My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. As usual, he is constructive in his questioning and I will try to be equally constructive in my responses. I am informed by my noble friend Lord Wallace that there was indeed a good and robust debate about consultation in this Room yesterday. Where I cannot follow the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is in his description of consultation in this case as being either defective or flawed. It was short but effective. We were working against a pretty tight timetable to deliver the LASPO reforms in place and on time.
I take the point that there was not perfect synergy between the coming into office of the new police commissioners and our consultation, but it was interesting that more than half the responses to the consultation came from police forces or ACPO. As I indicated, the overwhelming response to the consultation was favourable to what we are trying to do. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, was right to raise the question of consistency in the application of these proposals. That is part of a broader approach that we are undertaking at the MoJ to try to make sure that statistics about policing and courts are more widely known so that we can see the effectiveness of any such measures and any variety in their implementation.
We are supporting the Association of Chief Police Officers in its work to develop local scrutiny arrangements for out-of-court disposals. These will consist of a retrospective look by a range of criminal justice professionals at how an area uses these disposals, and it will look at individual cases to see whether they raise any training needs. We are working with the senior judiciary to establish how we harness the unique knowledge and experience of magistrates in these arrangements.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, also asked whether there was a kind of inflation in the use of out-of-court disposals. It is true that there was a significant increase after 2007, but that was not at the expense of convictions, the figures for which have remained broadly stable. Part of the reason for the increase was targets imposed by the previous Government that created an incentive for criminal justice agencies to criminalise low-level offending by administering cautions where otherwise they may have taken no further action. After those targets were replaced, the number of out-of-court disposals since 2007 has declined by about 43%.
The noble Lord asked for which offences conditions for foreign offenders will be available. The foreign offender conditions will be available for the same offences as the other types of conditions. However, it is right to make these conditions available for more serious offenders—for example, where the likely sentence, if prosecuted, would be a period of imprisonment. We believe that for foreign offenders who have no right to remain in the UK and admit to committing certain offences, the public interest is better served by administering a caution and promptly removing the offenders from the UK, rather than prosecuting and potentially imprisoning them at the taxpayer’s expense, only to remove them from the country once the sentence is completed. Where the public interest requires it, serious offences committed by foreign nationals will, of course, continue to be prosecuted.
The noble Lord raised the question of the DPP guidance. This will set out the circumstances when the police can offer a conditional caution and when they should refer the matter to the CPS. The police will be able to offer a conditional caution for a summary-only or triable-either-way offence but the decision in an indictable-only offence should be authorised by a prosecutor. In a case of whatever seriousness, the police can seek advice from the CPS on the appropriate disposal decision. This brings conditional cautions into line with the current situation on simple cautions.
On the question of the timing of the DPP guidance, I agree with the noble Lord. It is unsatisfactory. If I was in his place, I would grumble. Parliament is right when it says that it has not been given the whole picture on these things. I am asked to assure him that one of the advantages of delaying is that we will be able to take this debate into account as we put the guidance forward. I can already see how convinced the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is by that bit of sophistry; I sense waves of a feeling of treachery from behind me. As a parliamentary practitioner, I think that it is far better when Parliament gets the whole picture when making a decision. I also appreciate the pressure that we are putting our officials under.
Returning to the matter of foreign offenders, we will, of course, also take into account the views of victims. However, I think there is a general feeling that a sensible way of dealing with these offenders will be to get them out of the country and not put the taxpayer through the cost of prosecuting and possibly incarcerating them. We will keep these matters under review. The aim is to provide a consistent system, based on a clear framework of guidance, while giving flexibility to the police to make common-sense decisions. I hope that we will have an opportunity to gather together the results of the ACPO research, to which I referred, and perhaps at some stage publish it to promote further discussion. As the consultations indicated, there has been a broadly favourable approach to it. The points about ensuring consistency and proportionality, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, are well taken, but I still have no hesitation in recommending the order to the Committee.