Swearing on the Bible should have been scrapped

On Saturday, 19 October, the Magistrates' Association rejected the proposal to end in England and Wales the swearing of oaths on the Bible and other holy books. Given the amount of perjury in our courts, the oath seems to have done little in bolstering the veracity of court testimony. I think the removal of the oath is both fair and respectful of Christian belief.

If you were an innocent, non-religious defendant, wouldn't you consider it unjust if your evidence, given under affirmation, was automatically viewed as less credible because it was not given under oath? Similarly, should police evidence automatically be seen as more credible simply because it comes from someone in uniform?

The oath is, no doubt, a deterrent for sincere religious people. Yet, how many God-fearing people, the present readership included, end up as witnesses, let alone defendants? I wager few! The swearing of oaths is, for the most part, done by those for whom it is a matter of formality. God is dishonoured in these ways.

Back in 1968, Henry Cecil QC stated that 'a man charged with a crime is pretty well given a free licence to commit as much perjury as he likes in his attempts to be acquitted of the crime with which he's charged. The amount of perjury committed in criminal trials is tremendous.'

And in 1997, David Pickover, former police officer and one time commandant of the West Yorkshire Police Training School commented that, 'as our judicial system is increasingly perceived as being nothing more than a game, perjury is sometimes seen as nothing more than a professional foul.' Indeed, prosecutions for perjury are few and far between.

As for police perjury, in 1986 Barrister David Wolchover estimated from his 14 years experience at the Bar, mainly in London, that police perjury occurs in about 30 per cent of trials, an estimate he states is shared by 75 per cent of the 55 barristers he informally surveyed about the matter.

If the oath was scrapped and only the affirmation made available, all those hell-bent on committing perjury, civilian or police, would at least not add to their sin by calling upon God to witness to their lie - a case of the lesser of two evils being applied.

The Catechism teaches that oaths are permissible for grave and right reasons, but not for trivia. Yet, as the New Catholic Encyclopedia tells us, 'the lawgiver [] should not lightly multiply demands for sworn statements; otherwise the oath can become a mere formality that is thus deprived of probative value, and the temptation to perjury is thereby increased.'

The proposal to remove the oath from our courts is not the problem. The key problem is the amount of perjury committed, with the further problem of how to combat it. Our response needs to be tackled from an earthly not heavenly horizon. On that point, the secularists are right. We ought not to pass the buck onto God!

Dr Paul Dixon is a lay Catholic theologian who teaches philosophy and ethics. He lives in the diocese of Cardiff