Clause 5 - Limits on period of detention without charge
Criminal Justice Bill
10:00 am
Mr Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
That is a perfectly proper question, which I shall not forget, but I want to link it to what I
think is the reason why we are debating the proposed extension. The idea of further powers initially related not to robbery but to burglary. Two developments in the past decade were relevant. First, a study was carried out at the beginning of the 1990s on burglaries. It was argued that burglaries sometimes required people to be held for longer than the norm. The reasons listed for that included waiting for solicitors; recovery of stolen property; the requirement to allow suspects eight hours' rest overnight if they were held for a long time; difficulty in interviewing all the suspects if several were nicked at the same time; police going off shift and not returning until 24 hours later; and, quite importantly, the reasonable reluctance of the police to trigger the 36-hour option by stating that an offence was a serious offence, for fear that the court might say that it was not, and that they had abused their powers.
Secondly, in the late 1990s, the Association of Chief Police Officers came to the view that it would be helpful, for a variety of reasons, for the power to be extended so that it did not apply to ''serious'' arrestable offences, but to arrestable offences. In that case, robbery, like burglary, would be included. Thus the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question is yes; that is a reason for arguing for an extension to the 36-hour option. My answer is that I might be persuaded that robbery and burglary should be included in the list of 36-hour detention offences.
As the hon. Member for Hertsmere knows, and as I mentioned earlier, under the present provision, offences can be included in the 36-hour category if the sentence is fixed by law, if there is a minimum sentence of five years' imprisonment, or if they are in the list. I should be happier if Ministers wanted to include robbery and burglary in the list of offences for which there is a power of longer detention. That would be preferable to a sweeping general change that would encompass many other offences. Arguments in a previous parliamentary Session about jury trial raised similar issues. I think that the Conservative party, like us, strongly opposed the proposal to withdraw from the list of either-way offences the defendant's right to choose whether to go to the magistrates court, or to the Crown court for jury trial.
I never argued that the list was a piece of theology written on tablets of stone, or that it could not be reviewed. I argued that if one thought that for some cases there should be the option of a jury trial, yet for others there should not be, one should look at the list and change offences, if one thought that that was the right way to dispose of them. That is my answer to the hon. Gentleman. I am not against the idea of considering an offence for which there was evidence that there would be difficulties in dealing with it in 24 hours. If the case is made, it should be added to the list in the relevant schedule to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which permits that offence to come into the longer detention category.
There are reasons why we should be sceptical. The Minister alluded to one reason, which is the small number of cases in which the power has been needed. The Minister gave the figure. At the last calculation—I hope that the Committee will weigh the figure
heavily—697 people were detained in the last year for more than 24 hours, out of a total of 1.25 million detentions.
The table that shows which police forces have used those powers is revealing and interesting. Avon and Somerset, Cumbria, Dorset, Durham, Humberside, Norfolk, Nottinghamshire—interestingly—Staffordshire, Dyfed-Powys and North Wales never use those powers. Before the hon. Member for Nottingham, North intervenes to suggest otherwise, the issue does not affect Nottinghamshire.
There is a group of forces that use the powers occasionally, that is, in a band of under 10 times a year. Cheshire used them three times, Derbyshire twice, Devon and Cornwall once, Gloucestershire seven times, Greater Manchester once, Kent nine times, Leicestershire three times, Lincolnshire four times, the City of London once, the Metropolitan police—the biggest force in the country, with a quarter of all police officers—seven times only, North Yorkshire eight times, Sussex once, Warwickshire seven times, the West Midlands twice, and Wiltshire three times.
There is an intermediate band of forces that used the powers between 10 and 100 times. Bedfordshire used them 24 times, Cambridgeshire 13 times, Cleveland 10 times, Essex 59 times—at the top end—and Hampshire 17 times. Hertfordshire, the county of the hon. Member for Hertsmere, used them 71 times, Lancashire 41 times, Merseyside 14 times, Northamptonshire 68 times, Northumbria 24 times, South Yorkshire 19 times, Suffolk 11 times, Surrey 13 times, Thames Valley 18 times, West Mercia 15 times and West Yorkshire 14. It would be interesting to ask Hertfordshire—the force with the highest number in that category—why it needed the power so often, when the Met police, which dealt with many more cases, did not.
Most extraordinary is that from the total figure of 697 times, one force detained people over the 24-hour limit 192 times: Gwent. The Met police only needed to do that seven times in a year, yet Gwent did it 192 times. There may be an absolutely logical explanation, but I know the county of Gwent pretty well. The new Archbishop of Canterbury was, until recently, in charge of the diocese that included the county of Gwent. It was extremely law-abiding then; it is no less law-abiding now. The rugby players are no more or less prone to disorderly behaviour on a Saturday night in Newport than they are in Cardiff, Bridgend or Swansea. Nearly a third of all those occasions arose in one police force out of the 43 in England and Wales.
Something is going wrong somewhere. The Government seek an extension of powers, but many forces have never used them. Indeed, the biggest force has used them seven times, most other forces have used them only a handful of times and, even if we exclude Gwent, only three other forces—Essex, Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire—have used the powers more than 50 times. It seems to me that a very good case needs to be made for change.