28 Days or more without being charged?
November 17th, 2007 by GilesWe normally deal with commercial issues on this website, but given the current debate on the Government’s plan to extend the 28 days for which a person can be held by the police without being charged, I had a look this week at one of the most important works on our legal system - Dicey’s Law of the Constitution. My copy is the one I used as an undergraduate not so many years ago, and here are some quotes:
“Suppose, for example, that a body of foreign anarchists come to England and are thought by the police on strong grounds of suspicion to be engaged in a plot, say for blowing up the Houses of Parliament. Suppose also that the conspiracy does not admit of absolute proof. An English Minister, if he is not prepared to put the conspirators on their trial, has no means of arresting them, or of expelling them from the country.”
And earlier in the same chapter, on The Right to Personal Freedom, Dicey summarises this as meaning “in substance a person’s right not to be subjected to imprisonment, arrest, or other physical coercion in any manner that does not admit of legal justification. That anybody in England should suffer physical restraint is in England prima facie illegal and can be justified (speaking in very general terms) on two grounds only, that is to say, either because the person suffering restraint is accused of some offence and must be brought before the courts to stand trial, or because he has been duly convicted of some offence and must suffer punishment for it.”
Members of Parliament, please note.
While on the subject, one suggestion this week, from the Home Secretary, was that the current 28 days might be supplemented by the use of the Civil Contingencies Act, the law passed in 2004 which allows a state of emergency to be declared.
To use this law for such a purpose would be a misuse - just as the Health & Safety law was misused recently to prosecute the Metropolitan Police for putting seven bullets into the head of an innocent man.
Professor Dicey must be turning in his grave.