53.
asked the Attorney-General if he is satisfied with the current position and procedure for the selection of potential jurors in serious criminal trials; and if he will make a statement.
I am satisfied with the present procedure.
Is the Attorney-General aware that there was great disquiet over the fact that the statement on this subject was made as a result of adverse press criticism and that it came as a great surprise to many people to find that it had not been announced in Parliament? Will he give an undertaking that any revision of the guidelines will be made available to the public at the earliest possible opportunity, preferably through the House?
The hon. Gentleman is in error. The practice has been going on at least since 1948, and probably since a great deal earlier than that. It is only since 1974–75 that it has been subject to control to ensure that it is operated as infrequently as possible and as fairly as possible to the defence as well as to the prosecution.
The second part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question is also inaccurate, because when the matter was brought to the attention of the then Home Secretary and myself in 1974, and after we had thoroughly gone into it, in reply to a Question on 19th May 1975 from my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, West (Mr. Sedgemore), I informed the House of the position and said that my information would be amplified in a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, West from the then Home Secretary, Mr. Roy Jenkins. That letter was duly sent and it contained even fuller information. If hon. Members did not then take it up, I do not think that any blame attaches either to Mr. Jenkins or to myself.Without resort to the papers which passed between us on that occasion, I must confess that of the country, including the West Mid-it came as a surprise to me to see the guidelines published in The Times as a result of my right hon. and learned Friend's recent announcement. Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that I still hold to the view that one cannot have one rule for the defence and one for the prosecution? If the defence has been limited, as it has in recent years, in the kind of investigation that it can make into the background of prospective jurors, surely the same considerations apply to the prosecution, because it is in the interests of the defence also to know what is the background of people who are to try cases which have this kind of quasi-political nature.
I do not accept the point about cases of a "quasi-political nature". If my hon. Friend, who was then at the Home Office, is surprised by the form which the guidelines have taken I can only assume that at the time he did not study the correspondence in his own Department, because that correspondence made them absolutely clear. The major new development in the guidelines was to do everything possible to see that the defence was put on an equality with the prosecution.
The whole basis on which the system has operated is that if anything is learnt which can possibly be likely to influence the defence to want to use its right to challenge a particular juror because he may be hostile to a defendant, or for some similar reason, counsel for the prosecution is required to inform the defence and to give it as much information as possible. But the defence cannot be allowed to have the same access to the records as is given to the police and passed to the Director of Public Prosecutions.