New Clause 12 - Interception of communications (No. 4)
Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill
11:00 am
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Huntingdon, Conservative)
As I was listening to the interesting speech that my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield gave, I wondered what was behind the Government's thinking and was left thinking that there is a lack of Government policy. The proposals to allow a constable to arrest on suspicion of any offence and to allow the arrest without warrant of anyone who is guilty of an offence or suspected or being guilty are radical and are, as my hon. Friend said, a departure from how things have worked in this country.
We said earlier that, except in limited circumstances such as the imminent risk of injury or if addresses are suspected to be false, the present serious requirement for arrest builds a degree of proportionality into the arrest decision. The Law Society considered that with the proposed wider discretion and necessity test there would be more human rights-based court challenges to arrest.
Have the Government consulted with ethnic groups? Minorities may feel even more subject to discriminatory and disproportionate exercise of police powers with the numbers of possible arrests going up. The Minister may wish to comment. People arrested for minor offences that would not be arrestable at present would also become subject to a host of other related police powers, such as samples being taken and DNA being added to the database. The 2002 joint Home Office and Cabinet Office PACE review recommended producing a definitive list of powers to arrest and to enhance training, rather than removing the distinction between arrestable offences and others. Could the Minister give reasons why the change has taken place?
I want to end by going back to the policy issue. The changes could be used to lay a new framework for a zero-tolerance policy of New York-style policing, where we go around arresting everyone for everything. Minor offences become the important offences, because if one cracks down on petty vandalism and yobbish behaviour, the other more serious offences do not happen. There are cogent arguments for that approach, which the Government have not made and will have to make if those are the reasons why they are putting the proposals in place.
Have the Government discussed the proposals with the police? I would be interested to hear the Minister's views. I know that in recent times the police have been not so interested in smaller crimes, but have stayed in their police cars and headed out to deal with the big crimes. However, we have had a move away from that and back towards community policing in recent years. Is that move part of the Government policy behind the proposals? Has the Home Office carried out research into the matter?
The Minister needs to explain why the changes are required.