On The World At One yesterday (you can listen again for a while) Lord Falconer justified his conversion from pro-90 days Lord Chancellor to 28 days-and-no-further backbencher oddly forgotten by Peter Hain yesterday. To be fair, he was honest enough to admit he had supported 90 days “personally and privately”, not just because of collective responsibility.

He argued that his change of mind is because of the DPP’s guidelines to prosecutors and the “threshold test” that can be applied when considering a charge, under paragraphs 3.9 and 3.10. The threshold test is neatly explained in the Code for Crown Prosecutors. What is means is that, where the police are holding a suspect and do not have enough evidence to charge him according to the normal evidential standard (is there a reasonable prospect of conviction?) then, if it’d normally be inappropriate to grant bail if he were charged (as it would be in most terrorist cases) the CPS or police can charge him on the basis of reasonable suspicion pending further evidence coming in. It’s this power that led Sir Ken McDonald to say to the Home Affairs Committee the other week that 28 days is enough.

Well, that’s a half-decent justification from Charlie although the threshold test, as he admitted, has been around for a couple of years. It’s true there’s been some http://www.gooakley.com/ confusion about whether it applied in terrorist cases (though I can’t think why anyone thought it didn’t), a confusion Ken McDonald removed in his evidence to the the Home Affairs committee. Falconer explained that it’s only fairly recently become clear that the threshold test was relevant and part of the solution to the pre-charge detention issue. This report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights in summer 2006 testifies to the confusion; but also shows that everyone was clear well before Lord Falconer left office that the threshold test does apply.

So why no recantation before now?

2017-03-20T10:36:12+00:00Tags: , , |