Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by Baroness Browning on 12 July 2011 (HL Deb, col 609), what consultation on matters relating to bail and the conditions that apply has taken place to date.

The College of Policing consulted between 27 March and 21 July 2014 on a set of ‘bail management principles’ that the police had introduced in 2013. The results of that consultation were published by the College on 11 December 2014 and are available on its website www.college.police.uk.

Alongside these improvements in the management of pre-charge bail, my Right Honourable Friend the Home Secretary considered that it would also be appropriate to introduce statutory time limits. As a result, the Home Office published a consultation on this on 18 December 2014, which closed on 8 February and is available on the gov.uk website. We are currently considering the 300 responses to the consultation and hope to publish the Government’s response, including proposals for legislation, shortly.