Clause 7 - Notification of court and date of trial

Part of Criminal Justice and Police Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 9:45 pm on 13 February 2001.

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Photo of Sir Nicholas Lyell Sir Nicholas Lyell Conservative, North East Bedfordshire 9:45, 13 February 2001

Amendment No. 111 suggests that subsection (7) be removed. The subsection says:

``If a person has been given a warning notice, section 14 of the Act of 1980 (proceedings invalid where accused did not know of them) does not apply.''

I believe that the clause would be better if those words were left out.

The structure of the Bill is rightly designed to cut down the amount of bureaucracy needed to impose a modest penalty on a miscreant without the need for criminal proceedings, but it is not designed to keep out of the courts cases in which an alleged offender contests the allegations and wants to be tried. There is a real risk that, for some reason or other, there will be a misunderstanding in the penalty notices or something that is thought to have been given is not received, is simply forgotten about—which may not be good enough for the purposes of the amendment—goes astray in the post or arrives after magistrates have dealt with the matter.

In a sense, subsection (7) is a belt and braces provision. In effect, it states that even if the alleged offender who wishes to have his case tried knows nothing about having been told to appear at a certain magistrates court, he will none the less be deemed to have known about it. Nothing could be done about that, and that would be wrong. If we were to leave a window open so that an alleged offender could tell the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts that he was never served and that he wants to contest the assertion, the result would not be a large number of cases. Rather, it would provide the opportunity to avoid injustice in genuine cases.

Subsection (7) is unnecessary, and it would be wise to leave open the window to which I have referred. New clause 5—which is not to be discussed now, but which works along lines similar to the amendment—would also give a window of opportunity for justice to be done when something has gone wrong or has not quite connected. I commend the amendment to the Ministers, and I hope that they will accept it immediately. If they cannot, I hope that they will at least think about it seriously, and I look forward to their response.

Debate adjourned.—[Mr. Sutcliffe.]

Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Ten o'clock till Thursday 15 February at five minutes to Ten o'clock.