HC Deb 16 February 1872 vol 209 cc587-94

Order for Second Heading read.

MR. SPENCER WALPOLE

, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that its object was to supply a want which had been long felt—namely, that of a public prosecutor. The great advantage of having a public prosecutor, instead of leaving the prosecution of crime in the hands of private individuals, was so often insisted upon by the highest authorities in the land, that the wonder was that the want of such a public officer had so long remained a reproach to our law, and a serious obstacle to the administration of justice. In that respect our criminal justice was very defective. There had hitherto been so much irregularity, and not unfrequently so much negligence and collusion, in connection with the prosecution of crime that it might be said the law had been left to take its chance. When they considered the inconvenience, the trouble, and the expense which were thrown upon private parties, by relegating to them the duty that belonged to the State, nobody could be surprised when they found that prosecutions were not carried on, even in cases where the offender was known; and that in many cases also, where they were carried on, convictions did not follow, in consequence of the imperfect manner in which the cases were got up. According to the judicial statistics, between 50,000 and 60,000 indictable offences were annually reported by the police as having been committed. Of that number not more than 26,000 were brought before justices. Of the criminals apprehended, certainly about one-fourth were not committed for trial; and of those who were committed for trial, one-fourth more escaped for want of evidence, or from some neglect or defect in conducting the prosecution in a proper manner. The general result was, that out of those 50,000 or 60,000 indictable offences, only 13,000 criminals were convicted last year. And so it may be said that impunity for crime was almost the rule, and punishment the exception. With these facts before them, he could not doubt that the House would resolve to try to meet the evil, provided a measure could be adopted or could be suggested which would be suitable and well adapted for the purpose. He knew there was a difficulty in the case; but he would not shirk that difficulty. He had brought in the Bill with the full concurrence of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Recorder of the City of London (Mr. Russell Gurney), and other high authorities, whose names were on the back of the Bill, and he believed that the machinery it provided was efficient; but, at the same time, he might say that the provisions and machinery of the Bill would require close investigation in order to be satisfied that they would adequately meet the difficulties that existed. The main provisions of the Bill were, that on the recommendation of the county and city or burgh justices, a public prosecutor should be appointed to conduct the prosecutions that arose within the different districts to be constituted by the Secretary of State, whose duties would ordinarily commence after the accused had been committed for trial; but in difficult and important cases it would be in the power of the public prosecutor to intervene by the direction of the Attorney General, or of the magistrates before commitment, with power to the public prosecutor of consulting one of three advising counsel as to the mode in which the particular prosecution should be carried on; and where the public prosecutor declined to act, or, having undertaken to act, had withdrawn, the private prosecutor should be at liberty to proceed as he might think best. He heartily concurred in the objection that was raised last year by the hon. and learned Member for Ipswich (Mr. West) to leaving the power of prosecution in the hands of the police. That would, indeed, be a serious evil, but this Bill would discriminate between the functions discharged by the police and those discharged by the public prosecutor. The functions of the former would be confined to the detection of crime, and those of the latter to getting up the evidence and preparing the case, and seeing that the prosecution was properly conducted. A second objection was that it would increase the patronage of the Crown; but the provisions of the Bill carefully met that objection by enacting that no one should be appointed to the office of public prosecutor except on the recommendation of the county magistrates or of the civic authorities in cities and boroughs. A third objection was, that it might exercise an injurious influence upon the independence of the Bar; but under this measure young barristers would have the same opportunities as under the present system, since the public prosecutor would distribute briefs in the same way as the town clerks and the clerks of the peace at present did, where the prosecution was not in the hands of private parties. The fourth objection was, that although a public prosecutor was required for the metropolis and the large towns, the same reasons did not apply to the coun- try districts, and that, therefore, the Bill should be confined to the towns; but he found from the statistics that in the country districts 24 per cent of the prosecutions failed from the causes he had referred to. The last and most serious objection was the expense; but so far as he had been able to ascertain, he did not believe that the present expenses would be materially increased by the appointment of a public prosecutor; but on that point he would defer expressing any further opinion until the inquiry the Government had instituted on that head was completed. A public prosecutor was required for England as much as for Scotland and Ireland; and it appeared to him that the gap which had been left between the reformatory and industrial institutions and the Habitual Criminals Act would have to be filled up by taking care that they should not have in future such a vast disproportion between the number of crimes committed and the number of persons brought to justice. If the Bill were read a second time, he would wait until the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Recorder was present himself to take charge of it, and with that view would name a distant day for its commitment, so as to give every hon. Member interested in the subject a full opportunity of suggesting Amendments or expressing in Committee his views upon it.

MR. WEST

said, he fully appreciated the reason for the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. S. Walpole) bringing forward this Bill, in order that when the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Recorder, who was now absent on the important business of his country, returned, he might find the measure in the same position in which it was left at the close of last Session. Therefore, he would not at present offer any opposition to the second reading of the Bill; but such opposition as was in his power to give he would reserve until the Motion was made for going into Committee. Unfortunately, he belonged to the low and degraded portion of the legal profession which had to do with the criminal law, and he was somewhat startled at hearing some of the right hon. Gentleman's propositions. Under the Bill, as it now stood, the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General would have, as he now had in Mint eases, the patronage of every prosecution at assizes and sessions throughout the country. The Attorney General was to be the master of every prosecution, and was to instruct the attorneys in each district. There would probably be some 650 of these officers, and they were to receive a salary of £1,000 each. ["No, no!"] That would certainly be the case under the powers of the Bill if every petty sessional division in England was to have a public prosecutor, and if the salary of £1,000 was to be given in accordance with the recommendation of the Select Committee which formerly sat on the subject. It was therefore obvious that the patronage to be conferred upon the Government would be enormous in these matters. With regard to indictable offences to be prosecuted, that was the main objection to the Bill, for it did not deal with those offences at all. If they appointed a public prosecutor, such as Scotland and France had, one who conducted the proceedings from the time of the commission of the offence, they would get a useful officer; but under this measure the prosecutor would not come into play until after the criminal was committed for trial by the magistrates. In his experience, nearly all the failures of justice occurred before the prisoner was committed, not after. He regarded the measure as ill-adapted for the more efficient conduct of criminal prosecutions, and on that general ground he should oppose it on going into Committee.

MR. STRAIGHT

said, at the outset, he must express surprise, after all that had been said as to the vast importance of this subject, that so few hon. Members were present on that occasion to discuss the Bill now before the House. Differing from the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite (Mr. West), he did not think that the failures in obtaining convictions occurred because the public prosecutor did not step in prior to the committal of the criminal by the magistrate. At any rate, that was his own opinion, based upon experience. He confessed he was startled at the statement of the hon. and learned Gentleman that something like 650 petty session prosecutors would have to be appointed under this Bill, at the salary of £1,000 each, for he had himself entertained strong views as to the expense which the passing of a Bill like this would entail upon the country. With regard to the history of the measure, it was originated by the hon. Member for Windsor (Mr. Eykyn), though it was difficult to tell what particular experience in the administration of criminal justice that hon. Member had had. It had been originally submitted to a Select Committee that it might be made a good Bill, but they made a bad one of it. Then it was fostered by his right hon. and learned Friend the Recorder, and now the right hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. S. Walpole) had taken it up, in the absence of the Recorder, and lent it the sanction of his name. He could not understand how the right hon. Gentleman could have been induced to put his name on the back of a Bill of this character. Many persons spoke about the appointment of a public prosecutor merely for the sentiment of the thing. For his part, he admitted that it was desirable to have such an officer, provided the appointment was put on a proper footing. In principle, it was certainly desirable; but when we came to put the principle into practice, and to consider the question of expense, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would, he fancied, be alarmed at the enormous cost likely to be entailed upon the country. He was much surprised at the observation of the right hon. Gentleman that the present state of things led to a failure of justice. He believed that that was an impression founded on exaggerated statements in articles and reports in the newspapers. The assertion was certainly not confirmed by what the right hon. Gentleman had said that night. He did not wish to deal then at greater length with the details of the Bill, as they would have the opportunity of doing that in Committee; but he wished to give Notice that he should take every opportunity of offering the measure his decided opposition.

MR. LEEMAN

said, that last year, when a similar Bill was before the House, he had stated that it was his intention to propose, on its going into Committee, that it should be confined to the Central Criminal Court; that intention he should persist in on the present occasion. The great necessity for a public prosecutor was in London, and there had been no evidence given before any Committee which had sat on that subject to justify the appointment of public prosecutors throughout the kingdom. The great crimes which had led to the demand for such a change had mainly occurred in the metropolis; and there was no necessity for putting the counties or boroughs in the country to the immense expense which its adoption in them must occasion, for it was idle to say the cost would not he large if the Bill was to have any practical effect. Unless the public prosecutor in a county was prepared to attend the different petty sessions, the use of him would be nil; but the Bill assumed that this officer was only to be brought into action after an accused person had been committed or bailed. The measure was not a merely permissive one, but was imperative in its provisions; and, although it might be very well to try the experiment of having a public prosecutor in London, if the people of London wished it, let them not force it upon the provincial counties and boroughs, which, to use a Yorkshire phrase, had no more use for it than a cow had for a watch-pocket.

MR. BRUCE

said, he would remind the House that nobody had ever supposed that the Bill would pass through the House without the strong opposition of many of the legal Members; but, on the other hand, no one could deny that, in the opinion of the highest judicial authorities of the land, the present system was faulty, and the necessity for a public prosecutor was a real and a serious one. The Bill might not be perfect, but he believed that it contained the elements of a great and useful reform. There was no contradiction between the statements he had just made on the previous Bill and those of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. S. Walpole.) He repeated what had been already said, that independent of the increase in the population, the absolute number of crimes in England and Wales had diminished, that the proportion of apprehensions to crimes had increased, and that the proportion of convictions to apprehensions had also increased. This was in itself a satisfactory state of things; but still there was a large margin for improvement. Even at their best the English statistics, in these respects, could not compare with those of Scotland, a fact which might fairly be attributed to the fact that in Scotland there was a public prosecutor, whereas in England there was none. With regard to the cost, he had caused a most careful inquiry to be conducted by the best authorities, and he hoped before the House went into Committee on the Bill to lay the results before them; but he was in a position already to say that he had no reason to apprehend that there would be any great increase in the cost of prosecution, while he hoped that there would be a considerable increase in the efficiency with which they were conducted.

MR. EYKYN

, in answer to the taunt thrown out by the hon. and learned Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. Straight), said he must deny that he had shown any precipitancy in bringing that matter forward in a previous Session. The highest judicial authorities had pronounced the appointment of a public prosecutor to be an almost absolute necessity. He congratulated the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. S. Walpole) on having brought in the Bill, and also the Government on amply redeeming their pledges to support it, which they would hardly do if it were likely to entail the expense of which they had heard such exaggerated estimates.

MR. WHEELHOUSE

said, he could endorse the observations of the hon. and learned Member for York (Mr. Leeman), and might add that, having had some experience both of the system of a quasi public prosecutor in Leeds and of open prosecutions in the rest of the Riding, he could state that there was no advantage in the former over the latter. If public prosecutors were to be appointed by the town councils, those offices would become mere political appointments.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed for Friday next.