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Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Bill

moved Amendment No. 7E: 7E: Clause 5, page 3, line 20, at end insert— ““( ) the principle that witness anonymity orders are justified only in exceptional cases; ( ) the gravity of the offence;”” The noble Lord said: I shall speak also to Amendment No. 8A which, on reflection, really belongs in an earlier group because it deals with the list of considerations set out in Clause 5. I feel somewhat in the same position as the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, when moving his previous amendment. In my view, it is desirable for the judge, when making his decision about whether to award witness anonymity, to take into account, particularly where the issue is evidence as to credibility, whether there is any corroboration for the witness’s evidence. That is the purpose of Amendment No. 8A, but I readily accept that it bears little relationship to Amendment No. 7E. I would be grateful if, when the Minister replies, he would deal with Amendment No. 8A in the context of its proper place, which is Clause 5. I will not disguise the fact that Amendment No. 7E is derived from New Zealand legislation. Of course I accept that New Zealand is not a country which, in its numbers or type of litigation, necessarily has great relevance to the situation that we face in this country; I shall not be surprised if the noble Lord makes that point in reply. However, he will be aware that among those highly principled organisations that have made submissions on the Bill, the Bar Council, for one, has urged the Government to include a provision that anonymity orders should be made only in exceptional cases. An easy way to deal with this is to say that half the cases where anonymity is granted are about drugs and, in particular, about undercover agents acting as buyers or sellers and then giving evidence against the relevant party; and that, if ““exceptional”” in the amendment were to appear in the Bill, it might be misunderstood in the context of those applications. I readily admit that, in that sense, the amendment would require some tweaking. On the other hand, the Bar Council, and many other organisations with intimate day-to-day experience of these matters, will tell the Minister that, on too many occasions now, especially in certain areas of the country, requests for witness anonymity are made by the police as a matter of course. Moreover, many are accepted by the court without the application of any objective tests—one of the reasons for that being that the judge is not put in possession of sufficient evidence to make an objective judgment. It is in that context that the first paragraph of Amendment No. 7E is advanced. It would be quite wrong for any court to take the view that, in criminal cases, awards of witness anonymity orders should be made regularly. I see that the Minister is nodding and, when he replies, I hope that he will not only repeat that evident assurance in words but, if he is not prepared to put something of this nature in the Bill, at least give encouragement to the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee to make it clear in its stipulations, when crafting the rules of court, that applications for orders ought to be granted only in exceptional circumstances. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, took me to task on Second Reading for suggesting that it should be only in grave offences that witness anonymity orders were made. I readily accept that there may be some circumstances in magistrates’ courts when it is necessary to make anonymity orders. However, I hope that the Minister will agree that, generally speaking, it will be only in cases where indictments contain offences of the most serious nature that the orders are contemplated. I beg to move.