Coroners and Justice Bill

I add my voice in support of the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. I understand the reason for the speech that my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General gave in relation to the last amendment. I have heard it from her before on a previous occasion when mandatory life sentences were raised, and I have heard it from those on the other side of the House when the topic has been raised earlier when I have been in the House. I see that it is extremely difficult for any political party to say they are going to make that major change. I was grateful that the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, reminded us of the undertaking that was given at the time of the abolition of the death penalty, because that underlies the decisions that will be made by the Front Benches. It seems to me that this amendment finds a way of somehow mitigating the damage that has been done by the mandatory life sentence. It does not go behind the undertakings that were made at the time because in effect it provides a discretion to those who have had the advantage of hearing the evidence in the court. Those of us who are practising at the Bar and who have sat in many murder cases over the years are bound to say that not only do they all vary in their facts but they all vary in the degree of culpability. As others have said, not all murders merit a life sentence. The majority undoubtedly do but there are those—the mercy killings, the soldier, the one-off—which do not. To watch the judge, the prosecutor and the defence trying to find a way to achieve the right result is not the way justice should be administered. Consistency is needed but so are honesty, openness, clarity and, above all, justice. One size does not fit all in relation to murder cases. This amendment seems to shine a light for the first time in a way which I hope the Government can take forward. This is a light into a way in which the jury and the judge, faced with these extremely difficult and not very common circumstances, can reach a means of imposing the right sentence on the offender. I hope it will not receive a blanket rejection today. I hope it will be taken away, because the sense round the whole of this Committee is that the time has come for us to make some progress. Even if we cannot tackle the whole of the law of murder, which I think we ought to be doing in a separate Bill, this is one area in which this piece of legislation could at least show some reform and some advance.