Coroners and Justice Bill

I would like briefly to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester in expressing a little unease. I support the amendment and I was taken by the arguments of my noble and learned friend. I often find myself in agreement with what he has to say and I do so again this evening. I am concerned about some of the other arguments that have been adduced during the course of the debate that have caused the creeping unease to which the right reverend Prelate has referred. The arguments advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, and others about fudged verdicts are compelling. Looking at the way in which mandatory sentences are imposed is a right and proper thing for us to do. Many of us at Second Reading expressed concern that within the Bill there was no opportunity to look in great detail at the law on murder and many expressed again during Committee the thought that we probably need a separate piece of legislation to look at the matter in detail in the future. I would be one to sign up to that. I want to follow something that the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, said in his remarks. He has made great play of the point about mercy killing as a reason why we should now pass the amendment. The arguments for fudged verdicts are good, but the argument about mercy killing is one we should consider carefully. I would like to ask the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General how many people have in any event been sentenced to life imprisonment as a result of mercy killing. How often do such cases come before our courts? The reality is that this is a theological argument; in a legal sense we would rarely find such cases. I am not aware of anyone being given a life sentence for so-called mercy killing. However, I am struck that at the beginning of our proceedings on the Bill we have spent a great deal of time looking at the coroners service arising out of the killings of over 226 people by Dr Harold Shipman. I am struck that the defence that he could have offered, if at an earlier stage he had been brought to court, is that he had done such things as an act of mercy killing. Would that have been a defence in law and would he have been brought before the courts and given a mandatory sentence? We need to know how that would have happened in reality. The noble Lord, Lord Joffe, in his argument, said that we should rely on public opinion. As I experienced while a Member of another place for a division of the City of Liverpool, many people there were in favour of the restoration of capital punishment. I was regularly told in general elections that if only I would commit myself to the restoration of capital punishment they would vote for me. Many opinion polls show a majority of people who would like to see the restoration of capital punishment. However, as a matter of prudential judgment, I disagreed with that view and have always voted against it, for reasons that we would not have time to debate here tonight but I suspect that many would be in agreement with. We should not therefore necessarily rely on public opinion. The right reverend Prelate was right to say that we should have some concern about some of the arguments being adduced during this debate and the destination to which that might lead us.