Clause 45 — Meaning of "qualifying trigger"

Part of Bill Presented – in the House of Commons at 7:15 pm on 9 November 2009.

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Photo of Dominic Grieve Dominic Grieve Shadow Secretary of State (Justice) 7:15, 9 November 2009

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

The first problem is that this is the first opportunity that we have had to consider the matter on the Floor of the House. It is a scandal that our procedures are so rotten, hopeless and archaic that, despite the Government's so-called modernisation, we were deprived of giving the matter any scrutiny before it went to the other place. From that, in my judgment, stems a great deal of the difficulty that we are experiencing.

The second problem is that the Minister's arguments this evening are utterly incoherent. Having practised in the courts, I am the first to accept that the vast majority of the partial defences advanced to the wicked act of killing another human being are largely untenable. Every day of the week in our courts, those arguments are trotted out and correctly rejected by juries. I have never been left in any doubt that juries are able to make up their own minds as to what reasonably constitutes the partial defence that may reduce murder to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation, and they have to do it all the time.

For reasons that I find most peculiar, the Government have decided that thousands of years of human history and experience should be jettisoned for a piece of political correctness and proclamation: a declaratory statement that sexual infidelity can never justify violent behaviour. The Minister decided to pick some examples, but in doing so she started to undermine her case very quickly. Most reasonable people might have no difficulty concluding that the fact that one's partner is sexually unfaithful would not in itself constitute a ground on which anybody should raise a finger against them. However, human nature, and the nature of sexual relationships, shows that, unfortunately, that happens very frequently. Juries have to apply their mind to that, and in my experience they will tend very quickly to put things in different categories. They will take account of the circumstances in order to establish the extent to which a person has been deceived, the extent to which a person has been treated badly, or the extent to which general tenets relating to the reasonable humane behaviour that we owe each other have been violated.

The Minister said that if someone came home and found his or her partner was being sexually unfaithful with a child, that would not matter. What about the circumstances in which someone came home and found that his or her partner was being sexually unfaithful with a sibling, or a parent? Those things could happen, but they would not constitute a breach of the criminal law, unlike the Minister's example involving a child. I suggest to the Minister that all those examples are of a kind that might lead a jury, particularly if there are other circumstances that merit consideration, to - [Interruption.] The Minister says that that would be incest, but if a sibling were involved and both parties were adults, there would be no breach of the criminal law.

I have no idea whether the Minister has brothers or sisters, but it seems to me that if the Minister turned up and found that the person with whom she was currently having a sexual relationship-her partner-was having a sexual relationship with a close relative, a court would be entitled to take that factor into account. In such circumstances, it would be an aggravating feature because of the breach of trust. [Interruption.] I am sorry if the Minister does not understand what I am saying, but I think that I have made myself fairly clear. [Interruption.] Incest would be a different issue altogether. [Interruption.] The trouble is that the Minister did not listen to what I said. I was referring to circumstances in which someone is not only sexually unfaithful to his or her partner but sexually unfaithful within the context of that partner's wider family, including close relatives. That can happen without any breach of the criminal law. [Interruption.] I fear that if the Minister has not understood that by now, even an attempt by me to explain it behind the Speaker's Chair will probably be unsuccessful.