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.

Turning to the effect of the orders of Hughes LJ, I consider that the answer is to be found in the nature of a grant of bail. In principle, a grant of bail is not an order for the detention of the person to whom it is granted. To the contrary, it is a grant of liberty to someone who would otherwise be detained.

The House of Lords held that the distinction between the existence and the exercise of the power to detain was material to the power to grant temporary admission to a person "liable to detention". There is no warrant for applying that distinction to the different question of whether there is a power to grant bail in respect of a person who may not lawfully be detained at the time when it is proposed to grant bail.

The situation however, in respect of those who have not been to court and may have been released after the payment of a bribe we do not consider falls into the same category. 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.

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.