Bail in UK Law

To grant this application at this stage would, in the view of this Court, be to put a premium on prisoners jumping bail; it may even have the effect of encouraging others to do so. It may also have as a side effect, increasing the reluctance of a Court in a very long trial to grant bail lest Jones' conduct be repeated by others. The Applicant has brought this entirely on his own head, and he must now take the consequences.

The seriousness of the offence and the severity of the penalty likely to be imposed on conviction may well, as pointed out at the beginning of this paragraph, provide grounds for refusing bail, but they do not do so of themselves, without more: they are factors relevant to the judgment whether, in all the circumstances, it is necessary to deprive the applicant of his liberty.

Much will depend on the evidence relating to the formality of the detention (or lack of it) and the manner in which the bribe was taken and the credibility of the total story. If the detention is an informal one, or it is highly unlikely that the bribe or “bail” has been officially recorded, then the risk level to the applicant is likely to be below that of a real risk.

Nevertheless, and despite the fact that the purpose may be to effect a release from detention, I consider that this similarly attracts the presumption of statutory interpretation because the conditions which may be attached to a grant of bail are capable of severely curtailing the liberty of the person concerned.

Paragraph 22 of Schedule 2 confers a power to release on bail in the case of three categories of person, namely a person detained under paragraph 16(1) pending examination, a person detained under paragraph 16(1A) pending completion of his examination or a decision on whether to cancel his leave to enter, and a person detained under paragraph 16(2) pending the giving of directions.

I accept the submission on behalf of the Home Secretary that where there is a risk of absconding and a refusal to accept voluntary repatriation, those are bound to be very important factors, and likely often to be decisive factors, in determining the reasonableness of a person's detention, provided that deportation is the genuine purpose of the detention. The risk of absconding is important because it threatens to defeat the purpose for which the deportation order was made.

This is a time-honoured form of words to express the idea of surrendering to bail. Once a bailed person surrenders to his bail (whether to magistrates or the Crown Court in a criminal case or to an immigration officer in an immigration case) it is then for the person to whom he surrenders to re-fix bail, if he or she considers it appropriate to do so and to determine any appropriate conditions.