Clause 27 - Initial duty of disclosure by prosecutor
Criminal Justice Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
I apologise. We should consider whether, in some cases, statements should be served on the court, and the only person to see them in the first instance should be the person in charge of the case. Then, at the pre-trial hearing and later, witnesses would be confident that, if disclosure were necessary, it would only take place on the basis that their interests would be protected in an appropriate way. It is already possible for a judge to decide that certain court proceedings will not take place in public and cannot be reported. Some happen in camera, because a judge can order that that is necessary—it is very unusual, but it can happen. We shall discuss such an instance when we debate clause 32. Proposed new section 7A(8) of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 reads:
''Material must not be disclosed under this section to the extent that the court, on an application by the prosecutor, concludes it is not in the public interest to disclose it and orders accordingly'',
so the issue is raised.
There are also cases in which people's identity is not disclosed. The obvious example is sexual offences cases. The great debate concerns whether the identity of the victim should not be disclosed and whether, in some instances, the identity of the person being prosecuted should be protected. We must face the fact that unless we do better in protecting witnesses, we shall have great difficulty in collecting evidence. Therefore, I should like the Minister to address his second round of thoughts to the issue. The first round was expressed at our meeting with the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) and my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), and at a meeting that my hon. Friend and I had with Lord Falconer and the Minister.
This bit of the Bill concerns what evidence is needed by the other side in order to ensure that there is a fair trial. The bigger issue is that many trials never get past the starting block. Many of the cases in which the Government complain of a failure to secure convictions are those that do not start with the court process. Within the court process, the conviction rate is high; most people plead guilty or are convicted anyway. The difficulty does not occur once a case has begun, although there are famous cases in which that has happened; the difficulty is in getting the CPS to proceed by agreeing that there is a greater than 50 per cent. chance of success of prosecution, and that it is in the public interest to prosecute.
My last general point, which is directly applicable to the clause, is to consider the most famous recent cases that have collapsed. The Damilola Taylor case collapsed because of the wobbly nature of some of the prosecution evidence. There was a second issue to do with inducements and what is proper, and I shall come to that later. The second, the royal butler case, collapsed because part way through the proceedings new evidence or a new argument entered into the case and the prosecution case was thought to be weakened. It is important that we have a process that collects the evidence as thoroughly as it can and is able to assess—through the CPS—how to proceed, but does not put people off from the start because they think that as soon as they make a statement they will lose their anonymity and that, by accident or design, the fact that they have contributed to the case will be out in the open.
In the Stephen Lawrence case, one of the really unfortunate things that happened, as colleagues will remember, was that even when the inquiry was taking place the names and addresses of those giving evidence confidentially were released due to a mistake in New Scotland Yard. As the Solicitor-General, I and others in south-east London recall, that was a nightmare scenario. It was nobody's fault, but if ever one wanted something to undermine people's confidence in the process, it was that. I am not so much concerned about the interests of the defence, but I am concerned about ensuring that witnesses can feel secure enough to give evidence. I do not think that the clause addresses that issue at all. How does the Minister think that that could be done?
I could have tabled plenty of amendments for the Committee, although I thought that it would be better to wait for the Government's response, as they were given notice a couple of months ago. In the light of debates in the Committee, I shall be happy to introduce amendments on Report that will, I hope, command confidence across the House.