The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Chairman:
Dr.
William
McCrea
Blunt,
Mr. Crispin
(Reigate)
(Con)
Browne,
Mr. Jeremy
(Taunton)
(LD)
Campbell,
Mr. Alan
(Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's
Treasury)
Clegg,
Mr. Nick
(Sheffield, Hallam)
(LD)
Coaker,
Mr. Vernon
(Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
the Home
Department)
Davies,
David T.C.
(Monmouth)
(Con)
Fallon,
Mr. Michael
(Sevenoaks)
(Con)
Fisher,
Mark
(Stoke-on-Trent, Central)
(Lab)
Garnier,
Mr. Edward
(Harborough)
(Con)
Hands,
Mr. Greg
(Hammersmith and Fulham)
(Con)
Hodgson,
Mrs. Sharon
(Gateshead, East and Washington, West)
(Lab)
Ingram,
Mr. Adam
(East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
(Lab)
Jones,
Lynne
(Birmingham, Selly Oak)
(Lab)
Kemp,
Mr. Fraser
(Houghton and Washington, East)
(Lab)
Moffat,
Anne
(East Lothian)
(Lab)
Murphy,
Mr. Denis
(Wansbeck)
(Lab)
Reed,
Mr. Jamie
(Copeland)
(Lab)
Alan
Sandall, Committee
Clerk
attended the Committee
Second
Delegated Legislation
Committee
Tuesday 17
July
2007
[Dr.
William McCrea
in the
Chair]
Draft Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 (Amendment) Order 2007
10.30
am
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
(Mr. Vernon Coaker):
I beg to
move,
That the
Committee has considered the draft Criminal Justice and Court Services
Act 2000 (Amendment) Order
2007.
Good morning,
Dr. McCrea; it is nice to see you in the Chair. Good morning too to all
my hon. Friends and to the hon. Members from the Opposition parties.
The draft order
amends schedule 6 to the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000,
which sets out the trigger offences that apply to the testing of
persons for the presence of specified class A drugs. The drugs
currently specified are heroin and cocaine. The order was cleared by
the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments on 13 June, and agreed by
the other place last week. Regrettably, the order is required because
of drafting omissions in the consequential amendments to schedule 6
that were made by the Fraud Act 2006. Those omissions were not noticed
during passage of the Fraud Bill.
The Fraud Act repealed and
replaced the existing array of deception offences, including that of
obtaining property by deception, one of the trigger offences in
schedule 6, which was set out in section 15 of the Theft Act 1968. The
Fraud Act made minor and consequential amendments to update other
legislation. One such amendment concerned the reference to the offence
of obtaining property by deception, which was removed from schedule 6
paragraph 1 as a trigger offence. In its place, the equivalent general
offence of fraud under section 1 of the Fraud Act was added to the list
of trigger offences.
However, the
consequential amendments to schedule 6 failed to take
account of previous additions to the schedule that related to attempted
offences. The oversight resulted in an anomaly in the schedule whereby
the offence of obtaining property by deception under section 15 of the
Theft Act was removed as a trigger offence but the reference to
attempted obtaining of property by deception was not removed. The draft
order corrects the anomaly and ensures that offending in relation to
the attempted offence of obtaining property by deception, which is now
being removed from the schedule, will continue to be captured by
addition of the new trigger offence of attempted
fraud.
Although the
changes are largely technical, they are nevertheless important and
necessary. The trigger offences in schedule 6, especially those
relating to acquisitive crime, are offences that have been shown by
research to have the clearest link with the misuse of the class A drugs
heroin and cocainethe drugs that cause the most harm to those
who misuse them and to the
communities in which they live. It is because of the strong link to
class A drug use that the offences have been specified as trigger
offences for drug-testing
purposes.
Trigger
offences, and the drug-testing provisions to which they relate, play an
important part in helping to identify those individuals who misuse
specified class A drugs, so that those individuals can be steered into
treatment and away from crime. That is particularly the case in
relation to the provisions under section 63B of the Police and Criminal
Evidence Act 1984 for drug testing of persons in police detention as
part of the drugs intervention
programme.
Under that
programme, persons arrested for or charged with a trigger offence can
be tested for the presence of heroin and/or cocaine. The test is a
screening tool. Those who test positive can go on to be assessed and
can obtain access to appropriate treatment and other support. The
approach has been seen to work during the development of the drug
intervention programme over the past few years. In March 2004, some 400
offenders were entering treatment through the criminal justice system.
That figure has now increased to some 3,500 a month.
Trigger offences are also
relevant in circumstances where persons released on licence or under a
notice of supervision following a custodial sentence for a trigger
offence may be given a drug-testing requirement as part of their
licence conditions or notice. The relevant provisions are section 64 of
the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 and section 65 of the
Criminal Justice Act 1991. Currently, those provisions are targeted at
prolific and priority offenders who are known drug users and who may
revert to drug use on release. Monitoring their behaviour in such a way
helps to ensure that those who test positive can receive appropriate
treatment and
support.
Concern was
expressed in the other place that the new offence of fraud was broader
than the offence of obtaining property by deception and that
accordingly the order in some way widens police powers. The new offence
of fraud under section 1 of the Fraud Act 2006 modernised and
streamlined the law on fraud. It replaced various deception offences in
the Theft Acts 1968 to 1996 with a single offence. That has ensured
that the law is simple and flexible, and that it can cope with the full
range of frauds today. The new fraud offence, while wider than section
15 of the Theft Act 1968, did not seem to criminalise a whole new range
of conduct that was not already
criminal.
In fact, we
estimate that the inclusion of attempted fraud as a trigger offence
could result in just under 1,200 tests being conducted in police
detention in respect of that offence each year. That takes into account
the numbers tested for the offence of obtaining property by deception
and an estimated 230 or so extra tests resulting from the slightly
broader scope of the offence of attempted fraud. The 230 extra tests
represent an increase of less than 0.5 per cent. in drug tests carried
out in police detention each
year.
The number of
persons released from a custodial sentence who may be affected by the
addition of attempted fraud as a trigger offence is therefore expected
to be very small. Nevertheless, its inclusion as a trigger offence will
ensure that a drug-testing requirement can be applied as part of a
condition of
licence in the case of those released from a sentence of attempted fraud
when that is
appropriate.
As for
additional costs arising from the inclusion of attempted fraud as a
trigger offence, we anticipate that they will be minimal and can be
absorbed within existing capacity. The order clarifies schedule 6 from
both the legal and operational perspective. I commend it to the
Committee.
10.38
am
Mr.
Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con): I begin by joining the
Minister in welcoming you to our deliberations this morning, Dr.
McCrea. I wish also to welcome the right hon. Member for East Kilbride.
He has not been on the Back Benches for about 15 years, and I wish him
well in his future career as a Member of
Parliament.
Mr.
Adam Ingram (East Kilbride,
Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab): The correct name of my
constituency is East Kilbride, Strathaven and
Lesmahagow.
Mr.
Garnier:
The right hon. Gentleman has been a Minister; he
has done a lot of speaking in that capacity for 10 years, and as a
senior Opposition Front Bencher before that. However, I did not want
him to miss out on an opportunity to intervene on me by pronouncing his
constituency correctly because while I could manage the first part of
it, I did not wish to upset him by mispronouncing the last
partlet alone the middle. I genuinely welcome him to the
Committee. I congratulate him on his long service in the Government and
hope that it is not too long before his talents are
recognised.
I agree
with the Minister that the Bill is a correcting measure to deal with a
mistake made by the Government when they brought in the Fraud Act 2006,
which did not amend various aspects of the existing criminal law. The
Committee will understand that, as the Government are addicted to
legislation particularly in respect of criminal justice, mistakes will
be made from time to time. I think that we have now reached Home Office
Bill No. 65, with the Second Reading of the Criminal Justice and
Immigration Bill next Monday, so it is inevitable that mistakes will be
made.
I am glad that
the mistake to which I referred will be corrected because, as a Crown
court recorderI declare an interestand in my capacity
as a judge, it is my experience that most of the crime that comes
before the Crown court, certainly in London, has some connection with
the possession or retail selling of illegal drugs. Obviously, the
courts that are looked after by more senior judges deal with what I
would call the industrial-scale wholesale selling of drugs. Anything
that we can do to ensure that those who commit particular crimes of
acquisition are discovered as users of drugs is beneficial, as they can
therefore can be reformed, rehabilitated and got off drugs. I think
that that will have a direct effect on reoffending.
I was interested to note that
the Minister, towards the end of his remarks, said that it is essential
that the law should be simple and flexible. In paragraph 7.6 of the
explanatory notes, the Government fall into use of the jargon that they
are so fond of and talk about stakeholders. They go on to
say:
Stakeholders and
practitioners will be informed of the changes made by the Order by
means of a Circular and the earlier guidance issued to police and
probation strategic leads about the changes in trigger offences made by
the Fraud Act will be
updated.
That is all
very well, but it seems to me that somewhere in the Home Office there
must be a person whose only job is to issue circulars to correct
earlier mistakes and inform stakeholders and practitioners about
changes in the criminal law and procedure.
I remind the Minister that the
order was made under the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000.
I asked the Ministers colleague, the hon. Member for Bradford,
South (Mr. Sutcliffe), the former Parliamentary
Under-Secretary of State for the Home Departmenthe is now at
the Department for Culture, Media and Sportin a written
question on 27 April
2006,
which provisions
within the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 (a) have
not yet come into force and (b) have been replaced (i) prior to
and (ii) after coming into force.[Official
Report, 10 May 2006; Vol. 446, c.
316W.]
I had assumed
that I might get a one-line reply saying, One or two
provisions, but I received one and a half closely typed pages
listing the provisions. I shall hold them up, although I am afraid that
the Official Report cannot see them. There are 16 sections of
the 2000 Act that have been repealed, or repealed never having been
brought into force or when they were not yet wholly in force. In
addition, around 75 provisions under schedules 5, 7 and 8 to the Act
were repealed, or not in force, or never had been in force or were
partially in force. I shall hold the written answer up so that the
right hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow may see
what has been happening while he has been absent at the Ministry of
Defence. One can see that huge chunks of so-called flagship legislation
within the criminal justice field are simply not brought into force, or
have been repealed, or have been repealed having been partly brought
into force.
I am
therefore not surprised that we are here to bring in this amendment,
which, although minor, is important in its consequences. I urge the
Government, when they are going through this exercise, to check the 64
or 65 Bills that have been passed since 1997 within the field of the
law and ensure that, if they insist on cramming through legislation
without proper scrutiny, at least we do not have that sort of mistake
and receive answers to written questions that reveal the sort of
information that I am sure they would rather not reveal. Subject to
that minor caveat, I welcome this
order.
10.44
am
Mr.
Jeremy Browne (Taunton) (LD): Thank you, Dr.
McCrea, for giving me an opportunity to speak. Like the two hon.
Members who spoke previously, I welcome you to the
Chair.
The Minister
laid out in some detail the reasons for the change, and we have just
heard about the tendency, which many members of the Committee will be
concerned about, to bring us together for reasons that would not arise
if such errors and oversights were avoided in the first place. I want
to ask the Minister a couple of questions, which he may be able to
assist with when he draws the Committee to a close. The first and
fundamental question is this: why is fraud a trigger offence in the
first place? Is the purpose of having it as a trigger offence primarily
to try to reduce fraud or to reduce class A drug use? I understand that
in many cases there is a connection between those two offences, but
there is not automatically and inevitably a
connection.
As the
Minister rightly saidindeed, he said that this was raised in
another placefraud is a broader category of offence than
obtaining property by deception, but I shall be
interested if he will have a stab at defining the difference between
the two. Obtaining property by deception may well be a sub-category of
fraud, but I imagine that obtaining property by deception would be more
routinely linked to the use of class A drugs than the broader category
of fraud.
What I am
trying to get to is not necessarily the legal niceties or the drafting
requirements, but the purpose of the provision and what the Government
hope to achieve with regard to reducing fraud or class A drug use, or
both. However, subject to the interesting response that I hope we shall
hear on what the effects will be for my constituents and those of other
members of the Committee, I am sure that this change is broadly
sensible and we are happy to support
it.
10.46
am
Mr.
Coaker:
I thank Opposition Members for their comments. It
is quite funny that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough made the
remarks that he did. I wanted to welcome my right hon. Friend the
Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow to the Committee
and then I realised that I could not pronounce the last bit of his
constituency name, so I intended, when I stopped speaking, to ask him
exactly how to pronounce it so that I could welcome him to the
Committee now. Previously, we have often been in different roles: he
has often been on the Front Bench and I have been supporting him in
Committee. I wanted to get the pronunciation exactly
right.
Mr.
Ingram:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and to the hon.
and learned Member for Harborough for welcoming me to the Committee. If
my hon. Friend is struggling with the third part of the constituency
name, he can simply shorten it to the Gow, as it is affectionately
known in the area. Strathaven may be a bit more difficult for
him.
The
Chairman:
I am certainly glad that no one asked me to
pronounce
it.
Mr.
Coaker:
I welcome my right hon. Friend the Member for East
Kilbride, Strathaven and the Gow to the Committee. It is not only good
politically to see him here; I have a personal affection for my right
hon. Friend, whom I watched and supported as a Whip in relation to
defence matters for a couple of years. It was always a great pleasure
to work with him, so it is very good to see him here today, lending his
expertise and experience to our deliberations.
I say in answer to the points
made by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough that we are making
an important change and clarification of the legislation. As I said in
my opening remarks, it is regrettable that we have had to do this, but
it is an important change. He chided us slightly for the answer that he
received from a ministerial colleague of mine about the bits of the
Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 that were not enacted. I
point out to him that although some two pages may not have been
enacted, 109-odd pages of that Act make a huge difference to the
protection of children, to families and to the Courts Service. A number
of aspects of the Act may not have been enacted, but a considerable
amount has been, which has led to a great improvement in
services.
The hon. and
learned Gentleman referred to the explanatory memorandum. I am sure he
is not saying that we do not need to ensure that people are informed of
the changes that are being made. We regret the changes that we are
having to make, but the important thing is that an anomaly has been
recognised and we have changed things as soon as it became clear to us.
As he pointed out, the provisions will help people such as himself,
acting in a capacity in the courts, to deal with drug offenders when
they come before them.
In answer to the question asked
by the hon. Member for Taunton, I must say that we are including fraud
because obtaining property by deception or attempting to do so are, as
he has rightly said, included in the relevant definition in the Fraud
Act 2006. We have changed part of schedule 6 to the 2000 Act to reflect
that, but we need to amend it. If he reflects on the matter and talks
to the police in his constituency, as I know he does, or to
drug-misusing offenders, he will find that many of them fund their drug
habit through obtaining or attempting to obtain property by deception
or through other elements of fraud that may, for example, involve the
use of a credit card. I am sure that he can think of many examples
where fraud, in one form or another, would be used to fund a drug
habit. We think it only appropriate and right that this provision is
included in the legislation; as I say, obtaining property by deception
is a subset in respect of the Fraud Act
2006.
This gives me
the opportunity to point out something that I have already pointed out.
We introduced the drugs intervention programme in 2004, when only a
relatively small number of drug offenders were entering treatment, and
now nearly 1,000 a week enter treatment through the criminal justice
system because of that programme. That is a big success.
We should have got the
legislation right in the first place, but the amendment order gives us
the opportunity to highlight one of the major successes that this
Government have had in tackling drug-offending behaviour in our
communities. Since the drug intervention programme was introduced, the
use of trigger offences has meant that there has been a 20 per cent.
drop in acquisitive crime, which, as we know, is the major crime used
by drug offenders to fund their habit.
Mr.
Browne:
As I said, I am minded to support the provision
for the reasons that the Minister has been explaining. I do not doubt
that a large proportion of
class A drug offenders fund their addiction by fraudulent means,
including by obtaining property by deception; I am slightly less clear
about what proportion of fraudsters are also class A drug users. That
turns the consideration of this matter on its head. That was the only
point I was seeking to
clarify.
Mr.
Coaker:
Well, we believe that where people have been
tested as a result of the Fraud Act or the old offence of obtaining
property by deception, the positive test rate was about 16 per cent.
That is a figure that I can cite with respect to those who have been
tested.
I think that the Committee is
united in saying that this order is a clarification of the law. It will
help the courts, but it will also fundamentally help all our
communities to battle against those who misuse drugs. An important
power has been given to the police to test people on arrest, in many
circumstances, and on charge, in other circumstances. It has led to a
reduction in crime and is part of our continuing battle against drugs
in our community.
Question put and agreed
to.
Resolved,
That the Committee has
considered the draft Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000
(Amendment) Order
2007.
Committee
rose at six minutes to Eleven
oclock.