It's the law that needs updating to prevent disinformation

Rudakubana was arrested at the scene and subsequent searches and investigations revealed that he was bent on violence and had previously come to the notice of authorities. His immediate arrest should have reassured the community that the threat had been abated yet instead nationwide riots sparked from a vicious and ignorant surge of misinformation about him, his status, his religion and his nationality. At the time, the Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, Serena Kennedy, released to the media that the offender was a seventeen-year-old male from Lancashire, born in Cardiff. As he was seventeen, she did not reveal his name nor anything further about him and that, with hindsight, created a vacuum for others to fill.

In a BBC Panorama documentary last month, this approach was criticised by many, including Jonathan Hall KC, the UK's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. He specifically said: "People got the sense that something was being withheld or fudged in some way, and that led the social media types who wanted to spread disinformation to spread disinformation." He also said that more information could, and should, have been shared by the police, including his colour, nationality, background and faith. Chief Constable Kennedy is clear that she did not discount releasing this information so held a 90-minute conversation with a Crown Prosecution Service senior lawyer who told her not to depart from the standard guidance which is that the police say essentially what she did about suspects prior to their trial.

By chance, the Contempt of Court Act 1911 is currently subject to review by the Law Commission. This legislation creates the policy that when police release information following an arrest, it is necessarily scant and very often restricted to just the name, age and approximate area where the defendant lives. This has been common practice for decades and is such to safeguard and secure a fair trial while balancing the need to keep the public informed and reassured.

The events that took place following the murders, inflicted serious harm on communities, not to mention locked many down in fear for their lives, were entirely the fault of those who spread the disinformation and those who took to the streets to react so criminally. What Ms Kennedy did was to recognise the explosive unintended impact of such a rudimentary press release and seek to mitigate that by expanding on it. She was prevented from doing so by the CPS. Imagine the outcry if she had had ignored that advice and Rudakubana’s trial had collapsed as a consequence. She was acting within the law and within policy and it is that outdated law and policy at fault, not her. I was surprised that Mr Hall KC called her out so vocally and I wonder what he would have done at trial had she given more information and he’d been the offender’s defence counsel.

The Contempt of Court Act 1911 is there for a reason but in the words of Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes, the head of counter terrorism policing, the legal processes the police are working within were built for a different time and that ways need to be found to, in appropriate cases, reveal more about investigations when public safety or confidence demands it.

Once again this is a broader issue that encapsulates several agencies yet once again it is the police who find themselves in the spotlight while others duck their heads below the parapet or don their hindsight spectacles.

We cannot tolerate the outrageous behaviour we saw in the summer following the three little girls’ murders, nor forget who is truly to blame but in this social media, twenty-four-hour news, instant information world we now live in, archaic laws such as the Contempt of Court Act 1911 do need to be updated for today's times and the public and justice protected accordingly. Releasing information yet ensuring fair trials is a tricky balance but other jurisdictions manage it so there’s no reason we cannot.

Former Brighton and Hove police chief Graham Bartlett’s Brighton-based Jo Howe crime novel series continues with City on Fire which is now available in paperback.