Clause 3 - Bail elsewhere than at police station
Criminal Justice Bill
4:30 pm
Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Cran.
The clause deals with what is commonly known as street bail. We all understand the clear operational benefits of allowing the police some flexibility, but we must ensure that the same delimitations and safeguards that apply at a police station also apply elsewhere. The process requires clarity, so that everyone knows what is happening, why and what the consequences might be.
Two of the amendments in the group were tabled by the Liberal Democrats and we have happily subscribed to the Conservative amendments.
Amendment No. 85 is a corollary to a later amendment tabled to deal with the potential delay factor—unquantified at present, but limited to two hours under the amendment. It deals with the original wording of the 1984 Act, particularly the vagueness in the phrase ''as soon as practicable'' after the arrest. It would be qualified by the changes in new section 30A. We can easily add clarity to the original wording by limiting ''as soon as practicable'' to a maximum of two hours. In operational terms, it is unlikely to have a significant effect. It simply avoids an unpardonable delay in taking a person to a police station after arresting him. That seems a sensible explanation of what the term may mean.
Amendment No. 90 is a probing amendment. Paragraph 2 to schedule 1 deals with entry and search after arrest. We are not sure what the Minister has in mind in here and we hope that he can elucidate it for us. We assume that we are talking about entry and search of premises rather than a person in this instance. It would be helpful if he could set out not only how he construes the meaning of that paragraph, but under which circumstances he intends
it to be used. There is at least a strong supposition that it reduces the requirements for obtaining an authorisation. He can tell me if that supposition is wrong. If so, we would need to be persuaded that there is a case for reducing the conditions for authorisation, because of particular circumstances that are not immediately apparent.
I should like to deal briefly with the other amendments in the group, although I do not wish to steal anyone else's thunder. I welcome Government amendment No. 35. Clearly it would be silly to put the requirement on a named constable, rather than a constable in generality, for determining that a person no longer needs to be detained. That seems a sensible drafting change. We look forward to the explanations of amendments Nos. 75 and 10. I have briefly touched on amendment No. 11. No doubt the hon. Member for Beaconsfield will wish to expand on that. We will certainly support him.
Finally, I should like to make a broad point in this context. There is a concern about what a local police station is. It will mean different things in different places. There is an underlying assumption in this part of the Bill that every person being arrested will be in the vicinity of a police station that is staffed, available, has a custody suite and is within a reasonable distance from his normal abode. In many of our constituencies that is simply not the case. Many of our police stations are closed for a lot of the time. If the duty sergeant or constable is called away, the station may be closed without notice. Many of our police stations are some considerable distance from where the arrested person lives.
If a designated police station in this context is a police station with a custody suite that is capable of providing custody within the meaning of the current legislation, my constituency does not contain a single such station. We do not have a police station with operational cells in which a person who has been arrested could be held. There needs to be a little amplification from the Minister about what would happen if, under those circumstances, someone was arrested, given bail and required to report to a police station that was not available at the requisite moment. That seems to place an additional burden on the person arrested, which does not help them to comply with the conditions that have been set out for them.