Clause 6 - Property of detained persons
Criminal Justice Bill
11:00 am
Mr Humfrey Malins (Woking, Conservative)
I am grateful to the Minister, but once again this is a bolt from the blue. I know of no guidance: is it in PACE, or another addition to PACE, another code or what? The Minister referred to items of ''significant value'', but what is that? What is the value of my Omega watch, which my dear father gave me? I took it in for a service the other day, expecting it to be worth about £400 in today's money, but was told that it was worth about £20. My father is still alive and well, and I went and told him. The Minister says that, in accordance with the guidance, items of significant value will have to be recorded, but that is no answer, as my hon. Friends would agree.
I turn to the second reason that it is vital that money is kept. The hon. Member for Wellingborough is a barrister of distinction, who has appeared for defendants in court. Undoubtedly he, like others at the Bar and in the legal profession, has appeared on an overnight case. Let us imagine that a defendant is arrested at 9 o'clock at night for being drunk and disorderly. The hon. Gentleman will probably not have taken a small case like that except in the very early days of his career, which subsequently blossomed, but I have to take such cases from the judicial end, at Bow Street, Camberwell Green or Greenwich.
It is 10 o'clock in the morning and the defendant enters. The documents are with the jailer. The charge is drunk and disorderly. When asked what he pleads, he replies, ''guilty''. He is told to stand up. When the jailer is asked how much money the defendant had on him, he replies, ''He had £17.50 on him, your honour.'' The defendant is fined £15, payable forthwith, and told to go away. End of story.
That is a very helpful tool for the judiciary in overnight cases—which occur all around London. In the need to get a fine paid, being able to know how much money is in the defendant's pocket is very useful. Just imagine the chief district judge at Bow Street asking how much money a defendant has on him and being told, ''I can't tell you, your honour.'' When the judge asks, ''Why not?'', the jailer replies, ''Because under this clause I do not have to keep a record of it, your honour. Guidance was sent in a letter asking me to do that, but I did not choose to observe it.'' The courts would not like that at all. I provide that illustration to make the point that recording money, and having the requirement to do so in the statute, is an important factor for the courts.
The necessity to enshrine the requirement in statute has been questioned. The Minister might say that it is bureaucracy, and that it is causing the police a lot of problems—causing them to waste much time that would be better spend investigating serious crime. We know that serious crime is the great scourge of this country, and we are told that removing this obligation on the police will free them up to do the work that they are meant to be doing. Any party, such as mine, that queries that suggestion might be categorised as being anti-law and order.