Legislative Reform (Revocation of Prescribed Form of Penalty Notice for Disorderly Behaviour) Order 2009

I am grateful to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their contributions, particularly to the noble Baroness for her support for this measure. Penalty notices were introduced as part of the Government’s strategy to tackle low-level anti-social and nuisance behaviour. We believe that they enable the police to deliver swift and effective justice for lower-level criminality, freeing up the courts to concentrate on more serious offences. The aim is to provide the police with a swift financial punishment to deal with misbehaviour and a practical deterrent to future reoffending. PNDs free up the courts to concentrate on more serious offences and ease the position of the police. Issuing a penalty notice takes an officer approximately 30 minutes, compared with two and a half hours to prepare an evidential case file. The police officer is then freed to return to patrolling the street and does not have to attend court. We think that PNDs have been successful, but the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, is right to point out that there are possible dangers in such a system. As the Committee knows, and as the noble Baroness mentioned, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has set up a review. Indeed, there is a Written Ministerial Statement with yesterday's date on it that sets out the Government’s concerns. We are looking at the use of tickets to seek to avoid inappropriate use, because there have been recent suggestions that they have been used inappropriately for offences that are too serious for a ticket and should, in the interests of both the community and the defendant, end up in court. The noble Baroness asked me some questions. How long did the consultation last? It ran for six weeks from 22 August to 3 October 2007. Will the electronic devices not lead to even more on-the-spot fines being issued? There is no reason to think that the device itself will lead to an increase in the number of PNDs issued. As I said, issuing tickets electronically will save the police considerable time and reduce the amount of paper that an officer is required to carry. In response to the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, for a PND to be issued, an officer still needs to be satisfied that an offence has been committed that is suitable for the disposal option, following operational guidance. The noble Lord was concerned that if a policeman went around with a machine that was so easy to use, it might be used inappropriately and too often. One hopes that in the normal course, police officers would not do that. An offence must be committed before they can use that method, and the defendant always has the right to choose trial. As for reporting, which was the first line of questioning from the noble Lord, PNDs will continue to be recorded as at present. One reason for that is to ensure that no offender receives a string of tickets. They are for recordable offences, and exist on the police national computer. They can be included in an enhanced form and can remain on the computer indefinitely, but I remind the Committee that they do not represent a conviction in the same way as would a court appearance followed by a finding of guilt. Should a court be able to take note of previous PNDs when sentencing? The Independent Sentencing Guidelines Council’s new magistrates’ courts sentencing guidelines, which came into force in August last year, state: ""The fact that an offender has previously been issued with a penalty notice does not increase the seriousness of the current offence and must not be regarded as an aggravating factor"." So the court may not sentence more severely just because the offender has been issued with one or more PNDs, but that may properly, so the guidelines state, ""influence the court’s assessment of the offender’s suitability for a particular sentence, so long as it remains within the limits established by the seriousness of the current offence"." It can be used in criminal proceedings as evidence of bad character and can be cited in civil proceedings too.