’s s amendments Nos. 28 and 29, the use of a ““trained constable”” is a precursor to all activities carried out by a police officer. The amendments refer to an officer who"““has appropriate training and expertise to enable him to make a reasonable and informed assessment of the need for and proportionality of the conditions of bail””." However, discretion and proportionality apply to everything that a constable does. It would be unique to indicate that a trained officer can only deal specifically with bail conditions. Instead, there is a more general requirement that a constable must be able and competent to deal with the powers and responsibilities attached to the office of constable. As the then Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford, indicated in Committee, guidance accompanying the commencement of those provisions will make clear the need for supervisory management to monitor the use of conditions attached to street bail and to ensure that its application is not subject to any stereotyped images or inappropriate generalisations. Those are important safeguards, which provide scrutiny and monitoring of the actions of a constable, and should serve to highlight any additional training requirements. I therefore hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw her amendments to schedule 4.