Kicking criminals is easy, but who will speak up for the accused?

Victims Commissioner Vera Baird says the ‘double jeopardy’ rule – which prevents a person being tried for the same offence twice – should not apply in certain cases to those acquitted of less serious crimes against children. This is a big mistake. It would make Britain’s rules on double jeopardy – a legal principle established for thousands of years – among the most feeble in the West.

Demands for cracking down on ‘criminals’ are easy to make. They are also politically popular. Boris Johnson has realised this with his calls for longer sentences for criminals. After all, tougher treatment of those accused of sexual crime are among the few things that unite the traditional Conservative ‘law’n’order’ right and the ‘woke’ left.

Yet Baird – and Boris Johnson – should know there is a heavy price to pay here. Over the last 35 years, there has been a gradual revolution in criminal evidence and procedure.