Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Damian Green

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)]

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 112.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this is will be convenient to take Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 112.

[Damian Green]

I should add that I wish the House to agree to amendment (a).

Clause 151 defines what amounts to a “miscarriage of justice” for the purposes of compensation under section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. There has been much debate about the clause, both here and in the House of Lords, and I am indebted to all who have contributed to examining this important issue. The Government have taken account of all the points that have been made and all the concerns that have been expressed, and our position has changed as a result of the very good debates that have taken place in Committee here as well as in the House of Lords.

I was pleased to note that Members of both Houses and members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights agreed with us that that the current definition set out by the divisional court in the case of Ali was not clear enough, that we needed to legislate for a clear definition of a miscarriage of justice given the ongoing uncertainty and reinterpretation of definitions by the courts, and that our aim was not to seek to restrict compensation, but to provide clarity. The question that remains before us is how it can be determined whether someone has suffered a miscarriage of justice.

This is indeed a complex issue. When a case is properly brought to court—that is, when there is evidence of a crime on which it is right to ask a jury to adjudicate—there is no miscarriage of justice when the result of the trial is an acquittal, or even in very many of the cases in which a guilty verdict is later quashed as unsafe. The Government believe that a miscarriage of justice arises only when there is in existence a fact which entirely exonerates the accused: in other words, a fact which makes it unquestionable that the accused did not commit the crime. In such cases, it is only the ignorance of this fact that allowed the accused to be convicted in the first place. What we are seeking to define is something far more than merely a failure in the investigative or trial processes. We are seeking to define a clear miscarriage of justice which is—and, in our view, can only be—the wrongful conviction of the innocent.

Our aim is to create an unambiguous statutory description of such a situation for the purposes of compensation. The fact that the definition inserted in the Bill by Lords amendment 112 is open to various interpretations is obvious from the significant number of judicial review cases awaiting consideration by the administrative court—13 at present—in which the aim is to challenge the Secretary of State’s application of the Supreme Court’s judgment in the case of Adams. That number excludes the three cases that are awaiting judgment from the challenge to the divisional court’s decision in respect of Ali and others, which was heard by the Court of Appeal last December. A test similar to the “Adams test”—the definition that is at the heart of all these cases—is the test that is now being proposed in Lords amendment 112.

It is vitally important for us to ensure that the definition that is introduced into statute for the first time is “fit for purpose”. It must be clear and robust enough to avoid the need for further judicial interpretation, and, as far as possible, to limit the scope for argument about what will amount to a miscarriage of justice. The amendment that we propose would leave applicants in no doubt: if the new fact that led to their conviction being quashed showed that they did not commit the offence—for example, if it were shown that they had been somewhere else at the time, if someone else was proved to be the perpetrator, or if the courts acknowledged that no offence had in fact been committed—they would have suffered a miscarriage of justice, and would be likely to be compensated.