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Lord Goodhart moved Amendment No. 18:
- Page 9, line 5, at end insert "and unless there are exceptional circumstances shall do so if the period of postponement exceeds two months and the defendant has been remanded in custody pending sentence"
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is a short point. The Bill gives power to postpone proceedings for a confiscation order for up to two years, and indeed in exceptional cases for longer. The Government also allow the court to defer sentence until the end of the period of postponement. I believe that defendants remanded in custody are entitled to know what sentence they are going to get within a reasonable time of the conviction. It would certainly be wholly wrong to delay the sentence for two years or more.
We therefore believe that the Bill should contain a cut-off point for sentencing in cases where the defendant is imprisoned. What we have suggested in this amendment is a period of two months with power to delay further in exceptional cases. If the Government were prepared to accept a cut-off after a
period of more than two months, I think that we would be content with that if it was a reasonable period. But it is plain, frankly, that we should not leave the defendant hanging around awaiting sentence for two years. That would, in the American phrase, be a cruel and unusual form of punishment.If the defendant is being unco-operative about disclosing his or her assets, which may be part of the reasoning for postponing sentence, I should expect that the defendant would be punished by imposing a longer sentence. That is the way to deal with the matter. I believe that a delay of two years in sentencing is not justified. I beg to move.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, an earlier prototype of these amendments was discussed in Committee. I refer noble Lords to columns 55 and 56 of Hansard of 22nd April.
I add to what was said on that occasion as follows. In its original form the confiscation legislation did suffer from the sort of problem that the amendment seeks to deal with. The legislation always required the court to make the confiscation order before sentencing the defendant. Confiscation matters are often complex so defendants often had to wait for a long period before learning their sentence. That is a situation that I think we all agree must not be allowed to happen unnecessarily, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said.
The postponement powers were introduced largely to deal with precisely this problem. They give the court a wide discretion to sentence the defendant as soon as it has postponed the confiscation proceedings; and no doubt that often happens in practice.
As my noble friend Lord Rooker pointed out, we see no reason to impose fixed time limits on the court, given that it already has power to sentence the defendant quickly. It is also a matter of a little concern to us that the amendments import the question of exceptional circumstances and the issue of whether the defendant has been remanded in custody. We see no need for those complications. If the court postpones the confiscation proceedings, the powers to sentence quickly are there; and no one has complained that the courts are unable or unwilling to exercise them.
In short, we think that the provision is best left as it currently stands. We believe that the court has the necessary powers and is the best arbiter of how to exercise them in this context.
I hope that in the light of what I have said—I broadly seek to deal with the same problem as the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart—the noble Lord will be reassured and will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord. I am reassured to some extent. I still have some concerns that problems could arise but in the circumstances I am happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 18 [Provision of information by defendant]:
Lord Falconer of Thoroton moved Amendment No. 19:
- Page 11, line 28, at end insert—
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 19, I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos. 52 and 77. These amendments bring us back to a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, in Committee.
Briefly, a defendant who responds to an order under this clause may make an admission that he has benefited from criminal conduct. The noble Lord suggested that the Bill should protect the defendant from self-incrimination in relation to these orders. The effect of the amendments is very much along the lines suggested by the noble Lord. Their effect will be to prevent the authorities from using the defendant's admission to prosecute him or another person. In this way, we hope to encourage defendants to be more forthcoming about their benefit from criminal conduct.
However, I should make it clear that where the information provided exposes the commission of an offence, the protection we are creating here would not prevent the authorities from prosecuting the offence on the basis of some other evidence. It would be wrong to create a blanket immunity against prosecution. Accordingly, the amendment prevents admissions made under this clause from being used to prosecute the defendant or another person, but it does not prevent a prosecution from proceeding on the basis of other evidence.
There is one further point I should mention. During Committee proceedings the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, asked whether failure to comply with a court order under Clause 18 would attract contempt proceedings. My noble friend Lord Rooker did not have an immediate answer and indicated that he would look further into the matter.
I have since written to the noble Lord but the position is the following. We want defendants to co-operate fully and frankly with the court. Where a defendant declines to respond to an order concerning the extent of his benefit, it will be open to the court by virtue of Clause 18(4) to draw inferences from his non-co-operation. We have to accept, however, that the fact that a court may draw inferences from a defendant's non-co-operation is unlikely to be of much help if a defendant refuses to provide information about the extent and whereabouts of his property.
Neither the CPS nor Customs is aware that contempt proceedings have ever been brought against a defendant who has declined to provide such information. Furthermore, we think that Clause 18, as it presently stands, is ambiguous as to whether contempt could be applied or not for non-compliance with the court's order to make information available. We therefore intend to bring forward an amendment
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and absent friend Lord Thomas of Gresford, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for having taken these points on board. We welcome the amendments.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 28 [Defendant neither convicted nor acquitted]:
Lord Goodhart moved Amendment No. 20:
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 20, I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos. 53 and 78. This is another short point. English law and, as far as I know, Scots law have never accepted the principle of trial in absentia. Therefore, a defendant cannot be convicted unless he or she has been present at least at the start of the trial. Unless they have been convicted, they cannot, of course, be punished. But the clauses which we seek to leave out override that principle by allowing a confiscation order to be made where the defendant has absconded.
A confiscation order is a punishment. Under this clause it would be punishment where there has been no conviction. In effect, we would see a sentence where there had been no trial. That, I believe, is wrong; it is also unnecessary. The enforcement agency is likely to have obtained a restraint order. Indeed, if it has not obtained a restraint order, it has nothing left to confiscate. If the defendant absconds, the restraint order will, of course, stay in place. The agency can leave it until the defendant is apprehended and tried, or it can apply instead for a confiscation order or a civil recovery order. We believe that the clauses we seek to delete override a longstanding and entirely proper principle of the criminal law and do so without any pragmatic justification. I beg to move.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, the effect of these amendments would be to make it impossible for the court to make a confiscation order against a person who is charged with a criminal offence and flees justice before being convicted.
Similar amendments were tabled by the noble Lord in Committee. The debate is recorded in Hansard of 22nd April at columns 97 to 100. The matter was discussed extensively on that occasion and I do not intend to repeat all the arguments. There is perhaps one comment that I should make initially in elaboration of a point that was emphasised more than once. The provision in the Bill is not new. In Northern Ireland, it has already extended beyond drug trafficking to cover other criminal offences for some
Our main reason for opposing these amendments was also touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and again his comments would benefit from a little further elaboration. While we accept that the possibility that applying for a civil recovery order might provide a solution in some cases, it would not always do so. As my noble friend pointed out, criminal confiscation and civil recovery are very different tools. In particular, to obtain a civil recovery order, the director has to prove the criminal origin of the recoverable property.
However, if the only property at issue has been legally obtained, there would be no possibility of obtaining a civil recovery order. For example, if a criminal inherits an amount of money, that money could be confiscated to enforce a criminal confiscation order that was made in absentia under the Bill but it would most certainly not be subject to civil recovery under Part 5.
So long as a theoretical gap in our armoury would be created by the removal of the powers, we wish them to remain in the Bill. It would be embarrassing and wrong if just one substantial confiscation order was lost as a result of their removal. As my noble friend Lord Rooker emphasised, there are adequate safeguards to ensure that they are not used inappropriately or oppressively. In those circumstances, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
"(8) No information given under this section which amounts to an admission by the defendant that he has benefited from criminal conduct is admissible in evidence in proceedings for an offence."
5.45 p.m.
Leave out Clause 28.
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