CRIMINAL EVIDENCE BILL (Hansard, 3 May 1965)

§ Mr. Edward Gardner (Billericay)

This short technical Bill makes admissible as evidence in criminal cases certain commercial records of a kind which the House of Lords, in its recent decision in the case of Myers v. the Director of Public Prosecutions, had held to be inadmissible on the ground that they were hearsay evidence.

May I say, on behalf of the Opposition, that we welcome the Bill. It is a very short, extremely useful and necessary Bill. It was worked out in the time of the last Conservative Administration and it is based upon studies which, as the Home Secretary generously acknowledged during the Second Reading debate, were initiated by his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke).

We on this side were at first cautious about the Bill. We were anxious about the wisdom of leaving all its provisions without amendment, but after the most careful, thorough and, if I may say so, 1060 satisfactory debate in Committee, we came to the conclusion that the Measure could safely be left in its original form, in which it now comes before us for Third Reading.

Before we part with it, I should like to say that it is our hope on this side—a hope, I am sure, shared by the Home Secretary—that this Bill will be the first stage in a comprehensive review of the law of evidence, a review which was, as I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will acknowledge, initiated by a Conservative Lord Chancellor and Home Secretary during last Session.

The law of evidence is a labyrinth of uncertainty that frequently leads to a sense of unreality, and all too often brings courts uncomfortably close to the perils of injustice. In our view, it is a law that cries out for reform and, as I say, we hope that this modest but important Bill will be the first step towards our major ambition of a comprehensive review and reform of this branch of the law.

§ The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir Frank Soskice)

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Billericay (Mr. Gardner) for what he has said, and I gladly respond to his hope about the general review of the law of evidence, initiated, as he says, by the previous Government. Obviously, that law needs careful overhaul, and it is, as he says, extremely complicated. This Measure is really a single step in that more prolonged and elaborate process.

This is a useful Measure, and one upon which we all agree. Our discussion in Committee was valuable. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite had their reserves about the Bill, and we were all 1061 glad that in mutual consideration of it we were able to dispel the doubts that such a technical Bill as this is bound to arouse. I think and hope that we have got it right, and that it will conduce to the more effective administration of criminal justice, particularly in the kind of case to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred, which gave rise to the introduction of the Bill.

When one has criminal cases which have as part of the evidence necessary to establish the prosecution—and, indeed, the defence—a whole mass of documents consisting of records of undertakings perhaps going back for years and containing very large numbers of entries in regard to individual transactions extending over a period of time, it is extremely difficult either for the prosecution or the defence adequately to put its case before the court unless one has the assistance of some such 1062 Measure as this, which is really, in the criminal sphere, the counterpart of the Evidence Act, 1938.

I am most grateful to the hon. and learned Member for what he has said and, indeed, for the contributions made on both sides of the Committee when we were examining the Bill in detail. I hope that the House will now be willing to give this Measure its Third Reading.