Criminal Cases Review Commission

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered strengthening the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

It gives me great pleasure to have the opportunity to speak this afternoon about the Westminster commission on miscarriages of justice. As someone who has been in the House for a very long time, I have to admit to you, Sir Charles, and to the Minister that this is my first time doing a Westminster Hall debate in this way. I was delighted yesterday to manage to come physically into the House of Commons after a year to pay my tribute to the Duke of Edinburgh. Please bear with me if I make any mistakes and do correct me if I put a foot wrong.

As you know, Sir Charles, I have been in the House for a very long time; and long before you were in the House, I was deputy shadow Home Secretary to the shadow Home Secretary, Roy Hattersley. All those years ago, at the time of the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven and all those very controversial cases, I was quite intimately involved—well, rather on the periphery, but certainly involved at that rather interesting time in British politics—with what was happening in terms of alleged miscarriages of justice, so this has been a long-term interest of mine, an interest over a long period of time.

A very great friend of mine, Glyn Maddocks, who very early on was a research assistant of mine in the House of Commons, has over the years, as a lawyer—a solicitor—made miscarriages of justice one of his central areas of interest; and over those years, I have helped in individual cases when they have been brought to me as worthy of having a look at and perhaps giving my support to. We have had some very great successes, but I want to stress that many people, including many of my constituents, would not know very much about how we handle miscarriages of justice in our country. It shocks many people when they realise. We have a system that is not bad—not bad at all. When miscarriages are discovered and resolved, the wrong is put right to some extent. However, not many people realise that someone can serve 15 or 18 years in prison and it can be found that they have been wrongly imprisoned for all that time, but, when they leave prison, they get not one penny of compensation. Indeed, we can compare that to the situation of a convicted criminal who has been in prison, perhaps for murder, for a very long sentence—say, 12 or 15 years—and who comes out. They get rehabilitation and support to get back into the community, but if someone is found to have been wrongly convicted, they get nothing of that; there is no compensation, so this is something that has been a great interest of mine.

Back in 1997 we introduced the Criminal Cases Review Commission—the CCRC—and everyone thought at the time of its introduction that we had absolutely sorted the problem. To give you the background, Sir Charles, you will know as well as anyone that, even in the best criminal justice system, mistakes are made. If we look at countries similar to ours with good justice systems, throughout the world a good justice system also has the capacity to look at miscarriages that might occur. We all know—we are human beings—mistakes and errors are made in the criminal justice system for complex reasons.

Over the years of the CCRC working, it has done a good job, but we increasingly see evidence of a lack of cases being referred for review and that has been a worry. In my short speech today, I want to give some idea of the problem. I am a campaigner and I know that one of the greatest assets in a campaign is to have a good all-party parliamentary group. Two years ago, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) and I started an all-party group on miscarriages of justice with very good membership in the Lords and the Commons. After some good seminar discussions and identifying the problems, we resolved that we would try to put together a commission to look at the issue, not only to give it some reputation, but to take written and oral evidence and to see if we could make good recommendations, not to criticise or be negative about the Criminal Cases Review Commission, but to assist it and make it even more effective. That is the background to why we founded the commission.

Very often, all-party groups can be extremely good, with very good seminars, but there is always one member who steps outside and we overhear them say, “That was a really good discussion, but it was just a talking shop”. We did not want this APPG to be a talking shop, so we founded the Westminster commission on miscarriages of justice and then we struck lucky, because Lord Garnier and Baroness Stern in the House of Lords—people with an enormous reputation in the criminal justice system—agreed to co-chair the commission and a commission of inquiry.

What I am putting forward in this debate through this strange online link is the fact that we very carefully and positively, on an all-party basis, tried to look at a problem that emerged and to come up with some good suggestions for improvement and reform—all in a positive spirit, but with an underlying passion. Miscarriages of justice do dreadful things to people who are wrongly imprisoned for long terms. They ruin their lives and their families’ and friends’ lives, and their communities are deeply damaged when a real miscarriage takes place and is not put right. In that spirit, we set course not only with the all-party group, but with the commission.

The commission has now published a report, which Lord Garnier and Baroness Stern gave the title, “In the Interests of Justice—An inquiry into the Criminal Cases Review Commission”. I want to briefly mention what we think the problems are. One is known as “the real possibility test”. We believe that the predictive nature of the real possibility test encourages the CCRC to be too deferential to the Court of Appeal. It seems to act as a brake on the CCRC’s freedom of decision and we believe that needs reform. We urge the Government to take that recommendation seriously.

My second point is something that not many people really know of. Those of us who care about our justice system have been very positive, and we know that justice is not a cheap commodity, but the Ministry of Justice has experienced the biggest cuts of any Department in the past decade. There is no doubt about that, and there have been serious effects in relation to miscarriages of justice. When that overall lack of resource for justice is combined with covid and its dreadful impact in delays in the courts of justice, we know that the justice system has been going through a tough time, and there has been an impact with miscarriages of justice in particular. At a time when the CCRC has been more needed than ever its budget has been slashed too, and we believe it urgently needs more resources to fulfil its role. The figures are not extraordinary; they are very modest with respect to what is needed to put things right.

The third issue is investigative powers. The inquiry revealed one instance where the CCRC had waited 1,000 days for a public body to comply with a disclosure request. What is the point of the CCRC’s having special powers to request public bodies to disclose evidence if it cannot enforce its requests? That seems extraordinary. The case taking 1,000 days was extreme, but in many cases there are serious worries about lack of co-operation. It is good for everyone in the justice system if there is transparency. The principle of open justice is at the heart of the system; but for that we need accountability and transparency, and the CCRC needs to do better on both counts, to maintain public confidence in its work.

We have done our job very well. The all-party group visited the CCRC. Not many people know this, but it is based in Birmingham. I am very much in favour of putting civil service jobs and Government jobs out in the provinces, as I am sure you are, Sir Charles, but the CCRC in Birmingham is somewhat out on a limb and a visit was important, so that we could see how those good, dedicated teams work. However, the all-party group was rather shocked by the fact that the team is small, commissioners’ remuneration has declined quite steadily—they are paid on a per diem basis as consultants rather than as full-time employees—and they find it hard to recruit some full-time staff because of the general level of pay and conditions. We saw a really good bunch of men and women, working hard—everything that I am saying today is what we say in the report—but they were restricted by the resources at their command. Also, we believe that the move away from more full-time people towards having part-time people working on a per diem basis has not been very good for the organisation’s overall effectiveness.

The last point that I want to make—and strongly—is that we believe the cut in resources has also affected communication with applicants. It is important for those appealing about a miscarriage who are in prison, and their families, to be kept in the loop about what is happening, and the stage that their application for a review has reached. We took evidence from people who had been wrongfully imprisoned and then released and from their families and friends. While the CCRC has made important efforts to make itself more accessible to potential applicants, it must communicate better during the case reviews. That is most important. It is a stressful time for many people and is made worse by silence or infrequent, hard-to-understand updates from the CCRC.

Sir Charles, this is a unique report, in the sense that it is very high quality. I do not think anyone could fail to be impressed by Lord Garnier and Baroness Stern’s commitment and the hard work they put in, or the quality of the report that we have subsequently published. I am sure the Minister and the Government have seen the report, but I ask today that they look at it in a positive spirit. Every inch of the way we have tried to say, “This is a very good organisation. It could be much more effective and it would be good for our justice system, and for its reputation as a high-quality justice system, if some modifications, along the lines of our recommendations, were made.”

We did not find any of the staff involved in the report to lack the commitment or desire to do a better job, and I know the report has been warmly endorsed by those delivering and working for the Criminal Cases Review Commission. We have worked hard, on an all-party basis. We believe we have come up with something that is useful to the Government. Would it not be nice if we could see that hard work, across the Commons and the Lords, produce something effective to improve the situation in our justice system?