Clause 5 - The offence
Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill [Lords]
3:30 pm
Mr Paul Goggins (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Wythenshawe and Sale East, Labour)
As this is the first group of amendments on the clause, it is important to say at the outset that I welcome the broad cross-party consensus on the attempt to deal with circumstances that have proved difficult—those in which it is known that one or other person has committed the act leading to a death, but it has not been possible to identify which one. That issue has gripped politicians, lawyers and campaigners for years, and the clause is an attempt to redress the injustice. We shall debate various issues related to the clause, but I appreciate that there is broad welcome for it.
The amendments introduce for debate the question whether the offence should be extended to cover not only those events leading to death but those leading to serious harm. The question has been widely discussed in the other place and we have been given the thoughts
of the Law Commission as well as weighty evidence from organisations such as the NSPCC, which, in its report, ''Which of you did it?'' states:
''Each week three infants suffer serious injury or death when in the care of adults who should be protecting them.''
While I do not accept the amendments and will be asking the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome not to press them, I do not underestimate the need to increase and improve the protection that we offer to children, who should be looked after properly by those responsible for them. The statistic takes no account of the vulnerable adults that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Ms Munn) referred to, and for whom she campaigned so vigorously as the chair of the all-party Voice group.
That group does great work in bringing the issues to the fore, but I ask my hon. Friend to accept that, at this stage at least—I am sure there will be other opportunities to debate the issue—there is not a direct read-across from children to vulnerable adults. There are differences and we need to tease them out.
There are four reasons for the Government's conclusion, after careful consideration of the matter, that the offence should cover events leading to death but not serious injury. The first is that there are other ways of capturing criminal behaviour of that kind. We have all experienced the frustration that arises when it is not possible to convict people despite its being known that the actions of one or more of them have contributed to a death. However, there are other forms of legal redress. When a child is hurt the offence of child neglect can be pursued. The offence of grievous bodily harm, which the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome referred to, is also available. It is not as if there is no redress.
Secondly, there are clear differences—specifically in relation to determining which one of the accused committed the offence—between a situation in which someone has died and one in which the victim survives. That is not least because the surviving victim may be able to give evidence in any prosecution case that is brought; clearly that is not possible where the victim is deceased.