Clause 57
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
2:30 pm
Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)
As I—[Interruption.] There is some coughing in the Committee, and I hope hon. Members with coughs feel better as we go on into this afternoon and evening, or whenever. We are in the hands of others in that regard.
As I began with mea culpas, may I admit that when the Bill was introduced, two short subsections were accidentally omitted from clause 57? Their purpose was to qualify section 11 (3) of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, which prohibits magistrates courts from imposing a custodial sentence in an offender’s absence, and subsection (4), which restricts the circumstances in which a court could impose disqualification. The missing provisions would have limited those prohibitions to cases initiated by
“an information, where a summons...and...by a written charge”
and requisition.
In other cases, the most important category of the measures relates to a situation in which a defendant has been bailed to appear in court. In such a case, the prohibition would be lifted on the basis that he would know that he was due to appear in court, but that is not always so when cases are initiated by information and summons. It does not necessarily follow that a court would consider it appropriate to impose a custody in absence, but that would not justify statutory prohibition. The amendments will put the missing subsections in the Bill, and I hope that the Committee will make them.