In this country we profess trial of those accused of criminal offences by our courts, not by public opinion. Thus Blake Morrison does a service in highlighting the manner in which the more sensationalist parts of the press have vilified the two young brothers charged with the attempted murder of two other young boys. Notionally Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (now part of our domestic law) guarantees the right to a fair trial but it provides no sanction against such pre-trial reporting which prejudices a fair trial. It prompts the question as to why we continue to permit our media to report anything other than the bare facts of an arrest in advance of trial. By all means let us have full and fair reporting of a trial. The only beneficiary of uninhibited pre-trial publicity is a profit-seeking media satisfying an unhealthy appetite by a section of the public.

Whilst inspired to write I ought to mention another subject which continues to concern me, the disgraceful way in which the Government (admittedly then headed by Blair) handled the cover-up of the bribes allegedly paid to Saudi officials when the investigation being carried out by the Serious Frauds Office was discontinued, ostensibly in the national interest, an action which equally disgracefully was rubber-stamped by the House of Lords. I revisited the subject after the Observer, on 5 April in its Business section, ran an article headed "Brown backs new global assault on tax avoidance" which reported on the present Prime Minister's letter to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (the OECD) "about the need to build on recent international breakthroughs on bank secrecy 'to make further advances in the fight against harmful tax practices'". The article quoted from Gordon Brown's letter (described by No 10 as an 'opening salvo') to the OECD and said he wanted the OECD which co-ordinates international tax protocols,to relaunch its drive to outlaw harmful tax competition and to end tax abuses that deprive the public purse of hundreds of millions of pounds. This struck me as rich, real chutzpah, coming from a Government of which Brown was a key member, which in 2007 had put the damper on the Saudi arms bribe investigation which was roundly condemned by none other than the OECD for breaching the international convention on bribery. So I wrote to the paper and although my letter was not published I now reproduce it as it seems to me very relevant and exposes the Governmental hypocrisy in using the OECD for one purpose, a very proper one, when it rejects it for another: