Matt Foot writes about the inequity of the compensation regime for those who have suffered a miscarriage of justice (Andrew Malkinson was right to expose these ministers. Why do they keep punishing innocent people?, 9 August). The root of the problem is the abolition of the discretionary ex gratia scheme that was announced without consultation in April 2006 by the then home secretary Charles Clark, as part of the “rebalancing of criminal justice in favour of the victim” – a soundbite that seems to have overlooked the fact that those who are wrongly convicted are themselves victims.
Under both the current iteration of the statutory test and its predecessor, it is unlikely that, for example, the Birmingham Six would have received compensation. In the supreme court decision in the cases of Sam Hallam and Victor Nealon, currently being litigated in the European court of human rights, Lord Kerr, in a minority judgment, made the point that it can be “an impossible task” to prove innocence. Either the statutory test needs to be significantly revised or the discretionary scheme needs to be reintroduced.
Henry Blaxland KC
Garden Court Chambers
