Police and Justice Bill

I understand the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. However, there is a difficulty because training in all areas is important. We have just spoken about training in Every Child Matters, which is essential. As I have indicated, it will be available at the end of this month and will form part of the training of officers and CSOs. From time to time there will be additional issues, each of which will need training, have their own merit and therefore will have to be undertaken. I am sure that the noble Baroness would not suggest that we list in a schedule every single element of a police officer’s training. If we did, we would probably have the Centrex introductory list, and we would have everything—all of which is important, all of which Ministers will say is essential, and all of which has to have priority. Chief officers are required to ensure that their officers and staff are suitably trained, competent and able to carry out the range of tasks required. Not just training but guidance will help officers know how to discharge that duty. In the same way, we had interesting discussions about the sort of training that officers should have to issue fixed-penalty notices, cautions and such matters. Guidance and training in these areas are absolutely necessary and I wholeheartedly support that sentiment, but I do not think it would be necessary or right to specifically create a statutory provision for a single area of training nor do I think that street bail would be the only aspect to which such a provision would relate if we were to do so. Attaching conditions is not the exclusive domain of street bail; the noble Baroness is right to say that the station sergeant quite often does that. We are left in an interesting situation because, at the same time, we are saying that street bail is a good thing and we need to encourage it to be appropriately used on occasions when it is safe and in the interests of justice for it to be undertaken as regards both the potential victim and the offender. We certainly see the merit of that. If we were to take the provision further, we would have to ask who would give the direction. Would it be the chief constable, the BCU commander or the officer’s immediate line manager, and what would happen if such an officer were not immediately available? There is no provision in the Bill to provide a power to detain in order to await the attendance of a trained officer in command. We would hope that all officers who were able, and asked, to discharge this duty would have the appropriate training. The aim of street bail is to minimise the time that an officer spends dealing with a situation on the street and, importantly, to limit the period that a person has to be detained by the police. I hope that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord will be reassured by that and by the fact that we very much understand their concerns about getting the conditions right. I have indicated that we do not propose to have tagging or matters of that sort, which would put us into a slightly different league, but, as the noble Baroness rightly said, asking someone to attend, to live at an address and not to commit further offences in the interim all fall within the Bail Act. I respectfully suggest that it is reasonable to expect anyone given bail to comply with those minimum conditions so that we know where to find them if they do not happen to honour their duty and turn up.