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Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Bill

I rise to speak—I hope fairly briefly—to amendments Nos. 3 to 8, which stand in my name. I shall take the Committee of the whole House through them swiftly. Amendment No. 3 would substitute ““sure”” for ““satisfied””. May I explain why? It seems right that the standard of proof required to satisfy the conditions should be the criminal standard—beyond reasonable doubt. I know that the phrase ““is satisfied”” is often used in legislation, but standing by itself it does not have a clear meaning. The word ““sure”” does have a clear meaning. I tried to make precisely the same substitution in the Counter-Terrorism Bill, but that was met by the argument that the word ““sure”” is not readily recognised in statutory language and that the courts gave a fairly clear interpretation to the word ““satisfied””. However, that argument is not correct. The Committee will remember a Court of Appeal decision in the case of Davies—that is indeed a coincidence—this year. It was reported in The Times of 19 May. The Court of Appeal was required to adjudicate on whether a court, when setting a sentence in a homicide case, had to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt or on the balance of probabilities about the existence of aggravating factors. In other words, notwithstanding the fact that the word ““satisfied”” is well known to the courts, the Court of Appeal was asked to define what it meant in that context. Given that, we should use language that makes our meaning clear, and our meaning should be that the court is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt—hence the word ““sure”” in this context.