Police and Justice Bill

I am sure that we will have a broader debate on this part of the Bill in due course. The fact that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, has indicated that he wants to come back to it—as I knew he did—reinforces that. What I propose to do therefore, at five minutes before 10, is to focus particularly on the two amendments in this group, rather than deal with the broader issues indicated by the noble Baroness opposite. I have already noted the questions she raised, and I am sure that we can come back to those. Let me therefore deal with these amendments on the working assumption that there is to be a scheme of conditional cautions, which will include some form of punitive possibility. Amendment No. 91E seeks to ensure that any conditions attached to a conditional caution must have at least two of the following three objectives: facilitating rehabilitation of the offender; ensuring the offender makes reparation for the offence; and/or punishing the offender. The problem with that amendment is that, overall, the conditional caution scheme will need to be appropriate, achievable and proportionate in relation to the particular offender. I am looking forward to the opportunity of developing more why it is necessary to include a punitive condition. In many cases it may be appropriate to attach more than one condition. That is one of the reasons why we want to include a punitive condition. Let me give an example: at the moment a conditional caution can be used for someone who has committed a low-level offence but a typical problem might be where one can see that part of the way of dealing with that offender, and therefore the problem that that offender is causing to the community, is perhaps to encourage that person to deal with an alcohol problem. In Lancashire some alcohol treatment programmes are used through the conditional cautioning system. In some cases, we might say that that is all very well but there needs also to be a modest punitive element to recognise what has taken place. At the moment, for example, for drunkenness the police could simply serve a fixed-penalty notice. That would have a punitive element and the case does not go to court. Or under a conditional caution one could encourage someone to obtain treatment for the problem by imposing a condition, if the offender accepts it—these are all voluntary schemes—that they take some form of alcohol treatment. What we cannot do at the moment is both: we can have either a fixed-penalty notice or a condition for treatment. So it may well be appropriate, if the House ultimately accepts the scheme, to enable one to have both in a particular case. However, it does not follow that in all cases it would be appropriate to have both objectives. For example, it might be appropriate to encourage an offender as a condition of getting a caution to engage in treatment or to pay compensation but not to do something else. The difficulty with the noble Baroness’s amendment is that it would stop that taking place. For example, a drug-using prostitute might need help with rehabilitation from a drug problem but we do not want to impose a financial penalty as well because that may only drive her back on to the streets in order to pay the fine. The amendment would not help us to meet the requirement of having something appropriate and proportionate to the offender. Amendment No. 92, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, would limit the types of punitive condition to the two specified in Clause 15: a financial penalty or required attendance. Clause 15 specifies those two as part of a range of options that might be attached to a conditional caution. The reason that those two are spelt out is because of the provisions that follow, which fix the amount of the penalty or the number of hours’ attendance at the specified place. Any number of other conditions could be imposed. Let me give one example, which might be an appropriate moment to leave this part of the debate. At the moment, you could impose a reparative condition that someone deals with a piece of private property that has been damaged, for example where someone has come back from a pub and kicked in a door or something of that sort. If, on the other hand, the property in question does not belong to an individual or is community property in a park and has been fixed by the time the matter is dealt with, because the local authorities dealt with it straightaway, you cannot have a reparative condition related to it; it has already been dealt with or there is no specific victim. There you might want to have something broader in terms of reparation, such as doing some work for the community. That would fall under the heading of punishment, but it is not a financial penalty. What the noble Baroness wants to know is that safeguards will be in place to prevent any abuse of the new punitive object. The primary way of doing that will be through the conditional cautioning code of practice, which makes it clear that any conditions imposed have to be proportionate, achievable and appropriate to the offending—but particularly, finally, that the offender accepts them. The whole scheme is built on the premise that if the offender does not accept the conditions, they simply do not operate. The offender says, ““I am not prepared to accept them””, and the matter goes to court. That is an important safeguard as well. That may be no more than a taster of the rest of the debate to come, but on the basis of those two amendments, I invite the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, to withdraw her amendment, and in due course the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, not to move hers.