Clause 21 - No order made: reconsideration of benefit
Proceeds of Crime Bill
12:15 pm
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 88, in page 12, line 33, leave out subsection (2)(b).
It may be due to the hour of the night when I drafted some of the amendments but a re-reading of clause 21 seems to provide reassurance for my anxieties and doubts. However, there is a matter that the Committee should flag up.
We are considering the reconsideration of the benefit. My probing amendment asks what is intended by subsection (2)(b), which states:
``the defendant does not have a criminal lifestyle and has not benefited from his particular criminal conduct''.
Subsection (5) makes it clear that a fresh decision should be based upon a reconsideration of the benefit, rather than whether a person had a criminal lifestyle in the first place, which originally sprang to my mind. We should consider what should happen if a court concluded that a person did not have a criminal lifestyle, but subsequent evidence emerged to indicate that he did. The situation of a defendant who is convicted when the court does not have all information about his previous convictions is not unheard of. I have seen that happen, and observed defendants being convicted when the court was ignorant of their previous convictions.
The definition of a person's criminal lifestyle arises from whether they have committed a particular offence or a series of offences. What would be the situation be if, subsequent to a conviction, it were to emerge that, because the wrong button had been pressed on the police computer, the court—having decided that there was no benefit from that criminal conduct—discovered that the person fell within the general criminal conduct provisions?