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Criminal Law (Amendment) (Protection of Property) Bill

My hon. Friend is right, but I am just trying to do the best I can by applying a little common sense to the definitions. The promoters have constructed a whole superstructure to suggest that a change in the law is necessary to protect people in certain circumstances, but the examples that I have cited prove that their case is fallacious. In all those cases, people were either not charged or acquitted under existing law. In some cases, the new defence provided by the Bill would not apply because the events happened outside a building. In other cases, they would have fallen foul of the new law because the force used was excessive. I do not understand what the hon. Member for Vale of York would gain, should the House see fit to give her Bill a Second Reading today. On 13 January 2005, the Crown Prosecution Service issued a press release, listing other examples of cases where people were not prosecuted. There was a robbery at a newsagent in Greater Manchester where one of two robbers died after being stabbed by the newsagent, but the CPS did not prosecute. A householder, who returned home to find a burglar there struggled against him and hit him on the head. The burglar later died, but no prosecution resulted from that case in Derbyshire. Armed robbers threatened a pub landlord and barmaid. The barmaid escaped, fetched her employer’s shotgun and shot one of the intruders. She was not prosecuted in that case from Hertfordshire. Two burglars entered a household with a knife and threatened a woman. Her husband overcame one of the burglars and stabbed him. The burglar died, but there was no prosecution in that case from Lincolnshire. A middle-aged female took a baseball bat off a burglar and hit him over the head with it, fracturing his skull. The burglar actually made a complaint, but the CPS refused to prosecute in that case from Lancashire. All those cases—the sort of cases for which the Bill provides protection—were perfectly adequately dealt with under the existing law of defence of reasonable force.