Summer Adjournment

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I would like to share a shocking case with the House on behalf of my constituents George Shaw and Paula Davidson, who for 18 years have been the proprietors of the Fillings sandwich shop in Streatham Hill.

In March 2005, Mr Shaw was unloading his van outside his shop. He saw a man looking into his front window and became concerned that the man was about to steal his van. He then felt a sharp pain in his back: he had been shot. The man had been looking at the bank, which he intended to rob, on the other side of the street through the reflection of the shop window. This man, Mr O, fled in a minicab. It took some time for the police to arrive, but there was CCTV footage from the buses that passed along the street and there were witnesses who were prepared to give evidence, in spite of it being a violent crime. One would think that it was an open and shut case.

It took the police a week to find Mr O. They found him in the Republic of Ireland, where he was also wanted by the police. He was found guilty of a violent crime in Ireland and was imprisoned there for five years. He was later extradited back to the UK and went on trial in 2010. Mr Shaw and Ms Davidson tell me that in the five years between the shooting and Mr O being returned to Britain they were not kept informed and had no idea what was going on. To this day, they are confused as to why Trident investigated the case, as it was not a gang or black-on-black crime. A few days before the trial in 2010, they received a two-line e-mail telling them to be prepared for a case at the Old Bailey, and to be ready to give evidence.

Mr O was being tried for a number of violent crimes, including, I understand, a dangerous assault on a woman in a pub in Brixton. When Mr Shaw got to court, he learned that the police had lost all the evidence: they had lost the gun, the bullet and the CCTV from the buses. The people who were prepared to give evidence turned up in fear. They sat outside for 10 days completely uninformed about what was going on. Mr Shaw and Ms Davidson had never had anything to do with the police or the criminal justice system before, and this was an overwhelming experience for them. Mr Shaw had suffered greatly. He had been in hospital for weeks, and he continues to have a very large hernia as a result of the injuries he sustained. Nobody explained what was happening. As far as he knew, Mr O was not being prosecuted for his near murder.

On the advice of Victim Support, Mr Shaw came to see me in March 2011. I wrote to the Independent Police Complaints Commission to ask it to investigate. On 19 December 2012, Mr Shaw and Ms Davidson met Mick Foote, the detective superintendent in Trident gang crime command. Last week, they received a letter explaining that nobody was at fault for losing the evidence, and that nothing could be done to bring Mr O back to trial.

On Mr Shaw’s behalf, and to give some credibility to our Government system and our public services, I ask that Mr Shaw be informed of where Mr O is imprisoned and when he will be released. Not unreasonably, Mr Shaw and his wife are frightened that Mr O will be released. He is a man of violent conduct and might come back to their shop. I would like the police to meet Mr Shaw and Ms Davidson and explain exactly what happened, and what support they should have expected, from the crime taking place to the date when the trial took place, and what support they should have reasonably expected while the trial was going ahead.

If victims experience this level of bemusement in such a serious case, what happens in smaller cases? My constituent has run his sandwich shop on Streatham High road for 18 years and has had no involvement with the criminal justice system. He feels he has been treated like a criminal.