Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, one of the drawbacks of being last man in is that it is not one’s task to sum up, although I cannot help referring to some of the quite outstanding contributions that have been made in today’s debate. It also means, of course, that the best targets have already been peppered by well directed fire from far better shots than me. This is a very important Bill which requires the fullest scrutiny because of its constitutional implications, a scrutiny which I am sure it will receive in this House. I am also sure that, with her customary conscientiousness and charm, the Minister will seek to deflect many of the genuine concerns expressed today. However, I have to advise her that she faces an uphill struggle on a number of fronts. I hope the House will forgive me if I concentrate initially on an issue which has not attracted the most attention today but which, nevertheless, is of constitutional and operational importance—namely, the position of the magistracy. In doing so, I declare an interest as a magistrate, now on the supplementary list, and as a former member of a police authority, although, of course, as is customary in this House, I speak personally. In my experience, the magistrates are invariably, in the world of the law, everyone’s favourite aunts and uncles. From High Court judges to passing Ministers of every political hue—and, believe me, there have been a good many in recent years—they are invariably depicted as the jewel in the British judicial system. If I had a fiver for every time that I heard this in my time on the Bench, I could be well and truly in the money. Yet whenever changes are afoot because of some malfunction, who do we invariably see in the firing line? Why, justices of the peace. I entirely accept that delays, especially in dealing with minor offences, are a continuing scandal, but instead of dealing with the inadequacies and incompetence in other agencies, which are the principal reason for such delays, we must apparently instead give additional powers—particularly with regard to bail and conditional cautions—to the CPS and the police, thereby cutting out the inconvenience of a judicial hearing. Bail is a serious matter, both for the individual concerned and possibly for the public too in certain instances. Correct assessment of cases requires both training and experience and the sort of publicity which is only available through open court, with reasons provided for decisions reached. However unfair it may be, there will undoubtedly be a feeling of a done deal—perhaps even a stitch-up—between the prosecuting authorities if these measures are implemented as they stand. In some instances, defendants could find themselves with a criminal record never having appeared in court. I should add that the Select Committee on the Constitution has drawn attention to this potential constitutional danger. I turn now to the matter of the police authorities and magisterial representation. Quite apart from the widespread unease about the composition of such bodies being a matter for secondary legislation—and, therefore, basically left to the whim of a Home Secretary—the proposal to remove the obligation to have magistrate representatives on a police authority in future beggars belief and has aroused the opposition of the Magistrates’ Association, the Association of Police Authorities and the police themselves. Try as I have to find some scintilla of a logical argument for this proposal, I have failed, other than to hazard a guess that in an effort to get the size of future authorities down—something which, in itself, may not be a bad thing—the Home Office has said, to paraphrase Shakespeare, ““Let’s kill all the JPs””. But if we are, at long last, trying to get joined-up and expert advice in the fight against organised crime and terrorism, what sort of sense does it make to get rid of what is arguably the most experienced element in these matters on any authority? Is it too much to suggest that one obligatory magistrate stays on and, say, one of the business representatives drops off, anathema though that may be to the present Government? With, correctly, so many elected local representatives on the body, can I—appropriately from these Benches you may feel—make a plea for at least some independent element, something which would be provided by the retention of a representative from the Bench? Turning to other matters, in principle I welcome the creation of the National Policing Improvement Agency, particularly in relation to its powers of overseeing good practice in procurement and in being able to check on the contracting-out in design and delivery. In all the justified excitement and unease about future police force mergers, I have now—forcefully, I hope—made the point on two separate and recent occasions that, irrespective of whether one ends up with 43, 33, 23 or 13 forces, or any other number one cares to think of, if there is IT and system incompatibility the war against serious crime and terrorism is fatally compromised. Again, in this context, does the creation of this agency signal an end to the indifference of the Home Office to what equipment chief constables order on their own initiatives—equipment which, because of Treasury constraints, is often the cheapest available and frequently incompatible with other forces? Also, what proposals are there to gather together the separate Special Branch elements which reside within individual police forces where they are scattered about the country, in what has been a historic and slightly arbitrary way? There are of course many other concerns raised by the Bill, not least those relating to the establishment of a Chief Inspector for Justice, Community Safety and Custody and how that will affect in particular the prison inspection regime referred to by my noble friends Lord Ramsbotham and Lady Stern, and the noble Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, in what were very powerful speeches indeed. I will only say that I share their dismay at this possible infliction on the system. However, I finally refer to something that is absent from the Bill but which has been referred to by several noble Lords today—the omission of any mechanism to amend the Extradition Act passed by this House in 2003 in so far as it affects our relations with the US. I remember the occasion well. We were invited to support yet another measure in the fight against terrorism and I—and I suspect many other noble Lords—voted for the measure on that basis. Was I naive? Yes, in the light of subsequent events, and short-sighted and unimaginative too—I plead guilty on all those charges. But two principal developments have emerged from the situation. The number of requests for extradition from US authorities for non-terrorist cases has far exceeded those with possible terrorist associations. Secondly, the reciprocity promised by the US Government has failed to materialise. Thanks to opposition in Congress, possibly due, as some believe, to reluctance to part with IRA suspects, who are literally leading the life of Reilly on the American subcontinent, there is little sign of the Act being implemented there in the future. This Bill offers an opportunity to correct that inequity and I am hopeful that, not for the first time, this House will take up its role as the defender of our liberties.