Greeny News

Not enough attention has been paid to a remarkable U-turn, and a piece of buck-passing, by the government over its broken pledge to give defendants in rape cases anonymity.

The climbdown itself has been well reported, firstly by the Sunday Telegraph , and then elsewhere (examples below in list of sources).

But it struck me forcefully when I was being interviewed yesterday about the matter by BBC Radio 5 Live that the coalition's sleight of hand deserves much more publicity.

Minister of Justice Crispin BluntNot so much words on the eve of his speech Press Complaints Commission, Suddenly announced that he would negotiate with the PCC, to convince the newspaper to provide the anonymity of rape suspects.

He even suggested that the CPC leadership to the editor in 2004, recommends that the documents do not identify people before they are accused of rape should be strengthened.

That took me by surprise because I couldn't recall the PCC ever issuing such guidance on rape. So I checked and discovered that no guidance exists, and nothing so specific has ever been issued. The 2004 advice document is about court reporting in general.

You might just have thought that Blunt and/or his officials might have done some checking before he made that statement.

Then again, he was already on dodgy ground because of the U-turn. In the coalition programme for government, it states: "We will extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants."

Now the justice ministry are saying this was not, after all, a legislative commitment. Instead, it's a job for press self-regulation.

In fact, the government has backed down in the face of fierce political and legal hostility to the idea. And it certainly won't find the PCC too happy to deal with it either.

Indeed, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke spoke of there being strong arguments for and against when advocating a free vote. That was on 15 June, and it was clear that there was already a change of heart because of a subtle change to the promise.

Men would only be granted anonymity "until they were charged". (The number of cases in which papers know of men arrested on suspicion of rape before being charged would, incidentally, be so low as to make such a law meaningless).

So how should we expect the PCC to react? The commission will undoubtedly listen to what the justice ministry has to say. But it cannot effect a code change (that's a matter for the editors' code committee).

Anyway, how should the code be changed? And, more to the point, why should it be changed? Should the PCC even contemplate what we might call "soft guidance" on the matter to editors?

My hunch is that nothing will come of this. If parliament wishes to grant anonymity through, say, a further amendment to the 1976 Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act, then it should have the guts to do so.

It's not for the PCC or editors to get the government off the hook. That's not to say that I don't have sympathy for men wrongly accused of rape who suffer from the media publicity when they are charged. I most certainly do.

But ultimately, I think justice must be done openly.

Sources: Sunday Telegraph/The Guardian/ BBC /The Independent/ Innews / Daily Mail