Coroners and Justice Bill

Amendment 184 stands in my name. It stems from a recent report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member. I am concerned again with investigation anonymity orders. The Bill provides that investigation anonymity orders should be available in cases of murder or manslaughter where death was caused by a gun or a knife. The argument for making such an extension of the provision is to encourage witnesses to come forward in the most serious gang-related crimes, where witnesses might otherwise be reluctant to do so because they fear reprisals. That is understandable. However, there is a difficulty. Witness anonymity orders can be applied for by the police or other investigative body as well as by the DPP. However, there is a practical problem about the effectiveness of such orders. Unless the witness is also confident that his or her anonymity will be protected at the trial, they are unlikely to come forward at the investigation stage. Yet the investigating authorities are not in a position to know at that point whether such a trial anonymity order is likely to be applied for by the DPP, let alone given by the court. The requirement that an application for such an investigation anonymity order should first obtain the consent of the DPP would address that practical problem. It would give the witness confidence that their anonymity would be protected right through all the stages, not just at the investigation stage. When the Joint Committee on Human Rights wrote to the Minister pointing that out and asking whether there was any reason why the consent of the DPP should not be required before an application for an investigation anonymity order was made, the Government’s answer was that an investigation anonymity order is essentially an investigative tool to assist the police in their investigations of a particular kind of crime. They were talking about an early stage of the investigation before the CPS is involved. According to their response to us, the Government do not consider it appropriate to require the DPP to consent before the police apply for these orders. I have already explained the difficulty. Surely, in the interests of witnesses coming forward, it makes sense to do this in the way that the amendment suggests rather than simply saying, "Okay, during an investigation a witness will have anonymity, but we cannot guarantee anything beyond that". It will make them shut up and not want to come forward. There is a further point which is close to that made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. The Joint Committee is also concerned that evidence suggests that the police have in practice not regarded applications for witness anonymity orders as exceptional. Without requiring the CPS’s involvement in such orders, there must be a risk that the number of such applications by the police would be disproportionately large.