COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 24 July 1968)

§ LORD HUGHES
My Lords I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 57.

§ LORD DRUMALBYN
I am slightly puzzled by this Amendment. We have 1213 already had one, Amendment which we have passed so that subsection (2) now reads: A constable or any person authorised by any court or by any justice of the peace may take to a place of safety any child in respect of whom any of the offences…has been or is believed to have been committed…". It goes on: …and any child so taken to a place of safety or any child who has taken refuge in a place of safety may be detained there— and so on. It finishes up: and where a child is so detained the constable or and so on. Then we come to Amendment 57, with which the subsection will read: the person authorised as aforesaid or the occupier of the place of safety shall forthwith inform the reporter of the case. This was an Amendment made without discussion in another place. It is always desirable to lay a duty upon a particular person, and the Amendment to the Commons Amendment of which I have given notice would lay the duty to inform the reporter of the case upon the person who brought the child to the place of safety whether that person is the constable or "the person authorised as aforesaid". I can quite see that this would leave a bit of a gap where the child has taken refuge in the place of safety on his own initiative. The difficulty is that you are laying a statutory obligation on the occupier of the place of safety without any sanction. You are really saying to the occupier of the place of safety: "Please tell us." That is all you are doing; you cannot do more. Who is going to look at the Act to find out whether they should inform the reporter of the case as soon as the child arrives there? What will almost certainly happen is that the person concerned will ring up the police, which will be the same thing as if the police had brought the child to the place of safety.
My Lords, what I do not like particularly is the idea of laying a statutory obligation on parties in this way. In many cases they are not the sort of people who will know that they have this obligation, because the place of safety may not have been used by the child before. It might be the local doctor's house, or somewhere like that where the child has taken refuge. As I say, I do not particularly like this. 1214 Nor do I like the fluffing of the responsibility here for informing the reporter of the case. It says that in the case where the constable brings the child to place of safety it is the responsibility of either the constable or the person to whom the child is brought. I think this is untidy and, in my view, it is not good legislation. Of course, there may be no other way of expressing it.
I have put down this Amendment to the Amendment to draw attention to what appeared to me when I read this through yesterday to be a rather odd form of procedure. My Amendment will lay the responsibility firmly on the person who brings the child to the place of safety; and I think one could be quite certain that when a child comes to a place of safety under his or her own steam (if I may put it that way) the parents will be notified, and this would bring into operation what is required.
The only other point I would m ration is that it is difficult to see what the occupier of the place of safety is it forming the reporter about when it is said that he must inform him of "the case". He is merely informing him that a child has arrived on his premises, which is hardly "the case". I beg to move.

§ LORD HUGHES
My Lords, the way in which the noble Lord has spoken to his Amendment leaves one in no doubt that he is quite clear about all the circumstances with which this clause deals. I must admit, quite frankly, that if one were seeking to put this in terms of perfect law we should not have lone it in this way. I think the best defence, however, is that it is fairly good common sense. Of course, one knows that the law and common sense are no; always exactly the same thing. The circumstances are really these. There may be three different lots of people involved in a transaction. There is the constable, the authorised person, and in each case there will be an occupier. If there is a constable or an authorised person involved, it will be the normal procedure —and I would doubt whether it would ever vary from this—that the constable 1215 or the authorised person would do the reporting.
As the noble Lord himself envisaged, there could be a case where a child was not brought by anyone but took refuge of its own accord. In these circumstances there are only two people who could take some step to bring it to the notice of the reporter. One is the child itself, and it would not be reasonable to place a responsibility on the child to report that it had taken refuge. The only other person who could do this in these circumstances is the occupier; and I am in complete agreement with the noble Lord that what is almost certain to happen is that the occupier will report the event. He probably might get in touch with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children or he might get in touch with the police, and they in turn then will take the necessary steps.
I think that that is all that is necessary. I do not think that there is any defect in the proceedings because if the person in fact does not do this there is no sanction that can be taken against him. After all, if he does not do it he has the child, and so in the ordinary course of events, unless he wants to be stuck with it in perpetuity, he is going to tell somebody about it sooner or later. So I do not think that any sanction is needed against the occupier.
Theoretically there is the possibility that the constable would leave it to the occupier and the occupier would leave it to the constable, or the authorised person would leave it to the occupier and the occupier would leave it to the authorised person. That situation will not arise, because in any case where either a constable or an authorised person is involved they know quite clearly that it is their job to take the necessary step. It is only in the case which the noble Lord envisaged, of a child putting itself in refuge of its own accord, that this point is likely to arise.
I must admit that there was an alternative to the way we have done this. We could have had a very complicated drafting procedure, which the occupier probably would not have understood. It would have made it quite clear to a lawyer the way that things should be done, but we could not be absolutely 1216 certain that that in turn would not need to be the subject of a drafting Amendment some time next year. So I think it is better to leave it as it is. I must admit that it will probably offend Lord Drumalbyn's sense of tidiness of the way things should be done, but I think that in this case we have chosen the most satisfactory of the courses reasonably available to us. I hope, therefore, that he can withdraw his Amendment to the Amendment.

§ LORD DRUMALBYN
My Lords, I thought I ought to raise this point if only because, had these words been in the Bill when it first came to this House, I am sure I would have raised this point then. Well, it is not a perfect world. This is quite a good Bill now, I think, apart from the major blemish we have already dealt with; and, although this point does in a way stick out a little as a sore thumb, nevertheless I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.