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Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Bill

My Lords, it is obviously with great trepidation that a lay man such as me ventures into an area of the law as esoteric as this, especially as most of the other speakers in this debate are high-powered lawyers. I do so first and foremost because I find the whole concept of anonymous accusation in a court of law to be deeply repugnant. I shall cite again, because it cannot be cited too often, the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham, in his judgment on the Davis case. He said that, "““the defendant in a criminal trial should be confronted by his accusers in order that he may cross-examine them and challenge their evidence””." I have been much assisted by an article in this week’s Spectator by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. I felt that his summary of the situation was itself a masterly judgment. Perhaps I may quote a little piece from it: "““The Law Lords reaffirmed the long-established principle of the common law that in a criminal trial the defendant should be confronted by his accusers. Any conviction which depended wholly, or to a decisive extent, on the evidence of anonymous witnesses could not be safe. Accordingly they quashed the conviction. The reaction of the police was predictable. John Yates, assistant commissioner of the Met, described the decision as a cause for grave concern. Bob Quick, the head of counter-terrorism, said that the implications were catastrophic””." He quotes Mr Quick as saying: "““There is too much principle in the criminal justice system, and not enough pragmatism””." The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, goes on to say that, "““the Lord Chancellor said that legislation was necessary to cure what he called ‘a technical defect in the law which has been until now unidentified and unsuspected’. This is a travesty of what the Law Lords decided””." He says that Mr Straw, "““further argued that ‘in recent years witness intimidation has become all too common’. Can he have forgotten the 30 years of terrorism in Northern Ireland where witness intimidation was always a very real problem?””." To me, as an amateur and outsider, that is a very helpful explanation of the situation that we face. Perhaps I may say one other thing in relation to Northern Ireland. I believe that the main political reason why successive Northern Ireland Secretaries rejected the use of anonymous witnesses was that it would have provided grist to the mill for those espousing the terrorist cause, which they sought to justify by depicting the Government of the UK as repressive. My second reason for speaking is that this rushed legislation has been brought forward as a result of public pressure from the police, who have suggested that without it the streets of Britain will soon be flooded with liberated murderers whose convictions have been quashed. That suggestion has been communicated to the public by the ever ready tabloids, for which it provides a useful alternative to their usual junk diet of ““Big Brother””. I regret that my own party should appear to have connived so easily in the whole exercise and I am surprised that the Liberal Democrats should have done the same. The next reason for my intervention is that over the years, not least as a member of EU Sub-Committee F, which deals with home afairs—we are at present looking at Europol—I have become deeply sceptical of some of the judgments and practices of the police and even more of the ability of the Home Office to control them. There have already been many references to the Strasbourg court. I would have thought that this is a problem that could usefully be looked at on a European basis so that, if there is to be witness anonymity, there can be an agreement in Europe to ensure that we have some form of common—