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Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill

My noble friend’s remarks reminded me of an occasion a very long time ago when I was a young man living in Derbyshire. I went to dinner with a neighbour and we got on to discussing consanguinity and the relative risks to the offspring of close relatives who were married. My hostess, whom I was sitting next to, said that she had always understood that there was not really much risk with first cousins but that there was a very strong possibility of genetically damaged offspring arising from the union of second cousins. I said, ““I don’t know about that, because my father and mother are second cousins””. She said, recovering quickly, ““Well, perhaps there’s something wrong with your sister, then””. So my noble friend’s comments on first and second cousins made me wonder where we are going to draw the line. I discovered a couple of years ago that my wife and I were 16th cousins although I am sure that that would not be of any interest to the DPP. Where is the line to be drawn? We need some clarity on the matter. The issue of friends is indeed subjective. I do not know whether Members of the Committee are familiar with MySpace on the world wide web. You can sign up and then invite somebody to be a friend. Simply by the act of saying that the person is a friend, he or she becomes a friend. It is a very convenient way of extending your contacts on the world wide web, but it would be stretching a point to say that someone who is signed up in that manner would be caught by the provisions of the Bill. That illustrates how difficult and subjective the use of the word ““friend”” can be in different contexts. My noble friend is quite right; unless we have greater clarity on the use of the terms ““relative”” and ““friend””, and the definition of ““associate””, we are giving the DPP an enormously wide power that he should not possess.