Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, we do not believe that that is right. The noble and learned Lord will know that conditional cautions are offered to those who agree and accept responsibility. It will always be open to the person if they did not wish to accept the conditional caution to go through the ordinary court procedure—the full panoply—and have their matter dealt with another way. The whole purpose of expanding the nature of conditional cautions is to allow the minor offences to be dealt with quickly, efficiently and speedily, particularly if the offender is accepting responsibility in a way that will ensure that there is a sanction. The community is therefore paid back in a way that is appropriate without necessarily making that person into a criminal in such a way that they cannot move on later. It is a quick, easy and effective way of recognising poor behaviour and intervening in a sensible manner. We hope that we will have more opportunity to talk about the levels—when they should apply, how they should apply, what would be the conditions, what would be the format and matters of that sort. I am sure that when we come to debate this more fully in Committee, those will be the sorts of issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay—if I know anything about her—will want to press me on. We will have to look very carefully at how this fits in with sentencing and what will be appropriate. We know that there was a lot of discussion in the other place in relation to this issue and I anticipate that your Lordships will wish to press us further on it to make sure that the balance is right. I see the nods coming from around the House and anticipate the sorts of discussions and debates that we will have about it. I also hear affirmation coming from the Liberal Democrat Benches and elsewhere. Part 3 is the area to which we now turn our minds in relation to crime and anti-social behaviour. This part talks about the ways in which we intend to make our communities safer. It is not only a matter for the police. It requires other key agencies—local authorities, police and fire and rescue authorities and primary care trusts—to work with the police in partnership. To this end, we established the crime and disorder reduction partnerships in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The CDRPs have had some success—some of us would say a considerable success—and they have the potential to achieve even more. To that end, Part 3 of the Bill makes a number of amendments to the 1998 Act, enabling crime and disorder reduction partnerships to become the most effective vehicle possible for partnership working in the reduction of crime and anti-social behaviour. The Bill will improve delivery by reducing unnecessary bureaucracy and enabling better flows of information between partners; introduce national standards to ensure that the best working practices are adopted by all partnerships nationwide; and improve the accountability arrangements for partnerships by providing for scrutiny of community safety by local authority overview and scrutiny committees. The overview and scrutiny committees will also have a key role in the new community call for action provided for in Clause 17. The community call for action will give local people a means to trigger action on a community safety issue where they are dissatisfied with the response by the police or local authority. Ward councillors will play a central role acting as an advocate for local residents and seeking to resolve issues through an informal dialogue with the neighbourhood policing team or local authority, as appropriate. As the Prime Minister set out in the Respect Action Plan, parents are also key partners in building safer communities. In fact, effective parenting is one of the key drivers in preventing children from engaging in anti-social behaviour. It is vital that the police are supported at the neighbourhood level by parents in creating a strong society based on mutual respect. To that end, the Bill will widen the range of agencies that can enter into parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders to secure their engagement. Parenting orders are already highly successful where they are used by local authorities to combat truancy. Youth offending teams successfully applied for some 1,273 orders in 2004–05 alone. The breach rate is low and most parents subject to an order grow to value the support that they receive; indeed, many wish that they had received such support earlier. Part 4 of the Bill is relevant to the whole of the justice system. It creates the new justice, community safety and custody inspectorate, which will replace the five existing inspectorates covering the police, probation, prisons, court administration and the Crown Prosecution Service. The inspectorate will create a modern, unified, strongly led and forward-looking inspection regime which will be every bit as independent as the existing inspectorates. It will support front-line staff by minimising unnecessary duplication of inspection and the additional work that that entails. With its overview of the justice system, the inspectorate will provide a capacity to challenge whether the police, courts, Crown Prosecution Service and National Offender Management Service are giving the public the best possible service. There is an argument that because of the unique position of HM Inspectorate of Prisons, it should be maintained as a separate inspectorate. I agree that the Chief Inspector of Prisons has a unique role in ensuring that persons held in custody on behalf of society as a whole are kept in decent conditions and that their human rights are respected. That is why the new inspectorate will have a special duty to continue that role and why we will not abolish the Chief Inspector of Prisons until we are sure that the new chief inspector is ready to fill the role satisfactorily. The creation of the National Offender Management Service, uniting the Prison Service and the National Probation Service to provide end-to-end management of offenders, demands a unified inspection regime. An inspection regime that looks only at what happens to an individual when in prison, and relies on another inspectorate to tell it what happens before and after, cannot report credibly on the whole process of offender management from start to finish. A single chief inspector for the justice system will be a more powerful public voice, able to say what is wrong with the system as a whole and what needs to be done to put it right, especially at the joins where the activities of different agencies interface. Finally, Part 5 deals with one of the growing new threats that can be tackled only through extensive international co-operation; namely, the continued threat posed by computer hacking and denial-of-service attacks. To that end, the Bill makes provision to criminalise all means of interfering with a computer system, increases the penalties for hacking offences and criminalises the supply of so-called ““hacking tools””. This Part of the Bill also provides a suitable opportunity to review the Extradition Act 2003, which has now been in force for more than two years. The Act was a complete overhaul of extradition law, some of which dated back to the 19th century. It also implemented the European arrest warrant, which governs extradition between EU states on the principle of mutual recognition. Unsurprisingly, after such a major reform of complex law, some minor lacunae and operating difficulties have emerged in the first years of operation. The amendments in the Bill are to correct these lacunae, to clarify areas of doubt and to ensure that the United Kingdom is not in breach of international agreements. They are therefore essentially technical amendments to the 2003 Act which do not alter the existing framework governing our extradition arrangements with either Europe or the wider world. As a package, the Bill makes a vital contribution towards the realisation of our goal of safer communities and I have no hesitation in commending it to the House. Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Baroness Scotland of Asthal.)