Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) seems incapable of understanding the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth); it was not answered by the Library note, which was on a totally different matter. The Conservatives do however have a genuine sense of grievance that the fox of which they have long been in pursuit has been comprehensively shot by the Lord Chancellor. I have been party to the many debates that we have had on the subject, courtesy of the hon. Members for Newark (Patrick Mercer) and for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) and others, and I have heard the stonewalling from the Government, who have said that in no circumstances were they prepared to accept that a change in the law was necessary. For them now to reverse that position takes some brass neck. However, I am prepared to accept that the Lord Chancellor is making the change for the best of reasons. Let us start with our shared perceptions. All parties have always shared the view that there is a problem with the way in which people in the circumstances that we are discussing are investigated and, occasionally, prosecuted. We also agree that it would be a completely inappropriate interpretation of the law, or of the duties of the police, if a person who had defended themselves, or their family, friends or property, came under suspicion, unless they had behaved entirely improperly in defending what was theirs. There have been too many occasions, although not a great number of them have come before a court, on which people have felt that when they took perfectly proper action to defend themselves against criminal offences, they came under suspicion and were investigated by the investigating and prosecuting authorities. They should have been getting the support of those authorities, rather than finding themselves in difficulties with them.