RSPCA (Prosecutions)

Debate between Lord Garnier and Simon Danczuk

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman reads The Daily Telegraph more often than I do, but there we are; I am sure he enjoys doing so.

I want to make it clear that as a Member of Parliament, a private citizen and a former Law Officer, I have no objection in principle to private prosecutions. Equally, however, Parliament has controlled in one way or another private citizens’ ability to take private prosecutions. I think the most recent example—my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General will correct me—was the alteration in how prosecutions may be brought for the international reach of war crimes. I do not have the detail in my head right now, but I think that the situation has been altered to require that the Director of Public Prosecutions take over that sort of prosecution. We should not shy away from alterations to the rules relating to private prosecutions.

[Simon Danczuk]

The hon. and learned Gentleman will accept that the Law Commission considered the issue of private prosecutors in 1998 and found that adequate safeguards were in place. That was relatively recent. Does it not explain the situation? Everything is okay and should continue as it is.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

That is rather complacent. The whole point of being a Member of Parliament is to express one’s view on the basis of indirect or direct knowledge. Yes, the Law Commission considered the principle of private prosecutions not very long ago, but that does not prevent me from having a different view about particular types of private prosecution, and I am about to express it.

We must be watchful of the ability of the citizen—by “citizen” I mean either a corporate organisation, such as a charity, or an individual—to convert a legitimate public interest activity, namely the bringing of a prosecution in an appropriate case, into an arm of a political campaign. We all have different views about particular public issues—that is why we are elected for our separate parties—but we must be careful that the prosecuting system does not allow itself to become an arm of any one political campaign or a number of campaigns. That is the whole point of having a Crown Prosecution Service.

Certainly during my time in government, the Crown Prosecution Service subsumed the prosecuting wing of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Within DEFRA, there is a group of prosecutors who take on animal welfare cases, among other things, that were previously dealt with by Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food prosecutors. That subsection of DEFRA has now moved into the Crown Prosecution Service, which seems a sensible place for those people to carry out their work.

We must be careful. Although we do not wish all private prosecutions to be brought to an end, we are entitled to issue a warning to the RSPCA that if that sort of conduct—that is, the prosecutions referred to by the hon. Member for Derby North and others, in which the costs of £300,000-plus incurred were described by the judge as quite staggering—