The Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke has announced his intention to put before Parliament ‘as soon as time allows’ proposals to allow the televising of court proceedings.
Initially this will be restricted to broadcasting just the judgments in the Court of Appeal, with the intention to expand this same idea into the Crown Courts.
I’m unsure of the sense of such proposals as it will be impossible, from the Judges’ remarks and sentence alone, to get any real impression as to whether justice has been served in any particular case.
I also fail to see how, in Ken Clarke’s words, this will “allow the public to judge for themselves how we are performing and to hold us to account."
It seems to me that you should either broadcast all the proceedings of a case, evidence, witnesses, verdict, sentence etc. or, as at present, none at all. Of course that may be the ultimate aim and outcome and Mr Clarke is simply adopting the ‘salami principle’, getting what he wants one slice at a time.
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