Ministers to overturn bail ruling

30 June 2011 Last updated at 18:32 GMT Home Secretary Theresa May: "This is a matter of great concern"

Emergency laws are to be brought forward to overturn a High Court ruling limiting police bail in England and Wales to a maximum of four days.

Policing Minister Nick Herbert told MPs the move was necessary to allow officers to do their jobs properly.

Police had regularly released suspects on bail for weeks, or even months in some cases, while an inquiry continued.

But solicitors involved in the High Court case said such practices were "unlawful" and new laws "unnecessary".

Following a ruling in the case of murder suspect Paul Hookway, fresh guidance issued to forces said officers would have to re-arrest suspects in order to detain or question them again beyond the four-day - or 96-hour - period - and could only do so with "new evidence".

'Dire' implications

The Association of Chief Police Officers' (Acpo) lead spokesman on the issue, Essex Chief Constable Jim Barker-McCardle, said the ruling had caused "chaos and concern" among officers.

BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said one senior police figure had described the implications of the court ruling as "dire" as it would have far-reaching effects on serious and complex cases where police needed time to gather evidence and speak to witnesses, such as in rape allegations.

Continue reading the main story Mark Easton Home Editor, BBC News

The case highlights a concern that police bail is an incentive to do nothing”

End Quote Mr Herbert told the Commons that police "believe that the judgement will have a serious impact on their ability to investigate crime".

"It is likely that in most forces there will not be enough capacity to detain everybody in police cells," he said.

"In other cases it risks impeding the police to such an extent that the investigation will have to be stopped because the detention time has run out.

"The judgement will also affect the ability of the police to enforce bail conditions."

The minister said that with about 80,000 suspects currently on bail, the government could not afford to wait for a Supreme Court appeal.

He said the emergency legislation would provide assurance to the police that they could continue to operate on the same basis, regarding bail, as they have for the last 25 years.

But shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper criticised the government for dealing with the issue only now - despite Home Office officials learning of the Hookway decision in May.

"There has been considerable chaos in the Home Office around this, not just this week but for the last few weeks," she said.

"It is a deeply serious situation for the police, for prosecutions, and particularly for justice for victims."

Mr Herbert said that while the Home Office knew about the judgement last month, the full impact of it became clear only on 17 June.

'Unconstitutional'

The row began when a district judge at Salford Magistrates' Court refused to grant a routine warrant to Greater Manchester Police to extend Mr Hookway's detention.

Continue reading the main story 19 May: Judge rules orally against Greater Manchester Police. GMP informs officials at Home Office soon after 17 June: Written version of judgement circulated to Home Office officials, Crown Prosecution Service lawyers and police chiefs. Full scale of the problem becomes clear24 June: Ministers informed about the situation. Association of Chief Police Officers commissions further legal advice 30 June: Acpo recommends emergency legislation. Ministers say it will be introduced "as soon as possible"The force sought a judicial review, but the ruling was upheld at the High Court. The judge, Mr Justice McCombe, agreed that time spent on police bail counted towards the maximum 96-hour limit of pre-charge detention.

Greater Manchester Police will take their case to the Supreme Court on 25 July.

But Joseph Kotrie-Monson, the solicitor who represented Mr Hookway, insisted the ruling in his case did not change the law.

"It merely prevents police from abusing the custody process to reinterview citizens any of number times over periods sometimes as long as two or three years, provided the length of those interviews does not exceed four days," he said.

"Where there is new evidence, the police can detain again. What they can't do is take someone who is not proven to have committed any crime into custody as many times as they want, because they forgot to ask the right questions the first time around.

"The reason that [Home Secretary] Theresa May seeks new legislation is because she knows that the police actions up to now have been both unlawful and unconstitutional."

Greek ministers urge backing for austerity plan (Reuters)

(Reuters) – Greek ministers and policy makers urged parliament on Saturday to do its duty next week and pass a deeply unpopular set of austerity measures international lenders have demanded as the price for staving off bankruptcy.

With Greece teetering on the edge of defaulting on its huge public debt, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos offered to talk to wavering deputies from the ruling Socialist Party, at least two of whom have said they will oppose the measures in crucial votes on Wednesday and Thursday.

"I believe that the sense of responsibility will ultimately prevail, the God of Greece is great," he told TV station Alter.

Without parliamentary approval for the measures, the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have said they will not release a vital 12 billion euro ($17.2 billion) loan tranche and the government would run out of cash within days.

On Friday, Prime Minister George Papandreou's already slim majority was further undermined when a deputy from his PASOK party said he would vote against the measures, joining another party rebel who announced his opposition earlier this month.

Papandreou's government has 155 seats in the 300-strong parliament, having seen five defections since it came to power in October 2009 with 160 deputies.

With the economy stuck in its deepest recession since 1974 and youth unemployment running at over 40 percent, the mix of spending cuts, state sell offs and tax hikes demanded by the EU and the IMF has caused bitter resentment among ordinary Greeks.

A two-day general strike is planned next week to coincide with the votes, following a series of protests and rolling strikes at companies including Greece's main electricity group PPC, which is slated for privatization next year.

Athens accepted a package of 110 billion euros of EU/IMF loans in May 2010 but now needs a second bailout of a similar size to meet its financial obligations until the end of 2014, when it hopes to return to capital markets for funding.

In a statement, Venizelos acknowledged the austerity plan was harsh and imperfect and relied too heavily on tax increases but he said it would give the government time to negotiate a new deal with the EU which could include extra stimulus measures.

"The 12 billion euros of the fifth tranche are absolutely necessary to meet the states' cash needs, which is nothing other than the immediate and vital needs of citizens," he said.

CAMPAIGN

On Saturday, government ministers and policymakers including Bank of Greece governor George Provopoulos gave a series of media interviews to hammer home the message that the measures must pass to give the government some breathing space.

Justice Minister Miltiadis Papaioannou urged his fellow MPs to back the unpopular measures. "They must shut their ears to all the criticism they are hearing and do their duty," he said in an interview on TV station Mega.

Ministers also sought to squash the view, expressed by some deputies, that the vital 12 billion tranche may be released even if the measures are not passed because lenders will not want to risk the financial market turmoil that would follow a default.

"Blackmailing Europe would be playing with fire.. we can't negotiate with kamikaze tactics. It's not responsible to threaten that we'll blow up Europe," Deputy Finance Minister Filippos Sachinidis told the daily Eleftherotypia.

Despite heavy pressure from European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the conservative New Democracy opposition party has refused to support the package, meaning a handful of votes either way could decide the outcome.

However the Democratic Alliance, a small conservative splinter group with five MPs will decide on how it will vote at the last minute, its leader Dora Bakoyanis told a meeting.

"The stakes are very high, it is a great dilemma," Bakoyanis, said. A former conservative foreign minister, she broke party ranks last year to vote in favor of Greece's first EU/IMF bailout deal but has since criticized the government for bungling its implementation.

Papandreou last week sacrificed his previous finance minister, the unpopular technocrat George Papaconstantinou, in a bid to smooth the passage of the austerity plan but opinion polls still show him trailing the conservative opposition.

On Saturday, a poll by polling agency MARC for newspaper Ethos gave New Democracy leads a 1.4 percentage points lead over PASOK (21.4 pct to 20 pct).

(Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Michael Roddy; )