Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but it is a fact that very few such cases go to court. The problem is not the number of cases that go to court; it is the number that are investigated, and the cases in which there is a fear on the part of the householder, or whoever is involved, that they will be prosecuted. That is what is unacceptable in the eyes of Members of all parties. I wish that the Conservatives would accept that they have won the argument. The Lord Chancellor has come round to their point of view and has come forward with a formulation that I think actually works. However, if they will persist with new clause 8, I have to say that I think that there are two problems with it. The first is that it would replace one test, that of reasonableness, with another, the test of what is ““grossly disproportionate””. Both are still subjective, in the sense that interpretation is required—in the first case by the investigation and prosecution authorities, who have to decide whether to bring the case, and in the second by the jury, who have to interpret the word ““grossly””. That does not take us much further. Of course there is a difference in mood between the two, in the sense that, in common parlance, one would expect ““grossly disproportionate”” to constitute a higher test than what is reasonable, but in reality it leaves a blurring of the edges, which is not acceptable. Where I part company with the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham), with whom I often agree on such matters, is that, as I have said repeatedly, I do not believe that the purpose of statute law is to send signals. We do not use this place as a means of semaphore; we use it as a means of providing workable law. The problem with new clause 8 is that it replaces a test that is subjective in the eyes of the prosecution and the court with another test that is subjective in the eyes of the prosecution and the court. That is what worries me.