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Coroners and Justice Bill

The entrusting of information by an individual to the Government is an act of trust. It imposes upon the receiver of the information a solemn obligation of confidence. For many years, Government have observed that as an essential and cardinal principle of their activities in the maintenance of that trust. The right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) argues against those who take the view that the dismantling or relegation of that principle—which in my judgment this Bill is designed to do—will be an important retrograde step in the public life of this country, and he accuses us of over-dramatising or of unnecessary or gratuitous histrionics. When we remove from a wall a single brick, it is easy to stand around and say, ““Look, the wall has not fallen.”” Even if we remove from that wall one of its most important cornerstones, the wall will continue to stand for quite some time, and those who stand around can mock and say, ““See, the wall remains standing.”” However, the relegation of a principle upon which the freedoms, privacy and confidentiality of individual citizens have been based for so many years is an important step even if its consequences may not be visible straight away. I believe that the Government have a solemn duty not to apply information that has been entrusted to the state for one reason to another purpose, unless, perhaps, the most compelling circumstances dictate that—circumstances that are so compelling that any reasonable citizen would be obliged to say, ““Well, when I entrusted my information, yes, I expected the Government to keep it confidential and to use it only for the purpose stated, but I am driven inescapably to the conclusion that for the Government to use it this other way is a rational and necessary step.”” I have no doubt that the Government and the Minister will argue that the safeguards in place require that kind of test, but I am not sure that they do. I know that dozens of my constituents and many hundreds of others who have written to Members from all parts of this House are equally distrustful of the Government's intentions in this respect. That is not because they believe the Government are doing this for a malign purpose, nor because they do not believe that the Government have a perfectly legitimate function and perfectly legitimate enhancements of public services in mind, but because when one replaces a governing principle with a pragmatic assessment and a balancing exercise in respect of what is important, one suddenly and fundamentally changes the balance, culture and protections that the citizen enjoys within government. One hon. Member said—I am afraid I forget who it was—that this was a question of changing the culture. To take away a principle as important as this and replace it with a series of so-called safeguards and a practical or pragmatic balance of assessment of the functionality and utility of deciding to disclose other people's information for another purpose is to deprive the citizen and the individual of a crucial protection. I agree with those on both sides of the House who have expressed caution about the step that we are about to take. The accumulation and pooling together of knowledge and information about an individual by the Government, as happens in so many various ways—in respect of health, for the purposes of tax and for the purposes of social security—presents a mighty tool in the hands of the state. I do not believe that the Bill achieves a sensible balance or a sufficient protection for the individual in that respect. I welcome many of the provisions on coroners. I, like Members on both sides of the House, have had families who have been caught up in the tragic death of a loved one—a son, a daughter or another close member of the family—coming to my weekly surgeries. We have heard the constant refrain that they do not feel that there has always been the kind of liaison, disclosure of information and involvement of them in the process that allows them to feel easy in their minds that the process is transparent and that it allows them sufficient involvement. So, I welcome the charter for bereaved people, which is a substantial step in the right direction. I understand that there are concerns that it might be a toothless tiger if it is not backed up by the resources and finances to provide the relevant services in all areas of the country, but it represents a significant and useful step. If it is clearly enough expressed, it will be useful for those families who have experienced the kind of grief and involvement with the inquest system that I have come across in my surgeries. That brings me to an area of the Bill on which I have most experience and, in connection with my professional occupation, most practical involvement: the changes that the Bill seeks to achieve in the criminal law. If the Bill could be analysed in terms of the numbers of its provisions, it would be found to amount to another criminal justice Bill. One cannot even say it is a mini criminal justice Bill, because, by the standards of previous years, its provisions would have graced a full-sized Bill all by themselves. The Bill seeks to make a number of changes to the law. It is worth observing that we have had one criminal justice Bill after another during the lifetime of this Government, and hon. Members on both sides of the House will fairly concede that those have not all been tremendous successes. Indeed, dozens if not hundreds of provisions from those Acts, as they have become, have not even been brought into force, yet we face even more changes in the criminal law. The worst and primary change that the Bill seeks to make is one to the law of homicide. The proposed reforms adopt the Law Commission's proposals for changes to the partial defence of provocation, but its proposals were to be part of an overall and comprehensive reform of the law of homicide. It proposed that there should be first-degree and second-degree murder, and that first-degree murder would cover the most serious cases, where there was an intention to kill, and that second-degree murder would be where a person had an intention to commit serious harm but where there may not have been an intention to kill. In dividing murder into first-degree and second-degree murder, it made sense to review the partial defences to murder, which provocation and diminished responsibility represent. It is only those changes into first-degree and second-degree murder that made sense of and justified the re-examination of the defence of provocation and the narrowing of its scope. The Government appear to have plucked from the Law Commission's careful, detailed and comprehensive review of the law of homicide a part of it that was only made sense by the context that the Law Commission gave it and simply introduced it in a fragmented and piecemeal way in this Bill. The objections to that approach are clear: the narrowing of the partial defence of provocation makes no sense if we retain the single offence of murder with a mandatory life sentence, which is what the Government propose. Such an approach will mean that a great number of people to whom the defence or partial defence would have been available—the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) made this point well—will be affected by unintentional consequences; it might mean that many more will be convicted, and that those who are may not be those whom this House would wish to be. I wish to say a word about the exclusion of sexual infidelity as a type of conduct that can trigger the partial defence, because it makes no real sense. Why should one exclude a form of human conduct that all literature and all human experience teaches us excites the greatest feelings of injustice and hurt that human life can sometimes produce? Why is it necessary, when defining the provocation of partial defence as something of grave circumstances that brings about a sense of serious wrong, to exclude the fact that in certain circumstances, at least, sexual infidelity can produce just such a sense of grievous hurt and wrong? It can be an appalling type of betrayal, so it makes no sense for that to be excluded. It would have been a genuinely imaginative and bold step if the Government had taken on board the Law Commission's proposals on the reform of homicide law generally and introduced those proposals—or something very like them—together with these partial defences and their revision as part of a comprehensive reform. That is why one feels a considerable sense of unease about this Bill. In parts, it contains some positive and constructive measures, such as the charter for bereaved people and many of the changes to the coroners system. However, the provisions on the criminal law appear to have been tacked on for reasons possibly of expedience or, as the hon. Member for Cambridge suggested, to be seen to be doing something about a topical problem. That is not the way in which the criminal law should be changed. That is why my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) was right to say that the Conservative party should approach the Bill with considerable caution. I hope that in Committee—I hasten to add that this is not an invitation to appoint me to it—many of these issues can be considered, especially the criminal law provisions that have not been adequately thought through.