Consultation on the Criminal Procedure Rules for Expert Evidence

The consultation ended on 21 January 2006 at which point our final submission was sent to the Criminal Procedure Rules Committee.

An interesting feature of our submission to Lord Carter’s Review of Legal Aid Procurement (tell me more...) was the extent to which improvements in the use of expert evidence will rely on changes to the governing rule. It is, then, particularly welcome that this is the very moment the Criminal Procedure Rules (CrimPR) Committee decides to consult on the rules that govern expert evidence in the criminal justice system.

The Committee has drafted a set of rules that will form Part 33 of the criminal code. These are based, in large part, on the equivalent Part 35 rules in the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) but with modifications to reflect the different features and requirements of criminal proceedings. The purpose of the consultation is to find out what others think of the proposed rules, if any of the proposed rules are inappropriate and whether there are other rules that could be considered. So, nice and broad then!

The UK Register of Expert Witnesses has been asked to draw together views of individual expert witnesses. To help in this task we have prepared a number of resources:

• the text of the draft rules
• the guidance notes issued by the Committee to accompany the draft rules
• an initial submission based on our own analysis
• a quick and easy voting system to help us gauge the level of support for various elements of our initial submission
• a convenient on-line response system to allow you to answer in full the specific questions posed in the consultation.

The general deadline for responses is 7 December, but in light of the considerable work involved in our obtaining and collating views from the thousands of expert witnesses in the Register, we have been given until 21 January 2006 to respond.

How to respond

To respond, you can:

	lend your support to, or record your rejection of, the views contained in our initial response through our on-line voting system tell me more...
	use our on-line survey to respond to the specific questions set by the Consultation Paper take me there...
	send us your written response. tell me how...

This consultation is now closed.