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8.41 pm
Mr. Straw: This has been an interesting debate, which has showed the widespread agreement in the House for the proposals in the order--that, with the exception of part II of the 1989 Act and one or two other more detailed points, the PTA should be renewed for the forthcoming year.
I wish to pick up a number of the points raised in the debate. Before I do so, I pay tribute to the eloquent words of the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney), who spoke movingly from his own experience about the situation in Northern Ireland. He spoke about the way in which--despite the terrorism and the efforts of the terrorists to pull the communities apart--there are thousands of people from both sides of the divide who have been determined to make unity and not division the reality in their lives. The right hon. Gentleman drew not only on his experience as someone who comes from the Province, but on eight years as an Under-Secretary and Minister of State attached to the Northern Ireland Office from 1984 to 1992.
The right hon. Members for North-West Cambridgeshire, for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) asked whether adequate steps were being taken to target effectively the finances of terrorists. The frank answer is no. I am not satisfied with the powers--but not the efforts--and the results being achieved in pursuing terrorists and other serious criminals in a way that often can hit them the most--through their bank balances, safe deposit boxes and the cash they have stashed abroad.
There are two problems. The first is the insufficiency of the existing powers; the second is the problem of following up court decisions to fruition. In terms of the non-terrorist situation, the amount we take in each year is tiny compared with the ostensible value of the orders
achieved by the courts. I am concerned about that. So far as terrorism is concerned, we are examining it closely in the context of the consultation document that we shall publish shortly. I will come to the question of when precisely, which was raised by the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter).
In October, we were looking at whether we could use civil procedures to bear down on the confiscation of assets generally. Those techniques have been used successfully in the United States, Canada and--it must be said--the Republic of Ireland. We are examining their experiences because we cannot have a situation where serious criminals--terrorists or not--achieve substantial increases in their incomes and then use the protection of the law to stop us getting at their funds.
The right hon. Member for Upper Bann raised an interesting point about the terminology of the European convention on human rights. Article 5(3) of the convention states:
I had a meeting the other day with a magistrate from a continental country--I shall not mention which one. Magistrates in that country are judicial officers, but some of their functions are a combination of the functions exercised by the police and Home Office officials in this country. We must recognise that it is against that background that the European Court of Human Rights has come to its decisions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) apologises through me to the House for the fact that he has had to leave before the end of the debate. He asked whether we should have included within the Human Rights Bill a derogation relating to the PTA. We regret the need to start the Bill's life with the derogation, but it is unavoidable if we are to preserve the existing power to extend detention. Only fresh primary legislation to introduce a judicial element will get over the need to continue the derogation. Under the Human Rights Bill, the derogation will itself lapse after five years, unless it is specifically renewed.
The hon. Member for Basingstoke referred to the exclusion powers, and I understand his point. He quoted Mr. Rowe, and accepted that, in other respects, Mr. Rowe's views--and his own--had changed. I am grateful to Mr. Rowe who has, as usual, done a thorough job. It is a fact that on some issues we are bound to take different points of view. It is worth drawing it to the attention of the House that, although he has reported from time to time the view of the police and the security forces in favour of exclusion orders, he has also reported that this is not a unanimous view. I draw to the attention of the House paragraph 29 of his 1995 report, in which he said:
Mr. Straw:
I was not talking about the derogation that has been entered on the record before the Council of Europe, derogating from the European convention. I was talking about the fact that we have had to repeat that derogation within the body of the Human Rights Bill. It is within that that the derogation will lapse within five years, unless it is renewed under powers given in the Bill. I anticipate that we shall sort this problem out well within the five-year period, including making provisions within article 5(3) for a judicial element in extensions of detention. The right hon. Gentleman was in government for much longer than I have been so far and will be aware of the pressure on parliamentary time. However, it is no great secret that I hope and believe that we should legislate permanently in that field in the next two or three years.
The hon. Member for Basingstoke gently tweaked me for the fact that, in my statement on 30 October, I said that I hoped to publish the consultation document early in the new year. That was being over-optimistic. It is now early in the new year, but I am anxious to publish it in the next two or three months. It is a complicated, but also an important, matter.
I think that I have answered the main specific points that right hon. and hon. Members have raised. Myhon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe), in a short but eloquent speech, said that we needed to remember that the greatest fundamental human right was the right to live, free from fear, intimidation and terror. It is the duty of the Government and of the House to secure that fundamental right above all. Without it, no other rights or freedoms can be enjoyed. Against that background, and with that fundamental right in mind, I commend the order.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Jane Kennedy.]
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington):
You will know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that this a particularly difficult issue to raise. Members of Parliament do not usually stand up in the Chamber and allow themselves to be identified with those who would seek to defend a man successfully prosecuted for the offence of rape. What I say here this evening could easily be misrepresented.
I take that risk because I believe that someone must speak up on this case. Arising out of the Oyston trial, I see the danger of future miscarriages of justice, where cases are badly investigated, men are charged with rape and juries convict on the basis of uncorroborated evidence in closely contested cases. I am talking about convictions in the complete absence of medical or scientific support.
This debate is about the case of the rape of a 16-year old girl by a 57-year-old man. I am arguing that the case raises issues of public policy and natural justice. I want it to be referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
This was one of a series of six such allegations made against this man. A magistrate found no case to answer in three of the cases. A Crown court acquitted him in two. The allegations, which a jury upheld, were that the man indecently assaulted a young woman, whom I will call J, in the back of a car in the presence of two other passengers, one of whom was her friend. Twenty minutes later, J alleged, he raped her in his own bed in his own home. Both allegations were challenged by J's friend Lysa Rubotham, who was in the car and in the bedroom.
I have met Mr. Oyston on two occasions. The first time was in 1988 when, following allegations by a Conservative Member of Parliament about his activities in Derbyshire, I met him in a hotel in my constituency to confront him with the allegations. I conducted my own inquiries, which included interviewing people in Derbyshire. The allegations proved unfounded.
I then presented Mr. Peter Carter-Ruck with a file of papers that had come my way from a number of sources. Those papers were, I believe, used in a successful libel case. My activities included tabling an early-day motion, which proved a considerable embarrassment to Mr. Oyston. I did so in the belief that I was acting in the public interest. Allegations had been made that were damaging to the Labour party and, as far as I was concerned, someone had to investigate.
On the second occasion in 1995, Mr. Oyston asked to meet me in the House of Commons and told me that he was the subject of a conspiracy--his words. He was being prosecuted for rape. I could not comment on the issue of conspiracy--I have no knowledge of those matters. He told me that he had been very stupid, an admission he was subsequently to make in the course of his trial. He also told me that he had been having sexual relationships with young women. He seemed to me to be admitting that he had taken advantage of his position as a media tycoon. During the meeting, I spoke to his lawyer on the phone and told him that I was not prepared to take any action, because I believed that the matter was sub judice. However, I did state that I would like to be kept informed of developments because of my previous inquiries in the
late 1980s. l have now read much of the evidence in this case, including sworn statements to the police and affidavits in relation to the new evidence. I have also read the available transcripts of both trial and appeal.
The question is whether a charge of rape should have been brought against Owen Oyston. Oyston admits that he took advantage of young women. The House will deplore such conduct, and I find it unspeakable--but such is life. We have never legislated to make such relationships illegal, although some hon. Members may want to. However much we might condemn such behaviour, it is not a criminal offence, whereas rape is a particularly serious and nasty offence.
Did a change in the law on rape, five days before Oyston was charged, prejudice his trial? I have often asked why that change was introduced only five days before he was charged and whether there was a connection. A rule that had obliged judges to warn juries about the dangers of convicting on the uncorroborated word of one complainant in a rape case had been abolished. In 1993, the then Home Secretary said that it had to go. He said that it was outdated and demeaning to women, particularly in rape cases. I believe that that rule change was critical to the Oyston trial.
The danger of the change was outlined by Baroness Mallalieu in some detail, on Second Reading of the Criminal Appeal Bill 1995 in the House of Lords. Indeed, I am informed that, in north-west England, at least six other rape cases since 1995 have resulted in what has been described as grotesque and disastrous injustice, involving the suicide of innocent people and the gaoling of others who have made false allegations. Because of shortage of time, I have been unable to examine the detail of each of these cases.
In the case against Oyston, the prosecution brought an uncorroborated allegation of rape. However, the defence produced an eyewitness, Lysa Rubotham, J's friend--the other woman in the car whom the Crown acknowledged to have been present. I have interviewed this woman. During an interview at my home four weeks ago, she told me that she believed that an injustice has been done. She insisted that no assault had taken place in the car in which she was travelling, and that no rape had taken place in the house that the two girls had visited.
The case hinged entirely on the credibility of the two women witnesses. Both the Crown and the defence agreed that the two women had been present in the defendant's home on the only occasion when an offence could have been committed. Lysa Rubotham believes that J lied to the court. She told me that she would believe for the rest of her life that an injustice has been done. In my home, she openly wept over her failure to be believed in the court.
No other material evidence was available to the defence or the jury, as J could not say in what precise part of any year, season or month any offence had been committed. Most remarkably, she allowed two whole years to pass before she revealed to anyone that the rape had taken place.
Did the police, in the gathering of evidence, act as even-handed investigators? The first police interview notes in the case are now missing. Summing up for the defence in the Oyston trial, Mr. Anthony Scrivenersaid that Lysa Rubotham, who was questioned on 24 occasions, was asked only once--informally and on the telephone--about J's allegation. Scrivener said:
Lysa Rubotham was named. Her home address and carefully selected photographs were published in many newspapers. As she feared, she was forced by the Crown to reveal details of her youthful promiscuity. She was portrayed in newspapers after the trial as a liar and a loose woman. After she had admitted having a sexual relationship with the defendant, she was asked by Mrs. Helen Grindrod, for the Crown, to say whether she had had promiscuous sexual encounters, at the age of 17, with four business men, who were all named in open court.
The questioning was designed to demonstrate that, although Lysa Rubotham was a friend and colleague of the complainant, she was promiscuous and might have a stronger loyalty to the defendant and be prepared to lie on oath for him.
The trial judge told the jury that one of the two witnesses must have lied to them. He also told them that their resolution of the conflict of evidence was central to the question of guilt. Since the two contradictory witnesses were not examined "under the same conditions", as required by the European convention, the jury could not weigh accurately the evidence of one young woman against the evidence of the other young woman.
Many people in Lancashire believe that the defendant was denied a fair trial. My view is that, if each of the witnesses had been treated in the same way, the jury might well have come to a different verdict.
I received a letter from a woman in Silverdale in Lancashire. It says:
I do not want to comment on any conspiracy theories, but I thought that that letter was an indicator of the opinion of many people in Lancashire who have been following the case, and I thought it appropriate to read it to the House.
There is one aspect of the preparation of the case against Owen Oyston that I find particularly disturbing. Why was the evidence of the appalling and chronic abuse of drugs not adequately researched or considered by the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Crown court, or even the Court of Appeal? At one trial, J was formally given immunity from prosecution for past drug abuse. However, the police did not carry out a full inquiry into her heavy use of amphetamines, Ecstasy and cannabis. This was a woman whose memory of events, late one night four years earlier, would be so vital to the jury at the trial of Owen Oyston.
The question is whether courts should be allowed to rely in rape trials wholly on the evidence of those who have repeatedly used drugs. I note that, once again in our legal system, three Court of Appeal judges have been able to reject a mass of new evidence--some of which has recently been drawn to my attention--gathered in a man's defence after his conviction, but unavailable to his lawyers or to the jury in his trial.
As I have said, raising a case of this nature is very difficult for a Member of Parliament, but I feel very, very strongly that something is wrong, and that the truth has got to come out. A barrister recently said to me that the Oyston trial had implications for the whole of the law on rape. Something, somewhere, is wrong. The law is being brought into disrepute. I can only foresee great injustice being done in the future, unless we again review the law.
Before his trial, Owen Oyston was told by lawyers that, if he was prepared to say that he had consensual sex with J, a conviction for rape would be very unlikely, because of the operation of the law on consent. However, Oyston refused to adopt what he claimed was a dishonest defence. Both Oyston and Lysa Rubotham were adamant that no sex, consensual or otherwise, had ever taken place between Oyston and J.
Although I have not met Oyston for three years and have not been able to discuss the case with him, he has let it be known from prison that he will not admit his guilt, even to placate the parole board. His message from prison, to the girl who gave evidence for him, was:
Finally, I should like to make it absolutely clear that neither Mr. Oyston nor any member of his family has asked me to raise this case in the House. I have done so of my own volition. I believe that something is not right.
"Everyone arrested or detained should be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power."
The right hon. Gentleman was right--it is always worth while examining the texts. We are doing so in the context of the consultation document. The obvious way of doing that is through a judge, but it must be borne in mind that there are many stipendiary magistrates, and their numbers are increasing.
"The overwhelming majority of port officers gave me the answer that the orders are useful and should be retained. But there was a fair number of officers, of all ranks, who held the opposite view."
That is a fact and, in reciting the opposite view, he said:
"On the other hand, the argument is that in the absence of exclusion, a known and experienced member of an organisation can be noticed at the port, and followed thereafter, and kept under surveillance."
Sir Brian Mawhinney:
I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for missing the first few minutes of his reply. Having been in the Chamber since 4 pm, I had gone to get something to eat, so I apologise for missing those first few minutes. He has been talking about detention and the derogation. Can he remind the House how long that derogation still has to run? I am trying to tempt him into speculating whether his legislation will be before the House before that derogation is up, or whether he contemplates having to renew it.
That the draft Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 (Partial Continuance) Order 1998, which was laid before this House on 24th February, be approved.
5 Mar 1998 : Column 1275
8.52 pm
"It does not require a great brain to realize in the circumstances that Lysa Rubotham must be an important potential witness.
the police felt that
She was never asked to make a statement about it. Obviously a material witness--and when she was asked she indicated to the police that she would not be corroborating the police's version of it and so"
"it was not necessary to make a statement."
Another important question is whether the witnesses were treated equally. Why was J given anonymity, whereas the character of the only other eye-witness, Lysa Rubotham, was torn to shreds before the jury? Was article 6(3)(d) of the European convention on human rights breached? Under that article, everyone charged with a criminal offence has a right to
"examine or have examined witnesses against him and obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him."
As the complainant in a rape case, J was granted anonymity and protected from certain lines of cross-examination under section 2 of the Sexual Offence Act 1976. She could not be asked about her sexual and personal life. No such protection was afforded to Lysa Rubotham, whose evidence directly contradicted the evidence of J. Miss Rubotham was cross-examined in the way that rape complainants used to suffer in the days before the 1976 Act. That could hardly be described as examination "under the same conditions" as described under article 6.
"Re: Owen Oyston.
I confess that I was unaware of those matters.
Dear Sir,
I have been interested to read that you, as I am myself, are greatly concerned at the misjudgment used in the above case and are willing to help to right an obvious breach of what is fair in:
The way the case was conducted.
The biased questioning of participants.
The length of the sentence handed out.
The obvious bias of the policeman involved, whose comments were totally unacceptable on television."
"The sending to Garth prison of a man who has never been involved in violence. One of the prisons used for the worst type of offender.
The letter was signed.
This man, whom I have never met, has obviously upset people in high places. I can only conclude that what has happened to him is as the result of a deliberate conspiracy.
Please join with me in righting this wrong and bring it to the notice of Parliament."
"You told the truth. I will not make a liar of you by admitting a crime I did not do. I would stay in jail for ten years if it was needed to prove my innocence and your honesty".
As we adopt the European convention on human rights, do we not have an obligation to show that our own house is order in that difficult area of the law? It is with that in mind that an application will be made to the Criminal Cases Review Commission for a review of the Oyston case. The commission has two criteria--exceptional circumstances and new evidence. The application can meet both criteria. I earnestly hope that the commission, when it receives the application, will refer the matter back to the Court of Appeal. There is sufficient new evidence available to warrant its intervention.
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