Indignation and panic make bad law

Roared on by all three political parties just days before MPs disappeared for their summer holidays, Parliament enacted emergency legislation this month to allow witnesses in sensitive criminal trials to give evidence anonymously.

Ill-conceived, and based on a Bill prepared by Ministry of Justice staffers in a matter of days, the new Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Act will lead to a lack of clarity and the real possibility of miscarriages of justice.

The Act was rushed through after a Law Lords ruling on June 18 questioned the use of anonymous witnesses - a decision that led to the collapse of a £6m murder trial at the Old Bailey, and, according to the Director of Public Prosecutions, put another 600 trials at risk.

Peter Hennessey, professor of British history at London University, describes the interface between politics and law as a

jagged edge: the Law Lords could not have pressed this edge more uncomfortably against the Government’s most sensitive parts for they revived the spectre of gangland killers, previously convicted by anonymous witness testimony, being released to kill again.

The Government, relieved to have got the Bill through, says the new Act will solve the problem of anonymous witnesses and we can enjoy our summer holidays reassured. Don't be so sure.

The Lords had ruled that it was permissible neither under common law, nor Article 6 (right to a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights, to allow testimony from anonymous witnesses that "solely or to a decisive extent" leads to the conviction of a defendant.

Most anonymous testimony can still be heard but what the ruling does prevent are anonymous witnesses who give central, uncorroborated evidence that prosecutions in gangland killings and the like often rely upon. The ruling also catches - and this is what