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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

In rising to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, I find myself following the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, who has very adequately covered what I was going to cover at much less length and with much less erudition; that is, Palmer, Wheeler and the subjective test. I shall not repeat that, save to associate myself with all his remarks. I shall say, fairly briefly, what I said when we debated the previous amendment before the break; that is, what impact the attitude of the prosecuting authorities has on the proposed defendant. I perhaps do not need to remind noble Lords that we are dealing with something of great public concern. We have seen a number of high-profile cases, going back to the days of Martin, the Norfolk case, which was not a good case in point, and, more recently, the case of Singh, which was. We have been talking about public concern about house-breaking and burglary, which translates into very real fear. The clarity that the law requires has been very adequately set out in the amendment. I shall focus my attention on what the prospective defendant has to face—not only the shock of the event itself, finding somebody in a darkened room and a darkened place and what follows, but then the intervention of the lawful authorities, the police, who will undoubtedly question him and if he is lucky bail him. There is then the press speculation and the embarrassment, doubt, fear and deep worry that follow—and then, one hopes, the CPS disposes of the case. But it could well be, as it has been in the past, a different and much more elongated course of events. An arrest would inevitably be followed by being fingerprinted and photographed and a DNA test being taken, the person being charged and the case being referred to the CPS—and almost certainly a long wait before, if the person is lucky, no action is taken. The clarity being proposed in the amendment would do a great deal to focus the minds of the police and CPS on the essential requirements of the subjective test and would prevent that sort of ordeal for the proposed defendant. I cast my mind back to my own house—noble Lords may be able to imagine a big old rambling house in the Cotswolds and an old stableyard that no longer has horses in it but which is a garage containing rather expensive gardening equipment, and so on. If I went into the yard—not the house—in the dark and found somebody there, the inevitable fight could happen. I wonder whether the amendment is not too tightly drawn in that regard, when it refers to a, "““building or part of a building””." I do not know whether this is the right time to interpose the suggestion that the darkened yard or garden might also fall within this provision—the curtilage is the word that comes to mind. I ally myself entirely with what has been said about Palmer, Whelan et al and I support the amendment.