My Lords, the House is indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who has huge experience in this area. I open my remarks by telling a true story. A woman rifles through the dustbin of a reputable consultant, finds a used condom, smears the contents on herself and makes a false allegation of rape. Because the accused has no right to anonymity, he is suspended as a consultant psychiatrist, hauled before the GMC, shunned by his friends, attacked on the internet, loses £100,000, part of which was income, and is then discredited in his own community. Should we not be looking at the law on anonymity for men, as there are many cases of reputations that have been destroyed where prosecutions have been dropped?
I have raised this issue on many occasions over the last 15 years’ of my membership of this House. To be frank, I got absolutely nowhere. The problem is not in this House, but in the Commons. There are women in the Commons who feel strongly that transparency in the legal and investigatory processes helps to secure a high rate of successful prosecutions. I understand all that. The facts as the law stands speak for themselves: a 31% increase in recorded rapes in 2015 alone; gross underreporting of the crime; one in five women under 60 reporting sexual violence; abuse in the process, as in the recent Evans case; and the disturbing trend—I understand, although I am not a lawyer—of jury vilification, where juries return a verdict of not-guilty despite a belief that the defendant is guilty of the violation. The jury, in effect, is nullifying a law it believes is immoral or wrongly applied to the defendant whose fate it is charged with deciding. Finally, there is a low rate of successful prosecutions. That is the background; it is the tension in the Commons that leads to opposition to the change of the law in this area.
These concerns and more stand at the heart of the anonymity debate. Women want early identification so as to counteract their concerns. As Maria Eagle put it in the Commons:
“Rape is often a serial crime and it is often only after many crimes that a perpetrator is brought to court. Previous victims often come forward at that point. That can be essential to the securing of a conviction”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/10; col. 567.]
That is the case in defence of the present arrangements.
There is, however, an appalling price to pay for the denial of anonymity. Lives are being destroyed. The new drivers behind the argument for reform are those whose lives have been ruined by pre-charge publicity: Cliff Richard, Paul Gambaccini and Leon Brittan—as we mentioned—and the many others who have written to me over the years detailing what has happened in their lives. It has meant the loss of livelihood, the loss of friendships, marriages collapsed and families destroyed by the unjustifiable publicity. Even when their names are cleared, they take to their graves an element of residual public prejudice and suspicion. The benefits of transparency have to be carefully weighed against the destruction of people’s lives, which on occasions has even led to suicide. There has to be reform.
We are then told by those who oppose anonymity that you cannot single out the crime of rape from other offences pre-charge. Again, as Maria Eagle put it in the House of Commons:
“In fact, people accused of sexual crimes should not be treated any differently from other defendants. If the Under-Secretary”—
who was across the Dispatch Box at the time—
“singles out rape from all other sexual offences … That will impinge on victims’ capacity to come forward … which will in turn impinge on the conviction rate”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/10; col. 567.]
I cannot, however, understand how singling out rape pre-charge deters reporting by victims when, once a person is charged, goes to court and is placed on public trial, the world is made aware of the nature of the crime that they are alleged to have committed. In a particular case, a man is not tried for previous rapes, as I understand it, but only the rape or rapes that is or
are the subject of the prosecution. Surely if, during a trial, further rape cases come to light, and if the evidence is there, further prosecutions can be brought.
We are then told that police guidelines protect the accused prior to charge from adverse humiliating publicity. However, as Mr Blunt, the Minister, said at the Dispatch Box in the other House on behalf of the Government in July 2010:
“It appears to be widely assumed that there is a self-regulation scheme in place that clearly prohibits the reporting of anybody accused of a crime but not yet charged with it. On close examination, however, the 2004 interpretative note does not provide complete reassurance. Nowhere does it contain an outright general prohibition on the reporting of pre-charge allegations. In fact, in the main, no mention is made of the distinction between pre and post-charge reporting at all”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/10; col. 557.]
That is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, so forcefully put in his contribution. In other words, there is potentially no redress for those accused who are innocent.
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We then have to consider the attitude of the public to those accused of sexual offences, rooted as it is in deep public prejudice. The evidence is there of deep public prejudice towards those alleged to have committed sexual offences. It is in the prison system. Rule 45 allows governors to isolate prisoners, either for their own protection or to ensure good order and discipline. In prison they are often known, I understand, as “the nonce”. It goes further. We now have a concentration of sex offenders, I understand, in special prisons called “treatment hubs”. Indeed, we have learned that these arrangements are necessary, as where sex offenders are placed in mainstream prisons they commonly experience violence, fear, victimisation, abuse, physical assault, threatening behaviour and foreign objects—faeces, urine and even broken glass—in their food. In other words, they are different, particularly where persons have been prosecuted for sexual offences against children.
There is overwhelming evidence that grave sexual offences are in a category of their own and require special treatment. They deserve more than guidelines. They deserve what the Minister at the time, Crispin Blunt, referred to as “an outright general prohibition” on reporting. I would go further and argue that the consultation exercise referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, on 25 October—a couple of weeks ago—should start from the position that the professional practice guidelines authorised by the College of Policing, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, should be ditched and replaced with law governing anonymity, or a new set of guidelines that ensure a far greater element of responsibility in decisions on breaching anonymity. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, suggests in his amendment that these matters should be dealt with by the judge. I personally prefer an amendment to the law.
I now address what in my view is the central argument as to why rape cases should be treated as a separate category in terms of anonymity. People with decades of experience of the criminal Bar—there are some in the Chamber today—tell me that the identity of pre-charge accused, and even defendants in the courts, are withheld
every day in hundreds of cases. So anonymity is not a new principle. These same lawyers also argue that rape is different from other offences because it is one person’s word against another, particularly where consent is an issue. In these cases, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, there is often no supporting evidence to corroborate the complaint. That is why rape is so different from other offences. Word-on-word cases often leave juries unconvinced. It is often too difficult without evidence to be sure an offence has been committed. I am told that in almost every other criminal proceeding the CPS will require corroborative inculpatory evidence such as forensics, CCTV or even eye-witness evidence. In my mind, therefore, rape is in a very special category of its own and the law should recognise that reality.