---

Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Bill

I take my right hon. Friend's point. As we have discussed, I agree that there is the technical possibility of the murderer taking advantage, but it is far fetched. Indeed, my right hon. Friend has mentioned that that assumes that the murderer had a solid knowledge of the laws of succession, which would include the certain knowledge that they would spend many years in prison. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire pointed out, the Bill does not affect the forfeiture rule. In the light of the responses to the consultations by the Law Commission and the Ministry of Justice and the pre-legislative scrutiny by the Justice Committee of all those proposals, we do not believe that allowing a killer's children to inherit from the victim will encourage people to kill.