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Criminal Law (Amendment) (Protection of Property) Bill

That is not the issue. The problem is that these people were not in buildings, and if they were not in a building they could not have relied on this defence. My hon. Friend makes an important point, but I think that prevention of crime here refers to crime in the immediate circumstances rather than to a burglar committing a crime next week or next month. Mr. Faulkner, another example from 2004, was a 73-year-old farmer who shot a burglar after he had been broken into three times. The judge said that he could not be criticised for the way in which he defended his property. He was not prosecuted because he had the reasonable force defence. Mr. Cook, in a case from August 2003, used a hockey stick to beat up a group of late-night revellers who attacked his wife outside the family home. He was acquitted under the reasonable force rules, but because the incident did not take place in a building, he would not have been able to pray the Bill in aid in any case. There is also the case of Linda Walker in March 2005. This was the famous case of a special needs teacher who defended herself heroically. She fired an air pistol at a group of youths who were terrorising her, but she was imprisoned because, under the old rules, it was not considered to be self-defence. As it took place outside her property and not in a building, the Bill could not have helped her. That is one case that might be on the borderline between ““disproportionate”” and ““grossly disproportionate””, but because the event happened in a building, she would not have benefited from the Bill in any case.