Oh, she is here. What my noble friend said is very interesting, because she is one of the great lawyers on our side specialising in human rights. Perhaps I may draw attention to her view at the time on anonymity right through to conviction. She said:
“I strongly urge that this House does not consider allowing anonymity for anyone who is charged with rape. But the Government might look sensitively at the issue of whether someone should be covered with anonymity until the point of being charged … The reason that women will come forward when they see that a man has been charged with rape is because they are confident that they will not be so readily disbelieved if he is clearly doing it to other women”.—[Official Report, 2/6/03; col. 1085-6.]
It is quite clear that, at that time, my noble friend at least had some sympathy for the principle behind today’s amendment.
The former Prime Minister, David Cameron, told Parliament that he believed that,
“there was a case for saying that between arrest and charge there was a case for anonymity”.
“I think”, he went on to say,
“this does represent a good way forward”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/6/10; col. 428.]
My right honourable friend Caroline Flint, speaking on behalf of the Labour Party in the House of Commons, said,
“the serial nature of the crime that we are talking about is important, because when a crime is reported and people hear the name of the person who has been charged, they feel confident to come forward and stand by the victims”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/6/10; col. 150.]
Even there, from a spokesman from the Labour Front Bench in the Commons, is an admission that, post-charge, people do come forward. I am not claiming that she would support me on this amendment, but I ask the House to judge her view on the basis of the record to which I just referred.
The Home Affairs Select Committee report in 2014 stated:
“We recommend that the … right to anonymity should also apply to the person accused of the crime, unless and until they are charged with an offence”.
In other words, for the second time the Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons, only two years ago, made the same recommendation—again unanimous.
We then have Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, a practitioner in the field dealing with these matters. He too says he supports pre-charge anonymity.
Finally, there is the letter of 24 March last year from Theresa May, who is now the Prime Minister, to Keith Vaz, which says:
“The Government accepts the committee’s conclusion”—
that is, the report I just referred to, supporting pre-charge anonymity—
“that there should, in general, be a right to anonymity before the point of charge, but there will be circumstances in which the public interest means that an arrested suspect should be named”.
All these assurances are diluted by the guidance being given to police officers, because that guidance does not work. It is about time that we stood up in Parliament, recognised the deficiency in the way the law is operating and put on the statute book something that requires police officers to operate in a particular way. In this case, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, suggests in his amendment, they should at least be required to apply to a judge for permission to release a name.
The product of all this law as it currently exists, and the present arrangements, is that reputations are undermined, families are discredited—as I said in my contribution in Committee—there are suicides, public lives and reputations are destroyed, and individuals are sacked from their employment. I have a desk full of letters written over the last 15 years by men all over the country—many of them in prisons; we do not know what happened in those particular cases—objecting to the way the law works.
I implore the House: please give the House of Commons the opportunity to reconsider this matter. If I lose in the Commons, fair enough—but at least give the Commons the opportunity. It is in our hands. If we vote for the amendment tonight, the Commons will reconsider the matter.