Police and Justice Bill

I believe that this is the first Committee over which the noble Baroness the Lord Speaker has presided. If it is, I very much hope that she will enjoy the day as much as I am sure the rest of us will. I welcome her to her post. Amendments Nos. 93 and 95 propose to remove the power of the Home Secretary to vary the maximum hours of attendance and the financial penalty that can be attached to a conditional caution. The reason for including those provisions is obvious; it is important to have a power to make amendment to those maxima if circumstances demonstrate that they need to be changed over time. If there is not a power to deal with them in this way, it will be necessary to find a slot in primary legislation to make what would probably be small adjustments. The time of this House and of the other place to initiate primary legislation is always precious. I am therefore not able to support the amendments to remove the power to vary those, but I hope that I can none the less offer reassurance on Amendment No. 96, which proposes to make the power to vary the maximum financial penalty by order subject to parliamentary scrutiny by affirmative resolution. The noble Baroness has rightly reminded the Committee that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has recommended that the affirmative procedure should be used for both the power to change the maximum financial penalty and the power to amend the maximum number of hours of attendance, except where the change is solely to take account of changes in the value of money. We have considered the recommendation and propose to table an amendment on Report to meet those concerns and to take account of what the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee said. The noble Baroness has also made broader observations on the conditional cautioning powers. As I said when opening this debate in the previous sitting, it may be more economical of time if I address those remarks when we come to the clause stand part debate which I think is to follow shortly. At this point I shall only say that I do not for a moment accept the proposition that conditional cautions are nonsense, if that is indeed a correct attribution to the gentleman quoted in the newspaper to whom the noble Baroness referred. It certainly is not nonsense to have conditional cautions; they are working at the moment. The noble Baroness and I agree in principle that we need to see that what is being done is, as she says, necessary, effective and fair. I do not have any disagreement with any of those adjectives. It may transpire that we will disagree on how they apply in particular circumstances, but we do not disagree on the objective. For the time being, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.