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Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Bill

Lords amendment No. 1 is designed largely with the avoidance of doubt in mind. We wish to prevent unnecessary legal argument arising about the effect of the emergency legislation that will come into force on Royal Assent. The amendment puts beyond doubt that, even following the abolition of the common law in relation to such applications, the identity of witnesses can be withheld from the defence before and during the making of an application for a witness anonymity order. The amendment therefore makes it clear in the Bill that the party making the application is under no obligation to disclose the real identity of a witness to other parties at the application stage, with a saving for the disclosure of a defence witness's real identity to the prosecutor. In addition, where it is proposed that an order should be made, the amendment makes it clear that the identity of witnesses can be protected in the proceedings before the application is made, for example, during committal proceedings. Lords amendment No. 1 also addresses a question raised by amendments tabled in the other place. The issue is whether the court must always know the identity of the witness. In the vast majority of cases, it will do so, but very occasionally there may be national security-related cases where even the court will not know, and will not want to know, the identity of a witness. For that reason, the amendment does not include an absolute requirement to disclose the identity of the witness to the court. Rather, it grants the court a power to waive the disclosure to the court of the real identity of a witness on a case-by-case basis. We envisage that the real identity of a witness will be disclosed to the court in the vast majority of cases. Finally, Lords amendment No. 2 makes it clear that the power of the criminal procedure rule committee to set out further procedures relating to witness anonymity in criminal procedure rules is unaffected. It is likely that the rule committee will want to make specific rules, as soon as possible, to set out the mechanics of applications for these orders. Indeed, the committee is meeting on Friday, when it will be invited to discuss this very matter.