Release Under Investigation

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the use of release under investigation.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I am grateful to all Members who have come along to this debate about a dangerous situation that has arisen in our justice system—a situation that poses a threat to both victims of crime and those who stand accused of committing them. I speak, of course, about the use of release under investigation.

It is ironic that a lot of attention has been paid recently to the dangers of early release; release under investigation poses at least as many questions, if not more, but it has received far less attention from the Government and the media. Unintended consequences and austerity have combined to create a dire situation. Rather than helping serve justice, RUI hinders justice and puts victims of crime in danger. It is creating a situation in which justice delayed is becoming justice denied. However, there are some straightforward solutions, and I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response and reaction to them. I will start by explaining the current use of release under investigation and outlining the problems surrounding it for victims and suspects. I will then outline suggestions by the Law Society and the Bar Council for improvements in the system.

The first important point to make is that being released under investigation is different from being released on police bail. When a person is released on bail, they are subject to certain conditions. For instance, they may be required to live at a particular address, not to contact certain people, to give in their passport so they cannot leave the UK, or to report to a police station at an agreed time—perhaps once a week. With release under investigation, the situation is dramatically different. The accused is released with no time limit—it could be for weeks, months or years—and is not subject to any conditions at all. That means the accused is free to contact anyone, including their alleged victim, and to go anywhere, including leaving the UK. It also means that those who are falsely accused can be left in a state of limbo for years, not knowing whether they will stand trial.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I am listening intently to the hon. Gentleman. In the Thames valley, the number of people on police bail dropped to 379 in 2018, while the number on RUI increased to more than 11,000. Police bail just is not being followed. Does he share my concerns about that?

[Bambos Charalambous]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I will come to that point later. The use of police bail has dropped dramatically, and the use of RUI has increased exponentially. That is partly because police bail is out of date, but I will come to that.

As I said, justice delayed becomes justice denied. Before we consider all the implications of those stark facts, let me draw attention to the huge increase in the use of release under investigation. All evidence suggests that the use of RUI has expanded massively since changes to bail introduced by the Policing and Crime Act 2017. In London, for instance, 67,838 people were released on bail in 2016-17. In 2017-18, that number fell to 9,881, yet the number of people released under investigation in the same period was 46,674. That indicates that RUI is being used to replace bail. The checks and balances of the bail system are being swept away by a system that has neither.

The picture is incomplete, because only 20 of the 44 police forces in England and Wales have released data on RUI. However, despite the patchy data, a clear pattern emerges. For instance, in Nottinghamshire, the Thames valley and Cheshire, as in London, the number of people on bail has plummeted, while the number released under investigation has skyrocketed. Worryingly, the Bar Council estimates that the number of offenders suspected of violence against people or of sex offences who are released under investigation has risen from 1,300 in 2016 to 27,000.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

The Minister will already have got the feeling from the debate that there is unanimity on both sides of the House on this issue. I will not diverge from that. I understand that the Government are undertaking a review of this area. We want the Minister to take up the issues we are raising today as part of that and to make sure that we are heard.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) said, we need a system that is proportionate. Just from the figures for the Thames Valley, it is clear that the use of RUI is not proportionate. The number of people released on bail between 2016 and 2017 was 13,768. However, in 2017-18 that fell to 379 people, and the number released under investigation was 11,053. What is happening within the police service is completely disproportionate.

In case the Minister has the impression that we are alone in raising this issue, we are not. It has been put forward strongly by the Bar Council and the Law Society, and by the Association of Chief Police Officers in its guidelines on how RUI should be brought into operation. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) has gone into great detail about it, so I will not do that.

While there is clearly an issue of justice denied, the major issue seems to be the victims being deprived of their rights. As we have heard, there is no ability to impose orders to keep people away from the houses of those they are accused of performing some disadvantage to. The imposition of those orders, alongside general conditions, is a major feature of the bail system that does not exist in RUI. There is no ability to place conditions on a suspect who has been released under investigation; it simply does not occur. That has an enormous impact on the lives of the victims. It is not just the people who have committed the crime who are left languishing for ages, wondering what on earth is going to happen. Victims are left not knowing what is going to happen with the person who has been accused of doing them harm. We need to make sure that proper conditions are imposed. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst mentioned the need to make RUI proportionate, and that, above all, seems to me to be something that can help.

I finish with a quotation about the use of RUI:

“in reality, it has made the situation far worse”.

It goes on:

“Not only are people released under investigation for longer than they were kept on police bail, but the absence of proper scrutiny means police do not keep suspects updated as to the progress of an investigation.”

Everyone in the criminal justice system is a loser from that—from police officers to victims and the people alleged to have committed the crime. Defence lawyers are also victims of it, and my conclusion is that RUI has been a dismal failure.

[Sir Robert Neill]

There is another problem with the notification procedure. The single letter, which is sent under the current system, makes it difficult to keep tabs on people. Frequently a person has moved, making it difficult for their lawyers to keep in touch. That will then involve an application to the court for an arrest warrant, and there may be subsequent hearings and a bail application, if there is an explanation for why these things have happened. Any cost saving made by not having bail administered in the first instance is, perhaps, wiped out by the cost of extra court time for the issuing of the warrant and any proceedings thereafter. There must be a better way of dealing with that.

[John Howell]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and there is another point to that: since we cannot take away people’s passports, they can go wherever they like and not be traceable. That makes a mockery of the system.

I understand why the police like RUI, since it allows them more time to gather evidence following the expiration of the timetable that they are under for pre-charge bail, but that is not a justification for continuing with a system that is now hopelessly discredited by all of us, the Law Society, the Bar Society and others. I urge the Minister to look thoroughly and carefully at this issue.