4.3 pm
Criminal Law (Amendment) (Householder Protection) Bill
3:48 pm
Mr Stephen Pound (Ealing North, Labour)
I sympathise with my hon. Friend’s confusion. I referred earlier to my point about the juxtaposition of brevity and coherence, and the fact that the search for one may be detrimental to the other. Like the cavalry he knows so well, I sought to ride to the rescue of the hon. and gallant Member for Newark.
Amendment No. 5 includes within its ambit flats, caravans and boats, although not what my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough, in a typically prescient and helpful intervention, referred to as commercial premises where the person who operates the business lives above the premises. Unfortunately I lack my hon. Friend’s intelligence and wisdom, or I would probably have included it in the amendment.
I extended the physical ambit in amendment No. 6, which is my favourite, to include a reference to
“any garden or other ground belonging to that house or that part.”
It is not an attempt to address the Kenneth Noye conundrum; Kenneth Noye killed a police officer in the garden of his house and his defence was that he feared that the police officer, who was in plain clothes, was seeking to enter the house. The amendment includes within the defined demesne the garden or any dwelling within that garden; that is essential.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman may have some sympathy with the amendment, because he will realise that a person’s sanctuary—the word used by the hon. Member for North Down—can include their garden; a garden is a lovesome thing. The fact that someone invades a person’s garden must be given consideration, not just because that person may be lurking in a gazebo, resting in a hammock, or in a garage working on one of their cars, but because that garden is part of their property. If we are to allow people to defend themselves within their homes, the definition of “home” should include the area immediately around it: the demesne, area, garden or blessed plot.