Release Under Investigation

Robert Neill Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[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 That is partly because police bail is out of date, but I will come to that.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.

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point. Is not the real rub that because of the exchange in effect of bail for RUI, two safeguards are lost? The first is the protection of the accused in relation to the review process and time limits that go with bail and the ability to argue a case, and the second is the protection for the victim, who cannot have, for example, non-contact or address conditions attached? There is also, in terms of general public protection, the risk of reoffending. Is that not what Assistant Commissioner Ephgrave meant when talking about the unintended consequences?

[Bambos Charalambous]

The hon. Member makes an excellent point. It is the loss of those safeguards after the Policing and Crime Act introduced RUI, in effect to replace bail, that I am highlighting in my speech. It is easy to understand why this has happened: huge reductions in police and Crown Prosecution Service resources under austerity make it extremely difficult for evidence to be collected within the timeframes imposed by bail conditions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bambos Charalambous]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. We need to review the process that takes place before charging, but we now live in an age where more information has to be collected from phones and digitally, which takes up a fair amount of resources.

It is vital that the following issues are taken into account by the Government. First, it is essential that RUI incorporates time limits. It is understandable that the bail system needed reform. Time limits attached to bail have often been unrealistic in terms of dealing with huge amounts of digital and social media evidence, which is now often relevant to cases. It has been suggested to me by a senior police figure that a longer and staggered time period, with different levels of approval, might make bail work better. However, it is still essential that time limits of some kind are brought into the RUI system so that victims and suspects are no longer left in limbo. For these time limits to work, it is also vital that the police, the CPS and criminal lawyers are properly resourced.

Secondly, while the promised increase in police numbers by the Government is welcome, there must also be proper resourcing for the collection and sorting of evidence, especially where it is stored digitally or where forensic analysis is required. The Government must ensure that procedures and funding fit for the 21st century are in place.

Thirdly, it is imperative that certain categories of crime are excluded from the RUI system. It is entirely inappropriate for suspects accused of domestic violence, violent crime or sexual violence to be placed under RUI.

[Sir Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman is making an impressive speech. Could his last point be dealt with by reforms to the codes of practice set out by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, to say that the use of RUI must be proportionate? If an offence were of the nature that it would attract unconditional bail, RUI might be a convenient way forward, but it is almost inconceivable that people charged with violent or sexual offences would be released on unconditional bail. In such cases, there would normally be a non-contact condition or a condition of residence—something of that kind. It would be simple to take those offences straight out of the system and go back to bail, to the benefit of everybody.

[Bambos Charalambous]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent suggestion. I hope the Minister takes note of that and that it is fed into the consultation.

Finally, it is vital that where RUI is used, some conditions can be imposed. There should be a mechanism for knowing where suspects are and for preventing them from being in contact with alleged victims and witnesses. All parties should kept updated at regular intervals.

To conclude, we must uphold the two vital principles of our justice system: justice delayed must not become justice denied, and everyone has a right to be regarded as innocent until proven guilty.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

I apologise if my speech sounds rather like a ramble through my years as a criminal defence solicitor. It probably will be that, but I hope that I can bring a little bit of experience on a practical level about how I have experienced the criminal justice system as a legal aid lawyer. I left just before the RUI process came into being. I had the dubious pleasure of dealing with police bail, which essentially was the same situation, but with bail conditions and people being arrested on a regular basis for breaching them. The delays were there with police bail, as they are with RUI, so that situation has not changed massively, as far as I can see.

My research for this debate was to speak to colleagues who are still practising in large practices. A friend I spoke to over the past couple of days told me that 75% of the people his firm represents who are interviewed in police stations are released on the RUI procedure. How can that possibly be? The vast majority of those case are straightforward offences. That was the point I was trying to make in my earlier intervention.

Another colleague of mine said that the situation has got to the point where, if my friend came to me and punched me on the nose—although that would clearly never happen—and I made a complaint to the police and said, “I have seen my friend, Fred Bloggs, punch me in the nose, and there is no doubt about it as I have known him for 10 years,” he would be released on this procedure. He would not be charged. He would go through this process for the best part of a year, and in the end he would almost certainly be released without charge, either because people had forgotten what they had said or the circumstances of the case, or because something else had happened.

It is a very unsatisfactory process. I would like the Government to consider going back to the custody sergeant ways. I know it is probably very old-fashioned, but I saw justice being done when I was a young lawyer. What is important here is how quickly we, as Members of Parliament, should expect the police to carry out their investigation. If the vast majority of cases are straightforward and involve two or three statements, how can that take more than 24 or 48 hours? Obviously people might be on holiday or away, but the vast majority of times, in my experience, the process literally involves a police officer going out and taking the statements, and that is it.

It has been confirmed to me by colleagues over the past couple of days that if that process happens—in most cases over a 24 or 48-hour period—and somebody is then released under investigation, when they come back to the police station in a year’s time it will almost certainly be the same evidence. Nothing will have happened, so the decision made 12 months down the line could have been made within 24 hours.

[Sir Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I know that he has real coalface experience of this. What might change a year down the track is that memories have faded, so the evidence will be less potent, which may result in a miscarriage of justice either way. We have talked about delays between charge and hearing dates in Crown and magistrates courts. If a delay is added before charge because of this system, the delay will be doubled up, which leads to that risk.

[James Daly]

For cases involving fraud or some technical matters, a process such as this should quite clearly be brought into play, because the technical examination of computers or whatever takes weeks or months. My comments are not in respect of those cases.

To follow on from a point that my colleague made, I have been told in the last 24 hours of rape and manslaughter cases following this process, which is quite incredible. It is suggested that one of those cases has direct evidence of involvement, but this process is happening. A suspect in a most horrendous rape case, similar to the one outlined, was released under this process for more than 12 months. I do not know how that can be.

We should look at the process within the police station. When a suspect goes into a police station, they will almost certainly be interviewed by an officer who does not take responsibility for the case later in proceedings. The officer who interviews does not have ownership of the case and gives it to the investigating officer, who is perhaps somewhere else in the police station or is not on shift at that moment in time, and the case gets lost within the system. My colleagues report back to me that, when this process happens, it is months down the line before the first conversation with the victim, or even the person who has been complained about. This system encourages delay and delayed justice, and that simply cannot be right.

When I first practised in court, I used to represent shoplifters or people who had committed the most straightforward offences. The court would be full of people committing that type of offence, but they are no longer within the court system; they have been taken out. We have a limited number of cases for which we have created a system in which we do not investigate these matters within an appropriate period of time. I believe that, sadly—I know that this was not the intention behind the process—this encourages tardiness and officers not prioritising these matters.

The only way of addressing this is to bring back a system in which charging has to be made within a set period of time, one way or the other, unless there is a good, proportionate and reasonable reason, or else we will continue to have these problems. We cannot have a system in which people accused of rape or manslaughter are in the community for more than 12 months, able to speak to their victim, to leave the country and to do other things. That is not the intention of the Government, the police or anybody involved in the process, but that is where we are.

I am interested to hear the Government’s view and to contribute to the review, but I say to the Minister that this comes down to who has the case initially and to carrying out the investigation at the earliest opportunity. It may be that we do not need a CPS lawyer to review all the evidence. There may be an experienced police officer who can do that, such as the custody sergeant, or there may be another way of dealing with matters that protects potential victims and the interests of those who have been involved in this process for a long time and that means that justice can be done.

At the start of my career, I believed that justice was done, but the custody sergeant did not always get it right, and there were lots of cases in which no further action happened as a result, so there is a strong argument against what I am saying. However, I can tell hon. Members, on behalf of my legal aid colleagues—I am proud to stand here as one of them, trying to represent some of the things that they believe in very passionately—that justice was done, the public were protected and the public interest was protected. I will obviously do anything I can to assist the Minister in the review.