Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I shall not hide the fact that I would prefer that the Government had withdrawn the whole of Part 7, because it is neither worth while nor will be of much value. It will have a number of serious disadvantages. However, we debated those a week ago. On behalf of noble Lords from various parts of the House who supported withdrawing Part 7 altogether, I say that we had the voices but the Government had the votes. All those who spoke, apart from an uncertain voice from the main opposition party, were against Part 7. However, we move on. The noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, is more constructive than me. He has sought, alongside the Government’s move to reduce further the scope of Part 7—to use "heinous" to separate those more serious crimes, where perhaps there is justification for Part 7, from the rest. He has given a number of reasons why "heinous" could be included, despite its apparent vagueness. It features in the Oxford English Dictionary, but I have looked at the law dictionaries and they do not mention it—probably because it does not appear in our statutes. None the less, it has a reasonably clear meaning, as the noble Lord indicated. It is a more worthwhile attempt, and it goes further than that of the Government. The Government have already made two moves to reduce the scope of Part 7, and maybe they will explain further why those moves were sufficient. The main objection to "heinous" in this context is its vagueness. However, I am much impressed, not only by what the noble Lord, Lord Lester, said about the Supreme Court of India and the Supreme Court of the United States in the use of "heinous" to separate, for example, crimes justifying the death penalty from other crimes; I am also impressed by the noble Lord’s indication that, in so far as there is an uncertainty about the word, by Jove, there are plenty of uncertainties in this part of the Bill. If you study the list of things that the court is to take into account in determining whether an order should be made under Part 7 proceedings, you will see phrases such as the "social value" of the literature or taking into account the "extent to which" the victim or his family will be offended. There are so many vague, uncertain and subjective items for the court to consider. If it is to consider the difference between a heinous crime and a less than heinous crime, that is a relatively straightforward matter which a judge would find a good deal easier to determine than the social, cultural or literary value of a book written by an offender. I appreciate that vagueness remains, but I also appreciate the value and constructiveness of the attempt of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, to address this point when the Government have, thus far, singularly failed to do so in their attempt to define and distinguish between indictable and non-indictable offences and so on, thereby reducing the scope of the Bill.