Police and Justice Bill

There are a number of incentives. One is that the matter will usually be dealt with much more quickly. An offer is made and, in a sense, the defendant then has to choose whether to accept that offer or to take the matter to the magistrates court, with all the time that that may take. There is a greater degree of certainty, because the defendant knows what the offer is, whereas he does not really know what the magistrates court may do. He will be able to determine whether he can afford to pay the fine—or whatever it is—there and then. There are also limitations on the level of fine that can be imposed as a result of a conditional caution. The limitation is about a quarter of the maximum in a particular case or £500. The penalties will be constrained, in terms of what can be done, if we get all the proposals that we want through. So, there are some advantages to the defendant in choosing a conditional caution. He will get free legal advice. Let me take the hon. Gentleman through what would happen. Let us say that a defendant has just been arrested, is brought to the police station and is being charged with driving away from a garage without paying for the petrol. He has got a few previous convictions, but nothing major. He is not a long-term recidivist offender. I will describe how we would like to see things operate. They have not always operated in this way in the pilot areas, because we have been looking at how we can get things to develop, but the aim is that the scheme would operate in the following way. The offence would be considered and a decision would be made about whether this was an appropriate matter to be dealt with by a conditional caution. The police would telephone the Crown prosecutor, or the Crown prosecutor may well be in the police station in some of the charging centres. The question would then be the conditions that needed to be imposed. When the conditions were agreed by the prosecutor, an offer would be made to the defendant. In such circumstances, it would be of key importance that the defendant had admitted the offence and that there was no doubt about his culpability. After the prosecutor made the offer, the defendant could ask for free legal advice. He would then decide whether to accept the offer, and a number of things could then happen. For example, it might take a short time to find out how much compensation should be paid. In the example that I cited, for instance, it could be straightforward to calculate the compensation, if the cost of the petrol was known, but if the offence was a form of criminal damage, it might take some time to obtain quotes to determine what the value of the compensation should be. If the defendant did not agree to comply with the conditions, he would end up going back to the magistrates court to be dealt with in the normal way.