---

Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, most of this Bill is well outside my knowledge and experience. However, I know that coroners’ inquests in Northern Ireland proved unsatisfactory during the long years of violence. That was partly because of major delays between deaths and inquests into them and partly because of the triangular low-level warfare that was going on at that time. There must be ways in which the workings of the historic coroners’ courts can be improved and better satisfy the relatives of those who have been killed. I intervene for two reasons only. The first concerns Clause 61 and freedom of speech. After only one year, the Government seek to remove the amendments that your Lordships made on 21 April 2008. Surely it is too soon for it to be known whether the amendment has produced adverse or unintended consequences. I fear that Her Majesty’s Government may have caved in to pressure from the fashionable homosexual lobby. What evidence is there that this important defence, protecting freedom of expression and speech, has done the slightest harm? The burden of proof is surely entirely on the authors of the Bill. There was doubt, and the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, removed it. Innocent people should not have to be investigated unnecessarily. I agree with my noble friend Lord Moran, who, alas, is not here, that so-called homophobia should not be made into a crime. When words are in fact threatening or intended to stir up hatred, they should be treated as an offence, but, where they express genuine opinion criticising certain behaviour in a reasonable way, they should be given full protection. I urge the House to resist Clause 61 and to leave the Public Order Act 1986 as it is. Free speech is always being whittled away; we should rally to its defence. My second point arises from Clauses 49 to 51 about suicide. Suicide is an awful thing whose repercussions affect many others apart from the deceased. There is a temptation for some who would be afraid to cause death by murder or manslaughter to achieve the same end by the suicide of their victim. That is why, rightly, the Bill makes encouraging or assisting suicide a serious offence, punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment. On 20 March, when the Bill was in the other place, some Members, led by the right honourable Patricia Hewitt, proposed an amendment to create a new exception to the provisions of the Bill, which would have made encouraging or assisting suicide lawful if the death occurred in another country where self-destruction was allowed. That would run directly counter to the purpose and intentions of the Bill. I argue that many people, especially the feeble-minded, the frail, the elderly, the confused or the chronically ill, are particularly vulnerable. They deserve our protection against coercion or persuasion to take their own lives. Exceptions to the offence of encouraging or assisting suicide will place temptations in front of would-be exploiters who would benefit from someone else’s death. On the contrary, we should be providing safeguards for a vulnerable group of people. I urge your Lordships to resist amendments of the kind described just as strongly as you would defend free speech.