Mark Littlewood, Campaigns Director of Liberty said:
The proposals contained in the Queen's speech are an affront to justice.

The Government has said that tackling crime is the most important task for the government. However, it is focusing attention at the wrong end of the criminal justice system. Blaming fair trial protections for crime rates is wrong and misleads the public. Less than 10 per cent of people who go to court are acquitted - the rest are all convicted. The problem is that in over three-quarters of all crimes - over four million every year -no-one is arrested. That's about resources and efficiency in the police and crown prosecution service - not about the courts.

Making trials less fair won't cut crime rates: it will send more innocent people to prison. The Government wants to shortcut justice, because it's cheap and it gets good headlines. But it's wrong and it won't solve the problem.

The politicians will get to look tough on crime, but crime levels will go untouched, while British justice will be seriously damaged. And the measures that attack fair trial standards won't help victims either: eroding the rights of suspects won't give victims the rights they have waited too long to receive.

Our principal concerns relate to the removal of safeguards against wrongful conviction:

EVIDENCE - PREVIOUS CONVICTIONS, HEARSAY
Allowing evidence of previous convictions and hearsay evidence may get the result the Government wants - more convictions - but far too many of them will be the wrongful convictions of innocent people. Previous convictions do not prove that someone committed this offence on this occasion; introducing them will simply mean more people being convicted because they appear to be someone 'likely' to have committed an offence.

The Government talks about 'shifting the balance' towards victims not defendants: it can't see that if you convict the wrong people, both the innocent defendant and the victim suffer.

DOUBLE JEOPARDY
Removing the protection of double jeopardy may well help convict a handful more serious criminals; unfortunately, it will also lead to the repeated prosecution of many more innocent people. For innocent people, even once acquitted, their ordeal won't be over. And police and prosecutors, knowing they can have a 'second bash', won't have to tackle real problems of incompetent investigation in the first place.

JURY TRIAL
It is anticipated that the forthcoming criminal justice bill will erode trial by jury in what the Government call 'serious and complex cases'. The Government's efforts yet again to cut jury trials show contempt both for trial by jury - the very core of our criminal justice system - and for Parliament, which has twice already rejected schemes to deny more people this basic right. Just as people should not be allowed to avoid jury service without very good reason, so juries should not be discarded by the Government or courts at the least excuse.

ANTI SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
The Government also intends to introduce legislation to combat anti social behaviour. We appreciate this is a subject that is of great concern to the public but fear this amounts to little more than a gimmick to make it appear that the government is taking action. The idea that creating endless new offences will solve this blight on people's lives ignores the facts. Most of this behaviour - vandalism, graffiti and threatening behaviour for example - is already criminal and covered by the law. Many of the measures proposed, such as 'on the spot' fines for littering, will be extremely difficult to enforce effectively unless, for example, there is a police officer on duty outside every tube station. This would be a huge drain on police resources that are better targeted against serious crime.

We are concerned that taken together these measures amount to 'zero tolerance' policy by another name. In the past zero tolerance has been found to disproportionately affect the homeless and those from ethnic minorities causing resentment and inconvenience but with little effect.

Anti social behaviour is a nuisance and the solution must be to change attitudes rather than create unenforceable new laws and place extra burdens on police resources.