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Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Bill

The Crown Prosecution Service has collected a good deal of information so far about the number of cases. There is a very strong argument for its keeping a proper log of all of them, and it is important that the House should know what has happened, not least when we come to debate the Bill later in the year or early next Session. I will therefore raise that matter with my right hon. Friend the Attorney-General, because it will be a matter for the CPS. If my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) looks not at the explanatory notes but at the background note on the number of cases, which we published alongside the Bill, he will see that the number that raised a concern of the sort raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North—cases in which the credibility of witnesses is an issue, because they could well have been accomplices to other crimes and could have as criminal a past as the defendants in the dock—is relatively small. It is thought to be about 40 or 50. Of the total, a large proportion involve undercover police officers or agents, and I do not think that anybody would argue that we should not routinely protect their identity.