Coroners and Justice Bill

I am not too sure how I should be classified, whether as a lawyer or as a layman. I never practised law but I did teach it once, including criminal law, but that was a very long time ago. Therefore, I think I should probably be classed as a layman on this issue this evening. That is no bad thing because I would like to take my place alongside the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, not among the chorus of lawyers who have supported the amendment, but among those laymen who are perhaps in a position to explain to the Committee how this matter appears from the point of view of the ordinary man in the street, so to speak. I want to add my voice to the chorus of support which there has been for the amendment. The rigidity of the mandatory life sentence is universally recognised, and has been in this debate, to give rise to major deformities in our law of homicide. One particular deformity that it gives rise to and one undesirable consequence is that it leads to fictional findings of diminished responsibility; for example, to accommodate the mercy killer, who may well have been acting under stress, but who was certainly not acting irrationally. Indeed, they may well have been following what seemed to them to be a highly rational course of conduct. The Law Commission in its review of the partial defences to murder in 2004 said in relation to mercy killing: ""At present, in such cases, a conviction for murder, with consequent mandatory life sentence, can only be avoided by"—" what it called— ""’a benign conspiracy’ between psychiatrists, defence, prosecution and the court to bring them within"," the scope of the defence of diminished responsibility. It went on: ""It is however a blight on our law that such an outcome has to be connived at rather than arising openly and directly from the law"." Whatever one thinks of this fiction, this connivance, it is now certainly made more difficult, as the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, indicated, by the Bill. Under the law as it stands, to establish the defence of diminished responsibility the defendant has to show that he was suffering from such abnormality of mind, whether arising from a condition of arrested or retarded development of mind or any inherent causes, or induced by disease or injury, as substantially impaired his mental responsibility for his acts and omissions. This is a fairly broad and loose concept, which is put to the jury to find their way through as best they can. Under the new definition of diminished responsibility, which will be introduced by the Bill, the defendant would need to be shown to have been suffering from a recognised medical condition at the time of the act, which substantially impaired their ability to understand the nature of their conduct, to form a rational judgment, or to exercise self-control. The defence of diminished responsibility will thus be considerably tightened up. That is no doubt a good thing. It will help to put an end to fictional findings of diminished responsibility. That being the case, it is clear that we will now need the amendment that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has brought forward this evening, which could well be the best way to ensure that the law can continue to show compassion to genuine mercy killers through clear, open procedures set down in statute and subject to public scrutiny rather than through the hidden means of the benign conspiracy.