Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Secretary, Government Equalities Office; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)

I beg to move amendment 279, in clause 65, page 39, line 3, leave out ‘may’ and insert ‘is entitled to’.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments 280 to 284.

Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Secretary, Government Equalities Office; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)

We would normally expect an investigation anonymity order to remain in force indefinitely. However, there may, on occasion, be circumstances in which an order should no longer remain in force. Clause 65 therefore allows a justice of the peace to discharge an investigation anonymity order if it seems appropriate to do so in the light of changed circumstances. However, it does not follow that because circumstances change, the order should or must be discharged. For example, we would not want an order to be discharged just because it subsequently comes to light that the ages of most of the gang members are outside the prescribed age limit—some of the 3 per cent. It may be appropriate in such cases that the order remains in force.

Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)

Perhaps it would be helpful if the Minister explained the articulation between the investigation anonymity order and the upcoming witness anonymity order, because they are presumably not the same. If the evidence is sound for one, will it be applicable to the second, and what will the transition process be, if required?

Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Secretary, Government Equalities Office; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)

With your indulgence, Mr. Cook, I will deal with that briefly. They are certainly not the same. The main difference is that the investigation anonymity order is available on appropriate application to a JP or the court at an early stage—perhaps before anyone has been arrested, or immediately after the crime has been committed—to bring forth information from members of the public who may feel unable to give the information or to tell the police what they saw or what they know without the extra reassurance of anonymity protection in the limited circumstances that we have discussed.

The witness anonymity order is about what happens at trial when someone has been charged and criminal proceedings have started. It protects the identity of a witness who is giving evidence at the trial, and a separate application must be made to the court. There are similarities, but one does not imply the other. When the police give assurances to the giver of information at an early stage of the investigation, they cannot guarantee that a witness anonymity order would be made if evidence were required to be given at trial, because there is not necessarily a causal link between them. They are separate processes. One is to bring forward information, and the other is to protect identity at trial.

Because of the importance of what is involved, the clause grants a right of appeal to the Crown court against the JP’s decision. Pending the outcome of the appeal, Government amendment 282 requires a justice to delay the discharge of the investigation anonymity order because, clearly, if the beneficiary of the order is opposed to it being discharged, one would not want it to be so discharged before an appeal had been heard. The clause pays close attention to the rights and interests of the witness or information giver, and it may be that person who wants the order to be discharged.

Subsection (2)(c) specifically permits the recipient of the order to apply for a discharge. Subsection (4) grants the witness or information giver—it is probably better to refer to the information giver to avoid confusion with the witness anonymity order—discretion to be party to any application for discharge by the police or other authority who might have applied for the order in the first place. In accordance with Government amendment 280, a JP may not discharge the order unless the person concerned has had the opportunity to oppose such an application, or it was not reasonably practicable to communicate with the beneficiary of the order to alert them that an application for discharge was being made.

Subsection (5) enables the beneficiary of the order to appeal against a JP’s decision, whether the application for discharge is made by the enforcement authority, or the beneficiary of the order, and whether the decision is to grant or to refuse the application. Those are safeguards to ensure that the person whose anonymity has been guaranteed in respect of the order has a full chance to oppose it or to appeal. The intention is to protect the individual concerned.

The clause allows the prosecutor, as well as the person who applied for the order, to apply for discharge. It might well be that if everybody agrees that discharge is a good idea, it is appropriate for the prosecutor to deal with the application, rather than leave it to the individual who has been the beneficiary of the order. That is the substance of the amendments. They would tidy things up and make sure that there are no procedural slips that  would allow somebody’s identity to become known before the discharge has been made, if there is to be a discharge.

Henry Bellingham (Shadow Minister, Justice; North West Norfolk, Conservative)

The Government amendments are logical and sensible, but why were they not included in the original Bill? When the Bill was being discussed, it had been around for a while and the Department has had a long time to prepare it. I refer to one important amendment in particular.

The Government are introducing quite a few amendments at this stage. Those amendments are neither in response to what was discussed on Second Reading, nor to representations made by either the official Opposition or the Liberal Democrats. Will the Minister enlighten the Committee about where the amendments are coming from and why the Bill was not 100 per cent. right the first time? Of course, it must be got 100 per cent. right and I take on board the point that she has made that it is a moving target and we are talking about work in progress. However, one of the amendments in particular is an important one and it is surprising, to say the least, that it was not included in the original Bill.

David Howarth (Cambridge, Liberal Democrat)

I have only one question: why do the amendments not include even more protection for the person who is the subject of the order? One would have thought that if one were moving in that direction, one would go so far even to say that the order should not be discharged without the person’s consent. Given what was said in the previous debate about trying to use the orders to give people confidence that their names will not be made known to the offenders, any risk that their name might come out without their consent would put people off coming forward in the first place.

Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Secretary, Government Equalities Office; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)

In response to the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk, these processes are not prefect, as he accepted. We thought things through to get the basic position right, and we thought that we had got it right, but we had not anticipated that the orders would be discharged. An individual might want the order discharged and there could be a set of circumstances in which it would be more appropriate for it to be discharged. It is in relation to those circumstances that we have ended up with Government amendments of this nature.

I will not suggest that the process is perfect. Those of us, including the hon. Member for Daventry, who have had ministerial experience, know that nothing is ever perfect in ministerial or legislative life. We do our best and we sometimes have to produce amendments, which has been done with the aim of trying to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. People have come up with fairly unlikely sets of circumstances that might be presented to the magistrate dealing with these issues, and we have tried, through an iterative process, to get rid of the potential difficulties. One suspects that such a situation will always occur as we reflect further and look at what we have in the Bill. We do our best to minimise such a situation occurring, but Ministers have to hold their hands up to it when it does.

Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)

As the Minister kindly and graciously mentioned me, perhaps she would like to bear in mind the awful warning of her colleague, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, the right hon. Member  for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), who, when introducing an education Bill, boasted all the way through that she would not accept any amendments, and she did not—although we had some lively discussions. However, in the end, she was defeated by the fact that it had been introduced in another place and so she had to table a privilege amendment to send it back to that place. However hard one tries, one is not going to get it right. We understand and appreciate the spirit of the Minister’s response to our concerns about these issues.

Maria Eaglerose—

Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister, Justice; Harborough, Conservative)

The lesson that I draw from the Minister’s comments is that she would like the Bill to be broken up into six or seven discrete Bills so that she would have much more time to get the subject matter right in each. I am sure that that is what she really meant.

Maria Eagle (Parliamentary Secretary, Government Equalities Office; Liverpool, Garston, Labour)

The hon. and learned Gentleman is over-interpreting what I said. I was trying to tell the Committee about my practical experience of ministerial life, which the hon. Member for Daventry will understand. There is never enough legislative time to have as many Bills as we, as legislators, would like, but we do our best with what we have. The formulation suggested by the hon. Member for Cambridge would have been another, perhaps more elegant way of achieving what we want, and I will have to think about it, although it may have disadvantages that are not at the forefront of my mind at present. In any event, we try to do our best.