Clause 6 - Evidence and procedure: courts-martial
Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill [Lords]
9:10 am
Mr Paul Goggins (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Wythenshawe and Sale East, Labour)
New clause 18 makes provision for evidential and procedural changes in trials involving familial homicide in England and Wales. New clause 19 makes similar provision for Northern Ireland, and clause 6 does the same for courts martial. My comments will be about all three.
In the debate on clause 5, we explored at some length the loophole in current law whereby those who kill a child or vulnerable adult can escape justice. Such cases arise when a vulnerable person has been unlawfully killed and the killer or killers must belong to a small and closed group of people, all of whom are suspects and, often, the only witnesses. In the face of their determined silence, the prosecution may be unable to identify the actual killer. Many hon. Members share our concern that something must be done. I am sorry to say that some of us have constituents who have been directly affected by the apparent powerlessness of the legal system in such cases. Their grief at losing a loved one in the most horrendous circumstances is only made more terrible to bear by the anger and frustration that comes from knowing that the perpetrator has got away scot-free.
Let me again make it clear that we are not willing to accept the current situation. We are determined to
reform the law to ensure that a greater number of offenders are brought to justice in such sort of cases. The new offence in clause 5 is an important part of that reform, but it is not on its own the solution to the problem. The clauses before us are no less essential to ensuring the effectiveness of our scheme.
A key problem in pursuing murder and manslaughter convictions in cases of familial homicide is that the case can be withdrawn at half-time—after the prosecution has put its case—on the basis that there is no case to answer. That is because the prosecution, in cases in which there is more than one accused, may not have been able to produce enough evidence by that stage to show which of the accused actually caused the death, or whether it was a joint enterprise. The clauses are designed to overcome that obstacle and to allow more charges of murder or manslaughter safely to be left to the jury to decide. That is an important aim, because, as I said on Second Reading, a conviction for the new offence under clause 5 would not be a just outcome if it could be shown that a defendant was in fact guilty of murder or manslaughter.
As hon. Members know, the Law Commission has undertaken a great deal of helpful work on the issue. In its report ''Children: Their Non-Accidental Death or Serious Injury'', it recommended that it should be permissible for adverse inferences to be drawn, subject to certain safeguards, where the other evidence did not amount to a technical case to answer.