Clause 26
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
5:30 pm
Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)
There is no doubt about the fact that it is a small number of cases. They are the kind of cases that can significantly damage the reputation of the criminal justice system as a whole if they are allowed to proceed as they have in the past with convictions of the plainly and incontrovertibly guilty being quashed at a later date. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, that is the mischief that the clause and these amendments to the clause seek to address. That has been the case all the way through the consultations that have taken place, resulting in the clause as it was originally drafted and in the changes that we are now proposing.
It is not a question of there being thousands of cases affected by this issue. Only a small number of cases are affected, but they are cases that, if they are allowed to stand—as the current law suggests they would—could do a disproportionate amount of damage to the reputation of the criminal justice system.