It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones). I will return to one of her points in a moment, but I shall start by focusing on the amendments tabled in my name—amendments 118 to 121.
In 2017, we reformed pre-charge bail—that is police bail in the jargon—to introduce time limits on how long suspects can be held on bail before being charged, and we introduced a general presumption against the use of pre-charge bail. These changes came after the terrible treatment—I reiterate, the terrible treatment—of some people, the most famous of whom, I guess, was
Paul Gambaccini, in the spin-off from the Savile affair. Gambaccini’s career was destroyed by the effective presumption of guilt in the treatment of him.
Even with those 2017 reforms, we still see a large number of people on pre-charge bail today and, indeed, for excessive lengths of time. In 2019, the number on pre-charge bail was 84,000. In 2020, it was nearly 154,000. The effect of the 2017 legislation, therefore, was not to suppress pre-charge bail, so the logic behind the changes in the current Bill are flawed to start off with. Worse than that, the number of people held on pre-charge bail for more than 12 months is 2,344, which is itself an increase on the previous year. These are people for whom there is not enough evidence to charge—not to convict, but to charge, which is a much, much lower threshold.
Currently, I have a case where the National Crime Agency has kept an individual on bail for almost six years. That is six years of being unable to live anywhere but her home address; six years of being unable to see her family because her passport has been withheld; six years of being without a bank account; six years of being without a job or career; and six years of being unable to lead a normal life. When I took it up with the National Crime Agency, I got a letter in response, which, frankly, would have done justice to an episode of “Yes Minister.” The most interesting point in it was a comment making the point that investigations took a long time. It said: “Investigations of this length are not uncommon when dealing with complex cases.” Six years is not uncommon in a justice system where the presumption of innocence is paramount. That is the problem that I am addressing with my amendments. For someone who has not even been charged, the NCA’s actions in this case make a complete mockery of the principle of presumed innocent until proven guilty. By the way, as an aside—separate from the Bill—we cannot find out how many people the NCA has under these circumstances. It is not subject to freedom of information requests and we know nothing about its operations, yet it still does these things.
The Bill seeks to undo the 2017 reforms, eliminating the general presumption against pre-charge bail and amending time limits. Although reform is clearly needed, this is not the correct way to do it. As the Law Society has said, changes to pre-charge bail may lead to people being kept “in limbo” for long periods of time, impacting their civil liberties. I entirely agree. The Government, of course, argue that their proposed reforms have public backing, but the consultation responses were starkly skewed. Police and law enforcement agencies accounted for 65% of the responses, compared to the legal professions at a mere 3%. Nobody should take at face value the Government’s claim that that backing reflects the consultation; it reflects the interests of the agencies involved.
My amendments 118 and 119 would introduce a two-year absolute limit on the use of pre-charge bail, ensuring that agencies had time to investigate properly but promptly. We should remember that the test is the ability to charge, not the ability to convict. That is how far it has to get in two years; that is the primary aim.
Amendments 120 and 121 would prevent the Government from reversing the presumption against the use of pre-charge bail. That would prevent a return
to the practice of bailing suspects for lengthy periods with strict and unacceptable curbs to their civil liberties.
I would like to pick up the point made by the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), because clearly she got some pushback from the Government Benches. As it stands, the Bill actually does pose a grave threat to the fundamental right to protest that this country has had enshrined in our national fabric for, I think, some 800 years. The Bill does address real issues, but the Government want to have the power to arrest people who cause “serious annoyance” or “serious inconvenience”. These are incredibly vague terms, frankly. It is clearly a breach of the normal reasoning behind a demonstration when somebody glues themselves to a train with the direct intention of inconveniencing everybody else, but demonstrations do lead to inconvenience.
It is not just the leftie, liberal, legal fraternity that has been worried about the proposed power; there was a letter to the Home Secretary, elements of which were published in today’s edition of The Times, from a number of police chiefs, who are concerned that the effect of the provision is twofold. First, it puts the police in the position of making judgments that they should not be making; that should be specified by this House, not by the police chiefs themselves. Secondly, that puts them in a politicised position, and that is really problematic. We have an apolitical police and every law we write must be written on the presumption that it will be a Government very unlike ours who oversee us at some point in the future. What if, in 20 years’ time, we have an extreme right-wing or extreme left-wing Government, and this sort of vague provision is in place? I ask the Government to pay attention to the precision of this measure, so that we get it exactly right.