Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

My Lords, I support these amendments as well. I look at the situation from an unusual perspective and with the unusual experience of sitting as the senior judge in Scotland in a criminal appeal. It was a case of murder, and I was not able—because I was sitting in a court where all the evidence was already out—to develop what was at the back of my mind, which was that the police had identified the wrong individual, who was then accused and convicted. I will not go into the facts of the case for obvious reasons, but it struck me that the court at that late stage was powerless to deal with what I thought had not been a frank and fair police investigation. I make that point simply because stages are reached where the situation is beyond recall, but I was deeply disturbed by what had happened in that case and could not do anything about it. So I welcome the steps that are being taken to improve the standard of candour among the police at all stages in the investigation of crime and its aftermath.