N. J. Hyam (Hansard, 11 February 1999)

§ Mr. Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West)
I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of the criminal cases review procedure, and, in particular, the case of Mr. Nicholas Hyam. First, however, let me welcome the Minister and the Whip to this short debate: I am grateful for their attendance.
This evening, I was—and shall be—at a dinner and concert with my secretary, Patricia Greenwood, to commemorate her 12 years of service in the House before her retirement. I thank her, and private secretaries, agents and welfare officers serving all Members of Parliament, for working for the cure, care and comfort of constituents who raise problems. I also thank her husband Allan and their daughter, Freya Twin, who backs up my constituency work.
I shall spend most of my time tonight trying to explain why I think Mr. Hyam's case could meet the criteria for the review procedure that has been introduced over the past few years. I understand that about 1,000 cases are being considered; about 200 were referred from the Home Office when the procedure was changed. I also understand that a case cannot normally be heard unless there has been an unsuccessful appeal against either sentence or conviction. Perhaps the Minister can give me more information, but I do not expect him to respond in any detail to the case that I shall be making.
I do not intend to give a running commentary on what the judge, Mr. McHale, said at the Croydon court in 1996. The case is No. T960391; it took place between 14 and 18 June 1996, and the sentencing took place on 9 July. I first became involved when Stella Evans—who is not a constituent of mine, but who has been involved in the Association of Coastal Tenants and the coalition for the abolition of residential leasehold, a campaign to deal with the difficulties experienced by leaseholders—asked me to support her work. I must declare an interest, in a freehold flat in my constituency. I experience none of the problems experienced by leaseholders, but I put that on the record for the elimination of doubt.
After I took up Stella's invitation, Mr. Nicholas Hyam came to me. He had served his sentence: he was convicted and gaoled for four years, although his co-defendant received a lesser sentence. He told me, straightforwardly but forcefully, that he had suffered an injustice. I think he accepts—certainly I do—that he committed bad practice and did other things that he should not have done, and I have given him forthright advice in regard to some of those things. It is also true that a civil dispute is in progress. I shall not go into the details—they are for the courts to determine—but let me quote one of the judge's sentencing remarks. He said after sentencing: I shall not …be able to make a compensation order because I do not think it is a simple sort of case where a compensation order is available. There are too many imponderables. Some evidence was not admissible in the court case. That, I suspect, will be one of the grounds when a submission is made for favourable consideration to be given to referring the case to the courts for reconsideration.
577 In essence, one of the things that Mr. Hyam did was to use money that was in a tenants' account for other purposes. He then paid it back. Later, when a property was sold and Detective Constable Peter Savage had made investigations, it was shown that the money had been improperly used, although it was paid back before anyone knew that there was a problem.
I do not want to get into the distinctions of the law because I am not a lawyer. Even when lawyers are involved, there is normally more than one side to the truth, in the same way that there can be more than one method of dishonesty. Anyone who went through the judge's summing up, which was lengthy—about 67,000 words—would be able to say that he got many things right. It is not for me to say that he got anything wrong, but it was a complicated business.
The best thing for me to do is to acknowledge that the article by Detective Constable Peter Savage in Police Review on 20 September 1996 puts his side as investigating officer, but it is not up to the police to decide whether there is a prosecution; it is up to the Crown Prosecution Service. It is not up to the police to decide whether there is a conviction; that is up to the jury. It is not up to the police to decide what the sentence should be; that is up to the judge.
I make the following comment not in passing, but as a major point, although it is not for the Home Office. It is time to bring our property law into the 21st century. The law should be more accessible to users, rather than being just the way legislators have chosen to leave it. It is a complicated area, but many of the things that the Associated Coastal Tenants wants are worth considering. They include the right of leaseholders to appoint their choice of managing agent; freedom of information, so that issues of insurance and maintenance funds are open and accessible; certified summaries of expenditure; maintenance money to be held properly in funds that cannot be used for other purposes; the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 to be updated; a greater say by leaseholders in the choice of contractors; landlords and managing agents to be regulated; increased rights for recognised residents' associations; the relationships between landlords and managing agents to be clear and obvious, if there are any relationships; and a property log book.
It is worth taking up a series of issues, but I shall use my remaining time to go through some of the issues as Mr. Hyam put them to me. As I say, it is not a matter for the House to judge, but it is important that people outside the House know that the job of a Member of Parliament is not just to pander to the prejudices of his constituents, but to be prepared to take up unpopular causes for unpopular people, who may have acknowledged that they have done things that are wrong.
I say that, as many hon. Members could, with a background of having taken up cases. At my first constituency advice session, I took up the case of a man whose sister said he had been wrongfully convicted of attempting to steal a hand bag. It took five years to discover that the person involved in detecting that offence was pretty suspicious. There was a late overturning of the conviction.
Other such cases include that of Judith Ward, who was wrongfully convicted of a motorway bombing; she could not possibly have done it. I have been involved in a case 578 in Florida, where someone had been on death row for two murders when the conviction, at least, was unsafe; I cannot prove that he was innocent, but the conviction was certainly unsafe. That case will not cover a Member of Parliament in glory, but it is right to be prepared to raise it, if necessary in public.
Mr. Hyam says that six months after the property that is perhaps the best illustration of his problems was sold, the police raided his offices and took away the old files. When he owned the property, he had a lessee maintenance account containing approximately £20,000. That was earmarked for maintenance works, which were never undertaken as not all the lessees had paid.
At that stage, Mr. Hyam had over 200 properties under management. He had an overdraft facility of £30,000 to manage the properties. That was insufficient. For example, the insurance renewals, which mainly fell together in June, came to more than £70,000. He was over his limit and had urgent company business to attend to. He acknowledges that he used £10,000 of the money in the account to pay for company business. That was a short-term measure taken out of desperation. The money was paid back shortly afterwards—a matter of weeks later. I do not justify his use of the money, and neither does he.
When Mr. Hyam sold the property a completion statement was prepared and every penny was properly accounted for and paid to the purchaser. The purchaser came to court as a witness to confirm that no money was missing. The solicitor acting for the lessees wrote to question the completion. He was sent a copy of the completion statement and was satisfied that no money was missing. No complaints were made against Mr. Hyam by any of the lessees.
Mr. Hyam goes on: Whereas I acknowledge that it was bad business practice to use these monies that I held, and that I had no right to do so, how can it be possible to be charged with theft, when it is clearly proven that no theft took place? There was no deprivation, other than the very short time when the monies were used, then paid back almost immediately.
I suspect that that sums up why the judge did not make a compensation order. However, that is not an issue for me, the Minister or the House to judge. I have merely illustrated a worry. The review system has been brought into operation because of the worries.
I should like to go briefly through some of Mr. Hyam's points. Part of the problem is to do with the fact that he paid some builders in cash. He should not have done so. I think that it is fair to say that that is reasonably common practice in the building maintenance business. I do not have to approve of the practice. If Mr. Hyam writes on the cheque stub that the money was for a certain builder, but the cheque was actually written for cash, which he gave to the builder, it would be pretty strong to describe that as fraud. Such issues might be worth a review, when reconsidering the judge's summing up.
I appreciate that sending the case to review—which is a matter for Mr. Hyam and his solicitors, not for me—will not give the review commission the responsibility to decide whether the conviction was unsafe. When the commission considers a case, it has to decide whether there is a reasonable prospect that there would be some difference to the verdict if it were sent back to the court.
The first count was about the estimates for a property. He was sentenced to 15 months for that. A second count related to a property in Littlehampton in need of external 579 redecoration. Quotes were obtained and the cheapest was taken. The work was done and the builder was paid in cash. The other quotes obtained were accepted as genuine quotes. They were more expensive, so money was saved by using the builders that were chosen. No one has alleged that the works were not carried out. One lessee said in evidence that there were paint runs and some poor painting. That was put right. Mr. Hyam asked: If the works were done, especially for a cheaper price than others tendered for, how can anyone be defrauded? He says that press cuttings about his case state that the prosecution maintained that he deliberately submitted inflated quotes, had the work done and made a dishonest profit. He goes on to say: Not only is this not true, it cannot be true, for I only accepted"— the quotes from these particular builders— when they were the lowest quote (they quoted for other works, were more expensive and did not get the contract, although none of this came out in the trial as the judge ruled it inadmissible.
I repeat that it is not my task to criticise the judge or any of his decisions. I merely want to illustrate the points that would be considered if the review commission allowed a new trial. Had the original appeal been accepted, those issues could have been considered, but for reasons that I am not aware of, the appeal was not successful. Hon. Members will know that under the old Home Office review procedure and the present procedure there have been a fair number of appeals or applications for appeal in which only at the end has it been possible to establish more of the truth or cast sufficient doubt on a conviction.
The other counts are different. Mr. Hyam regards some of the issues as bizarre. I think that I have said enough to show the complexities as well as the simplicity of the issue. All I can say—and my purpose is not to get everybody in prison to write to me—is that, in my experience, in cases where someone has persistently said that they were wrongly accused or convicted, they have turned out to be right. They have not always been proved innocent, but there may have been an unsafe conviction.
I believe that unless right hon. and hon. Members are prepared to do as much for people who have behaved badly or committed bad practice as they are for people who appear to have done nothing wrong, we are not doing our job right. My expectation is that during my remaining service in the House, along with the successor to Mrs. Patricia Greenwood, I shall continue working for Stella Evans and other leaseholders who are exploited and for those who are in prison or who have been in prison and believe that their convictions should be re-examined. I am grateful for the opportunity to put those issues to the House this evening and I look forward with interest to the Minister's reply.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Worthing, West (Mr. Bottomley) on securing tonight's debate and on the characteristically reasonable way in which he has presented his arguments. As he said, Mr. Hyam was convicted in June 1996 of 13 counts—of furnishing false information, using a false instrument and theft— 580 and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. The hon. Gentleman will accept that it would be inappropriate if I were to become involved in a debate about property law and still less the practices of the construction industry. He will forgive me if I do not take that path, tempting though it may be.
Mr. Hyam's offences related to documentation that he had furnished to the leaseholders of various properties. The properties were managed by a company that he ran, and in all but one case a company of which Mr. Hyam was a director owned the freehold of the property. The documentation was used to support claims for payment from the leaseholders for work carried out on the properties. The offences of theft related to cheques that Mr. Hyam had made out from the account of one of his companies. The cheques were made payable to various individuals, but their stubs purported to show they had been made out to firms for work done on the properties, as the hon. Gentleman conceded in his speech.
Mr. Hyam appealed against his convictions on grounds relating to the judge's summing-up. The hon. Gentleman referred to some of the specific comments that were made. In January 1997, the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal. Mr. Hyam was released from prison on licence last July.
I would not presume to comment on the merits of the case against Mr. Hyam, nor would it be proper or useful for me to do so. The hon. Gentleman has made it clear that he is not looking to me for such comment. What I can do briefly—and he may find it helpful—is to outline the avenue open to someone in Mr. Hyam's position who wants to continue to contest a conviction.
As the hon. Gentleman will know, before 31 March 1997, the Home Secretary had the power to refer a case in which someone had been convicted on indictment in England or Wales to the Court of Appeal. The court had to treat the referral as an appeal by the person convicted. The Home Secretary used that power to bring before the court cases, particularly where the court had already heard and dismissed an appeal, in which he believed there had been a miscarriage of justice, for instance, on the basis of evidence that had recently come to light, and that was a common practice.
Following a recommendation of the royal commission on criminal justice, the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 changed the arrangements for the review of an alleged miscarriage of justice. The Act transferred from the Home Secretary to a new and independent body, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the power to refer cases to the Court of Appeal. The commission is empowered to review and investigate alleged miscarriages of justice in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The commission can gain access to documents and other material that may be relevant to its investigations and, if it thinks fit, can appoint an investigating officer. Anyone can apply to it to refer a conviction or sentence to an appellate court. If the commission makes a reference, the court has to treat it as a fresh appeal.
The commission may make such a reference only if it concludes that there is a real possibility that the conviction or sentence will not be upheld. A conviction can be referred either because of an argument or evidence not raised in the proceedings that led to the conviction or on any appeal or application for leave to appeal against it, or because the commission thinks that there are exceptional 581 circumstances that justify making such a reference. Either the applicant or the commission may identify the argument or evidence not previously raised, which does not necessarily need to be newly discovered.
I understand that to date, no application has been made to the commission in respect of Mr. Hyam. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that, if Mr. Hyam wants to continue to contest his conviction, he should make such an application. I would be happy, if he felt that it would be 582 helpful, to send the hon. Gentleman a leaflet that sets out what I have said about the commission's functions, and explains how to make an application. I am sure that his constituent may find it helpful.

§ Mr. Bottomley
I am grateful to the Minister.