Police and Justice Bill

moved Amendment No. 97: Page 10, line 12, leave out ““A person arrested under this section must”” and insert ““If a relevant prosecutor determines that a person arrested under this section has failed, without reasonable excuse, to comply with any of the conditions attached to the conditional caution, the person arrested may”” The noble Baroness said: Noble Lords will be pleased to learn that fairly shortly they will hear voices other than mine. In moving Amendment No. 97 I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 100 and 102 tabled in my name, and refer briefly to Amendment No. 98 to which I have added my name in support. My amendments are probing in nature. Clause 16 gives police constables a power of arrest without warrant where an offender is suspected of having breached the conditions of a conditional caution without reasonable excuse. The Government argue that this will speed up the prosecution of the original offence. The clause will insert a new Section 24A into Part 3 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, and I ask that Amendments Nos. 97 and 102 should be read together. They would clarify that the various options specified in Section 24A(2)(a) to (c) would be available only where a prosecutor has decided that a condition of the caution has been breached without reasonable excuse. It would make it possible for the person to be released on bail before it has been determined whether that person has breached the conditions of their caution without reasonable excuse. New Section 24A(2) requires that a person who has been arrested for a suspected breach of the conditions of their caution should be ““charged with the offence”” for which they were originally arrested, or released on bail but without charge, or released without charge and without bail, but with the possibility of the conditional caution being varied. I do not have a problem with the proposal that the Section 24 powers should be used where it has been established that there has been a breach of the conditions of caution. However, Section 24 would not limit the use of the powers in that way; it would enable them to be exercised purely by virtue of the fact that the person has been arrested on suspicion of breaching a caution. Is that the Government’s real intention? Where a person accepts a conditional caution instead of being prosecuted for an offence, they of course effectively enter into a contract with the state on the basis, ““If I, the offender, comply with these conditions, you, the state, will not prosecute me””. Surely it would not be right for the state then to breach that agreement by charging the person with the original offence unless it had first established that the person had indeed breached the conditions of the caution and thereby had broken their side of the agreement. Paragraph 176 of the Explanatory Notes acknowledges that this is not the intention: "““If the person has failed to comply without a reasonable excuse, he can then be charged with the original offence in respect of which the conditional caution was given””." The same argument could logically apply in relation to the proposal to vary the conditions of a caution to change unilaterally the terms of the deal between the state and the offender without any reason. My amendment simply clarifies the position. In addition, I recognise that of course it may be necessary to release someone on bail while it is being decided whether they have breached the conditional caution. Amendment No. 102 would enable that to happen. Amendment No. 100 would delete subsection (6) giving the police the power to keep the person in police detention while the investigation is under way about the suspected breach of the caution. The amendment has been tabled simply to probe how long the Government anticipate it would be reasonable for the police to keep a person in detention for this purpose. I realise, of course, that the noble and learned Lord is likely to give a full response to this point when replying to Amendment No. 99 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond. That amendment seeks to put a 12-hour limit on the length of time which a person arrested on suspicion of breaching a caution could be held in custody. I note that Hazel Blears stated on 23 March that the Government, "““envisage a person as being held for a relatively short period””.—(Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 23/3/06; col. 174.]" So we have to ask the age-old question: how short is short? I would be grateful if the noble and learned Lord could address the specific point raised by the Magistrates’ Association on this matter: what safeguards will be in place regarding the operation of that power by the police? Why would it be right for the police to have greater powers in relation to such cases than magistrates have in relation to breaches of court orders? I beg to move