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Coroners and Justice Bill

I am grateful to the hon. Lady who has given way very generously. I am not a lawyer, so perhaps we can put this into terms that a layman can understand. The difference between murder and manslaughter is essentially the difference between premeditation and instantaneous reaction. If a man or woman comes home and finds her spouse in flagrante and loses control on the spot—not having premeditated finding such a thing—and hits the spouse over the head with a saucepan, which, instead of merely silencing, kills that spouse, most rational people would say that that was manslaughter, not murder. If we are completely to disregard the sexual infidelity in that situation, it removes a defence that would be reasonable in all other circumstances.