Clause 98 - Admissibility of hearsay evidence
Criminal Justice Bill
9:30 am
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield, Conservative)
The Minister amuses me more and more as his peroration continues. Surely, the point is that the Government have chosen not to rip up the adversarial system of criminal justice, although they have come close to doing that in the Bill. I have always understood the reason for that to be that they appreciate that there is something intrinsically fair and good about a system that asks the jury to look at a set of facts and to find upon it. They should not get muddled up by the surrounding issues, which is what leads to many miscarriages of justice. However, the Bill proposes to remove those important blinkers, which must surely lead to the danger that convictions will occur on the basis of evidence that cannot be tested. Such evidence will not go to the nub of the issue and establish, on a proper test, that the defendant is guilty of the offence as charged.