Lord Neill of Bladen: Before the Minister answers that question, I must confess to being slightly baffled by where we are moving to. The Long Title of the Bill is that it is a Bill to: "Make provision for a referendum on the voting system for parliamentary elections and to provide for parliamentary elections to be held under the alternative vote system". The amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is...
Lord Neill of Bladen: Before the noble and learned Lord finishes on that point, I feel some concern that he is not prepared to put on to the statute book the view which he has just expressed: that title and interest would necessarily be found by a court to exist here. The worry would be that there could, theoretically, be people advising in Scotland who will be unaware of the discussion now taking place and of the...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, it is past 10pm and I am the 60th person to speak. I will try to be brief and depart from what I was going to say. If anyone is interested in what I think on the general subject, they will find it in previous copies of Hansard and I will be happy to supply references. I was very struck by the debate that took place in the first half-hour of our proceedings, when people began to ask...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I support this amendment. We are belittling ourselves and lowering the reputation of the House by indulging the thought that we may look at 45 pages of amendments to a major constitutional reform Bill, running through the evening and the night, and try to bustle them through. It seems so obviously out of place in whatever the wash-up procedure may be that, by any definition, we...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I shall make a historical reference. In case some of your Lordships are not aware of the earlier history, I came into the House at the end of 1997 and had just been appointed as the second chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Our first report was about how elections should be conducted and money provided to the parties. The second one was about your Lordships'...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I have one observation to add, coming new to this debate. The best system must be prior authorisation where the Minister applies his mind to known facts and says that a bribe can or cannot be paid. I am much more troubled by the debate on a condition that applies broadly to the future. How are those conditions going to be written? In practice, how narrowly and carefully will they be...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I have heard enough this afternoon to feel convinced that a further careful look at this by the Government is called for. I liked the notion of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, who suggested that we might not vote on the issue today and that the Government could take it away and look at it in some detail. Picking up on a point that was obviously troubling the noble Lord,...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, for not being here at the beginning of his speech, but I know very well his views on this topic. We would make ourselves look extraordinarily foolish if we say that a jury cannot take account of what most people recognise as being the most dominant cause of violence by one individual against another. Every...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I draw attention to the practicalities of the amendment and to the consequences of the trial if we go down this route. I fully support the amendment—it is completely correct—but, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, said, cases will come forward with an infinite variety of circumstances. I find it possible to conceive of a case where the defence ran with diminished...
Lord Neill of Bladen: That is what I said. The prosecuting counsel would have a role as a challenger of fact.
Lord Neill of Bladen: To ask Her Majesty's Government, following the death by fire in 2007 of Fiona Pilkington and her handicapped daughter, what steps they have taken to investigate how many families in England and Wales are subjected to bullying of the type inflicted on the Pilkingtons; and what is their assessment of the scale of the problem.
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. He is aware, I believe, that the Home Secretary has said that we have slipped behind on this and that the Government took their eye off the ball. Can they now get their eye back on to the ball and think a little more about the victims? I have a specific question. We have acceptable behaviour contracts, which can be entered into in...
Lord Neill of Bladen: As I heard him, the Minister was objecting to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, by using the argument that we should not maintain the existing system of a coroner's inquest automatically when there is a death in prison because—lo and behold—why would we not then want that for every death in hospital? Unless I misunderstood him, that was one of the arguments that he...
Lord Neill of Bladen: Let me just finish the point; the Minister will demolish it, because he obviously thinks that I have got it wrong. The two obvious distinctions between someone who is in hospital and someone who is in prison are, first, that the prisoner has no liberty at all and, secondly, that he is quite likely to be surrounded by people of a violent disposition. The whole set-up of a prisoner dying in...
Lord Neill of Bladen: I am asking whether there should be a jury because of the nature of being a prisoner.
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I declare an interest as the second chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, following Lord Nolan, who is now, sadly, deceased. That committee strongly believed in self-regulation in Parliament. I want to begin with, and take as my leading text, a citation from the learned and able report of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which several speakers have...
Lord Neill of Bladen: I want to flag up a legal point. What do we know about this individual called D who appears in subsection (1)? Is he a friend or relative? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, plainly thinks that we are talking about a loved one. I ask what is no doubt an improper question. Can the loved one benefit from the death? Are there any words that rule out the loved one benefiting? Benefits...
Lord Neill of Bladen: I have two brief observations to make. First, the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, has set out the background and history so well that no addition is called for, save one. In the Holley case from Jersey, the ninth Law Lord also said that the law called for comprehensive reform. In other words, he agreed with the other eight who said, "No tinkering with parts of the law of murder". The...
Lord Neill of Bladen: That is rather discouraging, as I said a moment ago that I would ask a question. The noble and learned Baroness is overcomplicating the position of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. It is absolutely clear what he wants. He has three additional amendments which would get rid of Clauses 44, 45 and 46. Their effect would be to leave the existing law of provocation standing and...
Lord Neill of Bladen: If a lawyer was here and did not take part in the debate on this amendment, it would be a bit like those who were in bed on St Crispin's Day, when the battle was being fought in France. They would be ashamed in later life of the role that they played that day—so I do not want that reproach. To establish my qualifications, as a young barrister, I once prosecuted a murder case when there was...
