Police and Justice Bill

It seems to us that an important principle is at stake here that Parliament should uphold—that the police and the Crown Prosecution Service should prosecute and our courts, whether it be magistrates courts or Crown courts, should try a case on evidence, convict or acquit and sentence where appropriate. Our courts should not prosecute and our police and prosecutors should not sentence. Conditional cautions breach that principle, since they give the power of sentencing to agencies other than the courts. I want to see justice in the court room, not at the cash point and I want the separation between the police, the prosecution and the courts maintained. The analogy made previously between the penal aspects of a conditional caution and a fixed penalty notice is not strictly accurate, but it will, for now at least, have to do. I accept that the best is sometimes the enemy of the good and that the concession on conditional cautions made by the Government in the other place has to some extent mitigated the most offensive elements of the scheme. I congratulate my noble Friends on their achievement and, indeed, the Government on having the good sense to agree to a compromise. I am content, if not deliriously happy, to accede to the Government’s motion.