Coroners and Justice Bill

As the debate on the amendment has proceeded I am sure that I am not the only Member of the Committee who is not a lawyer who has found it enormously instructive. I have been increasingly convinced by the case made by the noble and learned Lord and so many others who have spoken for the amendment. As I have done so, and as that has been the way in which my mind has been moving, and even before the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, stood up, I had an increasing quaver of dis-ease, to put it mildly. Although I fully understood the noble and learned Lord’s case and respected it, my dis-ease began when he spoke of mercy killing, which is a difficult phrase, in his outlaying of the amendment. I have been asking myself what may be the effect on public thinking and the media which we are told over again by the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, is in a particular position on matters that will come later in the Bill and what may be the effect of thinking in the Committee when we reach the amendments in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice—probably not this evening. As I listened to the noble Lord, my concerns became all the stronger, even though, like him, I had noticed that among those learned and experienced in the law—what a strange thing that the term "learned" is applied in your Lordships’ House only to learning in the law and not to other things—who have supported the noble and learned Lord’s amendment, are those whom I know to be strongly opposed to the amendments to come in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice. This leaves me concerned; the quaver has become much greater and it is not simply dis-ease but considerable anxiety about the effects as it is working out in the Committee. The question I want to ask—it will matter to me what answer I receive—relates to proposed new subsection (4) of the new clause, which brings into play the Attorney-General. I would like to be clear that were a trial judge to make such a statement as he or she is enabled to by proposed new subsections (1) and (2), and if a jury so found that that was reasonable in relation to what the noble and learned Lord has spoken of as mercy killing, would it be open to the Attorney-General to question that and to do so clearly? The Attorney-General has nodded, but it will be interesting to hear her speak. She has not nodded; she has shaken her head. I am not sure whether she has shaken her head to my saying that she has nodded or whether she has shaken her head more generally, which is why it is important to rely on speech in your Lordships’ House. I should want to know that the law in these matters would not be made simply by a judge and jury, important as the jury is in these matters but that if the Attorney-General in the public interest believed that the law was slithering in the direction in which some noble Lords might wish it to run, the Attorney-General could ask those questions and bring back the case. As well as that detail I want to note a gathering unease, which leads me to the point of not being at all clear how it would be right to vote, were we to vote on the amendment, on the grounds that I have outlined.