Maximum Periods of Detention Before Charge

Part of Orders of the Day — Police and Criminal Evidence Bill – in the House of Commons at 4:15 pm on 15 May 1984.

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Photo of Sir Nicholas Lyell Sir Nicholas Lyell , Mid Bedfordshire 4:15, 15 May 1984

If I may get under way first, I shall then gladly give way.

There is no requirement to go before magistrates to extend the period in detention, let alone a requirement to go before them after 36 hours and again after a further 36 hours. There is no absolute maximum of 96 hours. All these are improvements for the liberty of the subject and for the better discipline and control of what goes on in a police station which do not exist today and which will go a long way to correct the position.

The hon. Member for St. Helens, South, said that there is no evidence of cases going beyond 96 hours; I think that was how he put it. I am sure that in his long hours in Committee he had an opportunity of reading and no doubt carefully studying the evidence on which the Royal Commission came forward with its recommendation. I have not referred to that evidence for some months, so I may be forgiven if I do not get the chapter and verse right. I think it was in the third or fourth quarter of 1979, the relevant period when the Royal Commission was carrying out its work, that the Metropolitan police dealt with 230-plus cases which had gone over 72 hours. They did not seek to come forward and say that all those cases were monstrous. Those cases were a tiny proportion of the total number of cases. But this is where the argument of Opposition Members and of those of my hon. Friends, who tend occasionally to become frustrated with magistrates, falls down. I have been before magistrates courts on many hundreds of occasions and I know the same sense of frustration when one is an unsuccessful advocate.