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Mr. Deputy Speaker: That point can be made in debate; it is certainly not a point of order for the Chair.
Mr. Maclean: I am glad to hear those confessions and admissions. Perhaps the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) will take the time to read the contents of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. He will find that the Labour party voted against penalties to increase sentences for people who are cruel to children and for drug dealers.
It is no wonder the Labour party does not like being reminded about that. Labour Members can come up with any excuse they like now, but they voted against that Act, lock, stock and barrel. They now have a guilty conscience about it, and I suspect that that is why we have seen all these spurious and bogus new clauses, which are 10 years late. The Labour party is trying to say that it is sorry about the mistakes of 1980s, and that it wants to make up for them. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is my near neighbour, for his confession--he is "one sinner that repenteth".
I turn now to new clause 13, which raises complex issues about the law on evidence--I do not know of any issues about the law of evidence that are not complex--and, in particular, what evidence may be given to explain why a complaint was not made or was delayed.
Of course the Government share the concern that juries should be able to make a proper assessment of the value of evidence on such matters; that is why, last year, we removed the automatic warning that juries were given that the evidence of one woman alone had to be treated with a certain circumspection. It was not right to retain that warning, but I am not convinced that it is right to create a new warning for the jury.
The present position is that, if evidence is admitted that a victim has made no complaint--or, more likely, that the complaint was substantially delayed--the court may hear
evidence to explain why the alleged victim did not complain. That is the correct way to proceed. The court is then able to hear the evidence relevant to the circumstances of the case, which may explain the reasons for the delay. There may be good evidential reasons why the victim did not come forward immediately to report a sexual attack, and the court should be told those reasons and the jury should take them into account.
In other cases, the evidence may not be so strong. In some cases, the absence of complaint may be crucial to the case, and a warning in the terms proposed would be inappropriate. A requirement to give the same warning regardless of the circumstances of the case and the quality of the evidence explaining any delay would confuse the issues and make the task of the judge and the jury more difficult.
The use of a warning should therefore be considered in the context of the rules governing the evidence that may be admitted to refute any allegation of the kind mentioned in new clause 13. It may, for example, be possible for previous consistent statements to be produced in evidence to support the allegation made by the victim.
That is a complex aspect of the law on hearsay and related topics, which the Law Commission is at present considering. Its report is expected later this year. It is likely to include proposals about the extent to which previous consistent statements should be admissible as evidence of the truth, and not merely, as at present, the credibility of the witness. It is also likely to address the question whether previous consistent statements should be admissible in cases other than sexual offences, in which physical injury might also have been inflicted.
Those are important issues that bear directly on whether there should be a statutory warning, and, if so, what it should be. It would, in our view, be wrong to legislate on that complex area of the law without having the benefit of the Law Commission's work. For those reasons, the Government cannot support new clause 13.
I am sorry that I have spoken at length on new clauses 11, 12 and 13, but they raise important and complex issues. We shall give further consideration to changes in the law in the light of the Law Commission's current work and the research that we intend to conduct into attrition rates in sexual offence cases, but we are unable at present to support the new clauses.
Ms Jowell:
The length of the Minister's speech has served as an effective smokescreen for the fact that he has nothing to say. His lengthy diatribe about the defective nature of the new clauses is simply a way to sidestep the real issues that they raise.
Those of us who read our copy of The Independent this morning have been led to believe that next week the Government are holding their law and order week in order to regain the initiative on law and order from the shadow Home Secretary and the Labour party. There is a growing conviction across the country that it is the Labour party that understands people's fears about crime, and that it is Labour which brings forward specific and practical proposals, which the Government then reject out of hand.
The Government's response to the new clause will be received by women across the country for what it represents: indifference, and a refusal to do anything about one of the most serious problems besetting women in the criminal justice system.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:--
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