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Session 2005 - 06 Publications on the internet Standing Committee Debates Road Safety Bill [Lords] |
Road Safety Bill [Lords] |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:John Benger, Committee
Clerk † attended the
Committee Standing Committee AThursday 20 April 2006(Morning)[Janet Anderson in the Chair]Road Safety Bill [Lords]New Clause 3Court
presentation officer ‘(1)
Designated members of a relevant police constabulary shall, for the
purposes of this section, have the powers and rights of audience of a
Crown Prosecutor in relation to the prosecution
of— (a) the offences
listed in paragraphs 1, 3, 4 and 5 of Schedule 1 to the Prosecution of
Offences Act 1985 (Specified Proceedings) Order 1999 (S.I.
1999/904); (b) specified
offences that cease to be specified when a magistrates' court begins to
receive evidence in those proceedings where a defendant does not enter
a plea. (2) A designated member
of a relevant police constabulary shall not have rights of audience
when an offence ceases to be specified where the defendant enters a not
guilty plea and the case proceeds to
trial. (3) A member of a
relevant police constabulary shall be designated for the purposes of
this section if that member is a recognised designated court
presentation officer employed for that
purpose. (4) A recognised
designated court presentation officer must also be a serving police
officer from the relevant police
constabulary. (5) In exercising
his role as a designated court presentation officer, a police officer
must have regard to any advice or guidance issued by the Secretary of
State. (6) The Secretary of
State may, by regulation, issue guidance on the recruitment, training
and operation of designated court presentation officers.'.
—[Mr.
Kidney.] 9
am Brought up,
and read the First
time. It is a
pleasure, Mrs. Anderson, to see you back in the Chair after the Easter
break. New clause 3 is quite specific: it would allow police officers
to present one more category of case in court; it is in addition to
those that they can present already.
When I was a young solicitor
there was no such thing as the Crown Prosecution Service. When
desperate motorists who faced disqualification as a result of road
traffic offences asked for my representation to help them save their
driving licences, I would go to the magistrates court and find the
courtroom filled with others who had similar cases. The prosecutor was
a police officer in uniform, who presented the cases one after the
other until the whole list had been finished. That was quite common in
those days. For
reasons that I understand and with which I agree, Parliament decided,
through the Prosecution of
Offences Act 1985, that prosecutions should not be undertaken by the
police but by a separate organisation, and the Crown Prosecution
Service was established. From then on, most prosecutions have been
conducted by CPS employees or agents. However, a small number of minor,
summary-only offences, including many road traffic offences, could
still be presented by a police officer. They were known as specified
offences. Even those offences ceased to be specified, and they had to
be handed over to the CPS in two set circumstances.
The first circumstance was when
the accused pleaded not guilty. Once a trial was required because of a
not-guilty plea, legal judgments and other legal issues might benefit
from the presence of a qualified CPS prosecutor rather than a police
officer. That is understandable. The second was when a person simply
ignored the court process and did not turn up. Even so, the argument
would have been that some legal judgments were required. For example,
the court would have to be satisfied that the person accused of the
offence knew that he was supposed to be in court, so evidence would be
needed that they had received the paperwork. Next, a judgment has to be
made on whether to call witnesses to prove the case or simply to serve
the statements on the accused and then read them out in court. But why
should we expend time and effort on people who are irresponsible enough
to ignore the process? Inevitably, therefore, a CPS representative
would turn up in court and read out the statements, and the case would
be proved. Under the
new clause, in that second class of cases in which the procedures are
ignored, the police officer can present the case to the court as the
CPS would have done. To show how important it is, I shall give a case
study, as it were, concerning the Metropolitan police. Although this
example is of what happens in London, I stress that the problem affects
all police forces; the new clause would benefit the administration of
justice throughout the country.
In 2004, the Metropolitan
police reorganised the way in which it dealt with road traffic
offences. It formed a pan-London traffic criminal justice operation or
command unit. As a result, all London’s traffic offence
prosecutions go through one office. That has ended the postcode lottery
of whether the police would decide to prosecute, so we have
consistency, and with it come economies of scale, standardised
processes and improved IT support
systems. Crucially,
the police depend on a good strong partnership with the CPS and the
courts. Between them, the three partners have developed a system of
five specialised traffic gateway courts. All cases go through one of
those five courts, and the system has resulted in an effective use of
everyone’s time and the consistent enforcement of traffic law. I
would argue that, if people cannot get away with breaking road traffic
laws, the system also makes an effective contribution to road
safety. The police in
London would like a similar model to deal with camera fines and other
fixed penalty notices that have to go to court—for example, when
cases are contested. The volume of work would be too much for the five
gateway courts, and the police are currently negotiating for additional
operations courts. Except for the specified proceedings, the CPS still
has to provide
the prosecution staff in all courts for all cases. As the Metropolitan
police has found, however, the CPS is unwilling, because it is
stretched, to devote resources to matters such as safety camera
prosecutions. The
police are quite willing to provide the prosecution—except, of
course, in not-guilty trials. They can prosecute the specified
proceedings, except when the accused ignores the process, because there
has to be proof in absence. In that situation, the court has the
discretion to allow the case to be presented by a police officer,
rather than a CPS prosecutor. Clearly, it is not possible to build a
strategy on the hope that all courts will grant a police officer
permission to do that on the day. If the new clause were passed,
however, it would allow prosecutions to proceed in an orderly way. In
any case, what is wrong with going that slight step further and using
the law to allow police officers to carry on as they usually would and
prove the case in absence? A fixed penalty notice system is good, but
it must be underpinned by the ability to take people to court, which
means proving the case in their absence if they ignore the
process. New clause 3
is narrowly drawn and deals only with the mischief that I have
identified. It would give the police new powers and provide for new
procedures, allowing the police to speed up the criminal justice system
to the extent that it is in their power to do so. The Metropolitan
police has used such new powers and procedures most effectively in
dealing with road traffic offences, but it has alerted us to a
bottleneck that it encounters at the court stage. It foresees it
growing significantly, and as I said at the beginning, it will extend
to other parts of the country. It is incumbent on us to remove that
bottleneck, and we have the opportunity to do so today. That is why I
tabled the new clause.
Stephen
Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con): Conservative Members give new
clause 3 a cautious welcome. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for
making available to me some of the briefings that he has had from
various organisations. As he rightly said, the new clause is designed
to tighten up procedures and end an anomaly by giving police officers
rights of audience when offenders do not turn up. Where no plea has
been entered, and the prosecution believes that the case could be
proved at first hearing, court presentation officers should have the
right of audience. As
the hon. Gentleman said, such an arrangement would have the advantage
of relieving an overworked CPS. If the new clause came into effect, the
CPS would deal with traffic offences only where more serious,
non-specified crimes took place or where cases relating to specified
crimes had been adjourned for trial. As the hon. Gentleman said, the
CPS was previously needed in such cases simply because the courts were
required to hear a statement of evidence. Such statements would be read
out by the CPS, so the case could be presented and proved only by the
CPS. The new clause
would make it the norm for court presentation officers to be used for
all minor offences. It would remove the anomalous power of individual
courts not to grant rights of audience. I note from the hon.
Gentleman’s comments and from representations from the police
that the police are pressing for the right of audience in such
cases.
I looked at the contrary
argument, which seems to be that a person who is absent has no defence.
They would therefore require an independent prosecution, and that would
be of the highest importance in such cases. As the hon. Gentleman said,
however, why should the whole process be held up by people who are, in
effect, thumbing their noses at the system and saying, “We are
not going to attend court”? As we and the Minister have said
throughout, we aim to deal with the hard core of offenders, and
non-attendees at court are often the very serial offenders we are
talking about.
Therefore, we give
the new clause a cautious welcome. I say cautious because no one should
assume from our support for extending the rights of audience in this
specific case that we would necessarily support extensions elsewhere.
In this case, however, such an extension would end an
anomaly.
The
Minister of State, Department for Transport(Dr. Stephen
Ladyman): I hope that you had a good Easter, Mrs.
Anderson, and I welcome you back to the Chair.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend
the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) for raising this issue. I entirely
understand his point and agree with his intentions, but I am afraid
that for several reasons I shall advise the Committee not to accept the
new clause. The first is that there is already judicial discretion
about who can appear in front of the court in a routine case.
Therefore, judges can, and sometimes do, allow police officers to
present routine cases. The cases that my hon. Friend has identified are
the sort to which judicial discretion could be applied.
The Government’s
preference is that we should leave the matter to judicial discretion,
rather than putting in place an automatic power to allow certain
individuals to appear before a court, which would be impossible to
remove without further legislation. As the new clause is drafted, there
is a tension between whether an officer who is to act as a court
presentation officer needs to have had a certain amount of training,
and whether the court presentation officer should just follow guidance
as to how he should behave. If the new clause were accepted, it would
not be possible to take the power of appearance away from individuals
even if things were not to work out in the way in which my hon. Friend
assumes that they will, and people were to present to the court
defective cases that held up its procedures.
Although it is the
Government’s view that the matter is best left to judicial
discretion, I hope that I will go some way towards satisfying my hon.
Friend if I tell him that the Metropolitan police, the Department for
Constitutional Affairs and the Department for Transport are working
together on it. The Metropolitan police has agreed to put together
information for the DCA about the rights of judicial discretion, and
how it could be used to improve the presentation and efficiency of
routine cases. We undertake that, when we have that information, we
will do what we can to ensure that all courts realise how they might
use that discretion and think about how they can improve the efficiency
of presentation of cases.
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