Coroners and Justice Bill

I insinuate myself briefly among the lawyers, since all the preceding speakers on this amendment were lawyers. I took note of that. I strongly support this amendment. We have had a huge amount of discussion over a lot of time about the extent to which extenuating circumstances should play a role in the judge’s decisions on sentences for murder, contrary to the existing mandatory life sentence. One approach has been to try to define types of murder and manslaughter in order to bring the law more in line with practice, which is a mandatory life sentence accompanied by a tariff which modifies the life sentence in many cases. We have tried to do that. The attempt in the preceding amendment was on those lines. We now have Amendment 150A in front of us. This amendment corresponds precisely to the way in which I think we should go, for two reasons. First, it provides the flexibility which is obviously necessary because of the different circumstances of these cases. Secondly, it brings in the jury in a role that I strongly support. The jury has a role in giving its opinion on the extenuating circumstances—whether they do or do not exist. This is an excellent amendment, which I strongly support, among the many lawyers who apparently take the same view.