On balance, the Law Society came out as supportive of the anonymity provisions. I take Anne Marie Hicks’s point that there might be adequate protections, but in our consultation response and our response to the call for evidence, we said that there might be circumstances in which the press would try it out.
Our feeling about it touches on something that was mentioned earlier about the need of vulnerable witnesses for support. Although we do not want unnecessary legislation, and I will touch on that shortly, there might be an opportunity for that bill to carry such a specific measure.
As I say, I am not saying that there is not adequate protection already, but if it was in the bill, you would be very much underlining the fact that anonymity is there for people. Whether other areas of legislation should have that provision is a matter for another time and place, but as I understand it, you are looking for things that could actively be done to tackle an undercurrent of a problem. To go back to the point about clarity of legislation, making what you are saying abundantly clear means that there can be no doubt. It will not be left to a sheriff to decide, and the press will not try something out and make a mistake. I suppose that anonymity is the one aspect of the English set-up that we could see would work.
With regard to the other aspect, I refer to what I said in our evidence. On failure to protect, whether there are adequate protections or not, the criminal law committee is concerned about the possibility that the over-criminalisation of the law could make it too complex or bring about a situation in which there are so many offences that the police do not know what to report and it becomes difficult to prosecute. I am hedging my bets. If, after the bill is enacted, you find that there is some need for the provision, you could look at the legislation again when you had an evidence base.
I do not really have anything to add on the duty to notify the police. If there is always to be a positive duty, it must be contained in statute. I am always concerned about the fact that we set out all these duties in legislation when, sometimes, they can be best left to guidance. I do not think that there is any more that I can add.