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As the Government and Opposition fall over each other in their haste to protect anonymous witnesses in criminal trials - a quickie bill is to be published this week, and almost certainly passed next week - the most important question, as usual in political panics, has been missed. Why is anonymous evidence so much more necessary than it used to be?
Until about 15 years ago, secret witnesses, testifying with their faces, voices and names disguised, were all but unknown in British courts - for the very good reason, as the Law Lords said, that such witnesses breach the right to a fair trial.
For not only can anonymity protect an innocent witness with a justified fear of intimidation, it can also protect a witness who is a criminal using the courts to do down a rival, or curry favour with the police, or win himself a lighter sentence. Without knowing who is giving evidence, it's harder to know if they have a motive for lying.
In the Nineties, anonymity started to be allowed in "exceptional" circumstances but what was exceptional seems now to have become routine. According to one QC in the appeal to the Law Lords, applications for anonymity are made in three-quarters of his cases.
The Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, told MPs last week that anonymous evidence is " fundamental" to a "significant number" of cases, "some of which" involve murder, blackmail, violent disorder and terrorism.
A significant number - only some of which are serious. It may be that, in an era of gangs and terror, the need for anonymous evidence has risen - although I doubt it. We managed to tackle the Krays, the Richardsons and the IRA - who all operated in much more close-knit communities than now - without screens and voice-disguisers, and also without the vast forensic and electronic resources available to the police today.
Other countries still manage to convict their gangsters without anonymity. But even if the need has risen, there is simply no way that it can have risen, in 15 years, from nil to the gigantic dimensions (hundreds of cases) reported last week.
What we're actually seeing here is another example of the greediness of state and police power, of the sly way in which Britain is moving from a free to an unfree society. Just as surveillance powers brought in for terrorists are now being used against people suspected of littering, secret evidence in court has gone from "exceptional" to "fundamental" in little more than a decade.
Like so many of these things, it has also been done without the faintest breath of public debate.
Thanks to the Law Lords, we will at least get that in Parliament next week. And while MPs may well conclude that there is a case for witness anonymity, they would do well to write in the strictest possible safeguards, safeguards which mean that this drastic step is taken only very rarely, and never simply for police convenience.
If they do not, and perhaps indeed even if they do, the Law Lords, or the European Court, will simply throw it out again, regardless of Mr Straw's quickie bill.
• Sir Ian Blair had a fascinating response to the latest accusations that he discriminates against his senior black officers. "I believe I have a long, honourable and occasionally bloodstained record of the championing of diversity," he said. Sir Ian is right. His Force's most famously bloodstained act, the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, is the prime example of how the Met under him is a fierce opponent of discrimination - between the guilty and the innocent.
That's enough Scottish news
One of the problems of being a politician in Scotland is that the country simply has too many journalists for the available supply of news.
What with the Scots papers, the tartan editions of the English ones and the BBC Scotland programmes to fill - all in a land of just five million - the inevitable result is the desperate overplaying of some decidedly bonsai scandals, the latest example being the "Donorgate" horror that cost Labour's leader Wendy Alexander her job over an illegal gift of - wait for it - £950. The BBC has said that what we all need is more coverage of Scottish politics. No. No. Please, no.
Admit fault? Not our Ken
Andrew Marr wanted to know: what had Ken got wrong? Was it cronyism, arrogance, waste, Lee Jasper? But Mr Livingstone, of course, doesn't do admissions of error. "The one mistake I regret making was not specifying that the call centre for the congestion charge would be in Croydon, rather than Coventry," said the ex-King Newt yesterday, in roughly his 850th interview since he was cheated of his crown.
Mr Livingstone clearly considers that his defeat was a mistake by the people of London, rather than by himself. Given this sort of attitude, however, rejecting Ken looks like one of those mistakes Londoners will quite happily keep on making.
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Re "That's enough Scottish News" - Mr Gilligan - £950 maybe small beer for London columnists. Ms Alexander was passing laws whereby people who were charged with matters less than £950 could end up court. Politicians cannot expect people to be at risk of court appearance for forgetting to pay say Council Tax or TV Licence and expect to be free from scrutiny themselves regardless of party.
- Martin, Aberdeenshire Scotland
I thought I was clear on the need for anonymity, but your well-argued case causes me to have real concerns that it would be another step towards oppression.
Your point about the HUGE £950 Wendy Alexander has resigned over is spot-on, (Spelman, do the words "do the right thing" not come to mind?).
Ken did at least admit that he should have lifted his vote past a third of a million to have been re-elected, and he accepted HE had failed in that.
Finally, it probably was Boris's 850th interview since DisMay-Day, or around 845 more than Boris has been allowed by his controllers.
Mr Cameron- can we please have more Boris on TV and radio phone-ins? Please let the poor chap out to play, he's visibly wilting before our eyes!
- Fresh, London
Andrew the examples you cite are ludicrous in your argument for not allowing secret witnesses. The IRA?! The IRA only does not bomb anymore because of years of negotiations, not to mention terror campaigns, and decades of misery in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Knife crime is best solved by local communities, the IRA lost influence because their actions became unpalatable.
If you made it so that people knew that their faces, names and addresses would be made public giving evidence in trials, how many people would give evidence then? It would leave those who commit knife crimes, or those who carry knives, with the upper hand, knowing that the courts would have next to no evidence to prosecute.
You seem to be so obsessed with freedom and liberty that you are willing to let it pervade the judicial system in such a way that violent crime will surely increase, and streets will be less safe. Police offering anonymity is one of the only weapons the police have in breaking through the shroud of silence, the omerta, which exists in some areas. A culture of fear surrounds the crimes, with gang members willing and able to threaten those who testify against them. Why should this bullying, terrifying tactic be legally enshrined?
- Will, London
