My Lords, on Report your Lordships’ House supported an amendment to include in this Bill the criteria for the payment of compensation for a miscarriage of justice based on the judgment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, speaking for the majority of the Supreme Court in the Adams case. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, himself spoke in favour of my Amendment 112 on Report. He has asked me to express his regret that he is unable to be in his place today to support Motion A1 because he is abroad.
We are concerned today with cases where an applicant has been wrongly convicted of a criminal offence. In many of these cases, he or she spent years in prison before the Court of Appeal overturned that conviction. Compensation is not paid, and rightly so, simply because the judge made an error of law or there was some other technical basis for the successful appeal to the Court of Appeal. The applicant must show, on the test stated by the Supreme Court—the test approved by your Lordships’ House—that a new fact has emerged that so undermines the prosecution evidence that no conviction could possibly be based on it. That is a very difficult test to satisfy, and rightly so.
I continue to believe that the test of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, for the Supreme Court is preferable to the Government’s approach, approved by the other place, and that the amendment approved by the other place, with great respect to them, is wrong in principle and would have very damaging consequences. That was true of the original criteria set out in this Bill and rejected by your Lordships’ House on Report—the criteria that the applicant must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he or she is innocent of the offence—and it remains true of the variation introduced by the Government in the other place, that the applicant must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he or she did not commit the offence. The Minister has very fairly acknowledged in his opening remarks that there is no substantive difference between proof that you are innocent and proof that you did not commit the offence.
I will first seek to explain why I say that the Government’s approach will have very damaging consequences. The Minister has suggested today that the judgment of the Court of Appeal will be the only evidence which the Secretary of State needs to see in order to form a judgment on whether the applicant did or did not commit the offence. However, the Court of Appeal very rarely says whether it thinks that a defendant has proved that he or she did not commit the crime. That is not the role of the Court of Appeal. It focuses on whether a new or newly discovered fact fatally undermines the case that is presented by the prosecution. The test of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, is consistent with what the Court of Appeal does. It has never been the role of Ministers in our jurisdiction—rightly so—to pronounce on whether a person has committed a crime.
The cases in which compensation is claimed for a miscarriage of justice will often be the most controversial and sensitive. When an appeal has been allowed in the Court of Appeal on the basis that the prosecution case has been fatally undermined by a new or newly discovered fact, and when the defendant is then released from
prison, often many years after their wrongful conviction, it is very unwise for legislation to state that it is then for the Secretary of State to pronounce on whether she thinks that the defendant has proved that they did not commit the crime. I can think of nothing more likely to keep open the sore of a regrettable miscarriage of justice, and nothing more likely to involve a politician in controversial matters of criminal responsibility.
The Minister suggested that the Government’s approach would promote certainty in the law. I have to say to him that, far from promoting certainty, the Government’s approach will inevitably be a recipe for complex, expensive and highly acrimonious litigation. The Minister said that there had been a few cases since the Adams judgment, which, he said, itself suggested that the Adams criteria were uncertain. However, as the Minister recognised, none of those cases has succeeded, and he well knows that members of our profession are quite capable of litigating any statutory definition. I therefore agree with the Government that the Bill should define the criteria for receipt of compensation for miscarriages of justice but I cannot agree that the Government’s wording, approved by the other place, is sensible in practice. It will have disastrous consequences.
Perhaps I may also say something about the issue of principle because the Minister emphasised this point in his opening remarks. He suggested that only those who are truly innocent should receive compensation for a miscarriage of justice. I say to him with the greatest of respect that that approach is wrong in principle. Our law does not ask people to prove that they did not commit a crime; it is for the state to prove that they did commit a crime. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, who I am pleased to see in his place, addressed this point with characteristic clarity at paragraph 97 in his judgment in the Adams case. He said that a person against whom there is no sufficient and admissible evidence on which a conviction can be based should not be the subject of the criminal process in the first place. Therefore, if a new or newly discovered fact fatally undermines the prosecution evidence, it is,
“right in principle that compensation should be payable”.
My noble and learned friend added at paragraph 102 that if the evidence against the defendant is conclusively shown to have been completely undermined, then there has been a miscarriage of justice which is as great whether or not the defendant committed the crime because in neither case should the defendant have been prosecuted.
5.15 pm
The Minister emphasised in his opening remarks that these Adams criteria may occasionally result in compensation being paid to a person who may in fact have committed the crime. My noble and learned friend Lord Phillips powerfully answered that point in his judgment in Adams at paragraph 55. He recognised that his test—the test approved by this House on Report—
“will not guarantee that all those who are entitled to compensation are in fact innocent. It will, however, ensure that when innocent defendants are convicted on evidence which is subsequently discredited, they are not precluded from obtaining compensation because they cannot prove their innocence beyond reasonable doubt”.
I commend the analysis of my noble and learned friend Lord Phillips to your Lordships as plainly correct in principle.
In the other place the Government did not address— far less answer—the concerns about the practical consequences and the issues of principle which I have summarised. I cannot—again, with respect—agree with the attempts by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, to respond to those points today. This House should invite the other place to think again on such an important issue. I beg to move.