Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-11-08
Topic: Law and Crime
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 171 and 190 in my name. I will then move to Amendment 186A which I support. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who cannot be in his place, has asked me to speak to it on his behalf As I have said, I apologise in advance for the length of my remarks. The only consolations I can offer the Committee are that the Government wanted to group these amendments with other groups. Secondly, I do not take responsibility for the length of the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, which I have undertaken to read on his behalf. These amendments are designed to do two things. First, they question the whole new system of police out of court disposals proposed in Part 6 of the Bill. These include, but are not limited to, cautions. Secondly, they attempt to try to make any system of cautions where conditions are attached more effective No doubt, the Minister will say that the new system of diversionary and community cautions is based on the existing system of conditional cautions. To some extent, the Minister may be right. Conditional cautions look very similar to diversionary and community cautions, except that, in the case of community cautions, failure to comply with the conditions of the caution cannot result in the prosecution of the offender for the original offence. The only way in which a recalcitrant offender can be punished if they fail to comply with the conditions of a community caution is for a financial penalty to be imposed instead. This can then be enforced through the courts. The Minister will tell me if I have any of this wrong. I look to the Minister for reassurance. Apparently, I am doing all right so far First, I cannot find any data on how many conditional cautions have been administered; the proportion of conditional cautions, compared with simple cautions where no conditions are attached; or conditional cautions as a proportion of other types of disposal. Considering the complexity of deciding on, arranging, administering and monitoring compliance with the conditions attached to a conditional caution, I can only imagine that most custody sergeants would avoid them like the plague, particularly when sending the case to court. Simpler, and arguably as effective, out of court disposals are available. Perhaps this is why the proposals in this Bill as drafted attempt to cut off any other form of out of court disposals. If agreed, these proposals would mean that police custody sergeants could avoid administering a diversionary or community caution only by deciding to take no further action or by sending the accused to court, despite an admission of guilt. I can assure the Committee that we would see a significant increase in these alternatives being adopted The House of Commons briefing paper 9165 on these proposals is illuminating. I am afraid that I am going to quote it at length, but I assure the Committee that it will be worth it. It states: "The Government estimates the policy will cost a total of £109.19 million over ten years. It thinks the criminal justice system will incur extra operational costs of around £15.58 million per year. It also thinks the system will cost the police around £13.70 million to implement (over two years) … The actual costs are likely to be higher because some costly features of the proposed system, like proposed restrictions on the use of OOCDs"— out of court disposals— "for certain offences, were not present during the pilot." It goes on: "The Government hopes the proposed system will help reduce reoffending. Available data does not suggest short-term reoffending rates are likely to go down. The evaluation of the 2014 pilot … found no statistically significant difference between the short-term re-offending rates of OOCD offenders" in the pilot areas "to those in comparable areas not using the framework." It continues: "The Government also hopes the new system will improve victim satisfaction because more victims will be involved in the OOCD process." I have already cast doubt on that, because I am convinced that the police will "no further action" a lot more cases as a result. However, the paper states: "It is true that more victims will be involved in the OOCD process under the new system, but this is unlikely to have a big impact on victim satisfaction rates. This is because the victim satisfaction rate for OOCD cases is already good. In 2019/20 84% of victims whose offender was issued a caution said they were satisfied with the police, a similar rate to victims whose offenders were charged (83%)." The paper summarises by saying that "the available evidence suggests the system … may result in a further decline in the use of OOCDs … is likely to cost more … is unlikely to have a major impact on the reoffending rates of offenders; and … may improve victim satisfaction but is unlikely to have a major impact." Can the Minister explain to the Committee why the Government are proposing to spend more to achieve nothing Turning to Amendments 170 and 171, a 2018 paper by Dr Peter Neyroud—a former chief constable of Thames Valley Police and now a distinguished academic—published by the University of Cambridge and commissioned by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, entitled Out of Court Disposals Managed by the Police: A Review of the Evidence, concluded: "In order to be effective OOCD’s with conditions must be implemented well and three areas require particular attention: the eligibility screening of offenders; the needs assessment to match conditions to the offender; the setting and tracking of conditions" More specifically, he said: "The result … was a significant degree of inconsistency and a substantial number of inappropriate and un-evidenced conditions. Whilst the provision of further training and more guidance improved the situation somewhat, the cost of … an investment within a more general implementation of OOCD’s with conditions would be prohibitive and, in any case, did not completely resolved the problems." On the issue of whether out of court disposals were more or less effective when they had conditions attached, he said, bearing in mind that this was a review of all the available evidence: "Making a direct comparison between OOCD’s with conditions"— both community cautions and diversionary cautions are OOCDs with conditions— "and OOCD’s without conditions is difficult: none of the research makes this direct comparison." Let me summarise. The provisions in this Bill propose getting rid of all out of court disposals except for cautions, all of which will have to have conditions attached. There is no evidence that cautions with conditions attached are any more effective than cautions without them. Where conditions have been attached to cautions in the past, there was "a significant degree of inconsistency and a substantial number of inappropriate and un-evidenced conditions." Amendments 170 and 171 suggest that only those adequately trained officers who are considered by the prosecuting authority to be suitable to decide on diversionary and community cautions can administer them. Amendment 190 is consequential.