Criminal Cases Review Commission (Information) Bill

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Friday 26th February 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Ramsbotham]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, it is a very real pleasure and privilege to be asked to introduce this Private Member’s Bill, which was so admirably introduced in and taken through the other place by William Wragg, MP for Hazel Grove. I thank him and his staff for their careful briefing, before passing on responsibility for its passage through this House to me. I also thank the Chief Whip and his staff in the Government Whips’ Office for their early tabling of the Bill, which I know enjoys strong government support. Finally, I thank the chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, Richard Foster, and his staff for the trouble they have taken to brief me on the Bill.

The purpose of this Bill is to correct an anomaly in the drafting of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, by which the Criminal Cases Review Commission was created. The task of the commission, an independent public body sponsored and funded by the Ministry of Justice, is to investigate possible miscarriages of justice, following the 1993 report by a royal commission into the circumstances of the mishandling of the cases of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. The commission investigates convictions on application by an offender or, if an offender has died, at the request of relatives. All applications are free. The commission’s remit covers only England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as do the provisions of the Bill.

If the CCRC concludes that there is a real possibility that the Court of Appeal will overturn a conviction, it can make a referral and send cases back so that an appeal can be heard. Sentences cannot be increased as a result of a defendant’s application for review. The commission, whose annual budget is £5.5 million, receives between 1,000 and 1,500 applications a year, of which, in 2015, only 39 were referred back for review. This very low ratio of referrals to convictions indicates how uncommon it is for a sufficient weight of relevant, accurate and compelling new evidence to be put forward to justify an overturn. I put it to the House that it should be taken as an indication of the rigour and fairness of our justice system. It is, however, essential that whenever mistakes are made, they be redressed as quickly as possible. That is why it is so important that any barriers in the way of the public body responsible for investigating these mistakes be removed.

Under Section 17 of the Criminal Appeal Act, the CCRC has the power to obtain any relevant information held in the public sector—an essential weapon in its investigatory armoury. Provided that the power is used reasonably, it is not restricted for any obligation of secrecy or other limitation on disclosure, and includes information relevant to national security and personal information held by the police, prisons, the NHS and the Department for Work and Pensions. It can also request CCTV information from local authorities.

However, thanks to the drafting anomaly which I mentioned earlier, the CCRC does not have the same power in respect of material held outside the public sector, and has to rely on co-operation and favourable responses to requests for voluntary disclosure of relevant material from individuals and organisations. Although voluntary disclosure is not uncommon, an increasing number of organisations are citing a number of reasons why they cannot assist, including recent trends in statutory data protection. Furthermore, voluntary disclosure often only follows protracted negotiations, which cause lengthy and expensive delays in the case review process. The CCRC cites four situations in particular in relation to the private sector which tend to disadvantage an applicant: inability to obtain information from a private individual; inability to obtain information from a private sector organisation; provision of partial information or a summary, which the commission is in no position to scrutinise or verify; and lengthy delays in the case review process caused by protracted negotiations within the private sector. What is particularly unfortunate is that the CCRC has experienced significant or repeated difficulties with some organisations or types of organisation, which has forced it to accept that further pursuit of information from them would be fruitless. This situation could have resulted in its inability to remedy a number of miscarriages of justice.

This problem has become much more acute in recent years because responsibility for much of the required material held by public bodies when the 1995 Act was enacted has now been passed to private sector bodies. Such organisations include some prisons; probation services, the majority of which are now contracted out; forensic science services, following the abolition of the official Forensic Science Service; private health clinics; and charities, including those treating substance misuse. Other private sector bodies from which material is sought include law firms, expert witnesses, campaign groups, news agencies, banks, private schools, public transport companies and shops and department stores.

The distinction between private bodies, from which the CCRC does not currently have statutory powers to compel disclosure, and those in the public sector, from which it does, is arbitrary because it could be a matter of luck or personal circumstance as to which one holds the relevant information in a case. For example, medical records that are statutorily available if an alleged victim is treated in an NHS hospital are not available if they are treated in a private clinic. Similarly, the CCRC can demand external CCTV footage from a public sector jobcentre on one side of the street but not from a shop on the other, possibly denying it important evidence. I could give many other examples but the point is that this arbitrary, random and unintended distinction should not be allowed to impede the justice system.

It is even more regrettable that a CCRC inquiry into a miscarriage of justice should be impeded by the refusal of a private organisation or witness to provide material, and the inability of the CCRC to compel disclosure of all relevant information can result in a flawed decision for and against an applicant. The victim of a miscarriage of justice could be made to suffer continued imprisonment and the social consequences of a criminal conviction. Conversely, the absence of all relevant information which could have persuaded the CCRC to turn down a case could result in an expensive referral to the Court of Appeal. In either case, unnecessary distress is caused to the victims of the crime in question.

The CCRC has long recognised that the ability to conduct case reviews is detrimentally affected by its lack of afforded legal power to obtain material held in the private sector, recognition of which was officially supported by the 2013-14 CCRC triennial review. There is already a precedent within the United Kingdom because the power the Bill seeks to give the CCRC was granted from the outset to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission under Section 194I of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. Under this legislation, the SCCRC is entitled to apply for a court order requiring a private individual or organisation to provide relevant material. In practice, the SCCRC finds that a reminder that it has the statutory powers to apply for a court order is usually sufficient to secure voluntary disclosure. Indeed, only one case in 15 years has led to contested court proceedings.

The granting of similar powers subject to similar legal safeguards was recommended by the Justice Committee in another place under the distinguished chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Beith, whom I am delighted to see in his place. Its Twelfth Report of Session 2014-15, published on 25 March 2015, included the following:

“The extension of the CCRC’s section 17 powers to cover private bodies is urgently necessary and commands universal support. It should be a matter of great urgency and priority for the next Government to bring forward legislation to implement the extension of the CCRC’s powers so that it can compel material necessary for it to carry out investigations from private bodies through an application to the courts. No new Criminal Justice Bill should be introduced without the inclusion of such a clause”.

This is that new criminal justice Bill.

To help the House, I will explain briefly how the proposed new power would work in practice. If passed, the Bill would be inserted into the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 as a new Section 18A, enabling the CCRC to obtain a court order requiring a private organisation or individual to disclose a document or other material in their possession or control. As with the current power over public bodies, disclosure requirements will apply notwithstanding any obligations of secrecy or other limitations on disclosure, including statutory obligations or limitations. This means that organisations will not be able to claim exemption because of the Data Protection Act or security classification. The new section will also apply to cases arising from courts martial, which the CCRC has been involved in investigating since the Armed Forces Act 2006.

The CCRC intends that even after the Bill is enacted, it will always attempt to obtain information voluntarily before reverting to a court order. This will result in better relations with the private organisation or individual concerned, and is likely to be quicker than a court application. Except in very specific circumstances where a problem in the criminal justice system requires a proactive trawl for information, the CCRC is a reactive body, responding to applications and not going out to seek custom. It estimates that it may need to request private body material on about 70 occasions a year, of which only 10 are anticipated to require an application for a court order. Those who refuse to respond, including journalists, will have to recognise that such action will amount to contempt of court, not contempt of the CCRC.

Although the British criminal justice system works well for the vast majority of cases, mistakes do occasionally happen. Prisons are not nice places, nor are they supposed to be, but a civilised society, which we contend to be, should ensure that there are adequate safeguards to prevent people being sent there who know that they are innocent or that the system has made errors against them. The chairman of the CCRC has admitted that miscarriages of justice have gone unremedied because of the lack of the power to obtain information from both public and private sources. We have a duty to ensure that this situation is eliminated so that when mistakes are made, they can be investigated swiftly and thoroughly without hindrance. That is what the Bill seeks to achieve and I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his typically helpful and comprehensive response. I also thank all those who have spoken in support of the Bill. In particular, I commend the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Beith. The excellent report produced by the Justice Committee under his chairmanship has been a notable landmark in helping to move things forward. I am very glad that he mentioned the various other aspects, which are really between the committee and the Government rather than for the Bill. There are other things to do with the CCRC that one is anxious to move forward to make it as efficient as possible.

I am also most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, for raising the question of journalists, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Beith, said, was mentioned by the NMA. It is appropriate for us to consider that in Committee, and I hope that an amendment will be tabled to enable us to do so. I am also most grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, first, for his support and, secondly, for drawing our attention to the question of legal privilege, which, again, I hope will be explored properly in Committee.

The impression I get from the CCRC is that it feels that the Bill would enable it to do its job better. That is surely the purpose of getting this thing through as quickly as possible—to enable it to do its job. I look forward to Committee.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.