What, then, the Home Secretary has had to consider is whether there was negligence in prosecuting Mr. Ayres. I have studied the facts very carefully, and I should now like to go through them again.

The murdered man, Mr. Porter, was Mr. Ayres' father-in-law. He lived in Burnley with a lodger, Mr. Ellis. At about ten o'clock on the evening of 18th February, last year, Ellis telephoned the police and told them that he had come home to find the living-room in the house in disorder, and a bloodstained axe on the table. He had not, he said, been upstairs. Upstairs, in bed, the police found Mr. Porter's body. He had been struck four blows on the neck and face with an axe, apparently while he slept. Police inquiries produced two witnesses who had seen Mr. Porter alive in the street, one of them at between 11.0 and 11.45 a.m. on that day, the other at 12.30. The medical evidence put the time of death at between 5.15 a.m. and 4.15 p.m. So the murder must, it appeared, have been committed in the earlier part of the afternoon.

The police interviewed members of Mr. Porter's family, including Mr. Ayres. They took a statement from Mr. Ayres on 19th February, the day after the murder. In this he said that he had gone to Mr. Porter's house at about two o'clock on the 18th. He had had no reply at the front, and had gone to the back. The back door was ajar, and he went in. The drawers of the living-room dresser were open and there was an axe on the table, but this was not unusual. He had called out, received no reply, and gone upstairs to Mr. Porter's bedroom. He had remained at the door and not gone up to the bed which, as far as he could see, was empty. A sheet was on the floor and the bedclothes were turned back as if Mr. Porter had just got out. There was an overcoat over the top half of the bed so that he could just see the pillow. Mr. Ayres had then, he said, left, closing the door behind him.

The police also interviewed two of Mr. Porter's daughters, Mrs. Calvert and Mrs. Osborn. Mrs. Osborn told them that Mr. Ayres had called at her house between 12 and 12.30 on the afternoon of 18th February. He had said that he was looking for her father to speak to him about a job with which they were concerned. He had already knocked unsuccessfully at Mr. Porter's house on the way to her. She had suggested that her father might be in bed and Mr. Ayres had left saying that he would go and see. About 20 minutes to half an hour later he had come back and said that he had found the back door open and the drawers open. He had not, he said, been upstairs. He was looking, Mrs. Osborn said, quiet and pasty as though he had had a shock.

Mrs. Calvert told the police that Mr. Ayres had called at her house at about 2.30 on the 18th. He told her that he had been to Mr. Porter's house and had found the back door and the living room drawers open. He told her, too, that he had been upstairs but her father was not in bed. Mr. Ayres made a second statement to the police on 24th February. He now said that he had been to the house twice. The first time he had knocked on the front door and received no reply. After visiting Mrs. Osborn he had gone back and gone in, thinking that Mr. Porter might be asleep. After seeing the open drawers and the axe he had gone upstairs and seen the bedclothes were pulled aside. He had re- turned to Mrs. Osborn and had not heard that Mr. Porter was dead until next day.

Mr. Ayres signed this statement. But then he told the police that he had in fact gone into Mr. Porter's bedroom, pulled down the coat which was on the bed and seen Mr. Porter's body, the head injured. He had decided not to disclose his discovery. The next day Mr. Ayres was charged with the murder. Mr. Ellis, Mr. Porter's lodger, had left Burnley after the murder and had gone to Northern Ireland where he was taken into police custody on another matter. On 24th March while in custody he told the police that they had got the wrong man in charging Mr. Ayres. He, Ellis, had killed Mr. Porter with the axe at about 6.45 a.m. on the 18th. He gave the police varying accounts of the circumstances of the killing. According to one of them, Mr. Porter had woken up while he was searching the bedroom for money and he had then attacked him. In a later statement he denied searching the room or that there was a quarrel with Mr. Porter. He said at first that he could not remember whereabouts he had hit Mr. Porter. Later he said that it was on the neck, but he could not remember which side or which way Mr. Porter was lying.

As I have indicated earlier, there were witnesses who saw Mr. Porter alive long after 6.45 a.m. and there were indications that Mr. Porter was asleep when he was killed. Mr. Ayres came before the Burnley magistrates early in April and on 4th April they committed him for trial at Lancaster Assizes. Mr. Ellis gave evidence at the committal proceedings and retracted his confession to the murder. The witness, Mr. Berry, who had seen Mr. Porter alive after mid-day some hours after Mr. Ellis said that he had killed him, also gave evidence to that effect. But the witness who had told the police that he saw him between 11 and 11.45 a.m. now said that this had happened on an earlier date.

The trial took place on 20th May and, as the hon. Member has indicated, Mr. Ayres was in custody meanwhile. At the end of the case for the prosecution Mr. Ayres's counsel submitted that there was no evidence against him to go to the jury and that it would be dangerous and unsafe to take the case further. On the direction of the judge, the jury returned a verdict of "not guilty".

It would be impossible for me in the time available for this debate to review all the circumstances of the case and I am sure that the hon. Member would not wish me to do so, but those are the essential and important facts. The question I have to ask is whether it can be said in the light of them that it was wrong or negligent to proceed against Mr. Ayres. It is not for the Home Secretary or for me to explain or justify a decision to prosecute in a particular case, but I ask the House to remember that the prosecuting authorities have, in the interests of the community, a very difficult duty to discharge: the duty, that is, of judging when there is such a case against a suspect that it should be brought before and decided by the courts.

I am sure that that duty was discharged with all due thought and care in Mr. Ayres' case; and while realising that a frightened man may do foolish things—I have no wish to criticise or censure Mr. Ayres—it is right to stress that if there was suspicion of him it was accentuated by the lies he told the police.

This is not, then, I submit to the hon. Gentleman, a case which comes into the limited category of cases to which I referred in which compensation may be paid because of misconduct or negligence by a public authority, and I am afraid that I must end as I began by repeating that, having listened sympathetically to the hon. Gentleman, and having previously investigated this case very carefully. I cannot feel that the Home Secretary could meet his request to pay compensation in this case.