Clause 6 - Secretary of state's guidance
Criminal Justice and Police Bill
9:30 pm
Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire, Conservative)
Indeed.
The guidance deals with the exercise of the constable's discretion in issuing of the fixed penalty notice, and it is designed to encourage good practice. Had we seen the draft guidance, I should have been far less keen for it to be in the form of a code of practice and should have preferred to have debated it here. The Committee should have an opportunity to debate something as important as the guidance, on which the Minister has relied on numerous occasions in explaining the Bill's provisions. I should have been happy to debate it in Committee, but as the Bill was put together at short notice, the guidance is obviously not ready.
The Police Federation has concerns about the difficulty that a police officer might face when trying to decide how severe an offence is and whether it merits a fixed penalty notice. The Minister made that point in our first sitting. On the vexed issue of compensation for criminal damage, he promised that no case in which a person can be identified as the victim would result in a fixed penalty notice, so those people would not be deprived of compensation. He has told us that he will issue guidance to make clear the type of offence with which the scheme is designed to deal. That shows that he clearly recognises the importance of the guidance.
Various points have been made about the issuing of notices, which is another aspect of the guidance. We believe that matters of such importance should be dealt with in a code of practice that has been debated by Parliament. One can understand what the Bill means in practice only if one has seen the guidance, so it should be debated.
With regard to the means of the accused person, to which amendment No. 14 refers, we need to see the guidance because of the breadth of the discretion involved. In our first sitting, the Minister said:
``Regarding the inability of the poor to pay on time, we believe that there is flexibility in the situation. The hon. Gentleman discussed potential police victimisation. Police officers already have discretion in how they deal with offenders. They can charge, caution or move on someone whom they find committing an offence. Fixed penalties are simply an additional power in the repertoire that is already used professionally by the police. We do not accept the charge that this is a charter for incompetent police, which is what has been suggested.—[Official Report, Standing Committee F, 6 February 2001; c. 28.]
The Police Federation and members of the Committee want to know how he expects that discretion to be used. If we are not be told in Committee, the House should have an opportunity to find out at a later date.