Clause 20
Serious Crime Bill [Lords]
12:15 pm
Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 121, in clause 20, page 12, line 44, leave out from ‘concerned;’ to the end of line 1 on page 13.
The amendment is small, but I suggest that it is surprisingly important. It would delete the provision contained in subsection (7)(b), namely that an order can be made by the Crown court in addition to an order “discharging the person conditionally”. I do not want to go into too much detail, but my wish to delete that paragraph goes back to an earlier debate and the question of what offences should be caught or classified as serious offences.
The Committee may remember that I had suggested that the penalty was a good way of identifying those offences that should be treated as serious crimes under the Bill. One thing is absolutely plain: in the generality of cases, a person who has been conditionally discharged is being treated extraordinarily leniently. It inevitably follows that an offence that attracts a conditional discharge can in no sense, in ordinary language, be considered serious. It is almost the least penal of punishments that can be imposed. An absolute discharge is probably the least penal, but a conditional discharge is the second least penal or oppressive.
By including that provision, we are enabling the Crown court to impose a pretty draconian order—we come to the arguments about clause 6—in respect of somebody where the offence, as determined by the nature of the penalty, is by definition pretty trivial. I do not like the feel of that one little bit, especially when one considers the renewal provisions that we have debated already. On any view, I would say that subsection (7)(b) should be cut out of the Bill.