Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support these amendments. The statutory duty of candour is vital not just to affect the culture of the police and enhance public confidence in policing but to give confidence to those police officers who face enormous internal pressures from their colleagues not to be candid. They need support; they need a statutory regime they can point to in order to justify to their colleagues what is required.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, quoted some of what the Home Secretary said in answering questions in the House of Commons on 15 June, and I will quote one other statement she made. She was specifically asked by Yvette Cooper about the duty of candour, and her response was that

“there is absolutely more to do here.”—[Official Report, Commons, 15/6/21; col. 132.]

I very much hope the Government will accept the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, but, if they do not, what more are they going to do in this area?

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

I rise briefly to support both amendments. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, looks at this from the position of the victim. It is, of course, right to acknowledge the huge progress that has been made over the last 20 or so years in improving the position of the victim—but we have not got to the end of the road. The important point of his amendment is that it gives further protection to the victim at two important stages: first, where things have gone wrong and there is an inquiry, and secondly and much more importantly, in the victim exercising the right of review where there has been a failure to prosecute. It seems to me, therefore, that the duty of candour is yet another step in putting the victim—as is so often said by politicians on both sides—at the heart of the criminal justice system.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, looks at this from a broader perspective, which encompasses the position of the defendant and the greater public interest. We should think of experiences over the years. One can go back, for example, to a problem that arose in Tiger Bay in Cardiff over 30 years ago, where the inquiry into the Lynette White murder investigation went on and on. One cannot help feeling that, if there had been a duty of candour, it would have brought that very damaging case to an end.

I say nothing about the undercover policing inquiry as it is still ongoing, but it seems that there is ample evidence that we need to enshrine this duty of candour to protect the position of the defendant and the wider public interest by making it absolutely clear that the police owe that duty—and they should be grateful to have that duty imposed on them, because we need to restore, above all, confidence in our constabularies.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I support these amendments as well. I look at the situation from an unusual perspective and with the unusual experience of sitting as the senior judge in Scotland in a criminal appeal. It was a case of murder, and I was not able—because I was sitting in a court where all the evidence was already out—to develop what was at the back of my mind, which was that the police had identified the wrong individual, who was then accused and convicted. I will not go into the facts of the case for obvious reasons, but it struck me that the court at that late stage was powerless to deal with what I thought had not been a frank and fair police investigation. I make that point simply because stages are reached where the situation is beyond recall, but I was deeply disturbed by what had happened in that case and could not do anything about it. So I welcome the steps that are being taken to improve the standard of candour among the police at all stages in the investigation of crime and its aftermath.