Criminal Cases Review Commission (Information) Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-11
Topic: Law and Crime
David John Ramsbotham (Crossbench, Unknown): I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Black, for sharing the content of his amendment with me in advance, which allowed me to obtain a response from the CCRC. I am also glad that those responsible for drawing up the rules, to which I will refer in due course, will have access to our discussions in Hansard. I am also grateful to the Minister for meeting with me and discussing what the Government’s response might be The CCRC recognises that the amendment is drafted in similar terms to the police powers to access journalistic material contained in Schedule 1 to the PACE Act 1984. However, it points out that it operates in a very different context from the police: "The measures in this Bill will only apply in criminal cases in which there has already been a trial, a conviction and (in most cases) an appeal. Therefore, from the outset of its investigation, the CCRC will already know a great deal more about a case in question than a detective in the early stages of an inquiry The CCRC is an independent public body, whose whole raison d’être is to ensure that the rights of an individual defendant/appellant are protected vis a vis the State. It is not part of the executive, is independent of the police, the prosecution and government, and exists, not to detect crime but to check for potential miscarriages of justice" At Second Reading I mentioned that the powers that the Bill seeks for the CCRC have only once been contested since the Scottish CCRC was established with those powers in Scotland in 1995. I will quote from the judgment given in that one case, which said that, "the petitioners have a statutory obligation to carry out a full, independent and impartial investigation into … miscarriages of justice and the legislation under which they act was clearly designed to give the widest powers to perform that duty" On the amendment itself, Clause 1 of the Bill specifies that a person will be obliged to provide the CCRC with private documents or other material only if ordered to do so by a Crown Court judge, who is best placed to consider and weigh up factors such as the potential relevance of the material, confidentiality issues and the public interest in uncovering miscarriages of justice. The CCRC considers that the most appropriate way of resolving issues of concern in an inter partes oral hearing before a Crown Court judge is by Criminal Procedure Rules rather than in the Bill. The CCRC is represented on the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee and tells me that currently the committee stands ready to put appropriate rules in place as soon as the Bill becomes law. I remind the House that the CCRC always seeks voluntary disclosure first, which process could also be said to be inter partes As regards the understandable concern about the protection of the identity of informants expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Black, the CCRC’s already existing processes have been designed to protect such identities, which it is routinely required to do in highly sensitive cases involving police informants. Furthermore, it has many years’ experience of reviewing and storing highly sensitive material, obtained through its existing statutory powers, up to and including "top secret". Those procedures are regarded as satisfactory by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, and no accusation of abuse of its powers has ever been made against the CCRC In sum, the CCRC believes that the amendment is unnecessary because the points it contains are covered already by existing safeguards or could be covered by the rules committee. Therefore, not least to help the CCRC in its important task of investigating possible miscarriages of justice, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.