Coroners and Justice Bill

I think that the noble Lord and I have the same point in mind. The test that I have put in the amendment is quite often applied, but, in reality, there is no difference between the two tests. I am obliged to the noble Lord. For the reasons that I have suggested, far from being unhelpful, this amendment would be extremely helpful. Secondly, it was suggested that the amendment would work only if there was a definition of the words "extenuating circumstances". The noble and learned Baroness said that Parliament should decide, ""something of such importance to the public at large".—[Official Report, 30/6/09; col. 171.]" Again, I am sorry that I cannot agree with that. In every murder case, the members of the jury are the representatives of the public at large, just as much as Members of Parliament are, so why not leave the decision in these cases to the jury? Nor would the jury have any doubt as to what "extenuating circumstances" meant. If I were the judge in such a case, I should have no difficulty in guiding them. I would simply refer to the Concise Oxford Dictionary and say, "Members of the jury, extenuating circumstances are circumstances that lessen the seriousness of the offence or diminish the guilt". That would be perfectly satisfactory guidance for them. No doubt the Judicial Studies Board would improve the amendment, but that would be the basis of it—simple English words that the jury could apply without any difficulty, and certainly without the need for a definition. Indeed, it would be literally impossible for Parliament to attempt to define all the circumstances that the jury might regard as extenuating and it would destroy the whole point of the amendment. The third argument seemed to me trifling. It was said that the amendment might add complexity, because what would happen if 12 members of the jury were in favour of convicting and only eight were in favour of finding extenuating circumstances? The answer is obvious: there would be no rider in such circumstances. Those were the only arguments and they seemed—at any rate, to me—to be far from enough to explain why this amendment was being resisted by both the Government and the Official Opposition. What is the explanation? It is quite obvious, at any rate to those of us who sit on the Cross Benches. It is politics. Both sides fear that, if they support this amendment, they will be accused by the other of being soft on crime, so there is an impasse. Both sides fear the headlines in the Daily Mail and fear that this will lose them votes in the general election. I find that profoundly depressing, all the more so because my belief is that both sides are wrong. There must, of course, be a sentence of imprisonment in these cases because we are dealing with murder. It must, of course, be left to the jury. However, if those two conditions are satisfied, I believe that the public would positively welcome this amendment. That was certainly the evidence emerging from the research carried out on behalf of the Law Commission in 2003, and again in 2005, by Professor Barry Mitchell. He found that the public are perfectly capable of distinguishing between different kinds of murder and that there is little, if any, support for the mandatory life sentence in the case of the genuine mercy killer. The Law Commission endorsed that view when it said, on page 155, that a life sentence in such cases is "neither necessary nor appropriate". I agree. Is the life sentence really so sacrosanct now in cases of murder that we cannot make this limited exception? It is not even as though it is the first exception; we already have one in the case of the partial defence of provocation and another in the case of the partial defence of diminished responsibility. Why can we not add a third exception to do justice in the very deserving cases that I have in mind? It is depressing beyond belief to me—and, I suspect, to many others—that political considerations should stand in the way of a reform of the law that would be so beneficial. I beg to move.