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12.2 pm
Mr. Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. Turner) on obtaining the debate and bringing this important matter before the House. He set out the facts and the issues that need to be considered afresh in detail and with great clarity, as did the hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Banks).
The House does not have to reach a conclusion on the evidence; nor does the Home Secretary. We simply have to consider whether there is a real danger that there has been a miscarriage of justice. The Home Secretary has the power to do more than express doubts and fears. He can send the case back to the Court of Appeal. He should do so now after 17 years in which more and more doubt has grown over the safety of the court's decision.
I make a more general point about miscarriages of justice. The House decided only last night to change the law on disclosure to reduce the burden of paperwork on the police and increase the chances of convicting the guilty. We supported that measure, which we shall seek to improve in Committee. Hon. Members on both sides of the House warned of the need to get the balance right to ensure that the innocent are protected and that alleged miscarriages are corrected. The case that we are discussing demonstrates the need for such care and balance.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) rightly referred to the dogged determination of Ann Whelan. It is worrying that there still has not been a proper review of her case after so many years. Many right hon. and hon. Members who, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook, may have had doubts about the strength of her case, are now convinced after her representations that that is necessary.
The cases with which my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) has been associated demonstrated overwhelmingly that some alleged miscarriages are indeed real, and leave an innocent person or persons incarcerated for long periods, their lives ruined beyond repair. It is worrying that the criminal justice system is held in such low regard by the public--because villains walk free and the innocent are sometimes convicted. That is why the Labour party called for a body to investigate miscarriages of justice as long ago as 1991, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook was shadow Home Secretary.
The royal commission, which was set up to examine miscarriages of justice, recommended the urgent establishment of such a body. The Government eventually introduced a Bill to establish a criminal cases review body. We supported that Bill but expressed concern that it was weaker than what Labour or the royal commission had urged. We also expressed concern that the Government had been slow to introduce the Bill and that it was likely that they would be slow in establishing such a body. Why, oh why are the Government so slow in getting it established and operational? Why, oh why has the Home Secretary not got on with the job so that the new body can deal with the backlog of serious cases in which a grave miscarriage of justice is alleged? I do not suggest for a moment that all the alleged miscarriages will be found to be miscarriages when properly investigated, even when they are considered by the court, but there are enough serious cases in which there is serious doubt for the work of such a body to be urgent.
Many right hon. and hon. Members expressed the frustration of looking at a constituency case and becoming uneasily aware of serious grounds for concern. We do not easily reach that view. The case of my constituent, Michael O'Brien, is one of many that have come to my attention. Many cases, after we have heard the arguments, do not leave us with that sense of deep unease. The Michael O'Brien case leaves me feeling deeply uneasy. In those rare cases, there is nothing that we can do.If one has the consistency of purpose of my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South, one might be able to touch a small number of cases. There are, however,a number of serious cases about which hon. Members will be concerned but about which nothing can be done until that body is established and takes on the responsibility that the House has agreed that it should have in investigating alleged miscarriages of justice.We cannot as Members of Parliament set out to investigate those cases. We are not detectives. We do not have the resources. We can ask questions and then receive straight answers from the Home Secretary that get us no further forward. It is a matter of deep concern. It is a scandal that, three years after the royal commission report stated the obvious, that body has still not been established.
The royal commission's recommendation should not have been a surprise. It was set up because it was blatantly obvious that something needed to be done, that a body must be established and that other changes in the law and in the administration of justice were required. The delay in establishing the criminal cases review body is a scandal. It is a sad demonstration of the ineffectiveness of the House. It is a sad reflection on the Government's commitment on justice and it leaves a cloud over the criminal justice system.
Each of those points applies with equal strength to the case of the Bridgewater Four. It is outrageous to delay a reference back to the Court of Appeal given the facts and the underlying doubts that were set out in detail by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook, my hon. Friends the Members for Wolverhampton, South-East, and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Dr. Jones) and particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South. In fairness, I should
say that my hon. Friend is not, as is sometimes alleged, soft on crime. Indeed, he is one of the Members of Parliament who is quickest to be tough on crime--but he is also tough for justice. It is only fair to place that balance in his character on the record. That is what everybody is appealing for. It is asked not that we be soft, or assume that cases should go to appeal and be dismissed, but that justice should be done, and should be seen to be done.
We heard a powerful and persuasive speech by the hon. Member for Southport, who was given a strong explicit endorsement by the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash). It would be wise for the Minister to listen to what has been said in the debate.
Hansard is full of questions and speeches by right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House who have examined the case and become disturbed by what they have learnt--often having started with the sort of scepticism that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook and I have described. The questions that have been asked over recent months make it clear how many Members on both sides of the House are now convinced that something needs to be done.
The establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission will end the Home Secretary's involvement with alleged miscarriages of justice, because the commission will be able to refer cases directly to the Court of Appeal.
I know that the Minister will not be able to give way to us today; in his brief is 20 minutes' worth of closely argued text, and doubtless he has been sent here to hold the line. I appreciate that he has little room for manoeuvre. I simply ask him to take back to the Home Secretary the clear message that the issue will not go away. Sooner or later the case will be reviewed by the Court of Appeal.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Timothy Kirkhope):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. Turner) on his choice of topic. I am here not, as has just been suggested, merely to hold the line, but to set out the background to the case and explain the way in which it has been dealt with up to this point.
It is right that miscarriages of justice, and the possibility of miscarriages of justice, should be a matter of the highest public concern. Such concern for justice is one of the hallmarks of a civilised democracy. Our criminal justice system, at all its stages, must work so as to protect the innocent while properly punishing the guilty.
The Government have been responsible for a series of major reforms to the criminal justice process, up to and including the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Bill now before Parliament. In the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 we introduced the most important and far-reaching
change of recent times to the procedures for reviewing criminal cases in the last resort. Work is well under way to establish the new Criminal Cases Review Commission, which several right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned. We intend the commission to start its work later this year.
Until then, the responsibility for considering cases of last resort rests with my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department, as it has done with Secretaries of State since the turn of the century. It is a responsibility which all Secretaries of State, and their officials, have taken most seriously. The liberty of the citizen is at stake. So is justice, and the security of the public.
Cases such as the one highlighted by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-East can sometimes become the subject of intense and impassioned lobbying and campaigning by people who no doubt sincerely believe in the innocence of those convicted. The task of Secretaries of State, however, is not about deciding or believing in guilt or innocence. Their task is to reach a judgment on all the available evidence, and to decide whether the case should go back to the Court of Appeal.
Certainly, Secretaries of State must listen and pay attention to those who campaign and argue with such feeling. But at the end of the day the decision in each case must be taken calmly, objectively, in the light of all the evidence. The same principles and the same careful judgment must be applied to each and every case, whether or not it is one known to the wider public, and regardless of the degree of clamour or otherwise that may surround it.
The criteria that successive Secretaries of State have applied in considering cases are well known. There must normally be some new evidence, or other consideration of substance, touching the safety of the conviction. New,in this case, means not previously put before the courts or available to be put before the courts. Those criteria do not fetter the overall discretion, and exceptional cases have been referred outside the criteria.
The general thrust found expression in a slightly different way, by Lord Justice Simon-Brown in the divisional court judgment in Hickey and others. He said that the question to be asked was:
In applying those criteria to the case before him, the Secretary of State is bound to look at the evidence in the case as a whole, and to consider the weight and cogency of any new matters in relation to the overall picture.I have heard it argued, in relation to this case and perhaps to others, that the Secretary of State should immediately send any case in which there is credible new evidence straight to the Court of Appeal.
That is quite mistaken. It is also plainly absurd, because if that happened there would be no purpose in having a role for the Secretary of State, or for the new commission. Every convicted person could simply take his or her evidence straight back to the Court of Appeal, which would become clogged with hopeless cases.
Of course the threshold applied by the Secretary of State in deciding whether to refer a case to the Court of Appeal is lower than that which would be applied by the court itself when deciding whether to allow an appeal.
But the Secretary of State is entitled to take a view of the weight and cogency of matters placed before him, in the light of the overall picture. Indeed, it is his duty to do so.
In relation to the particular case on which this debate has focused, there is a long and involved history of reviews and investigations spanning the 17 years since the convictions of the four defendants. It has sometimes been suggested--indeed, the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) and others suggested so again today--that simply because there have been so many investigations, the case should be referred again to the courts. That is false logic.
Successive Secretaries of State have been determined in the interests of fairness to have all the new matters put before them fully and properly investigated, however slight or implausible some of these matters may have appeared at first sight. If we investigated only matters bound to lead to a reference to the Court of Appeal,we should quite rightly be criticised for dealing with cases superficially, and for seeking justice on the cheap.
At this point I would like to pay tribute, as I have done before, to the quality of the investigation work carried out in the case, especially by the Merseyside police in the two most recent inquiries. Those inquiries have been exceptionally rigorous and exhaustive. Every lead has been followed. Witnesses have been interviewed and re-interviewed. The most painstaking research has been carried out. Considering the time that has elapsed since the events of the case, that is a formidable achievement.
We are fortunate that such expertise and energies have been applied to the illumination of this case--work that is by no means untypical of the quality of police work in other miscarriage investigations. Parliament was wise to ensure that such skills and expertise will also be available in future to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
The comprehensive and meticulous nature of these inquiries can be judged from the substantial volume of statements and other material that has been disclosed to the solicitors for the four men, in accordance with the divisional court judgment in ex parte Hickey and others. That was an important judgment. It acknowledged that there had to be a balance in matters of disclosure, and that in some circumstances it would be right for material to be kept confidential. I assure hon. Members that we have gone out of our way in the present case to see that the interests of fairness are met, by providing all the material that is, in our judgment, relevant to the provisional conclusions that we have reached.
As we announced on 7 December, our provisional conclusion, having given the most careful consideration to all the material in the case, and having applied the criteria that I explained earlier, is that the case should not be referred back to the Court of Appeal. We have set out our reasoning in detail and provided the supporting material. On Monday afternoon this week we received a 34-page submission from the solicitors acting for those who were convicted. I understand that that is only a partial response and that the solicitors intend to make further submissions at an unspecified later date. We shall of course consider most carefully the points that have been put to us.
On our provisional conclusions and the response from the solicitors, I do not want to anticipate or prejudge our final consideration, but I propose to set out the evidence on which our provisional conclusions are based and, where possible, to respond to some of the points that hon.
Members have made. If there are points that I cannot immediately answer or if we run out of time, I will ensure that those points are taken into account before a final decision is taken.
As I explained earlier, the Secretary of State's task is to consider any new matters in the context of the evidence, old or new, as a whole. That includes of course evidence that formed the prosecution case at trial and that has not been set aside by the Court of Appeal. In the present case, much of the evidence was examined by the Court of Appeal in 1989, following a reference of the case by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney(Mr. Hurd). The appeal hearing was, at the time, unprecedented in its length--hon. Members have referred to it--and the court's judgment ran to 216 pages. Clearly, any fresh consideration of the case must have regard to the existing evidence and to any view that the Court of Appeal may have taken about that evidence on a previous occasion.
"could the new material reasonably cause the Court of Appeal to regard the verdict as unsafe?"
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