Official Report: Minutes of Evidence
Committee for Justice , meeting on Wednesday, 25 February 2015
Members present for all or part of the proceedings:
Mr A Ross (Chairperson)
Mr Stewart Dickson
Mr Tom Elliott
Mr C Hazzard
Mr Seán Lynch
Mr Patsy McGlone
Mr Edwin Poots
Justice Bill Parts 3, 4 and 5: Informal Consideration
The Chairperson (Mr Ross): The oral evidence sessions on the Bill and proposed amendments have been completed, and the Committee will now begin its informal consideration of the clauses, schedules and proposed amendments. Today, we will discuss Parts 3, 4 and 5 of the Bill and the proposed amendments by the Attorney General in relation to the Coroners Act (Northern Ireland) 1959 and to provide rights of audience for lawyers working in his office. I am sure that many of you have been through the process before, but I just remind you that the informal consideration provides an opportunity for members to indicate whether they are content with the clauses and amendments, whether they require any further information or clarification, whether they are minded to reject clauses or whether they wish to amend clauses.
I presume that you all have a hard copy of your pack; I refer you to tabs 1 to 3. Part 3 is on prosecutorial fines. Do members have any views on clauses 17 to 27 of the Justice Bill? Are you content with the clauses, do you wish to reject any of the clauses or amend anything? I will open it up to members. I think it is something, Alban, that you had raised concerns about before.
The Chairperson (Mr Ross): We are at Part 3 of the Bill, tabs 1 to 3 of your hard copy, clauses 17 to 27. Are there any views, members? Nobody wants to commit to going first. There were a few issues that we raised during the oral session. I raised the matter of how often an individual could be offered the prosecutorial fine. I was a little bit concerned about whether it could be seen as something that was an easier option for the Public Prosecution Service (PPS). We could ask whether there is anything that could be put in the Bill to tighten that up. Maybe that is about the directions that come from the PPS, but it is an area that I thought we would look at. Their purpose is for non-habitual offences, so I am not sure that it would be the appropriate mechanism for repeat offences, but, for minor offences, it is certainly valuable in that it does not take up court time. I would be concerned if individuals were continually offered that.
Mr A Maginness: I agree with you, Chair. It is not designed for repeat offences. I suppose once or twice would be the limit — probably only once — because it serves as a warning. It is not, in effect, a criminal conviction, so it is a serious attempt to divert that person from any future offending. It should therefore have very limited usage. I am not sure whether that is implicit in the provision. I suppose that you could argue that it is.
Mr Poots: In its representations to the Committee, NIACRO said that the easy way out is not to pay the fine; it is to do a very short jail sentence. How will the Bill allow for the collection of fines? The biggest problem is that there does not appear to be the means of enforcing —
Mr A Maginness: Of course, if you do not pay the fine, you commit a criminal offence.
The Chairperson (Mr Ross): We are expecting the fines and enforcement Bill, but there is slippage. It keeps pushing that issue back, but it is a hugely important issue.
Mr Poots: Can they take it at the point of source?
Mr Poots: If someone is getting £100 a week, for example, can they take £5 a week off them at source?
Mr Lynch: The advantage was that you did not have it as a criminal record but that, if you did not pay the fine, it became a criminal record. That is a major change.
Mr Elliott: I support what Edwin said. They need a mechanism for trying to collect the money. We have heard of so many people going to jail for unpaid fines. I do not know whether we need that in primary legislation, but it needs to be dealt with at some stage.
Mr Poots: We do not want people running about the country after £100; you could be spending £500 while trying to gather up a £100 fine. It needs to be a very clear that, if you get hit with a fine and agree to take it, you have to demonstrate how it is going to be achieved. If you are on benefits, for example, it could come directly from the benefits. If you are in employment, it should come directly from your employer. If you are not prepared to pay it up front, you should never see it.
The Chairperson (Mr Ross): My understanding is that the powers to do that will be in the fines and enforcement Bill. It is important that we get progress with that Bill to allow those powers to be used.
Mr A Maginness: I made this point the last time: calling it a "fine" is inappropriate. It really should be a "penalty". Obviously, it is not a fixed penalty; it is variable. It should be "prosecutorial penalty" rather than "fine". A fine connotes something that has gone through a court and is a criminal sanction. It is a matter of style more than anything else, but the language should convey something less than a fine that someone would get in a criminal court.
Mr Poots: The other one was — I posed the question, but I still do not have the answer — about who can impose the fines. Can the Bill empower health trusts or the Ambulance Trust to impose fines? If an individual is being verbally abusive, constantly effing and blinding, and threatening staff, can someone at that stage say to them, "Right, any more of that there and I will issue a prosecutorial fine, and that'll be £150"? It will alert people, and there needs to be a further step to make it easier for people to get some form of mandatory sentencing for abuse of staff beyond that. It is not tolerable in today's society that front-line people who are providing a service can be abused like that. Front-line police officers have the ability to deal with that, but an awful lot of this is happening, and we need to give more support to our staff in those instances.
Mr A Maginness: I agree in principle with what Edwin said, but I do not think that a health trust or an authority of that type could be the body that imposes a penalty or a fine. I think that it has to be the PPS. It could be referred to the PPS and done that way.
The point is a good one. Verbal abuse and the obstructive behaviour of customers or clients is a mischief that needs to be addressed. This might be a good way of addressing that mischief.
Mr Poots: I do not mind how it is done, but I want empower those front-line staff to defend themselves.
The Chairperson (Mr Ross): We could seek information from the Department about whether the health trusts could refer directly to the PPS as opposed to having any police involvement.
Mr Poots: It needs to be smooth and easy, because staff have too much to do to pursue those things. If we ever want to institute zero tolerance of bad behaviour, and we should be looking to do that, we need the ability for that to happen. That will also lead to more prosecutions of people who go further. Staff do not want to spend time in courts. It needs to be made easy to punish people for bad behaviour. I would invite anybody to go to an emergency department (ED) on any night of the week — not just at the weekends — and they will see people being abusive.
Mr Dickson: To carry that conversation forward a little: we empower traffic wardens to deal with traffic offences. Why should we not be in a position to empower designated staff within a range of public bodies, in this case, health, with the same power as traffic wardens to issue fixed penalty notices, and people pay a fine or whatever?
Mr Poots: The 85-year-old grandmother who parks three inches over a white line is subject to such enforcement —
Mr Poots: — yet some foul-mouthed being is able to get away with it.
Mr Dickson: Maybe not. The point is that, in the same way that the duty can be given to a traffic warden, it should be able to be given to someone with a not dissimilar status within a public body, whether in the Ambulance Service or in health care.
The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I think that there is general support for the principle behind it, although there are certainly areas that we will want to seek more information on. Let us see who will be able to deliver them and whether it is a matter that could be referred directly to the PPS or to some other designated individual. We also need more clarity on whether it will be in the Bill that individuals will not be able to avail themselves of it on more than one occasion. We also need to get more information on the fines and enforcement Bill. We clearly want it to be linked together and want those two things to be done in parallel to ensure that, if there are fines, there are the appropriate powers to take money from individuals.
Mr Hazzard: Does anyone know whether there is precedence for this anywhere else?
Mr Hazzard: I would be keen to explore what happens when a perpetrator denies being offensive. If someone parks a car for too long, there is evidence. Would it be a camera that picks up sound?
Mr Poots: There will be cameras in a lot of facilities. There would not be a camera in a situation in which, for example, a community nurse is in a house and gets assaulted verbally or physically. That would be more challenging in terms of the evidence base. However, there will be cameras in a lot of areas.
The Chairperson (Mr Ross): The individual will be offered the fine. They do not have to accept it and can go to court or whatever else. It is more a way of trying to deal with lower-level offences so that they do not go to court and can speed up justice.
I think that we are generally content with that, but we will follow up on some of the other issues and try to get more information before we move on to the formal clause-by-clause consideration. Are members content with that approach?
Members indicated assent.
The Chairperson (Mr Ross): We now move to Part 4, which deals with victims and witnesses. The clauses deal with the victim and witness charters and bring into effect one of the key recommendations of the Committee's inquiry into the criminal justice services available to victims and witnesses of crime.
I invite you to comment on clauses 28 to 35, which cover victims and witnesses, and to say whether you are content with the clauses or wish to amend or reject any of them. I will open the floor up for comment.
There was general support for this before. An issue was raised about the difference between victim statements and victim personal statements, and I am not sure that that was made particularly clear. It might be something that we want to double-check with the Department.
Mr Lynch: Are you talking about victim impact statements and personal statements?
The Committee Clerk: The issue was that, in all the guidance and everything that this is referred to outside the Bill, the phrase "victim personal statements" is used, but the Bill uses the phrase "victim statement". The question was asked why there could not be consistency, because if somebody looked at the legislation two or three years down the line and saw the phrase "victim statement", they may not be clear whether it refers to the same thing that is being used or to something different. I think the explanation was that it was the draftsperson's view that it should be called a victim statement in the Bill. The explanatory and financial memorandum explained it. The issue is that, further down the line when the Bill becomes an Act, most people will not go back to the explanatory memorandum to look at it. It is about whether there is potential for confusion later when this becomes an Act. The issue is whether there is any particularly strong reason for not using the same terminology.
The Committee Clerk: As was recorded in Hansard last week, the reason was that they had spoken to the draftsperson, who felt that, because victim statements can be given by the family of a deceased person as well as an actual victim, the phrase "victim personal statements" was not the right terminology. However, it was pointed out that a victim statement can refer to the impact on other people as well. I am not sure about this. If the Committee wants, we can go back and clarify whether there is any specific reason why the same terminology cannot be used.
Members indicated assent.
Members indicated assent.
The Chairperson (Mr Ross): We will move on to Part 5, which deals with criminal records. I invite members to comment on clauses 36 to 43 and schedule 4, which cover criminal records, and to say whether you are content with the clauses or wish to amend or reject any or whether you require any further information.
Mr Poots: I want to ask about record-keeping. It is strongly indicated that criminal record checks would not be carried out on under-16s. What is the situation for people who are 18 and over but who committed an offence when they were under 16? I am thinking in particular of someone who applies for enhanced disclosure certificates and so forth to work in certain places if, for example, a sexual offence had been committed by a 15-year-old who would be working with vulnerable young people. I assume that that is available and is not restricted.
The Chairperson (Mr Ross): From recollection, I think that it would still be available in the deeper check of the two. We can double-check that, but from recollection, I think that it is still available for certain types of jobs.
Mr Lynch: I think it was a definition of a minor offence and, in effect, that was outside —
The Committee Clerk: We can get more information on the retention framework. My understanding is that particular offences, such as sexual offences, murder and manslaughter and those sorts of offences, even if committed when a person is under 18, are on the record regardless of age. It is more the minor disposals and cautions that, depending on when the offence took place and how often, either remain on the record or are removed. My understanding is that they will show up for certain checks, but we can get some more information on the actual framework that is used, if that would help the Committee.
The Chairperson (Mr Ross): There are no other comments. The Committee is generally supportive, albeit that there should be checking for more serious offences and whether they still turn up in a deeper check. Is that correct?
Members indicated assent.