Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Constitutional Affairs – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 18 October 2005.
Harriet Harman
Minister of State (Department of Constitutional Affairs), Member, Labour Party National Executive Committee
2:30,
18 October 2005
We do not want a situation in which a defendant is charged and brought to court but the case cannot proceed because the victim has not turned up as a result of intimidation, or because a witness has not turned up because the case has been adjourned a couple of times. We need to reduce the number of so-called ineffective trials so that justice is done in every case—on behalf of the victim as well as the defendant. It is not about a particular percentage of cases. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that in many cases the procedures let justice down and the outcome is a wrong one.