Mr Stephen Pound (Ealing North, Labour)

The hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield was making a point, with rather more grace than the hon. Member for North Down did, about existing legislation that covers the purpose of my amendments. Legislation does exist, but it is not before the Committee this afternoon.

This afternoon, we are considering an amendment proposed by the hon. and gallant Member for Newark to the Criminal Law Act 1967, and I shall confine myself to that area. The fact that other aspects of common law, of criminal law, of various other pillars of legislation and legal precedents could apply is not within the Committee’s ambit. I suspect that you would have little patience with us, Mr. Cook, if we sought to widen the ripples of the debate so broadly.

As I said, my amendments seek not to reverse the thrust of the Bill or to emasculate or destroy it, but hopefully to clarify it and its intentions and to help us to go some way in re-establishing the confidence in the power of the law to protect the individual, which is the crux of the matter before us this afternoon.

Amendment No. 4 seeks simply to rule out proposed new subsection (1A) unless the building in question is a house and the person who uses the force is the householder. I entirely accept that by defining a house and a householder, and including those categories, automatically excludes a great many other categories. Sadly, unless we are to say that anyone can do anything with anything to anyone, we have to apply legislative stricture and define the Bill’s precise ambit, which is why I sought to limit the proposal to that of a house or a householder. However, in the spirit of charity, and having studied long into the night—not just Archbold and the other authors who have been mentioned—I noted that the definition of a house does not include a flat, a caravan or a boat. I could have extended the proposal and made it wider by including tents and people in temporary accommodation in tepees, wigwams and any number of bizarre new-age hereditaments.

I am talking about houses, including flats, caravans or boats, in relation to the citizenry of this nation having the confidence that they can be protected in their home. I utterly endorse the point made by the hon. Member for North Down about the sanctity of   the home, which may well be a flat, a caravan or a boat. Unfortunately, the use of the word “householder” is far too narrow.

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