Publication of the Review's findings
107. The Home Office's Review, unlike the DCA's,
remains unpublished. Baroness Scotland told us that the Review
was an internal review and that there are no plans to publish
any more than the Rebalancing the Criminal Justice System
paper which seeks to implement the conclusions of the review,
but that she was willing to think again about publishing the full
Review. [87] In her letter
dated 6 November 2006, however, Baroness Scotland said that after
careful consideration she had decided that only the summary should
be made publicly available as part of the evidence to our inquiry.[88]
108. In our view there are strong reasons for
publishing the Review itself: first, to put into the public domain
the evidential basis for its conclusion that there is a culture
of risk aversion throughout the criminal justice, immigration
and asylum systems, to allow that claim to be tested; and second,
to rebut the BBC reports in July suggesting that the Home Office's
internal review of decision-making had identified some twenty-five
examples of the HRA impeding decision-making. We regard this
as a good example of just the sort of rebuttal envisaged by the
Review itself.
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