Clause 81 - ''Bad character''
Criminal Justice Bill
9:10 am
Mr Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
I wonder whether any of us in the Committee, if we were summoned for an offence before a court, could not be said to have behaved or have been disposed to behave—which is much more subjective—in a way that might be viewed with disapproval. That opens a Pandora's box of possibilities. I doubt that there is a member of the Committee who has not said or done many things that will have been viewed with disapproval by some of their constituents—and they are the people whom we are trying to keep happy. It is impossible to judge, for all sorts of reasons. We are getting off on a very wrong foot.
My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome and I have considerable concerns about this part of the Bill. Perfectly good reasons exist to get rid of the old uncertainties and to replace them with new certainties. We do not dissent from that view. There may be very good reasons to remove the common law rules and replace them with a codification of rules. I have signed up to that in principle.
Good arguments exist that rules of evidence about character should be included in one place, so that everyone who is involved in criminal law can find them. That would advantage not only lawyers but lay people and, indeed, defendants. Defendants who end up in prison spend a great deal of time looking through Acts, if my post—and other people's post—is anything to go by.
It is very important that we understand that there are obvious occasions when a person's bad character features in the case. The most obvious example is when an individual challenges someone else's character. If a person asserts that someone else is untruthful, it is quite reasonable that he can expect the fact that he may also be untruthful to be put in court for the jury to consider. If an individual asserts that someone else has a previous conviction, he cannot expect the trial to take place without his previous convictions being asserted. There are logical occasions when character
comes into the frame. However, that is done by choice and because there is a specific reason for it to happen.
A defendant will sometimes agree to include references to his character, and that is entirely reasonable. We can all think of many cases in which someone will admit to something in public because he believes that it is better to come clean. Whether through correspondence as MPs, from what we have read in local newspapers, or from cases with which we have been involved, we have all had experience of cases in which the defendant is honestly not guilty. However, because the usual suspects are the easiest suspects to pick up, sometimes a person who is not guilty may say that he has committed similar offences before but has been going straight for five years. He has a job, has settled down, and has a girlfriend, or a wife and kids. He honestly has not committed the crime, and he does not mind whether the jury know that he has ''previous''. That is reasonable to say. However, it is unreasonable for other people to elect to make that information known without safeguards.
This is similar to the previous sitting, at which the interventions from the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) were so effective. I know that the Minister will say later on whether there is a fair trial test. However, that is all about a proposal to change the presumption. If the clause is passed unamended then, instead of presuming that a person's previous criminal history should not be in the frame, previous criminal history will be the starting point, and the defendant will have to show why it should not be. We regard that as a considerable disadvantage.
I hope that colleagues in other parties will contribute in a moment to stand up against the most extreme and widely drawn parts of clause 81. We must also look carefully, as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) regularly argues, at the exact wording that is before us in each of the definitions. I appreciate that clauses that give definitions are not the most exciting ones. However, they are crucial as we go through this part, which contains many definitions. If we get the definitions wrong, and if we draw them too widely, significant injustice will be done.
I end by saying that the Home Affairs Committee was very clear that it had difficulty with the proposal to allow previous convictions to be automatically admitted at trial. It believed that that could lead to miscarriages of justice. Research supports that, so it is not just speculation. The Home Affairs Committee made two points in particular. It said that to allow previous convictions to be automatically admitted makes weak cases persuasive. One only has to add in the fact that that person has been guilty of an offence before, and the rest of the straws suddenly come together to make a brick for the jury—or might do. We should also be careful, because the provisions would allow usual suspects to be collected much more often, and put them at risk of being brought before the courts more regularly.
I hope that hon. Members not only will be sympathetic to the amendment, but think carefully about phrases such as, ''tends to show'', which is loose,
and, ''has committed an offence.'' We should be talking about convictions, not offences.