| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Stephen Hesford: The right hon. Gentleman was a member of the Government who brought measures before the House to categorise offences that deserved to be punished with life imprisonment. He now seeks to belittle that policy. How does he square his past with what he is now saying?
Mr. Gummer: We are talking about a wholly different position, so I do not have anything to square. We are now discussing the issue of which crimes should be treated in a way that is wholly novel in British law. I do not find it objectionable therefore to say that I wish to apply that, as the Law Commission suggested, to a very select group of crimes.
If the House is to overturn something that we have held as being very important to the principle of justice for centuries, it is a good idea—it is much safer—to do so little by little, so that we may even decide that we went too far in the first place. That is a simple matter of sense, and it is why I agree with my right hon. and hon. Friends in their amendments.
I am also concerned about how the system should be triggered, so I want to end by returning to a comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve). The crucial issue that faces those who might be pressed in such circumstances is that they will be under investigation for a second time. Of course the Minister said—I cite him as accurately as I can—that only guilty people who know that they have got away with it will need to be worried. I have to tell him that there is a slight assumption in that, is there not? The assumption is that everyone who is tried a second time is a guilty person who has got away with it.
My concern—the House ought to be concerned with this—is the small number of people who have been found innocent, but new evidence turns up that casts doubt on that finding. They are still innocent and may in the end be found to be innocent, but in the meantime they have to be reinvestigated. The Minister has assured us that he is doing everything in his power to protect the innocent.
I return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield: the decision must be seen to be triggered not primarily by the state, but much more by the independent judiciary. That is why I, too, hope that the House will accept those amendments that would put a judge in the position of taking that triggering act, because the public would then see that it is a judicial, not a state, decision. That would also protect those emissaries of the state who have the grizzly task of reopening cases that have been closed until then.
Lady Hermon: I am very sorry to put on record how much I disagree with the statement made by the Minister, whom I warmly welcome to the Dispatch Box. Not just the guilty need be afraid of the Bill. The Minister and the right hon. Gentleman will know that some of the amendments being considered this evening extend part 10 to Northern Ireland, so those who are guilty of murder in the most heinous circumstances in Northern Ireland should face the rigour of the Bill. However, the right hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that the recent Hillsborough declaration includes proposals for on-the-run terrorists who have committed murder to be given a clean bill of health—they will not face prosecution. Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on that?
Mr. Gummer: Well, I could comment on it, but it would be very inadvisable if I were to do so at this stage in this debate on these issues. We are dealing with the interrelation of a whole series of issues and I would be probably closer to the hon. Lady than to others on the fundamental issues that we are discussing.
What I want to say very clearly is that this is an extremely serious step even if, as Members on both sides of the House have argued against double jeopardy for many years, we decide to introduce double jeopardy in a very limited way. I should like that limitation to be clearly objective and clearly sensible in its distinction between the crimes that it covers and all other crimes, and it seems to me that the Law Commission has got it about right, although I am prepared to go one stage further and add the offence of rape.
Mr. Frank Cook (Stockton, North): The right hon. Gentleman in some ways quite properly says that the Government are seeking to introduce double jeopardy. I would dispute that statement by saying that double jeopardy was introduced by Billy Dunlop when he turned round and admitted that he had killed Julie Hogg and hidden her behind the bath for her mother to find a decomposing body. Billy Dunlop introduced double jeopardy, and it is up to us to deal with that kind of situation.
Mr. Gummer: However horrific the case, and that was one of the most horrific, the House would none the less be better advised to make its decisions about changes in
the law in general rather than in particular. That is the history of good law making. The general case is that it appears unacceptable to many people that if later evidence shows that those found innocent of murder may not have been innocent, they should, because of the process of law, be excluded from prosecution. We are suggesting—
David Winnick: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gummer: No, I must bring my remarks to an end.
I merely suggest that we would be better advised to restrict the provision to those two limited offences and to ensure that the trigger mechanism is in the hands of the judiciary and not in the offices of the state.
9.45 pm
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: I have listened to Members on both sides of the House debating which cases should or should not be referred to the Court of Appeal for review. The criteria being used by my hon. Friends and by other Members are at odds with mine. My criteria would be based on the suitability and the nature of the evidence.
Where the available physical evidence gives cause for concern about the original conviction, the case should be eligible to be referred back to the court. Where there is no physical evidence to support such a referral or where the evidence is purely verbal, the case should not go back to the court. That view arises from my, unfortunately, extensive work with a very unpopular part of the criminal community—sex offenders.
For the past three years, I have been chair of the all-party group on abuse investigations. Unfortunately, we have had to look into the processes involved in the conviction of sex offenders. Many of the people caught up in such cases assert their innocence of the crimes of which they are accused. I am not remotely interested in whether those people are innocent or guilty, but I am deeply concerned about the way in which the evidence against them in court has been collected.
Hon. Members will recall that, in 1993, a set of protocols was developed to manage physical evidence, following the cases of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four when there were clearly problems in that regard. There are about 133 requirements for the management of physical evidence, all of which we fully support and all of which underpin our view that in cases involving rape or murder, where physical evidence is obtained many years after the event, it should be used as the basis of an appeal. That makes us feel far more comfortable.
Unfortunately, no such protocols exist for the management of verbal evidence. In the vast majority of the cases with which I am concerned, all the evidence against the individuals has been collected in prison.
Mr. Grieve: I disagree slightly with the hon. Lady about the protocols on physical evidence. One of the problems that will have to be faced when the measure goes through is that the protocols on the preservation of evidence 20 years ago were very different from those that exist today. As a result, the dangers of contamination of, for example, DNA testing of old evidence collected by
the police are real, which may inhibit or prevent many of the prosecutions that certain hon. Members would like to see go ahead.
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: I do not disagree with that point, but at least there are some protocols for the management of physical evidence. Since 1993, we can feel reasonably confident that the physical evidence gathered has been managed efficaciously. However, that is rather different from the verbal evidence that is collected in prisons every day for a variety of cases, when prisoners are interviewed by the police as they pursue their inquiries. Frequently, there are no independent persons to witness conversations that can lead to the conviction of an individual. In the cases with which we have been dealing, there could be dozens and dozens of witnesses appearing against a suspect, all of whom were interviewed in prison. I am not happy that the evidence collected from those individuals, who are there because they have broken the law, might subsequently convict a man for the rest of his life. Moreover, there have been exceptional cases in which an individual has faced allegations from as many as 58 men, and all those allegations have been set aside. Those men, however, could face in the future further allegations and the possibility of a retrial. If further new evidence is brought to light, I would suggest to right hon. and hon. Members that it will have been gathered in exactly the same way: with no independent witnesses being available. I must add that the vast majority of complainants involved in those cases go on to receive significant amounts of compensation.
Therefore, cases exist, I am afraid, in which to introduce double jeopardy would endanger and lead to more innocent people being convicted of crimes that they did not commit.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |