Member

But if it is serious to incarcerate someone post conviction, it is arguably just as or even more serious to incarcerate them when they are a presumed innocent person awaiting trial, potentially, at the moment, for a long time. So my Amendment 98—supported last time by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and this time by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, to whom I am grateful—concerns the bizarre anachronism in the Bail Act whereby people can be detained, pending trial, for their own protection, even where the offence for which they will stand trial is not an imprisonable offence. In my view, that is simply unconscionable.