Clause 27 - Initial duty of disclosure by prosecutor
Criminal Justice Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I shall not take up too much time on what I suspect is the only non-contentious bit of part 5. I very much welcome the proposed change to the prosecutor's responsibility. I have experience of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 as a prosecutor, and I would always disclose material that could reasonably be considered capable of undermining a prosecution case. I am delighted that that understanding has now been put on a statutory footing. It is also correct that the clause should add the words
''or of assisting the case for the accused''
after the phrase ''against the accused''.
The provisions highlight the fact—this general comment can properly be made now, because we shall deal with defence disclosure in a moment—that it is wrong to assume that the relationship between the prosecutor and the defendant's counsel and representative in a criminal trial imposes identical duties on them. Indeed, if we start from that basis, we shall be on very shaky ground. Even in our adversarial system, the prosecutor has a duty, over and above that of trying to get the defendant convicted, of ensuring that the trial process furthers justice. I welcome the fact that the clause reiterates that, and we should bear the point in mind when we consider later clauses, in which the Government put some quite strange duties on representatives of the defence. Prosecution and defence are not equivalent in practice, and trying to introduce equivalence will damage the interests of justice, rather than further them.