Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, Clause 15 gives the Secretary of State an order-making power to specify unlimited categories of people to whom chief officers of police could give the power to give fixed penalty notices. That is a clear, straight-forward and wide-ranging power and it is right that we should look carefully at the potential it has to change the way in which our courts work. Earlier this summer, there were stories in the press that the Government intended to extend dramatically the number of offences that could be dealt with by way of a fixed penalty notice rather than the person having his case disposed of in court. The story returned to the headlines on Friday, 29 September. The Times carried a story that serious offences, such as obstructing or assaulting a police officer in the course of his or her duty, could be subject to an on-the-spot fine. That would be an unbelievable extension of on-the-spot fines. But then the very next day the Times carried another story reporting that the Home Secretary had ruled out on-the-spot fines for violent assaults. What did he mean by that? A spokesman for the Home Office said that Ministers had not been consulted about the proposals. How extraordinary that proposals for changes to legislation can get that far and apparently not be on a Minister's radar, especially as the Prime Minister appeared to be trumpeting exactly those changes in his own speech at the party conference earlier that week. I know that we may not necessarily take everything that the Prime Minister says in his conference speech as gospel. For example, he asked the conference to celebrate with him the fact that the Labour Government had been the first to appoint a female as Leader of this House, thereby forgetting yet again, as he had forgotten in a press release a few years ago, the appointment of Lady Young. I give way to the noble Baroness.