Release Under Investigation

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and to respond to the debate from the shadow Front Bench. This has been an excellent debate, with Members with vested experience in these issues, which makes it even more profound that there has been so much agreement on the challenges that these reforms to police bail have presented to the criminal justice system over the past three years.

I am delighted to see the Government acknowledge those challenges in the consultation announced today, which was clearly in direct response to the calling of the debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), making this one of the most successful Westminster Hall debates I have ever taken part in. Some important points have been made. My hon. Friend made the point that there has been a lot of focus recently on automatic early release, particularly relating to terrorism. It might shock hon. Members to know that, according to the latest RUI figures, between 2018 and 2019 there was a 540% increase in suspects of terrorism offences released under investigation or bailed without condition.

My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate made particular reference to domestic abuse victims, and there has been significant scrutiny of that precisely because of the vulnerability of the victims involved and the fact that the suspects in their cases are free to contact them without condition. Major concerns about investigative capacity were also raised. We can change RUI and we can put conditions on it all we like, but that will not address the real root causes of the issues at the heart of our criminal justice system—the crisis in detective numbers, the enormous boom in digital and forensic requirements attached to investigation, and the total lack of capacity in the police force and the Crown Prosecution Service alike.

The Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), neatly summarised the loss of the three safeguards for the suspect, the victim and the public. All have been removed under the current system because of the explosion in RUI and the complete drop in police bail. He also made the sensible suggestion that RUI should apply only in cases where unconditional police bail would otherwise have been applied. The problem, as the Law Society points out, is that risk assessments are simply not being carried out across police forces and are certainly not applied consistently.

The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) made similar points about the proportionality of the system, describing it as a dismal failure. I think it was well intentioned, but it has indeed been a dismal failure. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) made important points about legal aid and the intention of the reforms, which I hope the Minister will respond to. I welcome the hon. Members for North West Durham (Mr Holden) and for Bury North (James Daly) to their places. Both spoke passionately from their opposite experiences of the issue, but with similar passion and on the similar challenges around particular types of offences. It is inconceivable that RUI should be applied to rape and violent offences, and there can be little justification for it.

The Government’s announcement of changes is welcome and requires careful consideration. We know of cases in which individuals arrested for serious crimes have been investigated for many months—if not years in some circumstances—with no conditions and no timeframe attached to those investigations. To my knowledge, this is the first time the reforms have been debated in this Chamber since they were introduced in 2017. It has been something of a silent crisis, but its cause is obvious: abandoning the time limits, monitoring and conditions that underpinned police bail inevitably led to a severely underfunded police force taking the much less cumbersome option of releasing under investigation.

That has been demonstrated in the figures. Not only have we seen a huge increase in the hard numbers, but the average length of time spent under investigation under this system has in some cases quadrupled in some forces, so a reform designed to reduce the amount of time individuals languish under police investigation has ended up extending it considerably.

This was both foreseeable and foreseen. The Government’s consultation on the reforms said:

“respondents expressed concern that enabling release under investigation would not solve the underlying issue of an extended period of uncertainty for suspects… Indeed, some respondents were concerned that, without even the minimal level of scrutiny brought by the current process of granting and extending bail, there would be the potential for non-bail cases to take even longer to resolve with priority given to cases where bail would need to be justified to the courts.”

The hon. Member for Bury North highlighted that this has not only led to but encouraged or incentivised delay.

[James Daly]

What does the hon. Lady think about pre-charge advice? It is one of the reasons—it may be a good reason—for delays in the system. Does she feel that pre-charge advice plays a positive or negative role in this process?

[Louise Haigh]

It contributes to the delays in the system. Clearly it has had a role, alongside these reforms and issues around capacity and resources across the whole system.

It is shocking that 93,000 suspects of violence and sexual assault were released under investigation since 2017. The Secret Barrister tweeted this week:

“The primary driver behind the drop in prosecutions for sexual offences…is that lack of police resources means suspects are being released under investigation (RUI’d) for *years*.”

The Government’s reforms did nothing to address the reason people were languishing on police bail; they simply gave the old problem a new label, while investigations became more complex and time consuming due to digital explosion. We are now seeing cases in the Crown court for offences dating as far back as 2017. While suspects are left under the cloud of suspicion for years, victims of serious offences are denied closure and live in fear of being confronted by their accused.

I do not think the answers to this problem are complicated—some have been clearly expressed by hon. Members today—nor does it require an endless Home Office review. There is a place for release under investigation, but it must be used proportionately. The open-ended overuse of RUI has made a mockery of justice. Clearly, time limits must be introduced to prevent the perverse situation where victims and suspects are waiting too long.

The Government’s proposed mechanism to do this via codes of practice with no judicial oversight requires careful thought. The risk is that unless the codes of practice are strictly applied by officers, timescales will slip again. The police must be encouraged to use police bail where necessary to protect victims, particularly in cases of violent of sexual offences.

We look forward to engaging fully with the consultation in the coming weeks and months, but the elephant in the room is the crisis in the criminal justice system, and this consultation alone will not fix that. The problem is rooted in the utter mess the governing party has made of criminal justice, from the explosion in violent crime due to the reduction in police numbers, to the crisis in the probation system and our prisons, meaning that offenders are leaving prison even more likely to reoffend. All of that has meant detectives and investigators are dealing with an impossible caseload while facing a crisis in numbers.

The Minister knows that the recruitment pledge will only help marginally, because there is no commitment to replace the 16,000 police staff and investigators who have been lost. The party of law and order has veered so wildly on criminal justice that it is hard to believe that Ministers can maintain a straight face when they claim to be tough on crime. The cut of 20,000 police officers is now being reversed. Probation was privatised, but now it is nationalised. Bail reforms were introduced, but now they are reversed. On the central task of any Government—to keep the public safe—this Government have been shambolic. The silent crisis in bail reforms requires swift action, which we will support, as we will always support any proposals that help to correct some of the enormous damage that has been committed over the past 10 years.