Clause 45 — Meaning of "qualifying trigger"

Part of Bill Presented – in the House of Commons at 7:00 pm on 9 November 2009.

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Photo of Claire Ward Claire Ward Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice 7:00, 9 November 2009

I am going to make some progress; I will come back to the hon. and learned Gentleman.

In modernising the law in this matter, we have purposely set a very high threshold for the circumstances in which killing in anger could ever be treated as manslaughter rather than murder. The words and conduct limb of the partial defence is the main plank for achieving this, but we also believe that in relation to sexual infidelity, it is important to set out the position precisely and uncompromisingly-namely that sexual infidelity is not the kind of thing done that is ever sufficient on its own to found a successful plea of loss of control so as to reduce the verdict from murder to manslaughter.

I want to express one or two concerns about the amendment in lieu proposed by David Howarth. There may not be sufficient time at the end of the debate-I hope there will be-so I will say a few words about it now. I think I should be grateful to the hon. Gentleman for an amendment in which I believe he is trying to find an alternative form of words to achieve the Government's purposes in clause 45. However, the way in which the amendment is drafted is unacceptable, for two reasons. First, the amendment restricts the possible motives to three: punishment, sexual jealousy, or sexual envy. Therefore, in cases where sexual infidelity is involved, if the defendant argued that the action he or she took was due not to one of those motives, but to betrayal, breach of honour, or outrage to morality or decency, they could rely on the partial defence. Therefore, if the intention behind the hon. Gentleman's amendment is what I would hope it to be, it has a loophole.

Secondly, the terms of the amendment are drafted too widely: punishing a person for any act perceived as sexual infidelity would not qualify for the partial defence. The Government's amendment would ensure that a partial defence could be used, for example, in the extremely grave circumstances in which a woman killed her husband after she came home and found him raping her child. However, under the hon. Gentleman's amendment, if the act was perceived as sexual infidelity, even though that might not have been the main consideration in the loss of control, its existence would exclude reliance on the partial defence.