Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 12th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, I have spoken about this issue on a number of occasions over the years, most recently in Committee on this Bill. I start where I left off on the last occasion, when I quoted the case of a woman who rifles through the dustbin of a reputable consultant, finds a used condom, smears the contents on herself and makes a false allegation of rape. As the accused has no right to anonymity, he is suspended as a consultant psychiatrist, hauled before the GMC, shunned by his friends, attacked on the internet, loses £100,000 that was part of his income, and is totally discredited in his own community. A life destroyed as indeed was the case made by Cliff Richard when he recently attended a meeting in the House.

I do not want to do a rerun of the speech I gave on a previous occasion. Suffice to say that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, on that occasion and on this occasion, as a former serving police officer, in my view—and I say to others to read what he said in Committee—made the case completely. My contribution on that occasion was a modest add-on, as indeed it will be today. It will be about the political background to this matter.

Over the years, the resistance has essentially been in the Commons, but the Commons membership has now changed. Anyone who knows procedure in the Commons will know the position there is very different from in here. One can table an amendment in here and have it heard; in the Commons that is not the case. It has to go through two obstacles. First, it might not be selected by Mr Speaker, because there is a selection of amendments in the Commons. Secondly, it might not be heard because of the procedural changes that were made at the beginning of this decade in the use of the guillotine and timetabling in the House of Commons. I am arguing tonight that we please give the Commons the opportunity to consider again this matter, which it has not been able to consider for some years.

What support do we have for the change? The fifth report of the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2003 unanimously said, in the Commons, that,

“we believe that sex crimes do fall ‘within an entirely different order’ to most other crimes. In our view, the stigma that attaches to sexual offences … is enormous and the accusation alone can be devastating. If the accused is never charged, there is no possibility of the individual being publicly vindicated by an acquittal”.

This all-party Select Committee in the House of Commons in 2003 went on to recommend unanimously,

“that the anonymity of the accused be protected only for a limited period between allegation and charge”.

Then in 2003 an amendment was moved by Lord Ackner, whom some Members may recall. I understand that he was a prominent Silk, much called on nationally for his services, and a judge. I want to read the wording of his amendment in 2003 on “Anonymity of defendant in rape etc. cases”:

“The defendant in rape etc. cases shall enjoy the same right to anonymity as is enjoyed by the complainant”.

In other words, he was arguing for anonymity not just at charge nor even to conviction but beyond, in the event that a person was not found guilty. I have the Division list here. When that matter was brought before this House, all those on the Conservative Benches—who I am told are being whipped today; I hope that is not the case—voted in favour of the Ackner amendment for anonymity through the whole process, which would mean that, if someone was not convicted, they would retain their anonymity and would be identified only in the event of a successful conviction.

My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer argued during the same Bill that pre-charge and accused persons should not be named. He supported ACPO guidance. That is one of the problems: the guidance does not work. That is why we are standing here today. If the current guidance worked, there would be no need for an amendment. It does not work. My noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who is unfortunately—

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

I am here.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Oh, she is here. What my noble friend said is very interesting, because she is one of the great lawyers on our side specialising in human rights. Perhaps I may draw attention to her view at the time on anonymity right through to conviction. She said:

“I strongly urge that this House does not consider allowing anonymity for anyone who is charged with rape. But the Government might look sensitively at the issue of whether someone should be covered with anonymity until the point of being charged … The reason that women will come forward when they see that a man has been charged with rape is because they are confident that they will not be so readily disbelieved if he is clearly doing it to other women”.—[Official Report, 2/6/03; col. 1085-6.]

It is quite clear that, at that time, my noble friend at least had some sympathy for the principle behind today’s amendment.

The former Prime Minister, David Cameron, told Parliament that he believed that,

“there was a case for saying that between arrest and charge there was a case for anonymity”.

“I think”, he went on to say,

“this does represent a good way forward”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/6/10; col. 428.]

My right honourable friend Caroline Flint, speaking on behalf of the Labour Party in the House of Commons, said,

“the serial nature of the crime that we are talking about is important, because when a crime is reported and people hear the name of the person who has been charged, they feel confident to come forward and stand by the victims”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/6/10; col. 150.]

Even there, from a spokesman from the Labour Front Bench in the Commons, is an admission that, post-charge, people do come forward. I am not claiming that she would support me on this amendment, but I ask the House to judge her view on the basis of the record to which I just referred.

The Home Affairs Select Committee report in 2014 stated:

“We recommend that the … right to anonymity should also apply to the person accused of the crime, unless and until they are charged with an offence”.

In other words, for the second time the Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons, only two years ago, made the same recommendation—again unanimous.

We then have Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, a practitioner in the field dealing with these matters. He too says he supports pre-charge anonymity.

Finally, there is the letter of 24 March last year from Theresa May, who is now the Prime Minister, to Keith Vaz, which says:

“The Government accepts the committee’s conclusion”—

that is, the report I just referred to, supporting pre-charge anonymity—

“that there should, in general, be a right to anonymity before the point of charge, but there will be circumstances in which the public interest means that an arrested suspect should be named”.

All these assurances are diluted by the guidance being given to police officers, because that guidance does not work. It is about time that we stood up in Parliament, recognised the deficiency in the way the law is operating and put on the statute book something that requires police officers to operate in a particular way. In this case, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, suggests in his amendment, they should at least be required to apply to a judge for permission to release a name.

The product of all this law as it currently exists, and the present arrangements, is that reputations are undermined, families are discredited—as I said in my contribution in Committee—there are suicides, public lives and reputations are destroyed, and individuals are sacked from their employment. I have a desk full of letters written over the last 15 years by men all over the country—many of them in prisons; we do not know what happened in those particular cases—objecting to the way the law works.

I implore the House: please give the House of Commons the opportunity to reconsider this matter. If I lose in the Commons, fair enough—but at least give the Commons the opportunity. It is in our hands. If we vote for the amendment tonight, the Commons will reconsider the matter.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (LD)]

My Lords, I support what has just been said by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Paddick. I apologise for not having been here right at the beginning of the debate. Reflecting something said by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, I should state that although this issue affects a number of Members of your Lordships’ House, it affects multiples of ordinary people who are not Members of your Lordships’ House, who have been affected by regional publicity in such cases.

I am almost as dyed in the wool—indeed, dyed in the Welsh wool—a criminal lawyer as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, and I recall two criminal trials in which I appeared that particularly disturb me. In one, which I prosecuted, the defendant was, to my enormous surprise, convicted and sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment, and had to wait a number of months before the Court of Appeal overturned the conviction on very good grounds. In the second, a case in which I defended, my client was convicted of a number of offences and subsequently, after I had been sacked as his counsel, deservedly won his appeal. Those are just examples of the many cases up and down the country in which local and regional publicity has been a powerful driver.

I want to make two points—they are of quality—which were not covered by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, either in his speech this afternoon or in the article he wrote on this subject, which I read a little time ago. The first relates to the quality of non-recent sexual offences. In relation to most offences on the criminal calendar, there is no doubt that a crime has been committed and the investigation is as to who committed that crime and whether that person interviewed was involved in that crime. In the case of non-recent sexual offences, it does not need me to persuade your Lordships’ House that there have been numerous allegations of offences which never occurred. The damage that can be done—wherein I move to my second point—when the police work on the assumption that the complainant, often called the victim, is telling the truth means that those cases are quite different. I am not making this up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Many cases do not come to trial. I was trying to illustrate the reluctance of people to come forward. People are still reluctant to do so, and the Government do not want to create an environment in which we go back to the practices of times gone by, which is why we have so many allegations of historic sex offences.

Noble Lords asked about safeguards, and of course, as my noble friend Lord Faulks said, we have the magistrates’ court and the High Court. We have College of Policing guidance, which states that the police should not routinely release information about suspects before charge. However, it also makes clear that there are limited circumstances in which the release of such information can be justified.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Will the Minister address the issue that was raised by most of the speakers, on the position of people who commit suicide, whose families break up, whose reputations are destroyed or whose careers end, or who are destroyed in their communities, only because the Government of the day—of both major parties—have insisted on pursuing this arrangement, which is clearly not in the public interest? Will the noble Baroness address the agony of the people involved? The fact that some of them are prominent is not so important. Hundreds—there may well be thousands; we do not know—of people out there suffer similarly.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I think I addressed that right at the beginning of my speech, when I said that the Government completely acknowledge the pain that some people have gone through in the course of the last few years—and in the course of history—due to being wrongly accused of crimes which they did not commit. I absolutely acknowledge that point. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said that it is an incredibly difficult issue, and I recognise that.

I was going to say something else. The College of Policing is currently developing—