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

The Minister said, from a sedentary position, that I was not referring to the defendant. Of course I was referring to the defendant. The defendant is the person who has put the defence forward, and if the Minister has not understood that, it is beyond my comprehension.

Let me move on. The point at issue is this: why should the jury be deprived of the opportunity to take that factor into account? All I can say to the Minister is that it seems to me that the Government's argument is entirely incoherent. They wish to issue a statement, but I think that in doing so they risk grave injustice in a very small minority of cases.

The second issue that the Minister has not been able to address properly is how a judge will direct a jury in cases in which sexual infidelity is one component of the story, but other components are also involved. How, logically, will juries be able to disregard the sexual infidelity component? It beggars belief that the Minister thinks that that will be easy.

When I intervened on the Minister, I gave an example which I think is worth repeating. One of the good things that the Government have done in the Bill is to enable people who have been battered and abused for many years to advance the partial defence, even in circumstances in which currently they have been prevented from doing so because they did not act in the immediacy of the violence meted out to them. I welcome that-I think it is an important development-but, as I said to the Minister, there will be cases in which the final trigger is the discovery of sexual infidelity in that context. It is beyond my understanding how a jury will be properly directed to put that issue out of their minds, but will be allowed to consider the other issues.