The alleged involvement of top footballers in a rape case has stirred the debate over whether defendants should be named.

Grania Langdon-Down looks at the arguments

The furore surrounding the allegations that a 17-year-old young woman was raped by Premiership footballers in a London hotel is the latest in a string of high-profile cases that have raised the question - how should these extremely sensitive cases be handled?

Names of possible suspects have been plastered over Web sites and newspapers, followed by threats of libel action from their solicitors, while England and Newcastle United star, Kieron Dyer, issued a two-page statement through his solicitors denying any involvement.

Inevitably, the case has reopened the debate over whether or not suspects being investigated in relation to sex offences should receive the same anonymity as complainants, either until charge or until conviction.

The obvious vehicle for introducing such a change has been the Sexual Offences Bill - expected to receive Royal Assent before Christmas - which has brought together and updated centuries-old legislation.

It introduced new offences to protect victims - particularly children and vulnerable adults - and strengthened the framework of penalties for sex offenders.

The House of Lords introduced a clause which would have given defendants anonymity until conviction.

However, it was knocked out during the Bill's committee stage in the House of Commons after opposition from the government, which prefers the voluntary, non-legislative route of strengthening guidance for the media and police.

Jennifer Temkin, professor of law at the University of Sussex, maintains that the government was right - and she backs its arguments that defendants need to be named in the interests of open justice and to ensure other victims or witnesses have the opportunity to come forward.

She says: 'We have gone through this game on anonymity so many times.

Whenever there is a celebrity involved, the newspapers rehash the argument and there are calls for a change in the law.

But defendants were given anonymity in 1976 and it didn't work out.

The law had to be changed in 1988 and there was universal acclaim for its reversal.'

She says that men accused of rape should not be privileged above other defendants.

'There are lots of situations which are a smear on people's reputations - being charged with murder is a smear.

I think giving anonymity to accused men in these situations sends out the most appalling message and undermines everything that other changes in the law are trying to achieve.

You do not want to put forward the message that women who complain of rape are so likely to be telling fibs that we have to protect all men who are suspected or charged with rape.'

However, for Rodney Warren, a member of the Law Society's criminal law committee and director of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, the Bill was a missed opportunity to reintroduce anonymity.

'It was a great surprise when the anonymity clause was taken out.

It is right that justice is seen to be done but it can still be done even with anonymity, with the veil lifted on conviction.

'That seems to me to be the entirely fair way to proceed.

I am not in this to support men or women - what we need to be concerned with is justice and ensuring whether or not there is an appropriate conviction.

You need to look at the consequences of what is happening - in many cases men are accused and later acquitted but the way the press operates, their acquittal does nothing to lessen the damage to their reputation.'

Mr Warren, senior partner of Rodney Warren & Co in Eastbourne, Kent, says the Law Society's criminal law committee is concerned at the way the police leak information about cases.

'The law officers and the government could well look again at whether or not there should be a ban on the disclosure of any names of those being investigated until the point of charge.'

Robert Brown, partner with niche criminal defence practice Corker Binning in London, is vice-president of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors' Association.

He says the other issue behind anonymity is the need to protect a defendant's right to a fair trial under the Contempt of Court Act 1981 and article 6 of the Human Rights Act.

He acknowledges: 'There might be occasions when publication of a name is necessary in the interests of justice but the facility to do that could be maintained in the same way a complainant's anonymity can be removed by an application to a Crown Court judge.'

For Professor John Spencer QC, professor of law at Cambridge University, dropping the anonymity clause is symptomatic of the government's authoritarian attitude towards criminal justice issues.

'The government talks about open justice - but what about the presumption of innocence and the notion that people shouldn't be publicly branded as criminals without having been convicted?'

The Bill also tries to tackle the defence of consent in rape cases, replacing the current subjective test of whether the man honestly believed the complainant consented with the objective test of whether the man was 'reasonable' to have believed there was consent.

Prof Spencer says: 'In principle, I am in favour of subjective mens rea, but I don't regard this change as likely to create any practical injustice.

The difficulty is getting round the evidential problem that it is usually one person's word against another.

I find it deeply objectionable that you cannot put the defendant's previous sexual misconduct before the court as evidence.

Theoretically, the Criminal Justice Bill will strengthen the prosecution's hand in that respect.'

He is sceptical about whether any changes to the law of rape will actually make any difference.

'By widening the definition, you will get more people prosecuted and possibly convicted but I would be very surprised if you get a higher conviction rate as a result of changes in substantive law.'

He contends that the Bill as a whole is positive and fills in gaps with new offences, such as grooming children for sex.

'But the spirit of it is authoritarian and the result is overcriminalisation,' he argues.

He points to the offences designed to protect children from paedophiles which will render a range of sexual acts, such as 'rude games' between two ten-year-olds or two boys looking at a dirty book, seriously criminal.

He says: 'Some of the offences intended to protect children involve ridiculous overkill yet there is no difficulty in defining offences to avoid this happening.

'But there is a deep-seated attitude within the Home Office that it is right to define offences as broadly as possible, defences as narrowly as possible, and leave the rest up to the authorities and their view of the rule of law.

However, this just undermines the credibility of the Act.'

Peter Rook QC, of 18 Red Lion Court, is currently working on the third edition of Rook and Ward on Sexual Offences (Sweet and Maxwell) to include the new Bill.

He agrees it casts its net too widely on some offences.

'There is an element of control freakery to it.

Of course we want everything unacceptable circumscribed, but you can't have a system which relies on police discretion whether or not to proceed because you will end up with uneven justice.'

However Prof Temkin argues the Bill is not over-prescriptive: 'There is a misconception that the Bill is bringing teenagers into offences.

The law as far as teenagers are concerned is not going to be changed because the age of consent will remain constant.'

She explains that it is the case at the moment that if a boy has sexual relations with someone under 16, even if he is an adolescent himself, he commits an offence and 'we have to leave it to the prosecuting authorities to decide whether to prosecute and very rarely do they do so.

Yes, there is prosecutorial discretion under the Bill but then there always has been.

How can you avoid that? The point is there are children who abuse other children,' she adds.

For Mr Brown, the problems with the Bill lie in its drafting.

'This is part and parcel of the cavalier way the government regards the criminal justice system and uses it is a political football.'

Grania Langdon-Down is a freelance journalist