That is absolutely right. I was using that example to make a point, but whether we are talking about a police officer or an emergency worker, if this Bill becomes an Act—I would entirely support that—the principal potential for injustice is not the absence of legislation used to arrest, prosecute and convict an individual; it is where a prosecutor might make the wrong decision to drop a charge because, in an erroneous assessment of the public interest, he or she decides that it is not worth the candle. That is critical.
The second potential area of injustice is wrongful or erroneous charging. The example given was of a police officer who attends the scene of an alleged crime and her finger is bitten off. An offence for that already exists—causing grievous bodily harm with intent—and the maximum penalty is life imprisonment. If the defendant was convicted, Sentencing Council guidelines suggest that he or she should receive between nine and 16 years’ imprisonment.
Why do I make that point? Let us suppose the defendant is inexplicably charged with assaulting a PC—maximum sentence six months. Under the current position, the defendant would plead guilty and those six months would be reduced to four, because a third of the sentence would be docked. He would then serve half that sentence, which is two months. That is the maximum penalty. It is vanishingly rare that anyone ever gets the maximum penalty, but let us suppose someone does in this case and receives two months. Under the new regime, he would have a maximum sentence of 12 months, but we take off four because of the guilty plea, so the sentence is down to eight months. He will then serve four months, which is a bit more.
The amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley would make the maximum sentence 24 months, but let us look at what would happen in practice. If the defendant pleads guilty, 24 months is reduced to 16 months, and he will then serve half of that. We must be careful about this. The net effect is simply that the sentence would go from a maximum of two months in custody to eight months, even with my hon. Friend’s amendment. The true area of injustice is not the absence of the offence; it is when a prosecutor makes the daft decision not to charge someone with the appropriate offence. Of course I support the Bill, but we must keep our eye on the real areas of injustice, which are upstream.
Finally, in my experience, police officers, and perhaps, in future, emergency workers, will take umbrage at the fact that if a defendant is convicted of , for example, a robbery, even if the court says, “Right. That’s it. Two years for the robbery and four months for assaulting a PC”, those sentences will invariably run concurrently, and a police officer could be left thinking, “What on earth was the point of that?”