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Victims of Crime
1.28 pm
Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green): Today, although I am usually on the Front Bench, I take my place on the Back Benches to represent a constituent. I shall describe a shocking constituency case that I believe highlights a failure in the criminal justice system, and I hope that once hon. Members have heard that case, they will agree with me. The case is not isolated; it is one more example of a system that is no longer trusted by large numbers of the public.
You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will know that I tabled this debate before the House rose for the recess some months ago, so I did not know that in the past seven days other cases would come to public notice which reinforce what I am about to say.
Over the weekend, an award was announced in the Silcott case. When a person who is doing time as a murderer finds himself better off to the tune of £50,000 or £60,000, it sets the public wondering. They say that something seems to be wrong. In the past few days, the case of Dr. Joan Richardson was concluded. It appears that, were it not for the fact that the family were in a financial position to bring a civil prosecution, that would have been yet another case of injustice, and Dr. Richardson's killer would have gone free.
Last night, in an Adjournment debate on rural crime instigated my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard)--my colleague and friend--she drew attention to a case in her constituency. In doing so, she again highlighted what has gone wrong with the system.
I hope that those three incidents give some idea of what I consider to be wrong. However, today I shall focus on one case in my constituency, about which I am concerned, and draw some conclusions. In December 1998, I was contacted by Mrs. Hockley, who had just written to the Home Secretary--he or his office took more than six months to reply--and to the Prime Minister. On reading her letter, I was reminded of an article in my local newspaper entitled "Rough Justice?", which was about the murder of Mrs. Hockley's son, Matthew Hockley, and the subsequent trial. She had written movingly about the failure to convict two men for her son's murder.
However, it was the last sentence in Mrs. Hockley's letter to me which set me on the course of action that has culminated today. She wrote:
On 11 October 1997, in the evening, at the Fox and Hounds pub in Chingford, Matthew Hockley was stabbed to death--not one stabbing but multiple stabbings, in a brutal assault. The police charged two brothers with the offence, and with the joint offence of wounding with intent in respect of a different victim. Before the case came to court, the accused absconded but were eventually brought back into custody. The case commenced on 3 August 1998 at the central criminal court at the Old Bailey.
Before the case began, the Crown Prosecution Service was so certain that the evidence and the witness statements stacked up that it informed my constituent, Mrs. Hockley, that, in its opinion, the case was 99.5 per cent. sure to result in a conviction, and that the perpetrators would serve at least 15 to 20 years for what they had done. Yet before August had finished, the accused were acquitted and Mr. and Mrs. Hockley--and their family, Matthew's brothers and sisters, and nieces and nephews--are left surveying the ruins of their lives, with the desperate and constant reminder not only that their son was murdered, but most particularly that those whom the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and witnesses believed to have committed the murder are now free.
When I took up the case, I tried hard to understand how such an injustice could have come about in a system that I had grown up to believe was one of the best in the world. On 9 December 1998, I wrote to the Home Secretary, and that letter was passed to the Director of Public Prosecutions. When I read his reply, I felt that, while he was outlining the CPS version of events and how it had arrived at its conclusions, he was already starting to distance the CPS from the whole process, and especially from the failure. Intriguingly, the director said that the senior Crown prosecutor who had said that the CPS believed that the case was 99.5 per cent. certain of success could not recall ever saying that.
Once one has read to the end of the letter, one is left with the strong impression that the CPS never thought that the case could possibly have arrived at a successful conclusion. That strikes me as strange, because I cannot conceive of why the CPS would have gone about prosecuting the case if it genuinely did not believe that it would be successful. That is not the impression that the CPS gave to the police or to my constituents.
Some other very serious issues required some answers, which were not given. For example, the Queen's counsel who had started the case with the CPS found that he was unable to take the case to court because he had other commitments. That is fair enough; it does happen. Some cases go on longer than expected. A week before trial, a new prosecutor--a new QC--was given the case. That prosecutor had less than seven days in which to understand the intricacies of the case and prosecute it, but, despite, that there was no discussion by the CPS about postponing the trial or finding another way round the problem.
How can a prosecutor come to such an important case with just seven days preparation, and how can the CPS gamble that such an individual can master that brief and prosecute successfully? Surely it would have been better to go for some form of postponement, but that suggestion was refused.
When I inquired into the circumstances of what happened during the case, it became apparent to me, from discussions with the police, that several times during the case it was quite clear that the command or knowledge of what happened during the investigation was simply not there, and that elements were left unprosecuted.
For example, Mrs. Hockley maintains that the accused absconded for three weeks, which seems to bethe recollection of the police, but during the case the
prosecutor simply allowed that to be referred to as a matter of a few days. When the accused stated that when they left the pub, the victim was still sitting happily on a chair smoking, that apparently was not challenged although, according to all the witness statements, at that stage Matthew Hockley was already dead, or very seriously wounded, and the individuals were throwing bottles and chairs at him.
I do not intend to describe all the problems. I mention a few to highlight the mess that the case got into. Surely a week is not enough time in which to master such an important case. More important, when I then received a letter from the Attorney-General, whom I have known for a long time, about the case--to his credit, he was genuinely sympathetic--he seemed to be saying that the problem was simply the witnesses' failure to back up their witness statements. He said:
I hope that the Minister takes some account of the fact that, on this occasion, the police, to whom I spoke at great length, said that that was not the whole story. I do not know whether the Minister is aware of an organisation called Victims Voice. I was in contact with it some years ago about another case in my constituency. The organisation represents people like Mrs. Hockley. It has tried to contact the Government to get a response from them since they came to power. It maintains that it has done so without any success. I remember taking representatives of Victims Voice to see my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) when he was the Home Secretary and having discussions with him. However, Victims Voice is saying clearly that it receives no response from the Home Office or the Home Secretary, or even the Prime Minister, to whom it has written. That is not good and I am sad that that is the position.
Victims Voice has said that when Labour was in opposition, it had the clear understanding that a different view would be taken by a Labour Government. It is worried that the position is changing since the Opposition became the Government. I shall not draw conclusions about that; I simply say that an examination is needed. If what I have said is correct, I suspect that the Government need to have a rethink about their attitude.
I understand that Victims Voice organised a launch and that a letter to the Home Secretary last October, in which it asked him to attend, went unanswered. A fax to the Prime Minister received a rather bland reply two weeks later. Victims Voice has a serious issue to raise. It represents people like Mrs. Hockley who have suffered, and it has a right to be heard.
The Lawrence case is a recent example. I know that there are huge debates about other issues surrounding that case, but we should not lose sight of one simple fact arising from it--the parents have no redress, so their son's murder goes without answer. Like Mrs. Hockley, they are ultimately the victims of a system that seems to have failed them.
I have said that the Hockley case is not an isolated example, and from that I want to draw another conclusion. Over the past 24 hours, Victims Voice responded to my request for some other examples. There was the Crown v. Skeets and the Crown v. Skeets again in 1999. That was where the dismissed individual went on to commit another murder. There was the Crown v. Terrance Maul and Craig Maul. There was the Crown v. Donald Forbes followed by the Crown v. Donald Forbes again. That was a second homicide. There was the Crown v. Wayne Scotland. There was the Crown v. Scotland again. That represented a failure.
There was the Crown v. Anthony Diedick, the Crown v. Freddie Foreman, the Crown v. Jennings, Parker and Parker, the Crown v. Duffy, the Crown v. Colin Stagg, the Crown v. David Fields, the Crown v. Dunlop, the Crown v. McCluskey, Khan and Hunter, the Crown v. Stephen Plank and the Crown v. Keith Nicholas Whitehouse. I could go on, but I shall not do so. I simply say to the Minister that this pattern cannot be allowed to continue, otherwise people will lose faith in the system.
I ask for some redress for those who are now the victims, who are the families. It is clear that some cases will fail and we need to have a mechanism whereby, in a criminal sense, it is possible to have a rethink about certain cases and allow the families of those who have been murdered some form of redress. At present, if someone is sufficiently wealthy or manages to secure enough money, he can pursue some action through the civil court. However, in my constituency case--I discussed the matter at length with Mrs. Hockley--that is not an option because she does not have the money. Therefore, she is left staring at the ruin that is now her life.
The families of these victims do not want to create a victim culture. They would not call for that. They are not chasing for more money because they know that that will not bring back those who have been murdered. However, they do not want to see criminals benefit financially from any of their previous activities. Most of all, they want to be able to see justice done if the process fails in the first instance. It is the inability to deal with a failure, such as the one that I have outlined, that creates a terrible sense of injustice, and which can lead to problems in future.
I know that there will be problems. I am the first to accept that there are always problems with prosecutions because there is no absolute certainty. We all know that sometimes prosecutors do not get it right. However, when they do not get it right--not because of the innocence of the accused but because the prosecution has failed--the question that needs to be answered is how we deal with that failure. Justice must be done and be seen to be done. My worry is that if the Hockley case and other cases become known as the norm outside the House, and if newspapers represent them as real failures, ordinary men and women will think seriously about taking the law into their own hands. None of us in this place wants that. Any Government need to face that situation and find some way to deal with the anger and concern.
"I am at my wits' end knowing that the two murderers are free and living while my beloved son is dead. Please help me."
I am afraid that an examination of this case illustrates so much of what is wrong, and shows how urgently action is needed. I hope that the Minister will respond.
"It is important to remember that the decisions of police and CPS were based on the statements that were taken from the witnesses not the evidence that they gave in court which departed from their statements."
One is left wondering why that was not ascertained before trial. How can one go to trial in such a case and not try to discover whether the witnesses will back up their statements or are likely to agree with what they said at the time when they were interviewed?
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