Schedule 1
4:00 pm
Alan Campbell (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Tynemouth, Labour)
Amendment 248 seeks to impose an absolute limit of 24 hours on the period that the police would be able to detain an offender following their arrest for a breach of the new rehabilitative order that we intend to introduce in clause 16. Detention in these circumstances may be necessary, as we discussed earlier, in order to ensure that an offender who has not only breached a court order but ignored a summons to appear at court can be brought before a court to be re-sentenced for the original offence of loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution.
The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon is correct. When the provisions for the order were introduced in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, they allowed the police the power to detain an offender arrested for a breach of an order for up to 72 hours. The hon. Gentleman will recall, as I do, that that raised some concern among hon. Members. We have acknowledged that, and paragraph 9 will now oblige the police to bring the offender before a court “as soon as practicable”. We are confident that that will provide sufficient safeguards against undue detention without imposing an upper limit with which, in certain circumstances the police, through no fault of their own, would be unable to comply.
Let me give the hon. Gentleman and the Committee an example. If an arrest was made on a Saturday afternoon, the police might not be able to bring the offender before a court until Monday morning at the earliest. In such circumstances, 24 hours would not be a practicable time limit to set. I have stressed as often as I can in discussions on this matter that it will be a last resort for the police to detain offenders so that they can enforce the orders where they have been breached. We accept that there must be limits on the power to detain, but we consider that the requirement for the person to be brought before the court “as soon as practicable” is sufficient to prevent the police from detaining the offenders for unreasonably lengthy periods. In other words, it gives the police time to deal with circumstances such as when an arrest takes place at the beginning of a weekend but when the court might not be sitting until Monday. It covers those situations. By including the words “as soon as practicable”, the measure specifies an end limit in terms of hours. It has to be “practicable” and it has to be “as soon as”.
I understand the concerns expressed by the hon. Gentleman, but he must accept that if we are to introduce this order, it is necessary to strike a balance between the disproportionate use of power against those involved in street prostitution, and the need to ensure that the orders can be effectively enforced. We believe that we have struck the right balance, and that the provisions ensure that the power will be used appropriately.
The hon. Gentleman asked what would constitute an unreasonable excuse for failing to comply with a rehabilitation order. “Reasonable excuse” is an established term. It is used in existing legislation in relation to breaches of community orders, for example, so it is understood. Ultimately, it will be for the court to decide whether the offender has a reasonable excuse for failing to comply with the order. If an offender was unable to attend a meeting because of illness, for example, but they could provide evidence in the form of a doctor’s note, that would be considered a reasonable excuse.
I think the hon. Gentleman is perhaps seeking—either setting it out now or in the Bill—a whole series of scenarios or descriptions of what would constitute a reasonable excuse. The reality is that there will be as many excuses as there are people who breach the order, so we do not want to be too prescriptive. We want to give some discretion to both the supervisor and the court. We believe that, particularly in the case of the court, they would understand what was meant by reasonableness. We would not want to make a list of acceptable excuses, because some of the people receiving the orders will not have signed up to them themselves and will not need any encouragement to find ways to circumvent them. We do not want to be too prescriptive; we want to leave it to the discretion of the courts in particular.