Adjournment debate (continued)
"The Minister also stated in her reply:
"If the information requested is available under the access provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 or the Freedom of Information Act, then Mr. Bamber may have his own rights to gain access to such information under this legislation."—[Official Report, House of Commons, 21 December 2004; Vol. 428, c. 1556W.]
Those possible rights have been explored, but appear not to exist. It is now time for the Home Office to take matters seriously, and consider carefully not only the few points that I have made, but the whole Bamber affair. In particular, it should look at the issue of non-disclosure and the behaviour and attitude of Essex constabulary. It is also time for the Criminal Cases Review Commission to expedite matters so that the case of Mr. Jeremy Bamber is not left in judicial limbo. Such action is necessary to avoid perpetuating what a growing number of people fear may be one of the greatest miscarriages of justice of our times.
4.16 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Fiona Mactaggart) :
I thank the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) and congratulate him on securing this debate on the important and, in many ways, sensational case of Jeremy Bamber, who is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his adopted parents and sister and her twin sons.
The hon. Gentleman has stated that he believes that the Home Office should look closely at the Bamber affair, and in particular at the issue of non-disclosure and the behaviour and attitude of Essex constabulary. I shall begin by saying that, on previous occasions, the Home Office has looked closely at the Bamber affair, as have the constabulary and the City of London police, following a complaint by Mr. Bamber to the Police Complaints Authority under the previous system. Its 14-month study did not uphold Mr. Bamber's complaint. Since then, there have been reforms to the Police Complaints Authority, and I do not know whether Mr. Bamber has made a further complaint to the new Independent Police Complaints Commission. Perhaps, however, it would help if I explained the recent handling of requests to review cases such as Mr. Bamber's, because that is relevant to the points raised by the hon. Gentleman.
The 1993 royal commission on criminal justice recommended that the responsibility for re-opening cases of suspected miscarriages of justice should be
"removed from the Home Secretary, and transferred to a body independent of Government."
Parliament agreed with that when it passed the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, setting up the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Accordingly, the Home Secretary's powers to consider alleged miscarriages of justice ended on 31 March 1997, and were replaced by new powers vested in an independent body, the CCRC. It has the power to review and supervise investigations into possible miscarriages of justice in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; to approve the appointment of investigating officers; to gain access—I emphasise this—to documents and other material that may be relevant to its investigations; and to refer any cases when there is a real possibility that the conviction or sentence will not be upheld to the appropriate court, which will treat the referral as a new appeal.
The Home Secretary is answerable to Parliament for the work of the commission, but as it is operationally independent, he cannot intervene in its determination of a particular case. That being so, in many ways, it is not within the Home Secretary's remit to examine Mr. Bamber's case. I recognise that the hon. Gentleman is asking not for a general re-examination of the case, but for a particular investigation of the role of Essex constabulary. Further allegations of non-disclosure by the Essex constabulary are a matter for the CCRC, rather than for the Home Office, because non-disclosure can be a ground for the CCRC to refer a case back to the Court of Appeal. The commission referred Mr. Bamber's case to the Court of Appeal in 2001, following an earlier investigation, but those grounds were not based on non-disclosure. Mr. Bamber's solicitor added a number of non-disclosure arguments at the appeal hearing, although they were dismissed by the full court.
I understand that the commission has recently been asked to investigate the new allegations, and I can confirm that under section 17 of the Criminal Appeal Act it has the power to gain access to documents and any other material that may be relevant to its investigations. I have been told that there are something like 4 million items of material in this case, so there is a large range of matters that the commission needs to investigate. If it has not already done so as part of its earlier review of the case, which resulted in the unsuccessful appeal in 2002, it may, if it believes it appropriate, obtain the material to which the hon. Gentleman has referred.
It would be inappropriate for the Home Secretary to become involved in this or any other alleged wrongful conviction. The safety of the conviction is a matter for the courts rather than the Home Secretary. Accusations about the Essex police are a matter for the chief constable of the force or the new Independent Police Complaints Commission. There is an important public policy reason why both the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the Independent Police Complaints Commission are independent of the Home Office: to create public confidence in those authorities.
Mr. Bamber is of course aware of the Criminal Cases Review Commission's remit, as his second appeal in October 2002 followed its reviewing his case and referring it back to the Court of Appeal on 23 March 2001. In that case, the Court of Appeal did not find that there were sufficient grounds for finding the conviction to be unsafe. In its judgment, the court went so far as to say:
"It should be understood that it is not the function of this court to decide whether or not the jury was right in reaching its verdicts. That is a task that is wholly impossible in virtually every case because this court does not have the advantage of hearing and seeing the witnesses give evidence, and deciding which of the witnesses are trying to tell the truth and which of those who are trying to do so are accurate in their recollection. Our system trusts the judgment of a group of 12 ordinary people to make such assessments and it is not for the Court of Appeal to try to interfere with their assessment unless the verdicts are manifestly wrong, or something has gone wrong in the process leading up to or at trial so as to deprive the jury of a fair opportunity to make their assessment of the case, or unless fresh evidence has emerged that the jury never had an opportunity to consider.
We have found no evidence of anything that occurred which might unfairly have affected the fairness of the trial. We do not believe that the fresh evidence that has been placed before us would have had any significant impact upon the jury's conclusions if it had been available at trial. Finally the jury's verdicts were, in our judgment, ones that they were plainly entitled to reach on the evidence. We should perhaps add in fairness to the jury that the deeper we have delved into the available evidence the more likely it has seemed to us that the jury were right, but our views do not matter in this regard, it is the views of the jury that are paramount."
It is open to anyone to re-apply to the Criminal Cases Review Commission if they can present an argument or evidence not raised in previous court hearings or demonstrate that the case would, exceptionally, otherwise merit a reference back to the Court of Appeal. I am informed that Mr. Bamber's solicitor reapplied to the commission in March 2004. I understand that the commission reached a provisional decision but that his solicitor has since provided further material that will take time to investigate. I am confident that the commission is dealing with the further application both fairly and thoroughly.
It is neither in my remit nor in that of the Home Secretary to consider the said to be newly discovered police logs or any other new evidence that may have been made available to the commission. However, the commission can ask for that material and assess whether it demonstrates that the concern expressed by the hon. Gentleman that there has not been a fair trial is sufficient to merit re-referring the case to the Court of Appeal.
I believe that it is at best premature to discuss a call for a further inquiry into the suggested withholding of information by the Essex constabulary. At the second appeal, the court found no evidence to support Mr. Bamber's allegations of serious wrongdoing, including deliberate non-disclosure, by the police; nor did the results of the internal inquiry and the 14-month investigation of Mr. Bamber's complaints by the City of London police confirm that there was any justification to Mr. Bamber's allegations.
I understand that there is no current recorded complaint to the new Independent Police Complaints Commission. If there is a complaint that the police are deliberately withholding material, that is the proper authority to deal with the matter. Only if a third appeal contradicted the earlier findings of the re-referral and of the previous court might it be reasonable to consider whether an inquiry was needed into how the matter had come to that pass.
Before us is a concern that evidence has not properly been made available to the body that is rightly charged with judging it. There is an independent body, which is sifting through that evidence and which has the powers, given to it by Parliament, to call for that evidence if it believes that it is in any way relevant to the case for a re-hearing by the Court of Appeal. It is doing that job. I urge the hon. Gentleman to depend on that process. The Criminal Cases Review Commission has been pretty efficient at dealing with the matters before it. "
How can the defence provide the grounds for an Appeal, which the Home Secretary claims they have failed to do, while so much evidence is being withheld?
What sort of justice system is this?
