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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I am sure that magistrates frequently address the police in the terms the Minister has referred to, although I have not personally heard it. Suppose that a policeman comes into the witness box and says, ““I’ve got statements. I have interviewed three people, and they say this is a dangerous man””; the defendant says, ““But I’m a Muslim. I’m living in a white neighbourhood, and everyone hates me around there””, and that is put to the policeman. Where do we go from there? Do we ask them to go back and check that there is no racial or religious prejudice involved, or whether they have had a quarrel about the dog or the amount of noise coming from someone’s house? How is the individual who will be subject to these restrictions able to get justice when he cannot actually challenge the witnesses? I have just been at a case in the Old Bailey where every witness gave evidence from behind a curtain with a voice modulator so that we could not hear how they sounded unless we put on earphones, which were not available—obviously—to the defendant in the dock. There are ways in which these things can be handled which are accepted as part of the tradition of justice in our courts. It is not necessary to bring forward these civil orders in order to rely on hearsay evidence from witnesses who are not prepared to go to court under any circumstances, however well protected, to make their allegations in person and be challenged about them.