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Mr. Forth: The hon. Gentleman is making a good case for detailed examination of the Bill in Committee. But how would he solve the problem that people are increasingly coming to believe that the benefit of the doubt is given by the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts to the perpetrators of crime, not the victims? Is he prepared to concede that that is a problem and that something should be done to address it, even if he does not believe that the Bill does so?

Dr. Palmer: Yes, I am. That is the point with which I started my speech. As the right hon. Gentleman may know, at the Government's request the Law Commission is examining the partial defences to murder, which can reduce a charge of murder to manslaughter. Its remit is to consider the partial defences, with particular reference to domestic violence. Part of the Law Commission's study, the results of which are expected this summer, will include the examination of a possible new partial defence of "excessive force in self-defence". It is a complete defence to show that one has used reasonable force in self-defence as judged by a jury. In order to address the uncertainty that we all recognise exists, there is a possibility that the law could encompass excessive force under constrained circumstances. It would not be a total defence but a mitigating factor and would depend on the degree of excessive force applied.

When the Law Commission comes back with recommendations, we can reasonably discuss where the borderline should be drawn. I concur with the view that it would be better to give greater certainty to householders about where they stand, what they can reasonably do and what they cannot reasonably do. Anyone is entitled to know what is legal and what is not. That is fair. The problem with the Bill is that it starts from the completely ludicrous position that one is allowed to do anything if one believes, no matter how unreasonably, that one is under threat.

Mr. Gale: Hard cases make bad law, which is why my right hon. and hon. Friends have studiously avoided the
 
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case of Tony Martin. But if hard cases make bad law, extreme examples make bad argument and the hon. Gentleman has been deploying those. The hon. Member for Ealing, North said in terms—it is on the record—that if someone attacked his wife, he would pick up a baseball bat and let him have it. If that blow to the head of the man attacking his wife is legal, is that reasonable force? If not, the hon. Member for Ealing, North will be before the courts. We are saying that the presumption must be on the side of the householder and not the criminal: the intruder.

Dr. Palmer: With respect, what the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues are saying is not that the presumption should be on the side of the householder, but the certainty. The Bill offers a complete, 100 per cent. indemnity for any crime committed under certain circumstances, which seems completely disproportionate.

With respect the hon. Gentleman is missing an opportunity with the Bill. If he had proposed a Bill that, in a more proportionate fashion, had attempted to address the issue of uncertainty, he would have had a more attentive and respectful hearing than has been the case today. I am not calling his motives into question in any way, and he has done us a service in raising an issue of concern to the public. It is important to discuss the subject, but the Bill is not a sensible vehicle on which to respond to that concern.

The hon. Gentleman accused me of giving extreme examples, so let me give an everyday one. Every weekend, I go out for four hours to visit constituents and go to different parts of the borough each time. The overwhelming majority of my constituents are reasonable people who simulate pleasure at my arrival. They may not really feel it, but they say, "It's a long time since we have seen our MP. It is good to see you."

I would not claim in the most passionate moments of my devotion to the borough that every resident of my constituency is reasonable, or even sane. I do not want to give a constituent who is not reasonable or sane a licence to kill me because he sees me approaching his house and gets it into his mind that I might be a burglar. I would be a trespasser because I would not yet have his permission to be on his turf. He might get it into his head that I was trying to get at his property and break in.

As we know, people all too commonly leave doors open or unlocked. It strikes me that, were I a burglar rather than a politician, I would find it easy to break into perhaps one house in 10. However, that fact should not lead people to feel that they are at risk from me.

Mr. Pound: Before my hon. Friend is tempted to change career path, may I ask him whether he recalls in the previous exchange a personalisation of circumstances pertaining to myself? Were the hypothetical situation described by the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) to occur, I would want my day in court. I would not want to be exonerated by a rubber-stamp piece of legislation. Does he accept that that would be the reaction of many people who are robust both in defence of their homes, and in defence of the liberty of the nation?

Dr. Palmer: Yes, I do. I admire my hon. Friend in many ways and think that he made one of his best speeches today.
 
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I am reminded of the doomed presidential candidacy of Michael Dukakis. He was against the death penalty, and when he was asked whether he would want to shoot someone who attacked his wife, he replied, "Yeah, I would, but I don't think my instinctive reaction should be the basis for law." That was an honourable reply; it might not have done him much good politically, but it was correct none the less. As the hon. Member for North Thanet said, we should base the law neither on hard cases nor on extreme emotions. However, the Bill would legalise unreasonable conduct on the part of constituents who unreasonably believe themselves to be threatened. It is a licence for madmen, and we should not pass it.

1.57 pm

Mr. Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con): I am a sponsor of the Bill. The hon. Members for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) and for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) both referred repeatedly to jury trials, but I think they miss the point. People feel that, in many cases, the actions of a householder should not result in their ending up in court, which is what often happens now. In addition, the fear that that might happen is what restrains householders from acting when they ought to do so and ought to be able to do so knowing that they are safe in the eyes the law.

Part of the problem is that the law at present is unclear. I refer to an article from The Daily Telegraph of 2 December 2002 by Mr. Alan Judd. It refers to three cases. In the first, a man was convicted for repeatedly stabbing a burglar who had broken into the flat in which he believed his children were sleeping. In the second, a man who felled a violent schizophrenic who was strangling someone, then kicked him when he tried to get up and resume, was arrested by the police—unlike the schizophrenic—and prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service for kicking. In the third—the hon. Member for Ealing, North may have been referring to this case—a man stabbed to death one intruder and seriously wounded another, and the CPS found his use of force to be reasonable.

Mr. Judd quotes an article in The Sunday Telegraph by Mr. Alasdair Palmer, who wrote that what such cases indicate is that the CPS

"clearly can't decide where the boundary between the reasonable and unreasonable use of force lies, and thus what the law actually is".

Mr. Judd asks:

"How can it be right to prosecute people when the law itself is confused and contradictory? If the lawyers, safe in their offices, can't say what is right, how can we be expected to weigh up the pros and cons during some desperate struggle in the dark? Unclear law is unfair law."

The hon. Member for Broxtowe referred to certainty, and he is right: the Bill does provide a much higher degree of certainty. If he wants to argue about that in more detail, I should have thought that the place to do so is in Committee.

I want to raise one other issue, which involves the impact on rural areas. I represent a very rural constituency of 350 square miles. To give the House some idea of its size, the whole of Greater London has 74 constituencies in 650 square miles. Overnight in my constituency there are only two police vehicles with four
 
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police officers on patrol. If someone is apprehended, they have to be taken to Norwich or, worse, to King's Lynn to be locked up as there are no custodial facilities elsewhere. It requires only one call on the services of police officers to go into Norwich and the whole southern sector of my constituency—an area of 270 square miles, which is equivalent to nearly half of Greater London—is completely without police protection.

In Dickleburgh in my constituency, just last Thursday a store was ram raided in the middle of the night. The person who rented the flat above it alerted the police, because he could hear what was going on, but he was told by the police not to go downstairs and intervene in case he came under threat. However, one reason that caused that person not to intervene was fear that if he were to do so, he would be the one to be had up.

We need a shift in the presumption away from the burglar or law-breaker and towards the householder. There should be a strong presumption against prosecuting any occupant who injures an assailant in some way while resisting the intrusion into his or her home. That is essentially the point that my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) is making in the Bill.

I have no doubt—my hon. Friend admitted it—that the Bill could be improved. The place to do that is in Committee, and I very much hope that the House will give the Bill a chance to be considered there in more detail. The hon. Members for Broxtowe and for Ealing, North, who have opposed the Bill, have not said what they would do instead. They have both acknowledged that there is a problem and that members of the public out there—

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