Clause 2 - Penalty notices
Criminal Justice and Police Bill
10:30 am
Mr Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
I am happy to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Hood—for the first time, I believe.
I apologise to the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) for not having been here for the first few moments, but I anticipated his line of attack and am sympathetic to it, as he would expect. He is attempting to deal with what is the practical issue for most of the offences listed in the Bill. He is confronting the reality of life on the street, which we discussed last week, which is that most people confronted with an officer walking toward them would not hang around to receive a fixed penalty notice—they would scarper and would certainly not give their name. As I said last week, if I were in that situation I would certainly scarper and not give my name. Nobody is asking to be nicked and done; that is just not the real world.
Therefore, although I am sympathetic to the proposal, it compounds an unsatisfactory procedure with another unrealistic offence. We will get more offences on the statute book that are unlikely ever to achieve anything. Trying to find and then prosecute people who have no money and who are unlikely to be compliant strikes me as unsatisfactory. It would be far better to do as was implied both in suggestions from some police organisations and in our debate last week: not to give the police the choices for which the hon. Member for South Thanet was arguing, but to provide for fixed penalty notices to be issued at the police station. Pretty well all the offences are ones where people are likely to be antagonistic and reluctant to co-operate and give their name, but if the police manage to lay their fingers on someone's collar and get him into the police station there is a realistic chance of discovering who he is and giving him a fixed penalty notice.