Police and Justice Bill

moved Amendment No. 85: "Page 90, line 22, at end insert-""““( ) A constable may impose the conditions of bail under subsection (3B) only if he has undergone appropriate training or he is under the command of an appropriately trained officer.""( ) For the purposes of the above subsection, ““appropriate training”” means training equivalent to the training given to a custody sergeant regarding the proper imposition of conditions of bail.””" The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 85 would require constables to have the appropriate training before they impose conditions on street bail. Currently, a police officer may attach conditions to bail only when a person has been charged or referred to the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision to charge. Clause 8 and Schedule 4 would change that to enable the officer granting bail to consider attaching conditions that the Government intend should be relevant and proportionate to the suspect and the offence. In her response to the previous group of amendments, the Minister made that point with regard to younger people, to which it would also apply—that is the Government’s intention. The conditions that can be imposed must be necessary to secure that the person surrenders to custody, does not commit an offence while on bail, and does not interfere with witnesses or otherwise obstruct the course of justice. Where the offender is under the age of 17, conditions may also be applied for their own welfare or in their own interest. The Government argue that there is no need to be concerned about the extension of the process of imposing conditions on to street bail because the proposed measures reflect the bail provisions already available at the charging stage of the process. That is exactly why we think there should be concern about extending this power to the street, away from the custody sergeant, at the time of the charging process. When bail is granted in the police station, the custody sergeant, who has specialist training and expertise, performs a semi-judicial role in deciding whether bail conditions are justified. By definition the custody officer would not be present when street bail is given and instead the officer responsible for deciding on the conditions to be imposed would be the investigating officer, who would not necessarily have the training and experience of a custody officer. It is this matter of deciding whether to impose conditions that concerns us. We shall pass on from the matter of street bail, which we support in its broadest sense. If one imposes conditions, it is a decision that involves difficult judgments about the suspect’s likely behaviour and about the proper balance between the aims of the conditions and the rights of the suspect. Officers who impose conditions on street bail should have the training to enable them to make these decisions effectively. That seems only common sense. When the matter was debated in another place, the Minister said that she accepted the argument that training would be needed: "““Of course we will expect officers exercising such powers to be properly trained. We expect that with any powers that the police are given. They have extensive training, and we will expect them to be properly trained in those powers””.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 21/3/06; cols. 134-35.]" The problem is that saying is not the same as guaranteeing. It seems sensible to put the requirement for training on this important matter into the Bill, which is why we have tabled this amendment. I beg to move.