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Coroners and Justice Bill

I turn first to Amendment 183AA in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and say in passing how much we appreciate the suddenness with which he has had to take on this major responsibility. I thank him very much for doing so straight away. All of us around the House are extremely sad about the circumstances which led the noble Lord to have to take command, as it were, at this stage. We have some sympathy with the thinking underlying the amendment. Investigation and anonymity orders are a novel measure designed to address the serious problem of gang-related gun and knife crime. As with everything new, it is uncertain exactly how the orders will operate in practice. Of course it is right that their operation is closely monitored and we made it clear in another place that we intend to keep their working under close review. Whether a formal report to Parliament, as envisaged by the amendment, is required is for us another matter. We do not think it is necessary because, as I have said, we intend to review the provisions anyway and keep a close watch on how they are working. So it is not necessary for such an amendment to be in the Bill. Amendment 184 would require the Director of Public Prosecutions to consent to all applications for an investigation anonymity order. It would therefore prevent police officers and other prosecuting authorities applying for such an order without his or her consent. The amendment would restrict the power to give consent to the DPP, but we take the point that under Section 1(7) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 the DPP automatically delegates his or her consent functions to Crown prosecutors who would presumably also be able to give consent. Clause 65 makes it clear who can apply for an investigation anonymity order. It would not be appropriate for the DPP to have to consent to every investigation anonymity order application. As was said in another place, these new orders are an investigative tool which should be available to the police during the early stages of an investigation—perhaps on an urgent basis. Furthermore, any specified prosecuting authority should be capable of deciding whether or not to exercise the powers without reference to the DPP. These orders are not linked to witness anonymity orders; they are an independent tool. With regard to the suggestion in the Joint Committee’s report that there is a risk of a disproportionately large number of applications if the director does not have to give consent, perhaps I may answer by saying that these orders are available only in relation to a narrow class of gang-related homicides. It is difficult to imagine applications being made in disproportionately large numbers. More significantly, the Joint Committee’s observation overlooks a fundamental aspect of these orders; namely, that they are intended to protect witnesses in criminal investigations. Unlike at the trial stage, no one’s liberty is at issue. The Joint Committee also seems to be saying that, if the DPP gives his consent to the application for an investigation order, he will have then made a decision on, or will be likelier to know, whether he will apply also for a trial order later on. The implication seems to be that this will address the practical problem raised by the Joint Committee, and in Committee this afternoon, of informants being reluctant to come forward unless they know that they will get a trial anonymity order. However, I have to be frank with the Committee: the police, the CPS and the DPP can give absolutely no guarantee that a court will grant a trial anonymity order at any stage of a case; nor will the DPP be able to say with any certainty that the informant will indeed be required to provide evidence at trial at these very early stages of an investigation. I repeat that in our view investigation anonymity orders and trial anonymity orders are quite separate tools and they serve different purposes. There may well be examples of where it is impracticable for the CPS to provide cover for urgent police applications, and that is why we ask noble Lords not to press Amendment 184. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, spoke to his Amendments 183B and 183C. The first proposes the deletion of subsection (8) but Amendment 183C suggests the insertion of additional paragraph (c) to supplement existing paragraphs (a) and (b). One of the preconditions for the grant of an order is that the witness has useful information to give, but the deletion of subsection (8) would remove that requirement. There is no point in making orders in respect of people who have no information or who would be willing to provide information without anonymity, and that is why, if the noble Lord had argued for Amendment 183B, we would have rejected it. New paragraph (c) proposed in Amendment 183C would require the police to prove that the witness would be unwilling or unable to provide information without an order. We think that that is too closely related to our existing paragraph (b), which, with the amendment, would remain. It would call into question the effect of existing paragraph (b), which, in our minds, already sets out a similar condition and would probably make it more difficult for the police to obtain an order. We do not want to make the requirements for obtaining an investigation anonymity order unduly onerous. I repeat that we need to bear in mind that we may be dealing here with the very early stages of an investigation where the police need to obtain an order but have only very limited information at their fingertips. We think that subsection (8) is appropriate for what we are trying to do in this field. For those reasons, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment and for the other amendments in the group not to be pressed in due course.