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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, this time I very much support what the noble Lord said. I shall make four points. If the clause is meant to be a clarification and a teaching clause, it does a pretty bad job. I know that people never like to have their drafting criticised—personally, I hate it. Saying that one has no pride of authorship is not an honest statement. However, why does the clause not say what the defence of common law is in simple terms, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, did in the Martin case? He said in one sentence that: "““A defendant is entitled to use reasonable force to protect himself, others for whom he is responsible and his property””." That is a simple statement. What about property? There is no word in the clause that tells you whether you are allowed to protect property as part of the common law. What about the onus of proof? The man in the street on the Clapham omnibus or whatever vehicle he is in might be interested to know that once any reasonable suggestion is put forward that there may be a case of self-defence, it is then a matter for the prosecution. Again I quote the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, who stated: "““When this defence is raised, the prosecution has the burden of satisfying the jury so that they are sure that the defendant was not acting in self-defence””." That is an elementary statement about the law of self-defence that is nowhere to be found in this so-called teaching clause. Subsection (4) is just playing with words. It is the stuff of Roget’s Thesaurus. It says that what is not reasonable is disproportionate. What is the point of making an amendment like that? I have spoken about subsection (5), which just uses Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest’s rather flavoured special language and puts it into a statute. Then there is the use of self-induced intoxication in a defence. Why are drugs not mentioned? A lot of people are high on drugs all the time. Can one use that in a defence? Why not deal with this matter properly and send it off to the Law Commission?