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. ...

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One of the misfortunes of the Church of England is that the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has been preoccupied with crisis management and unable to give enough attention to what he is best at, the convincing exposition of the case for Christian faith. Morally he may lean to the liberal side, but doctrinally he is orthodox with an unusual ability to present familiar ...