Clause 1 - Breach of non-molestation order to be a criminal offence
Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill [Lords]
2:30 pm
Mr Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, Home, Constitutional & Legal Affairs; Beaconsfield, Conservative)
Welcome to the Chair, Mr. Benton, and to the proceedings of this Committee. They were most enjoyable this morning and will, I hope, continue to be so this afternoon.
I was making a point this morning about the relationship between the civil and criminal proceedings and how the Bill would affect those. After I sat down, the Minister kindly indicated that a comment that he had made earlier in response to the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) had potentially given a misleading impression as to what elements of the civil procedure would survive in future.
If I understand this important matter correctly, we will be invited by the Government to amend schedule 7 to delete entirely the power of arrest in civil proceedings, as it is considered no longer to be necessary because there is a general power of arrest associated with the breach of the non-molestation order. At the risk of taking slightly more time in responding to that than necessary—the Minister may wish to intervene, or we may wish to deal with the
matter at a later stage—let me say that it highlights the extent to which the civil procedure is disappearing down the plughole of history.
Let us consider that for one moment. If no power of arrest is attached to a non-molestation order and the person breaches it, the only avenue for revisiting the matter must be for the case to go to the magistrates court. As far as I can see, in those circumstances there will not even be a power for the police physically to take a person from detention at a police station back to the county court, although I suppose that if the victim were to issue a summons in the county court and serve it on the police when the person was in police custody, the police might be under an obligation—as they are in any other civil proceedings—to produce the prisoner at the county court, but not because of the breach of any order.
If I have understood correctly, and we are going to delete the power of civil arrest, perhaps the Minister will explain, either now or on clause stand part, how there will ever be a power to produce someone coercively at the county court thereafter for the breach of an order. I do not think that there will be such a power. It will be finished. The hon. and learned Member for Redcar suggested that civil proceedings for contempt would henceforth be a dead letter.
I hope that the Government have thought that through, because if that is the consequence, as the hon. and learned Lady said, circumstances that might better be visited by contempt proceedings will inevitably have to be dealt with through the criminal justice system. That would cause me some anxiety. I can see the logic of the Government's getting rid of the power of arrest in contempt proceedings and attaching the non-molestation order, but that must mean that the civil judge's jurisdiction ends with the order and thereafter he will never be seized of the matter again, except insofar as it relates to other domestic proceedings for which he may have responsibility.
I do not intend to press these matters any further. However, I will think about them, because I am concerned that the full implications of the measure for the civil jurisdiction of the county court and the civil courts generally have not been addressed entirely. If the civil judge has no power to order the arrest and subsequent production of a defendant appearing before him for contempt, contempt proceedings must effectively be at end. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.