HC Deb 17 December 1980 vol 996 cc523-32

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

10.2 am

Mr. Stephen Ross (Isle of Wight)

This is a very serious case. Alan Chard is detained in Parkhurst prison, in my constituency in the Isle of Wight. He is serving 12 years for his alleged involvement in a series of crimes and conspiracies which occurred in June, July and August 1974.

In all, there were three armed robberies, the first on 28 June 1974, which concerned a bank in Garratt Lane, Wandsworth, when over £3,500 was stolen; the second on 4 July 1974, when a raid took place on Watney's brewery, Isleworth, and over £24,000 was stolen and a member of the public was wounded; and the third on 22 July 1974, in a raid on Barclays bank, St. John's Wood, during which £11,000 was stolen. In that raid a patrolling police officer gave chase and was shot and wounded in the shoulder.

The Crown was later to allege against Chard and others further conspiracies to rob banks at Park Royal and at Chigwell in Essex, although these never actually took place.

After police investigations, various people were apprehended. Alan Chard was not arrested until some two months after the others, the date of arrest being 1 October 1974.

Committal proceedings against most of the gang started on 11 December of the same year. A certain Billy Williams—later to have his name splashed across the pages of the popular press as one of the first of the supergrasses, nicknamed "Squealer Billy"—gave evidence for the Crown.

On the following day, after they had had the opportunity to hear Billy Williams' evidence in court, two gentlemen, Peter Wilding and James Trusty, were accepted as Queen's evidence witnesses. All three had admitted involvement with the crimes. All three gave evidence against Alan Chard which had no corroboration, both at the committal proceedings and at the trial itself.

Committal proceedings against Alan Chard took place on 8 May 1975. Peter Wilding, James Trusty and Billy Williams all gave evidence. Chard's counsel made no submission.

The whole gang appeared at the Old Bailey before Mr. Justice Nield on 9 September 1975. On arraignment, three of the defendants who had pleaded guilty on all counts were let go for later trial, at the request of the prosecution. Three of the defendants applied successfully for severance. In retrospect, it was probably a pity that Chard's counsel did not also apply for severance.

Three notable absentees from the dock were Billy Williams, James Trusty and Peter Wilding. Billy Williams had appeared before the Recorder of London on 9 December 1974, charged with three counts of armed robbery. Thirty-six other offences were taken into consideration. He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and was released under Royal Prerogative in 14 months. James Trusty appeared in court on 9 April 1975, charged with armed robbery, attempted murder and wounding with intent to resist arrest. He pleaded guilty only to the first charge. The Crown accepted that and he was sentenced to just two years and nine months. He was released on parole after a year. Peter Wilding appeared on 6 May 1975, charged with conspiring to rob banks in St. John's Wood and Park Royal. He received 12 months' imprisonment, suspended for two years.

Those three, each of whom admitted to involvement in the offences, served just over two years in prison between them. Their evidence, however, against Mr. Alan Chard resulted in a sentence of 15 years for him, which on appeal was reduced to 12 years.

After the arraignment, five prisoners were left in the dock in September 1975, including Alan Chard. The indictment against them contained 16 counts. Chard was named in three of them. On the sixth count, he was charged with conspiring to commit robbery. The case was that he had supplied guns for the robberies and had reconnoitred the St. John's Wood bank. On the fourteenth count he was alleged to have conspired to rob Lloyds bank, Chigwell. As I said, that robbery did not take place and the only evidence came from James Trusty and Billy Williams, both grasses.

On the fifteenth count, he was charged with conspiring to rob the National Westminster bank, Park Royal. Again, that robbery did not take place and the only evidence came from Billy Williams and Peter Wilding. Chard was the only one of the five defendants to plead not guilty on all counts. He was also the only defendant to face purely unsubstantive conspiracy charges. All his co-defendants faced at least one substantive charge. Chard and Jenkins were the only defendants to face entirely uncorroborated evidence, that against Chard coming from three of his alleged accomplices, all of whom had turned Queen's evidence in return for lighter sentences.

The trial lasted nine weeks. Over 100 witnesses were called to prove the substantive charges. It must have been extraordinarily difficult for the jury to sort out the facts, and on the perhaps unfortunate advice of his counsel Chard did not testify. The judge gave the appropriate warning to the jury to the effect that there was no corroboration of the evidence given by the grasses against Chard. Inevitably, the case against Chard must have been obscured in the summing-up amidst the welter of information concerning the other counts and the other accused. Chard was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment on 21 November 1975. On 8 March 1977 the Court of Appeal, under Lord Justice Lawton, turned down his appeal on all counts but saw fit to reduce his sentence to 12 years. He is now serving that sentence in Parkhurst prison.

I was first contacted on his behalf in July 1979. The person who got in touch with me was a Mr. Jim Colla, and it is to his credit that this case has come to light. He was a fellow inmate of Alan Chard in Parkhurst prison. He became interested in his protestations of innocence and, with considerable ingenuity, investigated the case from his prison cell. The result was a 52,000-word dossier, which I sent to the Home Secretary, with some explanatory notes, on 6 June 1980. I am conscious of the delay, but it took me a long time to understand the case, to see Mr. Chard, to check facts and figures and to form my own opinion.

On 4 August 1980 the Minister replied, pointing out the problems involved in this sort of case. The Minister wrote that, constitutionally, the duty of administering justice in individual cases is placed on the courts. While the Home Secretary has certain powers to intervene, he can do so

only if some significant new evidence or other considerations of substance come to light which have not already been aired before the courts. The reply continued: The Home Secretary may not review the decision of the courts on the basis of the facts or arguments already considered by them. It is my intention to raise considerations of substance which have not already been considered by the courts and arguments that they have not already heard. A summary of them was included in a further memorandum prepared by Mr. Colla, which I sent to the Home Secretary in August 1980. I understand that police investigations were initiated as a result.

I should be grateful if the Minister would indicate what was in the police report, which is now, I believe, at the Home Office. If it is not possible to give a full answer, I should be grateful if he would tell me when a final conclusion is expected. Mr. Chard had already been in prison for four years when his case was first brought to my notice. A further 18 months has elapsed. Five and a half years is a long time for someone to serve in prison if he is in fact innocent. Mr. Chard's heart problems have recently come to a head again as a result of the acute stress that he is undergoing. He has written to me to ask whether he can undergo a lie test.

I think it best that I go through the counts one by one showing how I think that the evidence on each is unsatisfactory and should be re-examined.

In the sixth count, conspiring to commit robbery, the case against Alan Chard was that he supplied guns for robberies and reconnoitred the St. John's Wood bank. The only evidence for this came from James Trusty, Billy Williams and Peter Wilding—all grasses.

James Trusty related a visit with his brother Philip to the "Peacock" public house in Canning Town, where they allegedly met Alan Chard, who arranged for them to purchase two guns. The guns were for use on the St. John's Wood robbery, and one was said to be the Luger used by Philip Trusty to shoot the policeman. Williams related various conversations with Chard concerning robberies and guns. Wilding related the initial visit to St. John's Wood, allegedly with Chard and a man called Nicholas Smith.

I have submitted to the Minister that a close comparison of the statements of James Trusty and Williams and established fact shows that the "Peacock" public house meeting could never have taken place, because the dates -do not fit the essential requirments. No one attempted to check this at the trial or at the appeal.

Furthermore, the Minister now has a copy of a diagram and argument which show that all the guns used on the St. John's Wood robbery were an accumulation of guns from the two previous robberies. It was never suggested that Chard supplied the guns for Garratt Lane, while Williams, the chief witness for the Crown, actually said that the Watney guns were supplied by a man named Hyde—one of the gang of robbers.

As for the reliability of the evidence of Peter Wilding, the dossier and additional memorandum supplied to the Minister once again show that the various statements of the prosecution witnesses do not match up if rigorously checked against a notional calendar of events. Quite simply, all the protagonists have to be in too many places at the same time according to the evidence given at the trial. Unfortunately, none of the defence counsel did this rigorous dating at the time.

The other two robberies in which it was alleged that Alan Chard had played a part in the conspiracy never in fact took place. They remained conspiracies because the gang were rounded up before they could carry them out. We have only the word of the three grasses that Chard was ever involved at all.

The fourteenth count concerned conspiracy to rob Lloyds bank, Chigwell. The evidence on this count came from James Trusty and from Billy Williams and is remarkable, even by their standards, for its confusion and contradictions. According to James Trusty, he, Williams and Alan Chard met in a pub on the Southend arterial road in early July where Chard introduced them to someone who suggested Chigwell. Williams, on the other hand, denied having been to a pub on the Southend road and insisted that Chigwell was first suggested in a Surrey pub by Chard himself on 24 July.

Rigorous checking of dates again tears holes in James Trusty's evidence, because it is agreed that all visits to the bank have to be on a Thursday to check the lie of the land on a day when most money will be in prior to collection of wages. Careful examination shows that, in the light of all the other conspiracies and actual substantive crimes being committed, the visits to Chigwell are impossible on the dates suggested by Trusty.

As for Billy Williams' evidence, this hinged round an alleged meeting with Chard on 24 July. He was extraordinarily specific about that date, because it was close to the St. John's Wood robbery. It was a Wednesday night, for they went to check out Chigwell on the following day, a Thursday. Chard had a cast iron alibi for that Thursday. Indeed, he was so confident in its adequacy that he was perhaps too relaxed about meeting the other accusations against him.

The fact that Chard had an alibi was never properly checked at his trial, because the prosecution then argued that Williams might have been wrong in his dates—despite the fact that he was so emphatic—and that it did not affect the story of Williams. Yet Williams made it clear that they went to Chigwell the following day, and it is also clear that that day had to be a Thursday because of the interest in getting wages money.

The Court of Appeal failed to pick up the point of the importance of its being a Thursday and then went on to say that Chard's alibi was not in fact sound because evidence in its support came solely from two men with criminal records. That is not in fact true. There is a motel register which was offered for calligraphic tests of its authenticity—an offer never taken up. Two other witnesses were the motel manager, a man with no criminal record, and a man who subsequently became, and I believe presently is, the lord mayor of Swansea.

I must stress how important the date of 24 July is. Williams stuck to it through thick and thin. It was a major part of the case which Chard had to confront. He came to court with an alibi. He was then faced with the decison by the prosecution that it did not have to be 24 July after all, even though any other date is demonstrably improbable because of the need to visit Chigwell the next day, a Thursday.

A similar situation occurred in another case, which, I believe, provides an important precedent. It is the case of Regina v. Marks, which forms part of another case, Regina v. Thorne and others, presided over in the Court of Appeal by the same Lord Justice Lawton who had heard Alan Chard's appeal a few months previously. He said: It occurred to the prosecuting counsel that O'Mahoney might have made a mistake about the date that he had seen Marks and Arif keeping observation not on 21 March but on 28 March. This was put to the jury. It was a material change in the case which Marks came to court to meet. He should not have been asked to meet it. This makes the verdict against Marks unsatisfactory. His appeal will be allowed and his conviction quashed. For the record, Mr. O'Mahoney was a contemporaneous supergrass who gave evidence against some of Alan Chard's co-defendants, though not against Chard himself.

The final count covered conspiracy to rob the National Westminster bank, Park Royal, and the evidence came from Peter Wilding, relating a trip with Nicholas Smith and Chard to the bank on 25 July, and from Williams, recalling conversations with Chard in which Chard agreed to rob Park Royal.

The evidence of Wilding concerning a visit to Park Royal on 25 July comes up against the same South Wales alibi as that put forward in the previous count against the allegations of Billy Williams concerning the 24 July meeting. However, the dossier and memorandum that I have sent to the Minister also show that, contrary to the impression given in court, Wilding was much more heavily implicated in the planning of this raid. The bank was his mother's and he had no need for Alan Chard to suggest it, since he knew it only too well.

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from all this is that Wilding, Williams and James Trusty were much more heavily implicated in the planning of the raids than they cared to admit at the time. In order to qualify as Queen's evidence witnesses, they had to minimise their role. Alan Chard became a convenient person on whom to dump some of the blame.

We know from articles in the national press that Billy Williams was given unprecedented freedom of movement in Chiswick police station. Supergrasses were still a relatively novel phenomenon and the police could scarcely believe their luck when he began to talk. However, his freedom gave him ample opportunity to consort with James Trusty and Peter Wilding and agree on their stories. The latter two also had the chance to hear his evidence at their own committal proceedings. The general tenor of the evidence must be that their aim was to drag someone else in to take the blame for supplying the guns and planning the raids. Alan Chard was, I believe, that unlucky person.

Some of those matters were touched on at the appeal. Lord Justice Lawton felt bound to consider newspaper allegations concerning the freedoms accorded to Billy Williams, though to little conclusion. I have already covered the Court of Appeal's failure properly to consider the alibi evidence. One can have other reservations about some of Lord Justice Lawton's other opinions. However, I prefer to look at his judgment delivered not three months later, on Wednesday 1 June, in Regina v. Thorne and others, which I have already quoted. That appeal again challenged the veracity of a supergrass, this time Maurice O'Mahoney.

Like Williams, and to a lesser extent James Trusty and Wilding, O'Mahoney attributed to others things that he had done himself. It was pointed out in Chard's appeal that Williams tried to frame a man called George O'Dwyer before he fixed on Chard. This was considered fair game by the Court of Appeal, but it was not all right for O'Mahoney to accuse other raiders of carrying a shotgun. Williams could shift dates to get round an alibi, but not O'Mahoney. As regards the uncorroborated evidence of accomplices, Lord Justice Lawton pointed out the duty of the Court of Appeal to examine the villain's evidence with care to see whether there were any weaknesses in it which the jury may have overlooked or not assessed properly. That did not happen in the case of Alan Chard, because no one had sat down to do the necessary detailed examination of the statements and the depositions of Williams, James Trusty and Wilding in order to point out fully the weaknesses therein.

Perhaps the final epitaph on the Chard case comes towards the end of Lord Justice Lawton's judgment in Regina v. Thorne: Our experience warns us … that in long cases involving a number of accused, there is a danger that those on the fringes will be dragged down by the weight of evidence against those in the centre. In the case of Marks and Cook, awareness of that led to their acquittal. Three months earlier, Alan Chard had been sent back to Parkhurst prison with only his sentence reduced by three years.

There has been increasing popular disquiet concerning the reliability of supergrasses. We learnt last week that Scotland Yard is now reviewing the role of informers. It is said that the Director of Public Prosecutions will no longer sanction prosecutions based purely on the uncorroborated evidence of grasses. Increasingly, juries are acquitting in cases where supergrasses are involved.

The Minister may correct me, but, so far as I know. Alan Chard is the last surviving inmate of a British prison convicted solely on supergrass evidence. He has spent more than five and a half years in prison. He has always asserted his complete innocence. All three witnesses against him admitted a certain involvement in the crimes, and I believe that the evidence presented to the Minister shows that they were involved much more deeply than they cared to admit. I believe that I have raised enough new issues for Alan Chard's case to be referred to the Court of Appeal for reassessment, and I ask that section 17(1)(a) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 be thus invoked.

10.19 am
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Leon Brittan)

Before taking up some of the points made by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross), I hope that the House will bear with me if I explain once again the functions of the Home Secretary with regard to individual cases in which a miscarriage of justice is alleged to have occurred. I have done this on a number of previous occasions, but it is of central importance to the matter before us and, therefore, I feel that I must do it again.

Under our governmental arrangements, the duty of administering justice in individual criminal cases is placed upon the courts. While the Home Secretary has certain powers to intervene either by recommending the exercise of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy or by referring the case to the Court of Appeal under section 17 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968, which the hon. Gentleman has invited my right hon. Friend to invoke, he must not exercise them in any way that might tend to usurp the functions of the courts. In practice, this means that he can consider intervening only if some significant new evidence or other material consideration of substance comes to light which has not already been before the courts.

What the Home Secretary may not do—this is particularly relevant to Mr. Chard's case—is to review the decisions of the courts on the basis of facts or arguments already considered by them or seek in any way to act as if he were a further court of appeal. In particular, it would be quite wrong of him to use his powers of intervention merely because, if the decision had rested with him, he might have taken a different view of the facts. The Home Secretary cannot act merely on the basis of suggestion or opinion, even his own opinion. In other words, he cannot say that if he had been the trial judge or a member of the jury hearing the case he would, on the evidence, have come to a different view. Nor can he say that if he had been a member of the Court of Appeal hearing the appeal he would, on the basis of the argument addressed to the Court of Appeal, have come to a different view.

It is therefore not sufficient for the purposes of invoking the intervention of the Home Secretary to put forward reasons, whether good or bad, as to why the court of first instance should, on the evidence before it, have come to a different view or why the Court of Appeal, on the material presented to it, should have come to a different view. This is not because either body is necessarily infallible; no human institution is. It is because it is the courts to which is entrusted the task of deciding these matters.

I am sure that the House will agree on reflection that if the Executive were enabled to intervene except in strictly defined circumstances the dangers would greatly outweigh any apparent advantages. Therefore, I think that it is not in any sense restrictive that in support of the fundamental principles of our constitutional arrangements one says it is right that the Home Secretary should intervene only when some significant new evidence or other material consideration of substance comes to light that has not already been before the courts. If that happens, he is not second-guessing the decision of the courts but inviting the courts to look at something which they have not previously looked at. It is crucial before the Home Secretary can consider intervening to reach the view that material has been put before him not which would lead him to take a different view from the courts but which the courts have not had a chance to consider.

As the hon. Gentleman has said, Mr. Chard was convicted at the Central Criminal Cout on 21 November 1975 of three offences of conspiracy to rob and was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment in respect of each count, the sentences to run concurrently. He applied to the Court of Appeal for leave to appeal against his conviction and sentence. On 8 March 1977 the full court refused to allow his appeal against conviction but reduced his sentence to 12 years.

Later, a man who was in prison with Mr. Chard became interested in his case and compiled a dossier of 182 pages, seeking to show that Mr. Chard was wrongly convicted. That was eventually sent to the hon. Gentleman and he visited Mr. Chard in Parkhurst prison. Following that, he wrote to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on 6 June this year enclosing a copy of the dossier, expressing his concern about the case and asking my right hon. Friend to look into it.

My right hon. Friend asked me to look into the matter and I studied the dossier carefully. It seemed to me to consist almost entirely of re-examination of evidence that had already been gone into at some length by the courts, both at Mr. Chard's trial and at the hearing of his application for leave to appeal. I could not discern anything in it that might provide grounds, on the principles that I have outlined, on which my right hon. Friend might be justified in taking any action.

However, I recognised that it was a complicated case and that there might be points in the dossier that my officials and I might have missed or misunderstood. Although the bulk of the dossier went over ground that had been before the courts and which one could not reconsider, whatever one's personal view on the matter, there might be in such a substantial document some fresh material.

I therefore wrote to the hon. Member on 4 August asking whether the author of the dossier could make an explicit statement of the new evidence or considerations of substance on which he felt that my right hon. Friend could act, so that by singling out what were alleged to be the new matters we could be in a position to reach a better view.

On 15 August, the hon. Gentleman sent me a further document running to 27 pages. A study of that showed that it did at least contain references to certain facts, such as the dates of alleged meetings, which needed to be verified. In September, my officials wrote to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis asking for those facts to be investigated and for a report on various matters.

That is the normal practice when representations are received by or on behalf of a convicted person. Before my right hon. Friend or I can attempt to determine whether such representations contain anything of evidential value that is fresh, it is clearly necessary that the facts should be verified, so far as that is possible. Inquiry by police officers, who are trained and experienced in such matters, is not only the most appropriate method of doing that but is the only method available.

I appreciate that it is three months since the inquiries were set in motion. I could well understand the hon. Gentleman feeling that that is a long time, but, as I told him in a letter on 20 October, such delay was to be expected. Such inquiries, especially in complicated cases such as Mr. Chard's, are bound to take a long time if they are to be done thoroughly, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that it is paramount that they should be done thoroughly. Events that took place several years ago have to be re-examined, witnesses have to be traced and interviewed and other possible lines have to be pursued. Although that is an important task, the police are hard pressed with their normal duties.

The thoroughness of the police inquiries that took place as a result of our request is demonstrated by the report on Mr. Chard's case, which runs to 115 pages. That reached the Home Office a few days ago and is being carefully studied in relation to all the other papers that we have about the case, including the two long documents sent to us by the hon. Member. That will also inevitably take time, but we shall press on with it and as soon as possible in the new year I shall write to the hon. Gentleman to let him know the outcome. In considering the case, I shall take full account not only of the dossiers and the police report but of any additional points that have been made in this debate.

Mr. Stephen Ross

It is a question of the whole reliability of evidence from supergrasses. I am sure that the Minister will agree that there has been a new development on that in the past few weeks. I hope that that will be taken into account.

Mr. Brittan

I am not sure what the hon. Gentleman has in mind. He is not right to say that a decision has been taken that reliance cannot, as a matter of rule, be placed on bringing future prosecutions relying on the uncorroborated evidence of supergrasses. He is misinformed if he thinks that that sort of decision has been taken.

Of course, the evidence of supergrasses must be considered with great care by those responsible for deciding whether a prosecution should be brought and also by the jury at the trial. Everybody is well aware that evidence of that character is, rightly, likely to receive special scrutiny. That must be taken into account when deciding whether it is wise to bring a prosecution on the strength of such evidence and with regard to whether it is likely to secure a conviction.

Similarly, the court has to consider the nature of what should be said to the jury about the wisdom of relying on such evidence. It is fair to say that that point was considered both in the court below and in the Court of Appeal. I do not think that we can say that the danger of supergrass evidence in itself constitutes a new factor that entitles the Home Secretary to refer the matter to the courts. We have to look at the particular case and the new considerations. We cannot simply say that supergrasses are not as fashionable as they once were and, therefore, that any evidence that has been properly admitted, considered by the court of first instance and then considered by the Court of Appeal can be referred back—in spite of the fact that it was considered applying the normal principles of law—because it emanated from a supergrass. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will see the force of that.

I am aware of the concern that has been expressed. It is right to say that in the summing-up, which the Court of Appeal described as a model of clarity and conciseness", the trial judge took pains to point out to the jury the danger of relying on the uncorroborated evidence of accomplices and to draw attention to discrepancies in their evidence. The jury were reminded of all those weaknesses.

As I have said, I shall consider the matter in—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Wednesday evening and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty-eight minutes to Eleven o'clock am.