Clause 1
Serious Crime Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Jeremy Wright (Rugby and Kenilworth, Conservative)
I entirely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend’s argument, that the safeguard for the criminal standard of proof is necessary. Does he agree that one of the reasons for that is that when one considers the proposed offence of facilitating the commission by another person of a serious offence, paragraph 33 of the explanatory notes makes it clear that subject to any consideration of whether what the respondent has done is reasonable,
“the court must ignore the intentions and other aspects of the mental state of the respondent at the time of the act in question. This means that it does not matter if the respondent did not, for example, intend to facilitate the commission of a serious offence, or had no knowledge that he was conducting himself in a way that was likely to facilitate serious crime.”
In those circumstances, all the safeguards we can possibly have are entirely appropriate.