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Mr. Mullin: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Are we supposed to be making a judgment on the Iain Hay Gordon case? That is what the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) appears to be inviting us to do. Will you invite him to return to the subject of the debate?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have already ruled that the debate should be narrow and tied to Third Reading. On the summary notes that I received, the case of Mr. Iain Hay Gordon was mentioned, so I do not mind the case being mentioned, but it should not be discussed at length.
Mr. Leigh: I was deliberately pointing out that we are not equipped to discuss whether Mr. Hay Gordon was innocent or guilty. I was trying to draw the House's attention to a point that is central to the Bill. The jury heard all the evidence and came to the carefully considered view that the defendant was guilty of the offence, but was insane. We must convince ourselves that that is no different from finding a verdict that he was not guilty by reason of insanity.
That raises some interesting issues. Surely the whole point of the insanity defence is that the defendant is incapable of mens rea. He is incapable of having a guilty mind. Therefore, if his counsel comes to court and pleads that he is insane, the jury does not have to consider in detail whether he was guilty of the offence, because that is irrelevant. He was incapable of having a guilty mind, and all criminal offences--not civil offences--involve the concept of a guilty mind. Once the counsel convinces the judge that the defendant is insane, that is the end of the proceedings.
Perhaps Parliament, in its wisdom in 1883, when it devised the original concept of guilty but insane, had before it a third way: the jury could conclude that the defendant had committed the offence--in this case, he had stabbed a young woman about 37 times--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The House does not have the authority to re-try a case, especially this morning. We are simply allowing the proper judicial services to do so. We cannot, therefore, concentrate on whether the person in question carried out the acts to which the hon. Gentleman refers. That is for someone else to do.
Mr. Leigh:
I was saying that by way of illustration, because I am trying to develop the concept of exactly what Parliament had in mind in 1883 when it introduced the original legislation.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. What Parliament had in its mind in 1883 I would not know. What I do know is that we are supposed to be discussing the Third Reading of the Bill. The hon. Gentleman probably heard me rule that we must keep to the narrow content of the Bill. We cannot extend the argument beyond that.
Mr. Leigh:
I shall stop dealing with the facts surrounding the 1953 case. I simply suggest that, given all the arguments about the dangers inherent in Parliament introducing retrospective legislation, we should not instantly conclude that we are discussing a mere drafting error. We should conclude that what happened all those years ago was--possibly, we have no idea--in accordance with the facts as the jury understood them. Now, in introducing retrospective legislation, we are reversing the finding of that jury, which had good reason for acting as it did. So long as Parliament is aware of that, that is all right. We must be aware that it is a major step.
Some inflammatory articles have been written in The Guardian and The Scotsman. What has not been pointed out, however, is that the articles were based on the fact that Mr. Hay Gordon was innocent and that, therefore, his family and the judge must have been engaged in a cover-up. That is an appalling smear on the judge, who, presumably, is long since dead. The publicity surrounding this case has been most unfortunate. I wish that, when people promote this sort of legislation--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I do not like to keep intervening on the hon. Gentleman, but he is making it difficult for me. The Bill does not mention the publicity surrounding the Hay Gordon case, so the hon. Gentleman cannot discuss the matter. This is supposed to be a Third Reading debate.
Mr. Leigh:
I knew when I made that point that I was straying, but I wanted to get it off my chest because I felt so strongly about it.
Having read very carefully this short Bill and the literature surrounding it, my clear conclusion is that it should become law, because there is a real possibility that an injustice was done all those years ago. It is clear from what their lordships said--they know more about it than we do--that there is no other way of righting the wrong.
However, Parliament should be aware that it might be a unique piece of legislation and that there may be perfectly cogent reasons why the jury acted as it did.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kate Hoey):
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) for his stewardship of the Bill, and I pay tribute to Lord Ackner, who introduced it in the other place, and to Lord Portsmouth, who has long been active in promoting the change that it will accomplish.
I am grateful, too, for the contributions that we have heard this morning. Even though it is a Friday and we have a large number of Bills to get through, we should remember that the Bill had no Second Reading debate in the House, so there are genuine concerns to be dealt with. I hope that the debate has been useful and that we can alleviate any lingering fears.
The Trial of Lunatics Act 1883 introduced a special verdict that the accused was guilty of the act charged against him, but was insane when he did that act. That verdict is known as guilty but insane. Since 1914, the courts have held that the verdict is technically an acquittal, and thus that there is no right of appeal against it. The Mental Health Act (Northern Ireland) 1961 replaced the special verdict with a finding of not guilty on the ground of insanity.
For England and Wales, the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act 1964 amended the 1883 Act so that the special verdict became one of not guilty by reason of insanity. In effect, guilty but insane was merely renamed, with the important addition that a right of appeal was introduced against the new finding and verdict; but that was not applied retrospectively to verdicts of guilty but insane.
Mr. Leigh:
Is it the Minister's understanding that when a jury returns a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, it is saying that the defendant is guilty of carrying out the offence but was insane at the time, or is it refusing to come to a conclusion about whether the defendant is guilty, because it does not matter as he was insane?
Kate Hoey:
The crucial thing about the 1964 Act is that it introduced a right of appeal. The Bill is intended to ensure that people who were subject to the verdict before 1964--the one that linked insanity and guilt--can appeal.
The Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland were given a power to refer the new verdict and finding, but not the old verdict of guilty but insane, back to the Court of Appeal. Under the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, enacted by the previous Government, that power was transferred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission without alteration.
The opportunity to make the change that we are now making should really have been taken in 1995. I criticise no one for that. The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) was a Home Office Minister at the time, but he was not personally responsible for the matter, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South was involved in setting up the commission. We did not take the opportunity simply because no one thought of it. That is why we are trying to enact the Bill now.
Mr. Leigh:
With respect, the Minister has not answered my question. I fully understand that if one is found not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty but insane one should have the right of appeal. We are all agreed on that. My question is whether it is the Government's view that the two verdicts are exactly equivalent.
Kate Hoey:
I hope that I can help the hon. Gentleman. Precisely the same facts must be found for guilty but insane as for not guilty by reason of insanity.
Mr. Brady:
If a verdict of guilty but insane is referred to appeal, could the insane element alone be struck out, leaving the guilty element, or would both parts necessarily be struck out? If an appeal is against not guilty by reason of insanity and the insanity element is struck out, the not guilty element remains. There seems to be a real difference.
Kate Hoey:
I am not a lawyer, thank goodness. The Bill is not about such technicalities. If I am advised of a definitive response to the hon. Gentleman's question, I will let him know today. Otherwise, I shall have to write to him.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) said, Mr. Iain Hay Gordon was found guilty but insane in Northern Ireland in 1953 of the murder of 19-year-old Patricia Curran, the daughter of a senior High Court judge. I was a little girl at the time and that terrible murder took place only a few miles from my family home. I remember the enormous amount of publicity and talk, and there was always something unsatisfactory about the case.
Mr. Hay Gordon was committed to a hospital, where he remained until his discharge into the care of his parents in Scotland in 1960. After the trial, a campaign to clear his name began. At the beginning of 1998, an application was made to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer the case to the Court of Appeal. In June 1998, the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland ruled that the 1995 Act did not allow the commission to refer the verdict of guilty but insane. Of course, its reasoning would have led to the same conclusion in respect of a verdict returned in England or Wales.
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