Clause 1
Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill
11:30 am
Lady Hermon (North Down, UUP)
I am taken aback by what the Minister has just said. He has spent a long time usefully explaining to the Committee why it is essential that the DPP is the key person who makes the decision, because of the risk and the intelligence information that he is given. In the Shuker case, the Lord Chief Justice said that the court should not be making that decision. Having spent so much time explaining that, the Minister has now told the Committee that the prosecutor—it is only the prosecutor, not the DPP, who can apply to the court under the 2003 Act if there is a real and present danger of jury tampering—will not have the detailed information that, as the Minister has just laboured in telling us, the DPP will have. There will not be a smooth track. The whole point of moving the time is so that the DPP is not shackled by the date of arraignment the whole way up to the trial.