Clause 13 - Arrest for failing to comply with conditional caution
Police and Justice Bill
10:00 am
Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
I hope that I can give hon. Members some reassurance. It is a matter of practicality, as the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) has outlined. The provision will often be used for a quick inquiry to ascertain whether conditions have been breached, so that the process can go ahead. It would be illogical if someone who had been arrested had to be released and rearrested so that the breach of the original condition could be dealt with. We are trying to get the balance right between a proper system with safeguards, checks and balances, and getting matters dealt with as quickly as possible. That is the imperative throughout the system.
Subsection (6) specifies
“the power to keep the person in police detention if it is necessary to do so for the purpose of investigating whether he has failed, without reasonable excuse, to comply with any of the conditions attached to the conditional caution.”
When the detention becomes unnecessary for the purpose of those investigations it becomes unlawful. It is lawful only for as long as it is necessary for the carrying out of the inquiries. It would be unreasonable of me arbitrarily to suggest what I would regard as reasonable or necessary in any one of 100 different circumstances that could arise when the police had to carry out inquiries to establish whether a condition had been breached. The essence of the matter is that it relates to the specific case that a police officer is dealing with.
As long as the detention is necessary to allow the inquiries to be carried out, the officer will be within the legal framework set out in the clause. Once the matter strays into an area where detention is no longer necessary, the detention will be unlawful, and open to challenge in a range of ways.