From the editor’s desk

Confidence in the law

Dissatisfaction with the law's treatment of victims has prompted radical proposals from both Government and Opposition this week. The Tory leader, David Cameron, has responded to fears that the Human Rights Act is too concerned with the rights of offenders, and promised to replace it with a "British Bill of Rights". Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has proposed a drastic overhaul of the criminal justice system to produce a "better balance" between its treatment of offenders and the rest of the community, victims included. A system designed for the nineteenth century is not fit for the twenty-first, he said in a lecture, rather ignoring the fact that his own Government has been tinkering with the system for the past nine years.

Thanks largely to the concentration of the press on a few unusual cases, there is a widespread sense that something has gone wrong, but that does not mean that the remedies proposed should be welcomed. Indeed the immediate cause of the controversy was irrelevant to either of these suggested reforms. A paedophile who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a three-year-old girl was sentenced to life imprisonment and then told by the judge that he would be eligible to apply for parole in five years. This was interpreted as a probable five-year sentence, and denounced as far too lenient in the circumstances.

So it was; but the cause of the outcry was not a systematic neglect of the rights of victims. It was the system's failure only in so far as the language that the judge used - had to use, as the rules stand - was inappropriate and confusing, especially the contrast between life and five years. Confidence will inevitably be undermined when legal language does not mean what it says. The paedophile in question had virtually no chance of parole in five years or even 10, as the judge well knew.

Such confidence-ebbing confusion of language is general throughout the system. An adjustment of what is said in court to reconcile it with everyday reality would go a long way to meet current concerns - as would, in this case, a review of the right of habitual paedophiles to parole after any period, because of the persistent nature of their condition.

In general, life imprisonment should mean incarceration for the greater part of a lifetime. If the public knew that, there would be less need for the Lord Chancellor's new proposal that victims' family members should be allowed to address the court before sentencing in cases of murder or manslaughter - instead of the present arrangement where they can submit a written statement. The proposal does not so much repair a real loophole in the law as respond to public panic based on ignorance and misunderstanding.

The same fault applies to Mr Cameron's analysis of the Human Rights Act. By making a Bill of Rights sound more British than Labour's Act, he appeals to the anti-European streak in public opinion. But what he throws out through the front door he still allows through the back - access to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. It may well be that a Bill of Rights could usefully tidy up the Human Rights Act. But that is not the political project he has embarked on. Both he and Tony Blair want to sound tough. They may succeed only in undermining public confidence still further.