Court will review application to stay judgment that led to officers no longer being able to bail suspects for more than four days without charging or releasing them
The supreme court is to consider suspending a ruling on police bail that overturns 25 years of police practice.
A court spokeswoman said three judges will consider the application to stay the judgment ? which means officers can no longer bail suspects for more than four days without either charging or releasing them ? on Monday.
If granted, the move would put the ruling on hold until a full appeal is heard at the same court on 25 July.
There will be no public hearing on Monday, with the three justices considering the application, by Greater Manchester police, in private.
The Home Office was criticised on Thursday for not acting sooner to reverse the ruling, which could hamper tens of thousands of investigations and leave officers doing their job with "one hand tied behind their back".
The criticism came after the policing minister, Nick Herbert, told MPs that emergency legislation to reverse the ruling would be brought forward because he feared an appeal to the supreme court would take too long.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the Home Office was "clearly in chaos", adding: "The home secretary is still failing to sort the problem."
"Shocking delays and home office incompetence are still putting investigations at risk and jeopardising justice for victims."
She said ministers "confirmed that the home office has known about this for over a month yet they still haven't finished the emergency legislation, and the police still don't know what they are supposed to do with suspects today".
"That means thousands of ongoing investigations are being jeopardised," she added. "The catalogue of incompetence is deeply worrying."
Herbert admitted that officials were told of the oral judgment in May, but its full impact only became clear when the written judgment was handed down on 17 June and ministers were alerted on 24 June .
The row started when a district judge, Jonathan Finestein, sitting at Salford magistrates court, refused a routine application from Greater Manchester police for a warrant of further detention of Paul Hookway, a murder suspect, on 5 April.
High court judge Mr Justice McCombe confirmed the ruling in a judicial review on 19 May, which meant time spent on police bail counted towards the maximum 96-hour limit of pre-charge detention. Afterwards, Home Office officials were told about the problems.
Herbert told the Commons: "The police believe that the judgment will have a serious impact on their ability to investigate crime.
"In some cases, it will mean that suspects who would normally be released on bail are detained for longer. It is likely that, in most forces, there will not be enough capacity to detain everybody in police cells.
"In other cases, it risks impeding the police to such an extent that the investigation will have to be stopped because the detention time has run out. The judgment will also affect the ability of the police to enforce bail conditions."
He said the judgment "upsets a careful balance which has stood for a quarter of a century and impedes the police from doing their job", adding: "That is why it must be reversed."
About 85,200 people are on bail in England and Wales at any one time. The common practice in most major inquiries of releasing suspects on bail and calling them back for questioning weeks later is "pretty much a dead duck" following the ruling, police chiefs said.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/01/supreme-court-consider-suspension-ruling-police-bail
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