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Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I repeat what I said in Committee in strong support for the amendment. I am particularly concerned—other people have not mentioned this—about people with peculiar mental states who will not now fit into the new criteria for diminished responsibility because they will not fit conveniently into the diagnostic and statistical manual and the international classification of diseases. If we are to have individualised justice, jurors and judges need to address a wide range of circumstantial, psychological and contextual matters, as other people here have said today, and it concerns me that we might miss out some of the people who would be covered by the old provisions for diminished responsibility. The amendment would be an elegant and simple way of meeting some of our concerns, and defendants would not have to be artificially squeezed into inappropriately fudged categories. I give my wholehearted psychiatric support to the amendment.