HC Deb 21 July 1988 vol 137 cc1270-1
2. Mr. Wall

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he expects to be able to announce the outcome of his review of the Guildford and Woolwich bombing cases.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hurd)

I expect to announce my decision fairly soon on whether to refer the case to the Court of Appeal.

Mr. Wall

Will the Home Secretary comment on the transfer of the Guildford prisoner Paul Hill to Winchester gaol, the 47th such move for this prisoner, which smacks more of The Gulag Archipelago or a Kafka novel than the practice of a democratic state? Will be assure the House that when he reaches a decision on the Guildford and Woolwich cases he will announce his decision in the House so that Members can question him?

Mr. Hurd

There are many operational and other reasons why prisoners are transferred from time to time and I shall not comment on Mr. Hill's transfers. The hon. Gentleman puts me in difficulty about his second point. As I have said, I hope to announce my decision fairly soon, but that does not mean within the next week. Since I told the House in January of last year that I saw no ground for referring this case to the Court of Appeal, a new matter has come forward. The hon. Gentleman knows that I have arranged for it to be investigated by the police. That investigation has now come to an end. I need to look all over again at the whole case, from the beginning. I intend to do that during the recess.

Mr. Stanbrook

Is my hon. Friend aware that the challenges to the decisions made by our system of justice are in many cases, especially those involving terrorist offences, beginning to take on the attributes of an industry? It is always possible to question individual items of evidence in the original trial, but it was the jury's function at that time to distinguish between right and wrong. Is it not harmful to our judicial system to go on and on and on questioning individual verdicts?

Mr. Hurd

It is because I agree with the general thrust of my hon. Friend's question that, like my predecessors, I have taken the clear line that reference to the Court of Appeal should be undertaken by the Home Secretary only when there is new and substantial matter that was not before the original jury.

Mr. Corbyn

When the Home Secretary is examining this material will be give an undertaking to the House—[Interruption.] I am sure you will agree, Mr. Speaker, that we are discussing an extremely important matter and that many people believe that there has been a very serious miscarriage of justice in the Guildford and Woolwich cases. One of the Guildford four, Paul Hill, is a constituent of mine. Will the Home Secretary undertake to look into the prison conditions of all the prisoners and carefully to examine what possible operational reasons there can have been for Paul Hill to be moved 47 times in 14 years and to have spent four years in virtual solitary confinement? Will the Home Secretary undertake to look sympathetically into the prison conditions and also to look—we hope very intently—at the evidence, which, I believe, demonstrates the innocence of the prisoners concerned?

Mr. Hurd

These people have been convicted by a court. Their cases went to appeal and the verdicts were upheld. Therefore they must expect to be treated as convicted persons—neither better nor worse than other people in that category.