Baroness Brinton (LD)

My Lords, I support Amendment 486 and thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, for his excellent introduction to it, which was very clear to follow. Over the decades, thousands of people have been wrongly jailed for life in appalling miscarriages of justice because of the use of joint enterprise to charge those present with the commission of a serious crime. Sometimes that might be someone who was present and thought they were going to be involved in a low-level crime, whereas they had no involvement at all in the actual violence or murder committed by another but were still charged under joint enterprise as if they had also committed the act of violence or murder. That is very similar to the example that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, gave us. Even worse, there are those who have been jailed for murder simply because they were present at the act of murder, although they had not been members of the gang involved. Over the last 15 years, this House has seen various amendments and had debates and questions trying to correct and clarify when charges should or should not be used for those who did not commit serious acts of violence. As has already been mentioned, a decade ago the Supreme Court recognised that joint enterprise had been used repeatedly and incorrectly in many cases, but nothing has really changed since then. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for quoting the figures for the three years before and after 2016, because that judgment has not changed the numbers either. The key questions addressed by the Supreme Court, including what qualifies as assistance and encouragement, remain obfuscatory. It is still not clear whether presence at a serious crime is in itself enough. I will not repeat the data that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and others have mentioned in the briefing we got from Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association. I differ slightly from the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. It is quite notable that over 50% of those prosecuted are not just young Black men and women, but there is also substantial overrepresentation of disabled and neurodivergent people, as well as many under 25. I might understand the last, but not the others on their own. The proposal of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, would completely change the approach to considering who has been involved in serious crime. The amendment would ensure that, rather than guessing the individual's state of mind, associations and foresight of what might occur, the CPS must look at actual material actions, making that the baseline objective threshold for prosecution. I hope that the Minister is finally prepared to change the injustice in the use of joint enterprise and start a new era based on facts, not suppositions.