Crispin Blunt

Conservative Party | Reigate

Queen's speech: Sexual offences bill

Crispin spoke in the debate focusing on the anonymity of defendents intrials relating to sexual offences. Crispin was concerned that casesbrought to court can destroy the reputation of a defendent, even if they aresubsequently proved innocent.

To read the debate in full, please click here

Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate): Sadly, because of time, I will not be able to pursue the issues that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) has raised.

I want to focus on the anonymity of defendants in trials relating to sexual offences, and I was pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) placed such emphasis on the presumption of innocence and on the prosecution proving its case beyond reasonable doubt. I was reassured that the Home Secretary also endorsed the importance of those cardinal principles. However, if one's reputation is destroyed, it is of little consolation that one remains technically innocent. I hope that the House also paid attention to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee and to the report that he has published.

The Government addressed this issue in a White Paper and said:

"We are minded to retain the existing format in regard to anonymity for defendants as no other category of offence is dealt with in this way. However, we are still prepared to listen to the arguments of those who feel strongly on the matter."

Of course the Government are still prepared to listen. That is the purpose of Parliament. However, I also hope that it means that they are prepared to be persuaded by the arguments of hon. Members who feel as strongly about this issue as I do.

Sex offences and the way in which we deal with sex in the United Kingdom provoke extremism and a hysteria peculiar to us. The atmosphere in which sex offences are considered is uniquely charged because of the press coverage of such cases. The recent history of our media bears that out. We have only to consider the press frenzy following the Burrell trial, the television presenter whom the press accused of rape, and the police officer in the Soham case—mentioned by the hon. Member for Cambridge—whose name appeared on a list from the United States, to realise that those people are convicted in the eyes of the nation before there is any question of a trial.

Those are national figures and their cases are known to us, but the local press causes just as much damage. In 1998, 700 people attended the funeral of a 31-year-old teacher in my constituency called Nick Drewett. He was a popular and committed teacher, but he took his life when faced with charges of behaving improperly with pupils in his care. The master who was charged with him was acquitted. A significant factor in his decision to commit suicide was the sensational publicity that attended the investigation of the charges.

Nick Drewett is not alone. I presented a ten-minute Bill in 1999, which the NASUWT helped me to prepare. It gave me the statistic that between 1991 and 1998 there were 974 police investigations into abuse allegations against its members. No grounds were discovered for prosecution in 792 of those cases. The publicity in any one of those 80 per cent. of cases would do serious injustice to an innocent teacher.

My Bill attempted to protect teachers from injustice. I managed to convince my hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), who was our Education spokesman, to include similar measures in our manifesto at the last election. However, the principle does not apply only to teachers; it goes wider than that. I was slightly concerned about the Home Secretary referring to the will of the people. The fourth estate frequently claims for itself the will of the people and that it operates on behalf of the will of the people.

In the last Parliament, the Government introduced advanced measures to help complainants in sex offence cases. They are listed on page 19 of the White Paper. Although in 1985, 25 per cent. of complaints about rape resulted in a conviction, by 2000 that figure had fallen to 7 per cent. So 93 per cent. of those people who have to defend themselves against such complaints are innocent. That is what the presumption of innocence means. I notice the expression on the faces of Labour Members, but people are innocent until they are proven guilty. We cannot allow reputations to be destroyed by the publicity that accompanies cases in which people are innocent.

The decision-making process in the prosecution of sex offence cases is uniquely tilted. As a result of the atmosphere surrounding such cases, there is a tendency to press on with them. When the Crown Prosecution Service or the police decide whether there is a complaint to answer, the sensitivity of such cases, especially those involving children and, I now believe, in the more general case of rape, the tendency is to proceed to prosecution.

Vera Baird: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware of the joint publication by the Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate and police inspectorate, which came to the opposite conclusion? Cases do not go on when they are difficult. Instead, they are stopped when there is the slightest difficulty. The hon. Gentleman needs to get his facts straight.

Mr. Blunt: How does the hon. and learned Lady explain the fact that the same number of people are being convicted 15 years later when the number of complainants has quadrupled? I have not read the document she mentions, and I will do so, but my experience—and no doubt that of others—and the statistics cast doubt on its conclusion. The tendency to continue with a case is more extreme if the complainant is a child, and the loss of reputation of the people concerned is also extreme. Such cases result in extreme and tragic consequences, such as my constituent's decision to end his life.

It was decided in 1998 to end the anonymity of defendants in such trials, but we have moved on from that. The White Paper gives an example of a practical difficulty. It states:

"if a man escaped custody before conviction, the police could not warn the public he was a suspected rapist unless the judge exercised his power to lift those restrictions."

That is a pretty thin practical justification for the measures. The judge is plainly able to lift restrictions if someone is thought to be a danger to the public, and he would be right to do so. The balance of the argument has changed since 1998.

Caroline Flint (Don Valley): I accept that the hon. Gentleman is raising some difficult issues. Although I would not support sensational accounts in the newspapers, by the same token does he agree that the public's awareness of a person who has been charged with rape or paedophilia has often led to other victims coming forward who might otherwise not have done so?

Mr. Blunt: I accept that sensational publicity around a case may encourage other people to complain, but there has to be a balance. The charges that are brought against people in such circumstances are serious. The public take them very seriously and the publicity that can result from people's names becoming known serves to destroy their reputations whether they are proved innocent or guilty. I believe that the balance of the argument has changed since the decision was taken in 1998 to remove anonymity from defendants.

Measures have been introduced to assist people who complain about such crimes to give evidence. They are protected from a defendant cross-examining them in court and there are powers to enable complaints to be made. We must properly balance those measures, especially in the light of the atmosphere that our media creates around such cases, by giving defendants the anonymity to which they are entitled, in what is a unique set of circumstances, until they are convicted and found guilty of the crime. If we do not do that, the presumption of innocence amounts to mere words for the people who are on the receiving end of such allegations.