Clause 65
10:00 am
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.