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Coroners and Justice Bill

I am very grateful to all those who have taken part in this interesting debate, and particularly to the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General for her very considered response. With regard to the criticism of the text of the amendment—I emphasised that it was a probing amendment—I feel like an actor performing a play. If it goes well, you take the credit, and if it goes badly, you blame the author—which I shall do with enthusiasm on this occasion. Having heard the contribution of the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General, I must say, with great respect, that I do not understand the staging of the approach that is being taken. If you are going to take a carefully considered staging approach, you start with the offence and define it. Having defined it, you decide how you are going to deal with it. The careful definition of the offence deals with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Knight—who knows that I respect very much her contributions both in this House and formerly in another place—by emphasising that an offence of murder really is an offence of murder, and that a life sentence, when a judge says, "You will go to prison for life", will mean that you will go to prison for life for committing one of the most serious offences. How long will we have to wait for all the stages of this approach? I recall—other noble Lords will, too—that in another place, something like 20 years ago, the then home affairs spokesman of the Labour Party in opposition, no less a person than Tony Blair, advocated very strongly the abolition of the mandatory life sentence. But today the noble and learned Baroness is giving us an assurance—a very welcome and genuine assurance—that we are still somewhere along a very long obstacle course with no indication when we shall reach the end and be able to consider the whole of this issue fully. I do not believe that I have heard in this debate any empirical justification for why we do not start with a process that is staged in the way that we have described. I have heard no empirical justification for avoiding clarity of definition of the offence of murder. I have heard no empirical justification for why we do not abolish the mandatory life sentence. However, with the intent to return to the issue in due course, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 150 withdrawn.