House of Commons - Home Affairs

Select Committee on Home Affairs Second Report

INTRODUCTION

1. The Criminal Justice and Sentencing Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 21st November 2002. It is 293 pages in length, containing 273 clauses and 26 schedules. It is, by our reckoning, the seventeenth piece of criminal justice legislation that has been introduced since May 1997[3] and was just one of six bills, announced in the Queen's Speech on 13th November 2002, which will make further changes to the criminal justice system.[4]

2. If implemented in its current form, the Bill will make significant procedural changes to the conduct of criminal trials, including sweeping changes to the rules on bad character evidence. It will also make inroads into the existing right of defendants in the Crown Court to be tried by a judge and jury and will allow—in limited circumstances—for a retrial of a person previously acquitted of the same offence (thus relaxing the 'double jeopardy' rule). The Bill will also introduce a new sentencing framework, based on the conclusions and recommendations of the Halliday Report.[5]

3. The White Paper—Justice for All[6]—which preceded the Bill, stated that the Government aims to:

4. Let it be said at the outset that we fully support this aim. While the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 has gone some way towards improving the experience of vulnerable witnesses, there is still more than can and should be done to assist witnesses generally. At the moment, too few victims and witnesses are willing to report crime and give evidence at trial.[8]

5. We therefore support measures to allow more witnesses—in appropriate circumstances—to give their evidence by live links (Part 8), to give pre-recorded video evidence in chief (Clause 121) and to allow greater use of original witness statements to refresh the witness's memory in court (Clause 123).

6. We also support the aim of making justice swifter through better preparation and trial management. We therefore welcome the transfer of responsibility for charging suspects to the Crown Prosecution Service (Part 4) and we support the principle of improving disclosure by all parties to narrow the issues before trial. Finally, we welcome the proposals to create a new sentencing framework (Part 12), which we believe will be easier to understand for sentencers, victims and the public.

7. However, it has been suggested (and we share this concern) that some of the measures shift the balance of power too far towards the state, in a way which threatens to undermine "the integrity of the trial process, and the integrity of the verdict".[9] As one of our witnesses said:

8. We agree and, for this reason, we are concerned about the implications of some of the proposed measures. In particular, the proposal to allow for greater admission at trial of a defendant's previous convictions as part of the wider reform of bad character evidence (Part 11, chp 1).

THE CONDUCT OF OUR INQUIRY

9. In conducting this inquiry, we have had to work our way around a number of constraints. Yet again we have had to commence pre-legislative scrutiny without a copy of the Bill in draft. As a result, all of the evidence from interested parties (both written and oral) was taken without the benefit of having seen the Bill—with the exception of oral evidence from the Minister. Furthermore, although the Bill was published on 21st November, the Explanatory Notes were not available at the time of writing this report.[11] Given the length of the Bill, and the short time available between publication of the Bill (21st November) and Second Reading (announced for 4th December), our task has not been an easy one. In future, we would expect all Government departments to make Explanatory Notes available on the first day that a Bill is published and, at the very least, well in advance of Second Reading.

10. We heard from nine witnesses over three evidence sessions. These included the Minister in charge of the Bill, Lord Falconer of Thoroton QC (Minister of State at the Home Office), the Association of Chief Police Officers, Deputy Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police and criminal law practitioners representing the interests of JUSTICE, the Law Society and the Criminal Bar Association. We are also grateful to the 24 individuals and organisations who responded quickly to our invitation to give written evidence. All of the oral evidence is published with this report. We have also published some of the written evidence, but in order to contain costs, we have not printed submissions which are publicly available elsewhere. This includes submissions which formed part of the Government's consultation on the paper, as these are due to be published by the relevant Government departments.[12] A full list of witnesses and those who have provided written evidence appears on page 39.

11. We have not attempted to conduct a detailed or comprehensive review of the Bill. (The structure of the Bill is set out in the Annex to this report.) Our aim in the short time available has been to highlight the most important and controversial measures, in time for Second Reading on 4th December. For this reason, we have concentrated on the following parts of the Bill: