Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I would like to illustrate the usefulness of experts. This came from a case that I did three or four years ago. There had been family proceedings in relation to a little child of 11 months old who was found dead but with no visible injury. The case for the adoption of other children took about three weeks, with something like three experts on both sides. As a result, the judge held that the father was culpable but was not going to say that he had actually caused the injuries that the child had sustained. Shaken baby syndrome was alleged, but I discovered that there was a huge divide between experts on that issue. I advised the instruction of a biomechanical expert and the Legal Services Commission found one from Detroit, who had gained his expertise in car accidents. He was able to manufacture a doll that was of the same size and weight as the 11 month-old child. He demonstrated that, as the child was at the age of feeling around the furniture and pulling himself up on to his legs, not even yet climbing on the sofa, if the child fell over, his back hit the ground and his head followed, that would generate sufficient force to cause precisely the injuries that he had sustained. There had been no history of any previous child abuse; there were no marks, the skull was intact and nothing was broken. As a result of that evidence, the prosecution dropped the murder case that it had brought against the father following the judge's previous decisions. That indicates how an expert can make all the difference in a case like that, but expensively. It is to the credit of the Legal Services Commission that it was prepared to fund a report like that which ultimately led to a proper conclusion to the case, but one has to think of all the experts who had been involved in the argument about shaken baby syndrome before the judge. It is vital that experts are properly instructed and funded when they are required but I am sure that there are times when far too many experts are employed, and I accept what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has said previously on that point.