Clause 42
Serious Crime Bill [Lords]
6:30 pm
Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham, Conservative)
I shall not press the amendment to a Division, because I am not actually sure about the correctness of the position that I have adopted. Further thought needs to be given to the issue by all sides. We should take the Minister’s example of the baseball bat, because she is quite right: it is sometimes helpful to consider examples. A chap lends to another a baseball bat, and at that moment, all parties are innocent. They walk to a pub together and they get drunk. The person who has the baseball bat falls into a row with a third party, and decides to whack the third party with the baseball bat. He says to the donor of the baseball bat, “Thank God you’ve given me the baseball bat. I can now go and do something to the third party.” One could construct an argument to the effect that, actually, unless the donor intervenes, the donor should be guilty of an offence in terms of public policy. The language of the statute is capable of supporting a prosecution.
The Minister says that we should look at the issue in broad terms, and that in matters of natural justice we should not create an offence unless at the moment that one handed over the baseball bat, one had the necessary belief. However, there is another public interest argument, which is that if one becomes aware of subsequent facts that show that the bat will be used for an unlawful purpose, one should intervene. If the statute’s language is sufficiently wide as to capture that latter situation, we may have got ourselves an offence where we did not intend to create one. That is my anxiety.
Although I see the force in what the Minister said, because I accept that I am at risk of dancing on the head of a pin, I none the less draw some comfort from the remarks of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon. The provision is capable of a different construction, which none of us really intends.