Clause 6 - Influencing a prosecutor
Justice (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords]
10:00 am
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Shadow Minister (Northern Ireland), Northern Ireland Affairs; Orkney and Shetland, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment No. 4, in
clause 6, page 4, line 21, leave out
'a term not exceeding five years'
and insert 'life'.
I can join the hon. Member for Beaconsfield in harking back to a golden age of Bill drafting. The clause as a whole is indicative of another problem—partly in drafting and partly to do with the approach of the civil service—which is our tendency to legislate on things that are already criminal. The tendency began in the early 1980s with the creation of the statutory offence of vandalism when, in Scotland, we already had the offence of malicious mischief, which served the same purpose. The only difference at the time was that occasionally vandalism charges became time-barred after six months, whereas there was no statutory time bar on the common-law equivalent.
We spend too little time in this place doing what is necessary and, sadly, too long doing things that are not necessary. The Minister suggested that if what was proposed was innocuous, it was unnecessary. I rather choked at that, considering that we are about to move on to clause 6, which is wholly unnecessary.
The Minister said on Second Reading that the Government wanted to introduce the provision in statutory form, because it was right to make the point—or words to that effect. I accept that the matter is also part of the criminal justice review. I think that it is mentioned at paragraph 4.163.
In making a point, one should be careful about the point one chooses to make. The amendment is intended to make the offence in the Bill the same as
the common-law offence that it is to duplicate. At present, someone who is tried on indictment for the common-law offence is liable to life imprisonment. The Bill limits the sentence to five years. To my mind—as we are talking about making a point, or sending a signal—the signal that the Minister would be sending by creating the statutory equivalent would be that trying to influence a prosecutor is a lesser species of offence, less serious than trying to influence a witness, a judge or a police officer.
If I were being investigated and I chose to run away from the police—something perhaps considered to be at the lower end of attempting to pervert the course of justice, but a form of the offence that is quite often found—I should be liable to the full penalty. I hope that I should not find myself in that predicament. As a one-time prosecutor, I am concerned about what we are saying about the relative seriousness of that offence and the offence of seeking to influence the prosecutor.