I endorse what the hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Banks) said about the family of Carl Bridgewater. All of us who have been involved in cases of miscarriage of justice understand the terrible effect that the case dragging on unresolved year after year must have on the families of the victims. It is as much in their interests as in the interests of the men who, I believe, have been wrongly convicted that we bring the situation to an end.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. Turner) on his good fortune in obtaining this debate and on the clear way in which he set out the issues. I am glad that it is clear that the case, like the other celebrated miscarriages of justice, is beginning to attract support from both sides of the House. I have never felt that concern about miscarriages of justice should be confined to one side. I have always dealt with the issues and looked at them from the point of view of justice rather than from any party political perspective, and I will continue to do so. In all the great alleged miscarriages of justice, I have taken heart from and worked happily with Conservative Members who have come to the same conclusions as I have. I look forward to doing so in this case.

This is the greatest unresolved miscarriage of justice. I am genuinely puzzled that Ministers so stubbornly refuse to face up to what has obviously gone wrong. I do not know of any other case in which the foreman of the original jury has publicly stated that he does not believe that the men would have been convicted if the jury had known then what we know today. That statement is wholly unprecedented. Since one of the judgments that the Court of Appeal has to make when deciding whether to quash a conviction is to decide what the effect of new evidence would be on the jury, the evidence of the foreman of the original jury is something to which great weight ought to be given.

When the Guildford and Birmingham cases collapsed, we were assured that lessons had been learnt and that there would be no repetition of the scandals of the late 1980s and early 1990s. For a while, that seemed to be the case. Yet here we are, going round the same old track again, with endless police investigations that lead nowhere and cost enormous amounts of public money and crucial information that should have been disclosed at the trial having to be prised out of Ministers and officials line by line.

Five years after the royal commission on criminal justice was set up, there is still no sign—or not much sign—of the establishment of the independent review authority for which we legislated last year. If ever there were a case that ought to be dealt with swiftly by the review authority, the Bridgewater case is it. The post of chairman was advertised last September and interviews took place last December, but a chairman has not yet been appointed. I do not believe that the authority is likely to be set up until at least the back end of this year, and I cannot understand the long delay.

Mention has been made of the confession of Patrick Molloy, which is central to the case—it hinges on his confession, which was extracted in extraordinary circumstances. Perhaps I should qualify that by saying that they were not all that extraordinary, compared with the way in which the West Midlands police went about their business at the time. Certainly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) said, no court today would uphold a conviction based on a confession obtained in those extraordinary circumstances.

I notice that the confession was taken by Detective Constable Perkins of the West Midlands serious crime squad, who is one of the most complained about officers in one of the most complained about forces in the country. I notice, too, another familiar name—that of Detective Sergeant Hornby, who was peripherally involved with the case. He is probably the most complained about officer in the most complained about force in the country. I have the advantage of having seen his disciplinary record, which was disclosed at the Birmingham pub bombings trial, in which he played a part.

I am looking forward with great interest to the day when the discipline record of DC Perkins will have to be disclosed, to find out what other allegations of a similar nature have been made about that man, as I know that there are quite a lot. While we are on the subject, I wonder where that discipline file has got to. I should have thought that it was relevant, considering his central role in the case. If his credibility is so relevant, I should have thought that that file ought by now to have been disclosed and I hope that the Minister will tell us what plans he has for doing so.

It is strongly my view that no court today would allow a confession obtained in such circumstances to stand. I am puzzled as to why Ministers are still clinging to the wreckage.

On fingerprints, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook referred, the fact that two unidentified fingerprints were found on the bicycle belonging to Carl Bridgewater has emerged recently, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East said. I raised that matter with the Minister on 15 February, and I think that he gave me a misleading answer. He said that the existence of the fingerprints had been disclosed in 1988—that is only nine years after they were known to the prosecution—whereas the truth is that all the defence was told in 1988 was that two unidentified fingerprints had been found at the farm; not quite the same thing.

It was not revealed until 1994 that the prints had been on the bike, which was picked up by one of those responsible for this terrible deed and thrown into a pigsty. No one should be under any doubt about the significance of those fingerprints, because the police were not. They took the matter seriously at that time and records show that they contacted 34 police forces in an attempt to discover who had left the fingerprints. The police lost interest in the fingerprints only when they had charged the four men, against whom there was no forensic evidence and of whose fingerprints there was no sign at the farm.

I invite the Minister to correct the false impression that he gave me on 15 February and to confirm that the existence of fingerprints on the bike were not disclosed until 1994, 16 years after they were known to the prosecuting counsel, Mr. Igor Judge. So much, incidentally, for the contention in the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Bill, which we debated only yesterday, that we can rely on the Crown to disclose all relevant material to the defence.

I wish to repeat a point made by others the other day, but which has not yet been made today. As I understand it, it is not the job of Ministers to evaluate the new evidence—though, God knows, there is enough of it. Ministers have to decide only whether new evidence of sufficient significance has emerged to warrant a referral to the Court of Appeal. In this case, that is manifestly so.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook made an important point. It is no good the Minister telling us that much of the new evidence was considered by the Court of Appeal in 1988 and 1989. The defendants had the bad luck to be referred to the Court of Appeal while it was still under old management. I have no doubt that there would be a different result today if the case were to be referred.

To give an idea of the extraordinary nature of the 1989 appeal judgment, one need only consider the passage about the witness, Mr. Mervyn Ritter. The gist of that passage was that the judges accepted that Mr. Mervyn Ritter was a pathological liar, but on that occasion they believed that he could be relied on as a witness of the truth. It is hard to deal rationally with people who think along those lines, but I must restrain myself. I draw that passage to the attention of the House only as a sample of the quality of the thinking of the Court of Appeal under old management. I am confident that that would not happen again today.

The hon. Member for Southport referred to the long rooftop protest made by some of the defendants. They were on the roof of Gartree prison for 89 days in 1983, during one of the coldest winters of this century. I realise that that is not evidence, but I wish to point out to the Minister as gently as possible that the fact that someone who is arguing his innocence is prepared to endure discomfort of that magnitude is surely evidence that he feels a sense of grievance. I do not believe that someone who was trying to con us would sit for 89 days on the roof of a prison in one of the coldest winters of this century. He would not have done that if he did not feel that he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. But I can see that the Minister is looking puzzled. The other evidence is strong enough and there is no need to dwell on such esoteric points. If the Minister is not convinced by it, he should forget it.

This case will not go away. If Ministers decline to refer it, it will be one of the first cases to fall on the desk of the criminal cases review authority when eventually it is set up.

All 17 of the people whom I said were innocent in my maiden speech in 1987–18, including Judith Ward, whose innocence I first drew to the attention of the House in July 1988—have had their convictions quashed and are walking the streets with compensation in their pockets. With that in mind, I can tell the Minister that I am confident that these three men will walk out of the front door of the Old Bailey with their convictions quashed, too. For the sake of everyone, not least the family of Carl Bridgewater, let us get it over with.