Police and Justice Bill

I teased the noble Baroness because it is the Government, in their early release schemes, who are releasing from prison those who should be there. We can see the difficulties arising from those with life sentences who have been lost after release by the probation service. However, we will return to those matters another day. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her statement that it is not the Government’s intention to return to night courts. I notice that she did not say that these provisions would preclude that, but I take on trust what she said. We will consider further whether any amendment needs to be made, but I certainly accept her assurance. The Minister also gives proper recognition of PACE and the protections it contains. Of course we accept that, but it is a question of the interplay between the protections of PACE as operated by the police and the need of people accused of a crime to be able to get the protection of legal advice as well. She is right to point out that there has to be a provision for refusing legal advice. On occasion it is the very people who refuse it and then plead guilty who ought to have taken it in the first place. They then get tied up in knots, saying that they did it but they did not mean to. Then we get into intentionality, so there is a difficulty there. I accept what the Minister says about the cases likely to be at the lower end, although they are not necessarily confined there by these provisions. One would expect that to be the case. I hear what the Minister says about consent; there are still some matters where expressed consent will not be required but may be acceptable. So far, I have been looking from the point of view of protections for the defendant. Since it is late, perhaps I may be a little frivolous, although the police may not consider it so. I saw a report last week about another use of new technology: the police are piloting the use of a helmet with a camera on it so that you are really banged to rights if you are arrested. I had this apocalyptic vision of the Government’s justice system: the police take the video, nab the person and say, ““Right, my son, here you are, it’s midnightand the next thing you are going to do is pleadguilty by live link””. That is a potentially interesting development.