Policing and Crime Bill
12:00 pm
Martin Evans: The concern is about an individual’s entitlement to enjoy the protection of their possessions under article 1 of the first protocol. The courts have, hitherto, where they have had to deal with arguments in the restraint and confiscation field, come to the conclusion that the statutory regime is proportionate, because there is a reasonable degree of proportionality between the intention, which is to preserve property pending the making of a confiscation order, and the person’s entitlement to enjoy that property, because of course he might not be convicted. In some cases, particularly where an order is applied for when somebody is investigated, where the case involves, for example, allegations of serious fraud, the order may be in place for considerably longer than a year. It is not uncommon for the order to be in place for 12 months, 18 months or two years in these situations. Where the person continues to have the property, the article 1 rights are not infringed, or at any rate, the infringement is proportionate.
To give an example of a car, it may or not be part of the prosecuting authority’s allegation that it has something to do with the crime, but assume, for the present that it does not. The individual could be deprived of that car, and the use that he or she gets from it, for a long time because there is a risk that the car might be sold in the meantime. It is certainly going to engage article 1 concerns more than they have been hitherto because of the shift from the individual retaining it subject to the court’s order.