Police and Justice Bill

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord. I agree with him entirely that a swift response to any breach of conditional cautions is important. I strongly support anything that achieves that. Before there was such a thing as conditional cautions, great concern was felt about the difficulty in bringing breaches before a magistrates’ court in a timely manner. It is right that one should try to proceed as quickly as possible, otherwise one loses the whole benefit of the conditional cautioning system, which we fundamentally support. The noble and learned Lord was obviously right to point out, as Ministers do, that Amendment No. 97 is technically defective and would have exactly the opposite effect to that which I want, although I made it clear that it was a probing amendment. The noble and learned Lord was right, but he knows why I tabled it. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for explaining why provisions are in the Bill to prevent re-arrest for capricious reasons. I thought that Amendment No. 98 was well founded, but his assurances and explanations have satisfied me. Finally, I certainly agree with the noble and learned Lord’s response on time limits for holding persons in custody for the suspected breach of conditional cautions. I appreciate that there are provisions in PACE that one would hope would ensure that the time one could be kept in custody would be as short as reasonable within the individual circumstances. The noble and learned Lord gave the common example of somebody being drunk on arrest or of there being fights in the police station and of the police’s resources being rather stretched. I can certainly think of other circumstances. It might well be that the person is a vulnerable adult; it could well be that the person involved needed an interpreter. I could happily be an advocate against my own position in that respect. I have put these matters on the record in some detail at this stage because I do not foresee any need to return to Clause 16 matters on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 98 to 100 not moved.] [Amendment No. 101 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.] [Amendment No. 102 not moved.] Clause 16 agreed to. Clause 17 [Local authority scrutiny of crime and disorder matters]: