HL Deb 11 December 1979 vol 403 cc960-2

2.44 p.m.

Lord GARDINER

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, if the police discover that an innocent person has been wrongly convicted, it is their duty to inform the innocent person, or his or her legal advisers, or the Home Office, or the Director of Public Prosecutions, or one or more and which of them, of what they have discovered.

Lord SANDYS

My Lords, there is no statutory duty on the police to pass on information where there is a possibility that a person may have been wrongly convicted. Clearly, however, the interests of justice require that the police, or any other agency to whom it comes to notice, should draw attention to such a possibility at the earliest opportunity. The police are fully aware of this obligation. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary will however consider, in consultation with the Association of Chief Police Officers, whether any specific guidance is necessary.

Lord GARDINER

My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that Answer, may I ask whether he is aware, from the first of the examples of this that I gave him, that the innocence of the woman who was convicted of theft and sentenced to two years imprisonment transpired only because the barrister who appeared for her happened to be in the same chambers as the barrister who later appeared for the real culprit, who by that time had confessed that she was the real culprit? Ought there not to be some sensible system, so far as the Ministry can achieve one, for seeing that the police carry out the advice which the noble Lord has given?

Lord SANDYS

My Lords, there was indeed a curious chain of circumstances here, but it must be borne in mind that the fact that a person admits to an offence for which someone else was convicted does not in itself imply a wrongful conviction. Both may have been involved in the same offence and the second person may merely be seeking to exonerate an associate. The police will normally have to reopen their investigation into the offence and the circumstances of the original conviction before they are satisfied there may have been a wrongful conviction.

Lord GARDINER

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether the real difficulty, perhaps, is not the fact that outside the metropolis the Secretary of State has no power to direct the police as to what they are to do in such circumstances? In view of that difficulty, would not the Secretary of State at least consider remitting this problem to the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure within whose wide terms of reference the subject clearly falls?

Lord SANDYS

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord is very well informed and will know, of course, that the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure is sitting at the moment. I shall of course draw my right honourable friend's attention to his suggestion, but whether it will be specifically relevant to the matters they are undertaking at the moment I cannot confirm to him.

Lord PAGET of NORTHAMPTON

My Lords, surely the Minister should go further than that. Is he aware that it is human to err, that the courts are human and that they err quite often? Should it not be our duty—the Government's duty—to take urgent steps when they feel there is not a certainty but a possibility that they have erred, that they have inflicted an injustice, instead of looking into every technicality? The noble Lord should go home and read the Dreyfus case where this happened in its largest degree.

Lord SANDYS

My Lords, the noble Lord raises matters which are really more properly raised in your Lordships' House in the form of an Unstarred Question, and I am sure the Government would welcome an opportunity for him to do so.