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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I shall make two points quite simply on this amendment. First, it treats quite separately the Section 3 defence. We are off into a statutory provision in a 1967 Act which dealt with the use of force in achieving an arrest or preventing crime, and simplifying the language. They were the two main target areas. It has already been held in case law that the accused may take advantage both of Section 3 of the Act and of the common law of self-defence, and therefore it is totally undesirable to hive off Section 3 by altering the language and introducing stuff such as ““disproportionate””, which is not being introduced anywhere else in Clause 75. That is not the sort of error that the Law Commission would make. I say that with respect: it is my view that if two defences are running, they ought to use the same language. Secondly, what is the logic of limiting this to buildings? I go back to Mr Singh’s case, which I mentioned in Committee. Mr Singh came out of his shop, got into his car and put his bag with the day’s takings beside him. A man who turned out to be a criminal with a record as long as your arm, awaiting trial about a fortnight later, came up wielding what must have been quite a big knife, smashed the car window and tried to grab the bag. Mr Singh defended himself. According to the Times on 21 February and a small piece in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Singh could not give a coherent account of what happened, but the assailant ended up in the road with his own dagger through his heart. Why should not that case receive the sympathetic consideration of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland? It cannot because the incident did not happen on a premises. The noble Lord is making a narrow proposition and the principle is thoroughly undesirable.