Another day, another retreat by the coalition from a bad policy proposal. After Nick Clegg’s vision of light on 55%, now the government has taken a step back on rape anonymity, too. This is what justice minister Crispin Blunt said during yesterday’s debate in the Commons (columns 557-558):

Much has been made in the past of the importance of open justice and the free reporting of criminal trials as key elements of maintaining public confidence in the criminal justice system. We support that view. There is, however, another important reason of principle for distinguishing between the reporting of trials and the reporting of allegations before the point of charge. In the case of the latter, we are dealing with allegations that have not been subject to a full range of investigation …

When there is an allegation before the point of charge, there may have been some degree of investigation into the allegation, but there will have been no formal assertion on the part of the state that anybody has a case to answer. Those points provide grounds to inhibit reporting that are not present at the trial stage. Therefore, having carefully reviewed the extensive background, having taken account of the fact that nobody should be appearing in a criminal trial unless the prosecuting authorities have assessed all the available evidence including any exculpatory unused material, and prosecutors having applied the other provisions of the code for Crown prosecutors and decided to bring criminal charges, the Government are minded to strengthen anonymity up to the point of charge.

So the government now wants pre-charge anonymity only: defendants’ names will be published when it comes to trial. He also conceded the force of one of the main arguments against anonymity by offering to look at research and possible exceptions from anonymity where this would frustrate police investigations.

This isn’t good enough. I’m not persuaded there should be any change in this area. But if there is, it should apply across the board, on principle, to all criminal defendants. At least, though, the government has retreated from the inexplicably bad policy it originally wanted to foist on us in spite of its never having been so much as mentioned during the election campaign.

Well done to Caroline Flint and others, who have pressurised them into doing so.

2010-07-09T10:30:13+00:00Tags: , |