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Coroners and Justice Bill

In moving the amendment, I shall also speak to Amendments 183ZB to 183ZD as well as Amendments 183AB and 183AC. It is with some trepidation that I rise to speak to these amendments, put down in my name and that of my late noble friend Lord Kingsland, who was to have spoken to them. He was also, as we have just been reminded, to have spoken on the Perpetuities and Accumulations Bill and tomorrow he was going to speak on the Parliamentary Standards Bill. Moreover, he was due to speak in a number of other debates on this Bill. I shall provide a very pale shadow of him in attempting to bring expertise to the Bill. Nevertheless, I shall try to do so. Clause 62 introduces the concept of anonymity in investigations of criminal offences in which it is thought appropriate that those helping with the investigation should be provided with some form of anonymity for their own safety. Applications under Clause 62 can be made to the court to secure an investigation anonymity order. The first four amendments in this group, Amendments 183ZA to 183ZD, probe the limits of Clause 62, which establishes the qualifying offences that would attract anonymity if needed. At the moment, the qualifying offences are limited to murder and manslaughter. If it is right to have investigation anonymity orders, it is right to extend their ambit beyond offences of murder and manslaughter. Gangs do not just kill people; they can also hurt them and inflict non-fatal injuries. Indeed, in the qualifying offences, even attempted murder is excluded. Is it right that anonymity orders can be granted only in cases where the worst possible outcome has been realised—that is, the death of the victim? What if the intention was to kill, but swift medical action or simple good luck saved the victim’s life, despite the evil efforts of the alleged perpetrator? It seems clear that the Government are trying to restrict anonymity orders. In principle, that is the right approach, but they are restricting them to excessively limited circumstances. We could have suggested any number of additional offences, but, for the purposes of this debate, we propose to add GBH contrary to Section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act. Amendment 183ZA is consequential to that. I stress that the amendments are simply probing in order to promote discussion, so that we can hear what the Government intend to do. In Clause 62(4) it is open to the Secretary of State to amend the list of offences. Are we to presume that murder and manslaughter are to be the guinea pigs in the system, to which other offences will later be added as the system beds in? If that power is intended to be used, we prefer to debate the extension of anonymity in investigations in Parliament and not just leave it to the Secretary of State. I stress again that these are probing amendments, but we may need to return to this matter in more detail on Report. I expect the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, will also want to expand on the whole question of order-making by the Secretary of State in subsection (4) when he deals with his Amendment 183A in the next group, to which we have added our names. The same comments apply to Amendment 183ZD, which would extend the very limited range of weapons involved. Subsection (3) deals with a person being shot with a firearm and/or being injured with a knife. That ignores damage that could be done with, for example, a baseball bat, a crowbar or any number of other weapons or objects that can be used as weapons. Again, one feels that artificial distinctions are being drawn, quite possibly because the Government are being deliberately cautious. We feel that we should be wary of caution in primary legislation that is followed by bold order-making powers as a method of legislating. Amendments 183AB and 183AC would leave out the requirements that the alleged perpetrator is between the age of 11 and 30 and the requirements that the criminal group, of which he is likely to be a member, is mostly made up of people within that age range. Investigation anonymity orders would therefore apply to qualifying offences committed by members of criminal groups of any age. The Bill as it stands is targeting groups of children and young people with measures that would not be available in relation to criminal groups, including organised criminal networks dominated by older offenders. From the age-related conditions in Clause 66, it is obvious that the Government have in mind the problem of teenage gangs who have been involved in a number of high-profile crimes. It seems to us illogical that an upper age limit should be placed on the conditions for applications for an investigation anonymity order. I choose the most obvious and most absurd hypothetical situation: if two brothers or friends commit similar or identical crimes, but the first is 29 and the other is 31, Clause 66 would allow an application to be made in the former case but not in the latter, even though there is no or very little difference in the crimes; there is no difference in the fear engendered in the witnesses or anyone who might be able to assist in the investigation. To create such a distinction, we would argue, is artificial. We appreciate the mischief of youth gang crimes that these clauses are trying to address, but the age limit will not further that effort and may produce unintended and unnecessary contortions in practice. I beg to move.