Bail Conditions in UK Law

Whilst of course it may be that it is quite unnecessary to arrest a suspect who will voluntarily attend an interview, as it was with the schoolteacher in Richardson, it is not the case that a voluntary attendance is always as effective a form of investigation as interview after arrest. Section 29 of the Act reminds officers of their duty, if inviting voluntary attendance, to tell the suspect that he may leave at any time he chooses.

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.

It is fair to say that there are no express words in paragraph 22 saying that bail conditions are to cease on surrender but in my view Mr Clement's guidance correctly states the position as a matter of necessary inference from the terms of paragraph 22 and particularly 22(1A). It follows that there is no sub-scenario of FTT bail of non-finite duration in a case where there is no pending appeal to the FTT.

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.

In the present case our particular focus is not on a power of executive detention, but on a power to grant bail. 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.

Notwithstanding such deference there will be scope for the court to give intense scrutiny to the necessity for each of the obligations imposed on an individual under a control order, and it must do so. The exercise has something in common with the familiar one of fixing conditions of bail. Some obligations may be particularly onerous or intrusive and, in such cases, the court should explore alternative means of achieving the same result.

There is no dispute between the parties that section 7(5), in effect, involves a two-stage operation to be carried out by the justices. First a decision must be made as to whether or not there has been a breach of a condition. If there has been no breach of a condition then the bailed person is entitled to be admitted to bail on precisely the same conditions —in other words, bail continues.