Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-11-01
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for raising this important issue of children remanded in custody. I quite agree that police custody is not a suitable environment for children and that they should not be detained there unless it is absolutely necessary The provisions introduced by this Bill will amend the "tests" set out by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, also known as LASPO, which must be satisfied before the court remands a child to custody. These are intended to ensure that custodial remand is used only as a last resort, where there are no other options and it is necessary to protect the public Before the courts get involved, if a child is charged with an offence, Section 38 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 provides that the police must release them either on bail or without bail pending their appearance at court, unless one or more specified conditions apply. These conditions are that the child’s name or address are not known or are not believed to be genuine; there are reasonable grounds to believe the child will not appear in court to answer bail; the detention is believed to be necessary to prevent the child committing an offence, causing physical injury, loss or damage to property, or interfering with the investigation of offences; or the detention after charge is believed to be necessary for the child’s own protection or in their own interests I would like to reassure the Committee that there is already a degree of alignment between police bail and court bail, and the police custody officer must have regard to the same considerations as those that apply when a court is considering whether to grant bail under the Bail Act 1976 I acknowledge the concern that many more children are remanded post charge by the police than are remanded by the courts while awaiting trial, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, outlined, and that this may give rise to consideration of risk-averse decision-making by the police. I do not necessarily believe this to be the case. It is important to remember that post-charge detention by the police serves a different purpose from youth remand in the courts, so it is unrealistic to expect an exact alignment of the conditions required to make decisions With this in mind, it is perfectly possible for the police to make a decision to remand a child post charge and for the courts to make a decision not to remand the same child to custody, and for both these decisions to be reasonable based on the evidence and circumstances before each party. In the overwhelming majority of cases, a child remanded by the police will be held for no more than 24 hours I also acknowledge the concern that police remand is a driver of custodial remand—that is, for example, that a court is more likely to view a child remanded by the police as dangerous. I am not aware of any data showing a causal link between police remand and custodial remand. A comprehensive evidence base comparing the circumstances whereby police bail after charge decisions are made under Section 38 of PACE would be needed, giving consideration to the threshold for grounds to refuse bail and whether custody officers have access to and apply all relevant information when making a bail decision Before I conclude, I take this opportunity to put on record my thanks and the Home Office’s gratitude to Brian Roberts, who was the department’s expert on the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Sadly, he died last month after 50 years of public service as a police officer and then an official in the department. He is greatly missed by his colleagues On the basis of my remarks, I hope the noble Lord will be happy to withdraw his amendment.