Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

Colleagues will know—it is a well-trodden path—that if someone was convicted of a serious offence, they would normally come within the automatic disqualification. Let us say that the penalty imposed by the criminal courts was less than the 12 months in prison that would require automatic disqualification. Let us say that someone was acquitted in a criminal court but the facts had been admitted and the acquittal rested on a technical matter, or that the facts had been admitted but the extent of the mens rea—the individual's guilt—was challenged and the jury decided on balance to acquit them. The jurors are saying that the person is not guilty, according to the criminal standard of proof; they are not saying that the person is innocent.