Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill (Hansard, 18 April 1995)

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit payment directly or indirectly to any person convicted of an offence in the United Kingdom (or in any country with which the United Kingdom had diplomatic relations at the time of the offence if the offence would have been an offence if committed in the United Kingdom at that time) or to any person associated with that person in respect of any book, play, film, newspaper article or other publication relating to that offence; to confer anonymity upon men accused of sexual offences unless and until convicted of them; and for connected purposes. The first part of my Bill would make it an offence to pay a criminal for his story. It makes a mockery of our system of criminal justice and causes justified public outrage when a person is convicted of crime and then is seen to profit from that crime by selling his story to a newspaper or from being paid for his co-operation for a book, film, play or some other publication. It would, for example, be intolerable if Mrs. West were convicted of the Gloucester murders and received any financial benefit from selling her story.

My Bill would apply to direct payments and also to indirect payments via friends, relations or business associates. It would also apply to payments made here in respect of offences committed not only in Britain, but in any country with which we have diplomatic relations.

The second part of my Bill would give men accused of sexual offences the same protection from publicity as enjoyed by complainants since 1976, unless and until the defendant is convicted. There have been many cases and I shall remind the House of some of them, without naming the men concerned and thereby adding to the distress that they have already suffered.

The House will remember the case about a year ago involving an undergraduate accused of rape by a female undergraduate. More recently a television actor and comedian was accused of rape by a Soho stripper. Only last week, a gynaecologist was accused of sexual offences against two nurses. The jury found that the allegations by the nurses were no more than malicious lies. All those men were acquitted, but they will never be completely free of the stigma that attached to them by reason of the publicity attending the case.

Last week, a young man was acquitted of rape at Exeter Crown court. He did not have to live with the stigma for long, because he hanged himself last week. Commenting on that case, Lord Denning, the distinguished former Master of the Rolls, said:

34 This case is a tragic example of the importance of amending the law. Confidentiality should be extended to the man and the woman until after the verdict. The House may remember that men did have that protection from 1976 to 1988. I am well aware of the reasoning of the Heilbron committee which reported in 1975 and of the Criminal Law Revision Committee which reported in 1984. I do not agree with their conclusions. The general rule is that the identity of all defendants should be published, but in 1976 Parliament made a special exception for rape cases, which was extended in 1992 to other sexual offences. Parliament took that action because of the special character of sexual offences.

If an exception is made for complainants in such cases, it must also, as a matter of common fairness and justice, be made for defendants. It may well be that in a particular case the police have a compelling reason for wishing to publicise the name of the suspect and the Bill would permit a judge, on the application of the police, to grant the right to publicity, but in most cases it would be sufficient to say that the suspect was wanted for serious offences without specifying the nature of those offences.

It is said that anonymity for complainants is necessary so that women will not be deterred from reporting sexual offences. I agree with that proposition, but under the cloak of anonymity it is more likely that malicious complaints will be made for the purpose of destroying the reputation of a man whose anonymity the complainant knows will not be protected. The answer is not to remove the anonymity from women, but to grant similar anonymity to men.