Death Penalty

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:20 pm on 13 July 1983.

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Photo of Mr Roy Hattersley Mr Roy Hattersley , Birmingham Sparkbrook 4:20, 13 July 1983

The hon. and learned Gentleman will have heard some of my hon. Friends say that his intervention is an irrelevance. They are only partly right. I assure him that in a moment I want to consider the suggestion, which I thought he would not make, but others less experienced might, that somehow the entire process could be made more morally acceptable by shooting, gassing or injecting. In my view, that would not change the moral implications by an iota.

Before I do that, I want to complete the point that I was making. By talking as if capital punishment were the sure and sovereign cure for all our problems of crime, the hanging lobby has diverted us from the steps which we should have taken. They are less spectacular, less newsworthy, less likely to attract newspaper attention and provoke headlines, and could have made a more peaceful society in Great Britain.

Sir Robert Mark, writing in The Times and The Sunday Times, made the same point. He said that we should concentrate on the certainty of detection and conviction and that hanging was, by and large, an irrelevance. Time after time the hanging lobby repeats the old remedies and the venerable prejudice that capital punishment deters. I tell the hanging lobby what every informed person knows —that there is absolutely no evidence to support the view that capital punishment is in itself a deterrent.

If we compare abolitionist and retentionist countries and countries before and after abolition, we find that there is no evidence to prove that execution reduces the murder rate or reduces crimes of violence. The Home Secretary said as much today, and his predecessor put the figures into proper perspective when, rather more robustly four years ago, he said: the only sensible conclusion to reach is that their evidence is inconclusive." — [Official Report. 19 July 1979; Vol. 970, c. 2047.] If the deterrent case is to be accepted, if we are to vote for capital punishment as a deterrent, we at least ought to be sure that it deters. If we are to hang men and women by the necks until they are dead, we ought to do it on more than a hunch, a superstition, a vague impression or the anecdotes that follow Rotary Club lunches. Unless there is some positive proof that hanging deters, the case for hanging cannot be made even by its most sophisticated proponents.

They cannot provide that case. I must provide for them the other statistic, of which we are certain. Had hanging not been abolished in 1964, at least five innocent men would be dead today. That seems to me, and to almost all the people who have commented on the facts, the only statistic about which we can be sure in this entire debate.

Two minutes ago the hon. and learned Member for Fylde (Sir E. Gardner) asked why I talked about hanging. I know that there are some people—I am sorry to hear that he is one, if that is the category in which we find him — who want an alternative form of execution. I hope that anyone who talks airily today of the alternatives will answer some of the questions about how they might be used.

A year ago the then Home Secretary urged all supporters of gassing, injections or firing squads to read the Gowers report on the alternative forms of execution. That report shows that all the alternatives to hanging are equally macabre and corrosive to a civilised society. The capital punishment lobby must not hide behind the pretence that there is some decent alternative to the rope and the long drop. I ask them to read—