§ Mr. John TaylorTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proposals he has to deal with the bailing of prolific offenders especially where there is a history of non-compliance; if he will offer guidance to magistrates in these matters; and if he will make a statement. [77101]
§ Hilary BennThe decision on whether to grant bail or remand a defendant in custody is, of course, one for the courts to make, in each case, in line with the statutory framework primarily set out in the Bail Act 1976.
To help the courts to tackle the problems of persistent offending on bail by juveniles, I announced on 16 April 2002 the extension of the existing powers to enable courts to place on secure remand any 12 to 16-year-old where they are of the opinion that the child or young person has a recent history of repeatedly committing imprisonable offences on bail or in local authority accommodation and that it is necessary to remand him into secure accommodation in order to protect the 813W public from serious harm or to prevent him committing more imprisonable offences. This came into force nationally on 16 September 2002 after implementation on 22 April 2002 in the 10 street crime areas.
In addition to this, the national implementation of electronic tagging for 12 to 16-year-olds on bail and local authority remand was introduced from 1 June 2002. Tagging will strengthen the powers of the courts by increasing their options for dealing with young people who commit repeated imprisonable offences (such as theft and criminal damage) while on bail.
We also intend to include provision, as soon as parliamentary time allows, to weight the court's discretion against granting bail to a defendant who has been charged with an imprisonable offence committed while on bail for another offence. Once this has been introduced we will provide the courts with guidance on the new provision in the usual way.