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

It is the Minister who is being selective. If she turns the page, she will see the precise exceptions-in sections 3.146 to 3.150-which appear to me to undermine everything that she has said. Section 3.150 states:

"Our approach has been to seek to set out broad principles, to rely on the judge to exercise a judgement whether a reasonable jury could regard the case as falling within those principles and then to rely on the jury to exercise its good sense and fairness in applying them."

Further up the page, the report provides the precise examples that I cited to the Minister.

Let me return to a point that I made earlier. These are the Law Commission's original proposals. Since then, the Government have cherry-picked those proposals. I understand why they have done so, but, as the Law Commission has made plain, the coherence of its proposals has been entirely undermined by their action. That constitutes a major problem in the way in which the Government have approached the legislation. I think I am correct in saying that for those reasons the Law Commission has indicated to the Government-and the Minister has not answered my questions since then during the passage of the Bill-that it believes that the decision should be left to the jury.