HC Deb 28 April 1967 vol 745 cc2079-90

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Howie.]

4.3 p.m.

Mr. T. L. Iremonger (Ilford, North)

On a point of order. Before I make my submission to the House, Mr. Speaker, may I first ask you whether it will be in order for me to call attention to early-day Motion No. 517 and to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) for having seconded it? May I discuss that early-day Motion on the Motion, That this House do now adjourn?

[That this House, while upholding the principle that normal judicial processes should not be subject to interference by the Government or Parliament, take note of the fact that Mr. H. J. Trussell of Longwood Gardens, Ilford, petitioned the Home Secretary for a free pardon in respect of his conviction for receiving stolen goods on the ground that fresh evidence —including evidence that certain motorcar parts in respect of which Mr. Trussell was charged had not been manufactured until after the date on which the prosecution alleged they were stolen—became available after he had served his sentence; regrets the conduct of the Home Secretary in failing to have this evidence considered judicially before rejecting the petition; and calls upon the Home Secretary to refer the question of the procedures by which such matters should be dealt with to an appropriate body for consideration and report, and forthwith to exercise his powers under section 19 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1907, and refer Mr. Trussell's petition to the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal.]

Mr. Speaker

The hon. Member has won the right to talk about a free pardon for Mr. H. J. Trussell. If the Motion is also about the same issue, then he may talk about the Motion also.

Mr. Iremonger

I am obliged, Mr. Speaker. I particularly welcome the opportunity of having the Motion on the Order Paper recorded in this connection in the report of the debate.

My duty in opening the debate is first to state the grievance of my constituent, Mr. H. J. Trussell, and secondly to ask the House to secure for him such redress as may be possible, and to censure the Home Secretary for his handling of the case so far and thirdly to ask certain questions about the procedures involved in dealing with petitions for free pardons and the principles upon which such procedures are based.

The grievance of my constituent is that the Home Secretary, having decided that he himself would not recommend to Her Majesty a free pardon for Mr. Trussell, took it upon himself, very wrongly in my view, not to refer the petition for a free pardon for final decision to the Court of Criminal Appeal, as was requested in the petition. My submission to the House is that when the Home Secretary himself decides not to recommend a free pardon on sight, the ultimate decision ought to be made judicially by the Court of Criminal Appeal after considering the petition and ought not to be made administratively or bureaucratically, even though by a Minister personally.

Even if the Minister's view were that the petition was manifestly absurd, it should not be rejected by an executive decision. It should be referred for advice to the judiciary. But when a petition is, on the face of it, based on substantial new evidence and drawn up formally by solicitors of the Supreme Court who have acted for their client for 20 years, as in the case of my constituent, surely there can be no doubt that it should be submitted for judicial examination.

My constituent's submission was of the latter substantial kind. I have a copy of it in my hand, and I wish that I could read it all to the House, but, as it runs to seven-and-a-half closely typed foolscap pages, about 6,000 words, it would take nearly an hour to read—and I have less than 15 minutes in all and only about six minutes for this part of my submission —to say nothing of the manifold supporting documents which ought to be considered in connection with the petition.

I shall take not more than a very few minutes on this part of what I wish to say, and shall confine myself to summarising the introductory matter and then give merely three examples of the large amount of new evidence offered, though what I shall be able to give is only a fraction of the very substantial whole case.

To summarise, the petition states, to begin with, that on 6th November, 1963, at the Central Criminal Court the petitioner was convicted on six counts of receiving motor cars knowing them to have been stolen and one concerned with receiving parts of a motor car knowing them to have been stolen. He was originally charged on an indictment containing 20 counts, of which seven were in the alternative, of receiving motor cars or parts. On the direction of the recorder he was found not guilty on two counts and the jury acquitted him on four other counts. Accordingly, on the 14 counts, excluding the alternatives, he was found guilty on only seven. He was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. He appealed. His sentence was reduced to 18 months, which he served.

Mr. Trussell has always maintained his innocence, and during his imprisonment he caused inquiries to be made with a view to establishing the innocence which he had always claimed, and on his release, with the aid of various experts, he continued these inquiries. His petition provides cogent evidence that in a number of instances the vehicles or parts of vehicles could not have been stolen ones.

I will now give the three examples that I find most disturbing, as I am sure the House will too. The first example is that the chief identifying feature of the front part of a Morris Mini car which had been identified as being the front part of a car which had been stolen was a blanking plate fitted over a fresh-air trunking hole. This modification was introduced by the manufacturers in January, 1963. The body number of the car, according to Fisher and Ludlow, the body manufacturers, could not have appeared on any car registered before March, 1962. The stolen car was registered by the owner on 18th May, 1961. Therefore, the front part of the car in respect of which Mr. Trussell was charged could not have come from the stolen one, and he could not, therefore, have been guilty of the crime of receiving that car or any part of it any more than the hon. and learned Gentleman the UnderSecretary—I am glad to see him here to answer the debate—could have been Jack the Ripper, and for an exactly similar reason.

The second example is that the same Morris Mini had built seat belt anchorages, and these were first introduced by the manufacturers in June, 1962. Mr. Trussell was charged in respect of another stolen car allegedly incorporated into the same Morris Mini, but this other stolen car was registered by the owner in March, 1962—that is, before the relevant part had been manufactured.

The third example concerns a Mini Austin Cooper in Mr. Trussell's possession which was identified as incorporating a part of a stolen car primarily because of the windscreen. The owner of the stolen car said that the windscreen was the original one belonging to the stolen car. But the windscreen in Mr. Trussell's car must have been a replacement because British Motor Corporation Services Ltd. states that windscreens of that type were not fitted to Mini Austin Coopers, and, furthermore, marks on the windscreen show that it was manufactured not only after the owner of the stolen car bought it but after the date on which it was stolen.

Those are just three examples of many substantial similar points made in a long, detailed and well substantiated petition. It is not for me to assess the evidence supporting those assertions, or any assertion in the petition, still less is it for this House to do so now, but if we may not do so, no more may the hon. and learned Gentleman. What he should do is to say, "Let right be done", and he should pass the petition for judicial examination to the Court of Criminal Appeal. What he said is this, and I am quoting from an Oral Answer to me on 6th April: After considering a report of the very detailed inquiries that have been necessary in this case, my right hon. Friend is satisfied that there are no grounds on which he would be justified in recommending a free pardon, or in referring the case to the Court of Appeal. Then in answer to a supplementary by me he said—and this is what really appals me and should appal the House— There was a most detailed report of this case prepared by the Metropolitan Police."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th April, 1967, Vol. 744, c. 441–2.] If this House, one of whose prime, ultimate proposes and justifications is the redress of grievance and of the securing of justice to the individual, is to be told, and is prepared to accept that such a principle—namely, that the accuser should be privy to the judgment on ultimate appeal—is enshrined in the inner citadel and is the foundation of the last bastion of British justice, then this House ought to hang its head in shame.

I cannot believe that the judgment of the hon. and learned Gentleman, upon whom personally I make no reflection whatsoever, in deciding this himself in concert with the prosecuting authority, was really worthy of his membership of this House, really worthy of the high office he holds, or even of the silk gown which he wears. He ought to have said, "Here is a petition presented by a reputable firm of solicitors of the Supreme Court supported by massive and highly detailed evidence. Part of the evidence if it had been available at the time of trial and had withstood the testing of the court would have killed the relevant counts of the indictment utterly stone dead and, with any count so utterly destroyed, no jury would have looked at any other count; and the accused would have been acquitted".

Now my constituent has served his term of imprisonment and at least, in my submission, the hon. and learned Gentleman should have said on this evidence, "Let us give it consideration equivalent to that which it would have had if it had been available at the time of trial". He should have sent it, in my submission, to the Court of Criminal Appeal as the petitioner requests.

The House must ask why the hon. and learned Gentleman did not do that, and call upon him to do so even now. The House should be concerned that equity has not been done. I am concerned, if I may be permitted a personal view, that a man I believe to be innocent is denied the chance of vindication he should have. It is not a matter in which the personal situation of the petitioner is really relevant at all, but in fact Mr. Trussell is not a man who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth he has had a very hard struggle in life; he has made hugely successful an honourable business in a trade which is a thieves' kitchen and a nursery and seedbed of crime; he has kept his hands absolutely clean in doing so; and his reputation is very dear to him. He is a man in failing health, and now, in the last years of his life, he is devoting himself to vindicating his reputation with a passion which really must command respect and ought to be honoured by this House in giving to my constituent the right of having his grievance heard and redress given to him.

It is my third duty to ask for a statement of the principles upon which such petitions to the Home Secretary are dealt with. I wish to ask specific questions of which I have given the hon. and learned Gentleman written notice. The questions are these. What exactly is the procedure followed by the Home Secretary when all the processes of the law have been exhausted and a sentence served and fresh evidence comes to his notice? How does it differ from the procedure when a sentence is being served and fresh evidence comes to his notice? What is that procedure, and how much delay does it normally involve? What criteria does the Court of Criminal Appeal apply to fresh evidence in deciding whether to recommend the Home Secretary to recommend to that Queen that a free pardon should be granted? How do those criteria differ from the directions which a judge would give to a jury about not finding an accused person guilty when there is a reasonable doubt? By virtue of what precedent or authority does the Court of Criminal Appeal adopt whatever its criteria are? What representations have been made and by whom concerning the general nature of these procedures when the water has gone over the weir? What consideration has been given to representations and what view has been taken of them by successive Home Secretaries?

Finally, I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman what ought Ito have done that I have left undone, or not done that I have done, for a constituent in this position, with prima facie evidence to show that he served a term of imprisonment for a crime he never committed?

This is a difficult juridical field where judiciary and executive are bound to overlap. I am certain that a wrong has been done to my constituent as an individual. As well as asking for it to be put right, I call upon the hon. and learned Gentleman to explain his proposals for seeing that wrongs like this cannot be done in future.

4.22 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Dick Taverne)

I appreciate the reasons of the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) for raising this case and Mr. Trussell's anxiety to clear his name. I want straight away to answer one of the questions asked by the hon. Gentleman. I do not think that he could possibly have done more on behalf of his constituent than he has done.

However, as he and the House will realise, there is another side to the story, and it would be as well if I began by giving the House a brief account of the circumstances in which the charges to which the hon. Gentleman has referred were brought against Mr. Trussell.

Mr. Trussell was the director of a company whose main business was the repair of smashed motor vehicles and the sale of the repaired wrecks. For this purpose, he bought salvage direct from insurance companies and salvage brokers. It is a well-known fact that a system exists whereby wrecked cars written off a total loss by insurance companies are notified to the local motor tax office, which, in turn, notifies the police if those vehicles are relicensed.

In the London area, all such notifications are passed to the Stolen Motor Vehicle Investigation Branch of the Metropolitan Police, and the rebuilt vehicles are examined by officers of that branch to check that they have been genuinely rebuilt.

The system was brought into being to prevent the unscrupulous repairer from receiving a stolen car of the same make, model and type as the wrecked car and then, by substituting the identification plates from the wrecked car, passing off the stolen car as a rebuilt wreck.

The inquiries leading to Mr. Trussell's arrest began after a green and white Morris Mini, registration no. 195TKL, which had been written off as a total loss by an insurance company in November 1962, had been re-registered. In accordance with the practice which I have mentioned, the police examined the vehicle, but were not satisfied that it was a genuine rebuilt wreck, so they took it to a police garage for further and more detailed examination.

In consequence of investigations, which appeared to establish that the car was constructed from parts of cars which had been stolen, the police got a warrant to search the premises of the company of which Mr. Trussell was a director. They searched the premises very carefully and discovered parts of numerous vehicles which were later identified as belonging to vehicles which had been stolen, and found perfectly good cars being cut up and parts of some cars being joined to parts of others.

Mr. Trussell was charged and tried. On 6th November, 1963, he was convicted at the Central Criminal Court, as the hon. Gentleman has said, on seven counts of receiving and was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. He appealed against both conviction and sentence, and the Court of Criminal Appeal refused his application for leave to appeal against conviction but substituted a sentence of 18 months' imprisonment on each count concurrently.

The court considered it proper to reduce the sentence to suit not the circumstances of the offence, but the particular circumstances of the offender, on whose behalf medical evidence had been submitted to the effect that he did not have a normal expectation of life of a man of his age. Mr. Trussell was released from prison in November, 1964.

I should add, having looked carefully at this case, that, in my view, the evidence against Mr. Trussell was absolutely overwhelming. Seven private witnesses who had no connection with the police, and who were supported by other witnesses with no police connections, gave evidence of their cars having been stolen and identified those cars, or parts of them, with a great variety and wealth of detail, as cars or parts of cars found on the premises of Mr. Trussell's company. I do not see how any jury could have failed to convict.

On 23rd November last, Mr. Trussell's solicitors submitted on his behalf to my right hon. Friend a petition which purported to show that various prosecution witnesses who had identified parts of the cars in question as theirs were wrong. It was submitted that the new evidence would have made it impossible for any reasonable jury to have convicted Mr. Trussell and, accordingly, that he should be granted a free pardon, or, alternatively, that my right hon. Friend should refer the case to the Court of Appeal for further consideration in the exercise of his powers under Section 19 of the Criminal Appeal Act, 1907.

The petition, together with the numerous supplementary documents which accompanied it, was sent to the Commissioner of Police for his observations. A full and thorough inquiry was carried out into all the points raised in the petition and in its supporting documents. During the course of the inquiries the police obtained certain information from B.M.C. Service Ltd., and from representatives of Pressed Steel Fisher Ltd. and the Ford Motor Company Ltd. A detailed and comprehensive report was sent to my right hon. Friend just before Easter.

Since, on the face of it, there was some delay, I should say that the case was exceptionally complex and that the documents forwarded by Mr. Trussell were voluminous. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that the police took over three months to prepare their report, which was 123 pages long, when it had taken Mr. Trussell himself two years to complete his investigations. It is a most thorough and impressive report.

As the hon. Gentleman will realise, I obviously cannot deal with all the points in the report, or even with every one of the examples which he has given, but I have read the report and I am satisfied that there is a full answer to every question he raised.

I will give four examples, two of which relate to points which the hon. Member raised. First, Mr. Trussell tried to show that one of the cars could not have been the car of the person who claimed it as his because it had a body number belonging to a car manufactured after the date on which the prosecution said the car was stolen. This point was referred to in the Motion.

Police investigation has shown beyond doubt that the number in question, had it been genuine, would have been welded on. In fact, the number was rivetted on to the car. The inescapable conclusion is that the number plates were switched for crooked purposes. Had this evidence come out at the trial it would only have confirmed Mr. Trussell's guilt.

Secondly, Mr. Trussell questioned the truth of the evidence of one prosecution witness who said that he had damaged his car on a low wall of a car park next to a public house in Chiswick. Mr. Trussell argued that there was no low wall surrounding that car park, and that there never had been a wall which could have done this kind of damage. The police report explains, however, that the wall along one side of the car park is about 10 feet in height, but that the bottom 18 inches of the wall juts out from the rest by about 4 inches along the whole of its length, so that it amounts to a low wall.

Further, by this wall, at the entrance to the car park, there is an oak signpost, and to protect the base of this from damage by cars entering and leaving the car park there is a circular stone post with its upper edge 15 inches from the ground. This stone post is scored with the paint of numerous cars which have obviously come into contract with it in the same way as could well have happened to the car belonging to the prosecution witness.

Thirdly—this was another example referred to by the hon. Member—the report of an expert, or motor engineer, produced by Mr. Trussell argued that two of the cars in question were manufactured after the date of manufacture of the stolen cars because they had seat belt anchorages which, it was claimed, were not introduced by the manufacturers until June, 1962. Again, I have seen a letter from the manufacturers which shows that this is totally untrue. Anchorage points were introduced in March, 1961, before the cars were stolen.

On this as on so many points, it is clear that the report of the engineer produced by Mr. Trussell was inaccurate and that the maker of the report clearly relied on information supplied by Mr. Trussell—

Mr. Iremonger

The car was registered on 1st March, so it must have been a close thing.

Mr. Taverne

I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that the anchorage points were introduced into this type of car before the car in question was registered. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has the date of registration quite right.

The third point concerns the prosecution's identification of one of the cars by its chassis number. Mr. Trussell claimed that the number had been faked and tried to prove his submission with enlarged photographs. Police photographs clearly show that the chassis number was genuine and refute his suggestion that the letters and figures had been altered and others superimposed after the vehicle had been seized by the police. Mr. Trussell's photographs were taken at an angle and clearly designed to mislead.

Mr. Trussell's petition claims, as a keystone of its case, that all the private witnesses, who were totally unconnected with the police—including a school teacher, a chartered accountant, a systems analyst and others: perfectly respectable people—perjured themselves on the instigation of the police. I find this unconvincing. There is nothing in this petition.

The hon. Gentleman raised the question of the propriety of the police making further inquiries in circumstances of this kind. This procedure is long established, but in this case it was inevitable that my right hon. Friend should have sought the comments of the Stolen Motor Vehicle Investigation Branch, since only they knew all the details of this complicated case. No one else could have carried out the kind of detailed investigation of parts of cars.

Had their comments led us to think that there was need of an independent inquiry, this would, of course, have been considered. In Mr. Trussell's case, however, there are no grounds for supposing that an independent inquirer could possibly have reached a different conclusion.

The hon. Gentleman raised certain general questions, of which he courteously gave me notice, about the procedure followed by the Home Secretary and other Home Secretaries when it is claimed that someone has been wrongly convicted. The procedure is no different when the sentence has been announced from what it is in cases where the person is still in prison. We look at the record of court proceedings and may ask the police to investigate the facts. Clearly, if a man is still in prison there is greater urgency than if he is already out, but there has been no unjustifiable delay in this case. The extent of the delay depends on the facts of the case and on how detailed an investigation has to be.

If there is then substantial doubt about the conviction because of new evidence, the case may be referred to the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, which would then decide whether it should be quashed or upheld, or, in some cases, instead of ordering an acquittal, it may order a retrial if it allows the appeal. The hon. Member has suggested that all petitions of this kind should go to a judicial body, but this would be impossible because there are so many petitions from prisoners. In any event, there must be an end to litigation; once the case has been decided by the courts, one cannot ask the courts to look at it again.

Sometimes, if there is a clear case of a mistake, the Home Secretary may recommend a free pardon or, if the man is still in prison, remission of the balance of his sentence, without reference to the Court of Appeal. The question of a free pardon does not arise on reference to the Court of Appeal, because, if it allows an appeal, the conviction is quashed.

Occasionally, when a case is not clear but for some reason cannot effectively be dealt with by the Court of Appeal, we might institute an independent inquiry. This system has long been the practice of the Home Office under successive Governments. In this case, however, none of these questions arises, since no doubt has been cast by Mr. Trussell's petition on the rightness of his conviction.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock.