Death Penalty

Part of New clause 1 – in the House of Commons at 4:41 pm on 1 April 1987.

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Photo of Gerald Kaufman Gerald Kaufman Shadow Secretary of State (Home Office) 4:41, 1 April 1987

No, I wish to get on.

If we accept this proposition, Parliament would not only change the nature of jury trial and verdict, but it should also make every such verdict automatically liable to appeal. The basis of that appeal would not be, as it now often is, whether the judge had misdirected the jury, but whether the concept of evil in the minds of the appeal court judges was different from that in the minds of jurors. Appeals would become matters of differences of opinion, on which it is impossible for there to be any factual yardstick.

That hon. Members have put forward such an unsatisfactory formulation for the return of capital punishment for murder is a symbol of the fundamental flaws in the general case made by those seeking a return of the death penalty. To establish their case, they must prove that the absence of capital punishment fails to provide an effective deterrent for murder, such as they believe would exist if the death penalty were brought back. However, they cannot prove it.

As the right hon. and learned Member for Southport and the Home Secretary have pointed out, the statistics for murder are too insecure for any proof one way or the other. Arguments based on those statistics may be distorted by the classification of the murder and the base year that is chosen for comparison. Each year, some killings are initially regarded as murder. However, when they are pursued by the police, or dealt with by the courts, they are reclassified to provide a considerably lower total. In 1985, for example, the homicide figures in Great Britain fell by 69, solely as a result of reclassification.

Murder has certainly risen over the years, but not in a steady progression. Between 1951 and 1952, for example, when capital punishment was available, the number of murders rose by 72. Between 1976 and 1977 when capital punishment was not available, the number of murders fell by 83.

Murder is a uniquely dreadful crime, because it is uniquely irreparable. Every murder is hateful because it flies in the face of human instincts. However, it is necessary to see even the crime of murder in perspective, for example, in an international perspective. Last year, in England and Wales, 662 offences were initially recorded as murder. That figure is unacceptably high to us in this country, although it will certainly be reduced when the figures are reassessed, as they are annually. In New York city last year, the number of murders was not 662, the total for England and Wales, but in that single city 1,598. As a percentage of crime in New York city, the murder rate there is 15 times greater than that for the whole of this country.

As the Home Secretary sought to do, murder must also be seen in the context of total crime nationally. In the 20 years before abolition, murders constituted 14·7 per cent. of the more serious crimes of violence against the person. In the 20 years since abolition, that proportion has fallen to 9 per cent. In the 20 years before abolition, murders constituted 2·8 per cent. of all violent crimes. In the 20 years since abolition,'as a proportion of violent crime, that figure has fallen to 0·7 per cent. As a percentage of all crime, it has fallen from 0·05 per cent. to 0·02 per cent. All crime has risen unacceptably. Murder has risen far less than other crimes, although every murder is one too many.

Hon. Members proposing the reintroduction of the death penalty have yet to prove—so far they have failed to do so — that, if reintroduced, capital punishment would have a deterrent effect on potential murderers and assist in improving the Queen's peace.