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Miss Widdecombe: My right hon. and learned Friend makes a valid and helpful point.
I hope that the Home Secretary will deal with amendment No. 39, which would provide for compensation to be paid if a person prevented from travelling abroad did not qualify for a banning order. The right hon. Gentleman said that he accepted the principle of the amendment but not its drafting, and that he would raise the matter in another place. On that basis, I am happy not to press the amendment.
We welcome Government amendments Nos. 42 to 46, which do much to improve the Bill and which reflect some of the sentiments in our amendments. We are glad that they have been taken on board.
I have given much consideration to Liberal Democrat amendments Nos. 20 and 21, and also to the amendments tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member
for North-East Bedfordshire and my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr. Davis). I do not think that we on the Opposition Front Bench can support or press them, although my right hon. and learned Friend and my right hon. Friend are entitled to make their own decisions. The amendments would effectively negate this part of the Bill. We continue to want to try to improve the Bill instead of throwing it out altogether. That is why we shall not stand in the way of Third Reading tonight, although very substantial improvements must still be made before we can have confidence in the Bill.
Mr. Browne: I shall be brief. I made clear my feelings about summary detention when I intervened in the speech of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes). As to whether the phrases "reasonable cause to suspect" or "reasonable cause to believe" would generate difficulty for magistrates, my experience in the summary criminal courts in Scotland leads me to believe that there is plenty of help with their meaning to be found in road traffic legislation. For years, those phrases have been used liberally in that legislation, and they have been well chewed over by lawyers north and south of the border. They are clearly and well understood.
I wish to speak to two issues--the right to re-detain, about which I have some concerns, and the absence in the Bill as previously drafted of any requirement for constables to record the reasons for stopping a person, or to supply those reasons to the people detained. I hope to make clear to the Committee why I think that those issues are related.
Now that amendment No. 37 has been accepted, I am satisfied that the requirement to record the reasons for stopping a person has been incorporated in the Bill. That is important, but so is protecting people from the misuse of the power of summary detention. That is why the Bill should contain a clear provision preventing constables from using the four or six-hour power of detention to prevent a person from travelling, when those constables do not have the power to move to the next stage of the process--in other words, where there is no evidence to support a statement or warrant application under proposed new section 14B.
I agree with the principle of amendment No. 35, but not with its wording. I suggest that a simple amendment should be incorporated in the Bill requiring that, where a person is released at the termination of a period of detention under the relevant provision in the Bill, he will not thereafter be detained under that provision
- on the same grounds, or on any grounds arising from the same circumstances.
That suggestion to the Government is in response to the problem identified in amendment No. 35. I have nothing further to add.
Mr. Malins: I wonder whether I might raise with the Minister a few nuts-and-bolts issues about the amendments in connection with detention and reference to court. By way of preamble, it is a tragedy that a Bill of this importance should be debated in such a short time. Many in the House could contribute at length to debates on amendments to improve the Bill. I was given a draft Bill on Wednesday, then a further draft, and then I sat down to work out some amendments. To cut a long story short, it was not until this morning that I knew that they had been selected, and I had them in my hand--what a way to do business. If people could see what we were doing, they would be ashamed of us.
Let me give the Government an example of practical problems that might arise when England plays football against France and 20,000 people from this country decide to go to France to see the match. Some 10,000 have tickets, 10,000 have not. The match is on a Saturday, so people will travel to France on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, or Saturday morning. Of that 20,000, let us say for the sake of argument that a fifth--4,000--will be travelling from Dover, spread over a few days, and that the police and authorities will be seriously concerned about 10 per cent., or 400 people.
Let us picture the scene. Four hundred people will be stopped by the police at Dover--or around Dover, because they are going there by different routes. Unless the police wait outside the front door of their home--I understand that under the Bill it is entirely possible for the police to stop them at any time they want to--we shall assume that all those people get to Dover. What on earth will the practical situation be?
I pause now to ask whether the Government have taken advice or soundings from the bodies that could advise on detention and trial. There are so many of them--the stipendiary bench, the Magistrates Association, immigration officers, the court service, magistrates clerks, the Law Society and the Bar Council. Will the Minister tell us informally how many of those bodies were consulted before the Bill was presented on Thursday? Will he tell us formally? Perhaps the answer is that no real consultation took place with any of them.
Let us picture the scene at Dover. If one spreads those 400 people over three days, that is 130 or 150 per day. Each of them is, in simple terms, taken into custody by a police officer who is suspicious of them. Are there enough police at Dover to do that? Will the immigration authorities at the point of exit have any powers given to them in this respect?
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal): My hon. Friend fails to point out that these 150 people will be among a large number of other people. I still find it difficult to understand how, in the absence of any previous conviction, one could form a reasonable consideration that one had reasonable grounds, at that point, to detain a particular person among so many. It seems a fiction from the imagination of the Home Secretary that such a situation could arise.
Mr. Malins: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We shall be coming on to that a little later. How can an officer make a judgment? Even so, he or she will make a judgment and the person will be taken into custody. Can the Minister confirm that that person can be in custody
for up to six hours only? If that is right, what happens to the person then? He has so far been treated under a criminal umbrella in that he has been placed in custody. Will the Minister tell me how many custody suites there are at Dover, and whether the police believe that they can cope? Given that the person is in a criminal situation, will the Minister confirm that he has to be released after six hours?If that person is released, is he given bail under the Bail Act 1976, with all the criteria that apply; or is his case simply adjourned civilly, without there being any duty on him under the 1976 Act to return? If it is under the 1976 Act, and he does not return to face the court case, will the Minister confirm that all the powers of arrest and 1976 Act offences can and will be used, and that they will be used in the same proceedings as the civil complaint?
Mr. Browne: Has the hon. Gentleman looked at proposed new section 21C(2), which appears to answer his question? It provides that if people do not comply with notices under proposed new section 21B--presumably the notices that will be issued to people who are released from detention if they are not then free to go--they will be guilty of a criminal offence and may be arrested.
Mr. Malins: Yes, I have seen that. However, I am going through an exercise to find out what will happen. The position remains that a person will be taken into custody by an officer, has to be released after six hours, and has to go before the court within 24 hours. If the person is released, is he on bail, it being an offence under the Bail Act 1976 not to return to court? Can conditions be imposed under the 1976 Act for someone to return to court the next day?
If 150 cases are to take place in one day, a serious handling problem will arise. If 150 defendants are to come before the court, their cases will not be handled in one court building or in 10. Does the Minister understand that dealing with such cases will require, on those dates, certainly 10 and possibly 20 acting or full-time stipendiary magistrates in court buildings that can take them.
What happens when one gets to court? Does the case automatically go ahead? What happens if the Crown--if it is the Crown--says, "We would like to put this off; our paperwork is not in order"? There could be a huge handling problem at our ports of exit in relation to detention and reference to court, which has not been discussed sufficiently.
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