Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Part of the debate – in a Public Bill Committee at 12:00 pm on 20 January 2011.

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Shami Chakrabarti: That is the problem. The police will tell you that arrests sometimes have to be done quickly, whether they are of a potential war criminal or of a common-or-garden criminal in this country. That is why notice would be better than veto, because veto means that nobody can do anything—the magistrate cannot proceed until the DPP has done so and, frankly,  the DPP is busy with all sorts of other crimes. I would have thought that giving notice is less likely to hold up proceedings, because if the DPP chooses not to intervene or takes too long, the magistrate can form his own view. But that would give the authorities the opportunity to pipe up if they feel that they need to, because there is a real Mr Ellis-type concern about false information being given to a magistrate for the purposes of a stunt rather than of a prosecution, for example.