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Mr. Winnick : Is there not some conflict at least between existing legislation on incitement to race hatred and the way in which various organisations--fascist in the main--do their utmost in certain parts of the country to promote race hatred? Is the Attorney-General taking all that on board?
The Attorney-General : The Crown prosecution service and the police are certainly astute respectively to investigate and, where the evidence is available, to prosecute incitement to racial hatred. I read carefully the speech that the hon. Gentleman made when introducing his ten-minute Bill. Racial motive is expressly a factor to be considered by the prosecution under the "Code for Crown Prosecutors". Is is also a factor which judges can
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and will take into account when sentencing. To make it an added and separate ingredient for an offence would be likely to make it more difficult to obtain convictions and could, therefore, hamper its proper consideration when it came to sentencing.Police Officers (Criminal Misconduct)
31. Mr. Raynsford : To ask the Attorney-General how many cases involving allegations of criminal misconduct against police officers were considered by his Department in each of the last three years ; and how many of these resulted in prosecutions being brought.
The Attorney-General : The number of such cases referred to Crown prosecution service headquarters in the three years to 1992 were respectively 4,011, 4,012 and 3,696. Proceedings were instituted in 1990 in 187 cases, in 1991 in 186, and to date 108 in respect of 1992.
Mr. Raynsford : Does the Attorney-General accept that the discrepancy between the number of referrals and the number of prosecutions may possibly give cause for concern? Will he comment on the impact of the procedure whereby an 80 per cent. prospect of success is normally required by the CPS in such instances, whereas a lower margin of about 50 per cent. would be required in cases involving allegations against other members of the public?
The Attorney-General : I do not think that the hon. Gentleman's last evaluation is correct. There are two important points to bear in mind. First, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the police are required to report all cases involving police officers, other than minor motoring offences. Consequently, a large number of such cases are reported to the Crown prosecution service headquarters, many of which would never be reported if they involved ordinary citizens. Therefore, the weeding out is done from a much wider band. Secondly, it is important to remember that the same standard of proof applies to all prosecutions. A factor might arise that would cast sufficient doubt on the reliability of evidence to render a conviction unsafe, without necessarily providing sufficient reliable evidence to justify the prosecution and conviction of someone else.
Mr. Hawkins : Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that concern about the rises in the number and the type of offences committed by people other than police officers are the matters which especially concern members of the public? In their minds, it is quite inappropriate that Labour Members should concentrate almost exclusively on allegations about police officers.
The Attorney-General : The point is that whoever is involved, the prosecution process must be--and it is--carried out without fear or favour, affection or ill-will. The wider questions to which my hon. Friend rightly referred are being carefully considered by the royal commission.
Mr. John Morris : Will the Attorney-General underline the assurance that I think he has given to the House, which is that the same standards prevail in deciding whether to prosecute a police officer, and that the chances of conviction are considered in exactly the same way as for any other citizen?
The Attorney-General : I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to
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confirm that there is no difference in the standard applied, whether it be to a police officer or to any other member of the public.Crown Prosecution Service
32. Mr. John Marshall : To ask the Attorney-General if he will make a statement about the staffing of the Crown prosecution service.
The Solicitor-General (Sir Derek Spencer) : In the last year, recruitment in the Crown prosecution service has resulted in an extra 202 lawyers in post, bringing the total complement to 2,141. The number of administrative staff in post is 4,225.
Mr. Marshall : Does my hon. and learned Friend accept that, welcome though those increases are, there are still cases that take 18 months or two years for the court finally to determine the guilt or innocence of an accused person ? Such delay is the cause of great financial, physical and psychological hardship. Will my hon. and learned Friend try to reduce the delays to a minimum ?
The Solicitor-General : The problem is being tackled on two fronts-- first, by increased staff and, secondly, by increased financial resources. Over the past three years, the number of lawyers in post in the Crown prosecution service has risen by 694. In the year 1991-92, expenditure was £226 million, up 13.8 per cent. on the previous year. In the year 1992 -93, it is estimated that expenditure will be £263 million, an increase on the previous year of 16.4 per cent. If we add together those two increases over two years, that makes an increase of more than 30 per cent.
In addition, the national operation practice setting out improved standards of service, which the CPS provides to others in the criminal justice system, will be in operation by the summer of this year. My hon. Friend may be interested to know that last week Judge Denison, at the Central Criminal Court, observed that the backlog of cases had sunk from 1,260 to 400.
Mr. Flynn : Will the Solicitor-General direct the attention of the Crown prosecution service to a recent television programme on HTV Wales that alleged that the firm of Ring and Brymer has been involved in fraud in my constituency ? As the parent company of that firm contributed £86,000 to the Conservative party this year, is not it a serious matter that the Conservative party might be living on the proceeds of social security fraud and that some members of the Government might have their legal aid financed by the proceeds of fraud ?
The Solicitor-General : If the hon. Gentleman has any evidence of a criminal offence, he is duty bound as a citizen to put it before the police. The police will then investigate and the Crown prosecution service will decide whether to bring proceedings. It will make that decision in just the same way as it does in every other case, following the rules laid down in the "Code for Crown Prosecutors".
Prosecution Policy
33. Mr. Campbell-Savours : To ask the Attorney-General if he will make a statement on prosecution policy.
The Solicitor-General : The principles governing the prosecution policy of the Crown prosecution service are
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set out in the "Code for Crown Prosecutors", which is issued under section 10 of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985. A copy of the code is in the Library.Mr. Campbell-Savours : What is the policy on prosecuting for phone tapping, particularly in the light of Camillagate, where it seems likely that a fixed telephone in a private house was tapped by an individual phone tapper? Does not that appear to constitute an offence? Why has not the DPP asked the police to investigate, to see whether it is possible to establish who was that person?
Mr. Cryer : They know that it was MI5 or GCHQ.
The Solicitor-General : The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with the observations of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary over the weekend. He said that there is absolutely no evidence that the security services were involved. To answer the hon. Gentleman's question directly, if there is prima facie evidence that a criminal offence has been committed, it will be dealt with in exactly the same way as all other cases ; that is, if there is evidence of an offence that affords a reasonable prospect of conviction and if it is in the public interest to institute proceedings.
OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT
Yugoslavia
40. Mr. Bowis : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the latest report he has received on the arrangements for delivering relief to former Yugoslavia.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Douglas Hurd) : The area of greatest need is Bosnia and we are concentrating our effort there. We estimate that about two thirds of the needy there are getting the essential supplies that they need, but, in Sarajevo and other besieged enclaves in eastern Bosnia, increased fighting and the winter have greatly increased the difficulties faced by all those delivering relief supplies. Since they were first deployed, British troops have, up to 12 January, escorted about 150 relief convoys, which have carried into Bosnia a total of about 12,000 tonnes of relief supplies. British civilian lorries delivered 3,342 tonnes of supplies into Sarajevo during December alone-- just over half of the supplies reaching that city.
Mr. Bowis : Of course we congratulate British aid workers and service men on their achievements in Bosnia, but does my right hon. Friend agree that they went in because of Serbian aggression, yet the young British soldier who was killed the other day died not from Serbian bullets but from bullets fired between Muslim and Croatian forces? Will my right hon. Friend ensure that British forces do not become part of a four-way civil war and, to that end, that United Nations figures, which are released locally on a daily basis, on the locations from which guns are firing at Sarajevo and at British aid workers and service men are published, so that the British public can be aware of them?
Mr. Hurd : It is often extremely difficult, particularly in Sarajevo, to establish who is firing and for what reason. However, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that where such information is reasonably reliable, it should be made
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available so that the public can understand the sheer complexity of the situation and the reason why we do not intend to allow British troops to become involved in civil fighting. Of course one can imagine circumstances in which the risks are so great that we will have to pull them out--but in that case, many more people would die.Mrs. Dunwoody : Is the Secretary of State aware that we in Cheshire are very proud of our regiment's involvement in helping those most in need? However, that does not mean that it is understood why a regiment that is being badly treated in the reorganisation should be at the sharp end. There is also the question whether there is the same understanding by the Foreign Office of the need to protect British soldiers if the situation becomes even more dangerous. It would be wrong to allow British citizens to be caught in a web that is not of their own making, and which they cannot affect, without the right to defend themselves, just because the British Government are not prepared to accept that the situation has now gone beyond their control.
Mr. Hurd : Of course British citizens have the right to defend themselves : that is essential. I do not think that any hon. Member disagrees with that, doubts the value of the work that the Cheshires are doing or questions the possibility of circumstances in which it might be too risky to ask them to continue that work. Meanwhile, as the hon. Lady has said, they are doing an excellent job. I hope that the details--the facts and figures--of that job, and the job done by the Overseas Development Administration's British civil workers, will become more widely known.
Lady Olga Maitland : Are medical supplies now being included in the aid of convoys? Will my right hon. Friend ensure that there is no repetition of the occasion on which convoys arrived at Srebrenica without a single aspirin? I asked the same question before Christmas, but received an unsatisfactory reply ; perhaps my right hon. Friend now has a clearer picture of what is going on.
Mr. Hurd : As I understand it, medicines have always formed a major part of the supplies, especially British medicines. We have supplied a high proportion of the medicines that have gone into Bosnia in recent months. I shall look into the point that my hon. Friend has raised about a specific convoy, and let her know the details.
Mr. Meacher : Will the Foreign Secretary acknowledge that aid supplies to Yugoslavia will constitute a mere stop-gap cosmetic until the consequences of the war are confronted? Will the Government insist that sanctions are maintained until the areas stolen by ethnic cleansing are demilitarised, and until at least a majority of the 2.5 million refugees are permitted to return home in safety?
What action--along the lines of the action taken by the French--does the Foreign Secretary propose to stop the systematic rape of thousands of Muslim women in Bosnian prison camps? Does he accept that the war will not end until the Serbs accept that Bosnian-Muslim resistance--or, at least, international intervention and the threat of such intervention--has reached such a point that it is no longer in their interests to fight on? What action does the right hon. Gentleman propose to make that threat a real one?
Mr. Hurd : Relief supplies are not a cosmetic to people living in villages or towns, cut off for many months, who
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depend on those supplies if they and their children are to be alive in two or three weeks' time. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman is talking about. If he means that the supplies are not enough, of course he is entirely right.As for the allegations of mass rape, it was the present Government, when they held the EC presidency, who asked Anne Warburton, the head of a Cambridge college, to lead a mission to the area. The accomplishment of that mission put beyond contradiction the fact that those atrocities had occurred. They are no longer allegations ; they are fact. That is why we agreed last week to take the initiative in setting up a criminal court-- probably through the Security Council--to remind the perpetrators of such atrocities that they are personally responsible, whatever orders they may have received. There is no difference between us and the French in that regard.
The hon. Gentleman was right in his other two points. It is essential to maintain and, indeed, to intensify the pressure of sanctions, particularly at a time when there are signs that they are having some effect. Ultimately, however, these horrors will be brought to an end by a peace settlement within the framework that David Owen and Cyrus Vance are attempting to negotiate.
Africa (EC Aid)
41. Mr. Kirkwood : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on joint EC aid initiatives in relation to Africa.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd) : The United Kingdom is contributing £1.3 billion over five
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years to the European development fund, over 90 per cent. of which goes to Africa. In addition, there are substantial European programmes of food aid and humanitarian relief.Mr. Kirkwood : I warmly welcome the recent pledging of 680,000 tonnes of EC food aid under the food aid programme for Africa. Does the Minister accept, however, that real problems are involved in the delivery of that vital food? Will he consider setting up an EC-sponsored Africa special recovery plan to upgrade the logistics, transport and distribution facilities available on the ground, so that the aid can reach those who need it?
Mr. Lennox-Boyd : The hon. Gentleman is right about the difficulty of delivery, but I am afraid that it cannot be achieved in the way that he suggests. There has been some help in Somalia for relief and rehabilitation purposes by means of unutilised funds, but we cannot extend the use of unutilised funds in the way that has been previously suggested by the hon. Gentleman, because the Community works on commitments, not on disbursements. That system is different from the British system.
Sir John Stanley : Can my hon. Friend give the House an assurance that the British Government's aid effort to Somalia will be sustained for as long as famine conditions persist in that country?
Mr. Lennox-Boyd : Yes, I can confirm that the United Kingdom has a continuing programme of relief for Somalia. We are the world's third largest bilateral donor to the relief effort in Somalia. I have no doubt that we shall continue to give relief generously.
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