Justice committee  We haven't. I can't give you any data on that, I'm afraid. It might be something we could supply further to the session.

Justice committee  We don't think so. We think the difference is in the time the case takes to review rather than the outcome. Once a case gets back to the court, the court will appoint representation for the actual hearing day.

Justice committee  There is a definite overrepresentation of certain communities within the prison population. We work on our outreach to try to improve our application intake so that it is representative of the prison population. We've had some success with that, but it requires a good investment, as far as the commission is resourced, to do that—to go into prisons and build those relationships with people in prison and build trust within the communities.

Justice committee  We wouldn't look at a case if there were live proceedings or an appeal under way. You have to exhaust that. We'll do a triage with a screening. We'll be able to size the case. Is it something we could expect to make a couple of inquiries on? Is there a much longer process? We will size cases as small, medium, or large.

Justice committee  You can make a recommendation. The commissioner makes the decision in all cases. Experienced staff will maybe make a recommendation that this does look like a hopeless case, but a commissioner will make that decision. Sometimes we'll disagree.

Justice committee  It would be extreme vulnerability. Social standing could be an issue. Mental health could be an issue. It's the need to investigate something that you couldn't do yourself. If you're looking at surveillance material, the average person isn't going to be able to get access to that.

Justice committee  Yes. I think it's an important part of our work. The miscarriages of justice that we've investigated and referred and that have been quashed by the court are with people who haven't exhausted their appeals. They're in such large numbers that it would seem sensible to take that on board in some form.

Justice committee  We changed it from a text-heavy form to a much simpler one. In terms of representation, people often don't know why they were wrongly convicted. They know they didn't do what they were accused of, but asking them to articulate what went wrong is really only a starting point. Even good lawyers don't necessarily have that answer, so we have to look at things and bring our own skills to bear on the cases.

Justice committee  About 97% of our applicants are disappointed, in the sense that they receive a turndown from us. There's no way of knowing that at the outset of the process. It's something we have to deal with.

Justice committee  It could be new DNA that's discovered by more sensitive testing than was available years ago. It can be examples of police misconduct, such as an officer being discredited in a subsequent investigation. We've had pathology cases in which pathologists have overstated the accuracy of time of death.

Justice committee  Recently we had clarification from our Supreme Court on the law relating to joint enterprise. When multiple people have been involved in, let's say, a murder, but it's not possible to say who did what, the Supreme Court clarified that. We had to look at around 20 years' worth of cases to decide whether a new legal argument applied there.

Justice committee  Thank you. Our test is if there is a real possibility that the appeal courts would quash the conviction and if our case law tells us the real possibility is below the balance of probabilities—that it's less than a 50% chance in that respect. It has to be real, so it's reasonable rather than fanciful.

Justice committee  Good evening, everybody. I'm very pleased to be with you this evening and to assist you with this important work. I thought it would be helpful to set out some background to the U.K. commission's role, structure and powers, and the work we do within the British criminal justice system.