---

Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Bill

In speaking to this amendment, perhaps I may speak at the same time to Amendments Nos. 4C and 9. Amendment No. 4C is tabled in my name and in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, and the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, both of whom are very sorry that they cannot be here today. We have tabled the amendment as members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Thanks to the industry and skill of its staff, the committee has managed to produce at record speed a report on this Bill which became available this morning. I shall not go through it, but I refer to noble Lords to it. The report as a whole essentially follows what was said in the other place by the chair of the committee, Andrew Dismore, MP, and by myself at Second Reading in this House. None of that needs to be repeated, but paragraph 1.33 states: "““We recommend that the Bill should be amended to give the trial judge a discretion to appoint special counsel to represent the interests of both the accused and the witness at hearings for anonymity orders. This would also address the problem that the magistrates’ court may have no power to appoint special counsel””." I hope that the committee gets high marks for brevity and that similarly the amendment gets high marks for lack of prescriptive detail. The idea behind it is to ensure that there is a broad discretion, leaving it essentially to the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee to fashion particular rules. We do not have any particular dogmatic preference for the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, for the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford, or even, for that matter, for this one—as long as the pith and substance of what is proposed in the three amendments is given effect.