Clause 11 - Grant and conditions of bail
Criminal Justice Bill
9:15 pm
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield, Conservative)
As the Minister will see, the Conservative amendments, although different in wording from the Liberal ones, have the same purpose of eliciting from the Government the
background to the measure. I would go slightly further than the hon. Gentleman in voicing an anxiety—I put it no more strongly than that; it is not something that would yet make me vote against the clause—about the introduction of the welfare considerations into the granting of bail. As I said in my closing comments on clause 10, we appear to be slipping gently into a hybrid world in which children's welfare issues will no longer be the responsibility of the civil courts. Instead, we are being moved increasingly into intervention, not only when a child has been convicted of an offence but when a child is awaiting trial for an alleged offence and in circumstances in which full representation, which is appointed to ensure that the child's interests are properly addressed, is not available.
I fully appreciate that at first sight there appear to be compelling reasons for adopting that course of action. If a child appears to have welfare requirements when he first comes into contact with the criminal justice system, it may be argued that to delay intervention will not be in his interests. Therefore, to impose bail conditions that have reference to his welfare may appear to be in his interest. However, we must face the fact that, in so doing, we are short-cutting the normal procedure, and as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said, it is at least questionable whether we are observing our international obligations.
I suppose that that will in part depend on what the welfare considerations and the measures imposed on a child in those circumstances are in practice. I assumed, although I may be wrong, that with the welfare considerations that had been introduced, we might envisage a variety of measures, particularly relating to the question of the risk in terms of drug addiction. That is just one example.
I may be wrong, but we must be careful, or we could be in danger of introducing a parallel child care system that is imposed without the child's rights being adequately protected. Where, in such a case, is the child's representative? Where is the representative of the possible competing interests between parent and child, or between local authority and child? There is none of these. What there is, apparently, is a move to a short-cut procedure to address the child's best interests, but which will, I believe, largely be dictated by the police and no one else.
I hope that this is an opportunity to explore that issue. I am not unsympathetic to the Minister's aim, but I am slightly troubled and I know that some outside organisations, including the Children's Society, were extremely troubled by the provision. It may be worth pointing out that I tabled the amendments before they contacted me. I suspect that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome did the same. We were probably working along the same lines as we read the clause, and raising the same questions.