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Coroners and Justice Bill

I am having that checked, but my understanding is that that is not right. I will come back to the noble Lord a little later. We have seen no evidence that the current arrangements are not working satisfactorily. Thus, we are not persuaded that there is any need to put them on a statutory footing. As I have said, in two cases, the court has asked the Attorney- General to appoint special counsel and both were granted. One of our fears is that the proposed changes could have a significant knock-on effect for special counsel in other kinds of criminal proceedings. In principle, the use of special counsel is available in a much wider range of cases than anonymity applications. We do not think that this Bill is the place to place special counsel in criminal proceedings on a statutory footing. The Committee will be very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, for having analysed the leading case of Mayers, which of course discussed the law relating to special counsel as well as to features of the new statutory anonymity regime enacted last summer. In our view, two things stand out from that case. First, the Court of Appeal did not call for special counsel to be placed on a statutory basis. Secondly, it gave no indication that it considered the present arrangements—or as they had worked until that case—unsatisfactory. As regards the figures, that quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, is for applications for witness anonymity orders and not for applications for the appointment of special counsel. If there is some confusion between us about the figures, I will write to the noble Lord.