Prevention of Delays of Trials (Hansard, 16 November 1983)

§ Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helen's, South)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish the maximum period spent in custody pending trial; and for connected purposes. It is unfortunate that one has to raise this subject, but in any one year a considerable number of people suffer grave hardship because of the current system of remanding people in custody.

During the last 12 months for which we have figures, of about 48,000 people who were remanded in custody, 16,000 later received non-custodial sentences and 2,000 were acquitted. That effectively means that under our system of bail about 30 per cent. of the people involved were not granted bail in cases where they were not going to receive custodial sentences.

It seems to me and many people with whom I have discussed this matter that remands in custody have clogged the prison system. Recent figures available for Manchester and Leeds prisons show that about 25 per cent. of the people currently remanded in custody awaiting trial have been there more than 110 days.

In a recent example in Wales, three men were remanded in custody for approximately nine months before acquittal. They have no right to compensation for the iniquities and the conditions that they suffered during their remand. At a more lowly level of criminal offence, in Leeds the other day a defendant had been in prison for about 142 days on a burglary charge to which he was always going to plead guilty. He received a two-year term of probation. One must ask what is happening to the bail system and remands in custody.

I believe that the Bail Act 1977 has been largely ignored in a series of cases. The Nottingham and the Reading justices' decisions, and the periodic pronouncements of various judges, particularly one or two on the northern and north-eastern circuit who have warned magistrates by saying such things as, "People who are on bail commit offences," have created an atmosphere in which vast numbers of people who need not be locked up before court hearings are being remanded in custody. That places an unnecessary additional strain on the prison system.

My Bill, which is in no way revolutionary, seeks merely to bring English law into line with Scottish law. The Scots have a sensible law. If I have leave to introduce the Bill, England could, and should, benefit from a provision whereby remands in custody are limited to a maximum of 110 days.

I wish to allay one or two fears. In no way is the Bill designed to let the guilty go free. On the contrary, it is designed to enable the guilty to stand trial more quickly and to receive the punishment that they justly deserve more quickly. The Bill is not designed to shift the clog or blockage in the court systems but is a spur—I speak as a solicitor who has practised for many years in the criminal courts—to lawyers to get a move on in dealing with their cases, to listing officers in the Crown courts to list more quickly and to the judiciary to be more efficient in the use of time.

I appreciate that all those who operate in the courts seek to do their best, but we must be realistic. Considering the 851 amount of time spent messing about—I speak bluntly—in the preparation of criminal trials, all involved in the legal system have much to ask themselves.

To those who question the intention of the Bill on the ground that Scotland has a procurator fiscal system, the answer is simple—most prosecutions in England and Wales are largely controlled by prosecuting solicitors employed by either the shire or metropolitan counties, and in London by solicitors employed by Scotland Yard. In our system, lawyers control the cases. There is no excuse in 1984 for people to be remanded in custody for more than 110 days before their trial. Old trials are trials with stale evidence. The best way to justice is with fresh evidence, and the best way to justice with fresh evidence is to have speedy trials.