I will come to that point. I will try to answer that question, but if I do not, I know the noble and learned Lord will remind me. However, I think I will come to it. I was just making the point that there will be safeguards, checks and balances under the new two-tier framework, an example of which may be a review by an officer of a higher rank before a decision to issue a caution is made.
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Prosecution authorities are responsible for ensuring that authorised persons are suitably trained and competent to exercise this function appropriately. We believe it would be operationally unviable to have all officers personally subject to assessment and accreditation before they can issue a caution. We are working closely with police and other authorities to ensure that briefing and training take place prior to implementation of the new measures, and I therefore urge the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, to withdraw his amendment.
I turn now to Amendment 186A, on which the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, beautifully read the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. We agree that scrutiny and monitoring of out-of-court disposals is vital to successful implementation, accountability and public perception. The problem with this amendment, though, is that it would have what I am sure are unintended consequences beyond the particular policy area, because it would impose a statutory duty on Her Majesty’s inspectorates of both the police and the CPS and could set a precedent that would adversely impact the independent nature of the inspectorate regime. Those two inspectorates are not regulators; they do not have power to enforce compliance. They support continuous improvement and learning by means of inspection. It is evidenced-based and consultative but it is not a regulatory approach and, because inspections may be thematic rather than recurring, it is right and proper for the inspectorate to make the independent assessment of when and how they should take place.
Over and above that, the amendment would have potential legal implications for the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate Act 2000. That is because Section 2 of that Act sets out that my right honourable and learned friend the Attorney-General should be consulted on proposed inspection programmes, and the Attorney-General’s Office may, by order, specify the form that those programmes or frameworks are to take. The amendment would therefore undermine the power of the Attorney-General in these circumstances.
As is the case for the current conditional caution, a code of practice will accompany these clauses of the Bill. I hope here to reply to the points put to me by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. This is the appropriate place to set out arrangements for scrutiny and transparency of the new framework to seek to ensure a consistent but appropriate approach. Alongside the regulations we have already addressed, the code of practice will be subject to the affirmative parliamentary procedure—a point that I received by WhatsApp because officials heard the question he put; it works sometimes. The Government will also carry out stakeholder engagement and consultation on the code, allowing for a collaborative approach with stakeholders and sufficient time to draft this without the pressure of the time constraints of the Bill.
Finally, I turn, with an eye on the clock, to the assertion or contention of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that Clauses 80 and 89 should not stand part of the Bill. These introduce rehabilitation and reparation conditions which may be attached to a diversionary or community caution respectively: it is the same wording for each, as the Committee will have seen. They have the objective of facilitating the rehabilitation of the offender, ensuring the offender makes reparation for the offence, or both. The conditions can be restrictive conditions, unpaid work conditions or attendance conditions. The clause specifies the activities which the offender may be restricted from undertaking, the maximum number of hours of unpaid work and the maximum number of attendance hours—a number that may be varied by regulations to allow flexibility. These too will be laid before Parliament for scrutiny. We believe that the real benefit here is having rehabilitative and reparative conditions as early on in the criminal justice process as the caution stage. That will, we hope, reduce pressure on court resource and time and act as a deterrent to further offending behaviour.
If I may just take a moment to respond, I think there were three questions that I should respond to briefly. The first was from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, about data. As the Committee will know from previous exchanges, I am quite a fan of data. The position on this is that published data does not distinguish between the different categories of adult cautions. We currently have access only to aggregated data for both simple and conditional cautions given by the police. We do not have data on what conditions are attached to each conditional caution, and it is for that reason that we are committed to engaging with the stakeholders on the appropriate monitoring as we develop the secondary regulations for the new diversionary and community cautions. We hope to use that to improve the data that we hold centrally.
The second point put to me by the noble Lord was summarised by him, I think, as spending more to achieve nothing. If I can take it away from the rhetorical flourish, the position is that the three MoJ-led pilots now have a total of 15 police forces that have adopted the two-tier model. Although there has been some discussion of costs, the experience of all these forces shows that it can work and be upscaled or downscaled as appropriate to their force budget.
I do not want to take too much time at this hour going through the differences between Leicestershire or Avon and Somerset, and Devon and Cornwall, but we believe that the experience shows that it can be developed as a low-cost approach. Cambridge University’s evidence review found that out of court disposals with conditions appear to be promising in terms of reducing harm, including in cases of domestic violence. Although there might be costs, there can also be benefits, not only to the police but to other agencies, such as the CPS or Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. I apprehend that may be a point we will come back to, because we have other groups dealing with cautions as well.
Finally, I pick up a point made from the Back Benches, for a change, by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, that there is too much variation or a lack or a consistency in the use of out of court disposals across police forces. The noble Lord is, with respect, right that there are differences in the way cautions are given across forces. That is why, as I said earlier, we want to simplify the framework to reduce the inconsistency. We have to recognise, however, that there is ultimately an operational policing point here. Necessarily, therefore, because we have different police forces we will have different operational decisions, and different emphases in the way out of court disposals—