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Mr. Allan: It is very welcome that assessments of the IT implications will be made before policies are announced, but will the Financial Secretary deal with the point that was made by the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), among others, about the publication of such information? In considering policy initiatives in the House, it would be extremely helpful to have that information before us, instead of guessing it or picking it up from the computer press.

Ruth Kelly: I was about to turn to the publication of the OGC gateway reviews, about which I know the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) feels extremely strongly. My hon. Friend the Economic Secretary considered this issue in a previous debate, and although I acknowledge that there are differing views on each side of the argument, I shall make the same point that he doubtless made then. I have been involved in gateway reviews on a number of occasions, and I can say that the OGC reviews are conducted on a confidential basis. The process involving the OGC and the Department is extremely open. The OGC, which has the ability to disseminate best practice across government, helps and advises the Department when it has a project to deliver, and it is right that, once the Department owns that project, such information be kept confidential. If we took confidentiality away from the discussions we would not have such open and honest negotiations. Lessons would not be learned to the same extent, and the value added by the process could be significantly diminished.

Mr. Bacon: Does the Financial Secretary agree that the evidence is overwhelming that lessons are not being learned, as the history of the past 20 years has shown? I have made the point clearly that parties of both political complexions have suffered from this problem. The Financial Secretary says that the discussions between the Department and the OGC are very open. That is okay, but what about the suppliers? How can the situation be acceptable if suppliers do not even know that a gateway review is taking place? What is the Treasury afraid of?

Ruth Kelly: This is a question of learning from experience, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that such lessons are being taken on board. He has given examples of projects going back 15 years or more, and we do of course share the concern that he and other Members have expressed this afternoon about performance in relation to IT procurement. We are
 
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determined to improve and the OGC process is a vital contribution to the debate. On the particular issue of a new statutory framework, I can tell the hon. Member for South Norfolk that I am committed to taking away this interesting proposal and looking into it further. He will understand that I cannot give an instant answer to that proposition, but I commit myself to writing to him about his interesting suggestion.

I hope that that illustrates the fact that we are committed to learning from experience. We are open to new ideas about how to take this forward. I believe that the OGC process has been and is valuable, and that some of its fruits may not be felt for many years to come, but will be significant in the future.

Many other issues have been raised in the debate and hon. Members will understand that I do not have time to respond to them all. Some concern individual Departments. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Pollok asked about the sheep regime and it is important to pass his question on to the appropriate Department, and the same applies to the points made about the Home Office building. The Home Office response highlighted the positive contribution that the new building will make to its operation in the future. It is something that is quite hard to quantify and to take into account—and the same applies to other points.

We have had a valuable and useful debate. It has been stimulating and enjoyable, demonstrating the value of the Public Accounts Committee's work in adding to the process of parliamentary scrutiny. I look forward to the Committee continuing its extremely valuable work throughout the coming year.

6.56 pm

Mr. Leigh: I would like to add my thanks to all members of the Committee for what they have said in today's debate and, indeed, for serving on it. I shall run through them quickly.

First, the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg) is, with his humour and his knowledge, an extraordinarily valuable member of the Committee. In a particularly brutal hearing on tax credits, he reminded the chairman of the Inland Revenue, Sir Nick Montague, that he had received more letters on the subject than any other, apart from fox hunting. Quick as a flash, Sir Nicholas replied:

"I have to be thankful for small mercies, Mr. Steinberg. Fox hunting is not a subject about which you write to me."

We are very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his contribution to our Committee.

We are also grateful for the wise counsel of the soon-to-be Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), who keeps us on the
 
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straight and narrow and reminds us when we are in danger of veering away from the ancient precedents of our venerable Committee. He is another extraordinarily valuable member. What he said today about benchmarking was important and we should take it away with us. The point was reiterated by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Pollok (Mr. Davidson). We should have more international comparisons; we are too insular in our work.

I would also like to thank my two hon. Friends—if I may put it that way—the Members for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) and for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) for their extraordinarily skilful speeches on IT. I did not lose the will to live during their speeches. They are not anoraks, but are contributing a great deal to saving many tens of millions of pounds. We will have to return to the issue of gateway reviews. We may be able to debate it further in our Committee. We have also spoken today about how best to publicise findings and how to avoid the eternal reiteration of mistakes, about which Karl Popper spoke, as mentioned in the debate.

The hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) spoke well about the central paradox that the Committee has to deal with—the efficiency of the public sector. Somehow in our Committee, if nowhere else in the House of Commons, we manage to avoid it becoming a party political issue. It is something on which we can all agree, whatever our views—that we have to make the public sector far more efficient than it has been under this Government, under the previous Government and, indeed, under any Government.

I would also like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight), who did a feisty canter across the ground and injected a little bit of party politics into the debate—and what is wrong with that?

I also thank the Minister for being a member of our Committee, even though she cannot turn up for sittings. We are very grateful for all her work.

Finally, I am grateful for the very kind personal appreciation that the hon. Member for Tamworth (Mr. Jenkins) gave me. He is the hardest working member of our Committee and we are all very grateful to him.

This has been a good debate and we will carry on our work.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House takes note of the 1st to the 16th, and the 18th and 19th Reports of the Committee of Public Accounts of Session 2003–04, and of the Treasury Minutes and the Northern Ireland Department of Finance and Personnel Memorandum on these Reports, Cm 6130, 6136, 6155, 6175, 6191 and 6244.

 
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Domestic Violence

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ainger.]

6.59 pm

Vera Baird (Redcar): Two women a week are killed by violent partners. Thirty men a year are killed by their battered partners. Many of the men and women charged with those killings put up the defence of provocation. If the jury accepts it, they will be convicted only of manslaughter and not of murder. In those circumstances, the punishment is not a mandatory life sentence, but is at the judge's discretion.

The Government are undecided about whether to change the law on provocation imminently. I shall set out what happens under the current law.

In domestic killings, men kill because of anger and sexual jealousy. Women kill because of abuse. I have defended many women over the past decade who have killed their partners, and I have never come across one who has killed from sexual jealousy or anger. The women whom I have defended have killed only after being beaten and abused, sometimes for years.

In the defence of provocation, the defendant says that the killing was done during a sudden and temporary loss of self-control caused by things said or done by the victim, and in circumstances in which a reasonable person might have reacted as the defendant did.

The point of the defence is that although the defendant has killed, his blameworthiness for overreacting is mitigated by the provocation from the victim. Originally, the defence required the provocative conduct to be wrong. The philosophy behind provocation—that its presence reduces the blameworthiness of killing—would not make sense if a victim did only what she had a right to do, or if she was not wrong to do it.

As long ago as the 19th century, judges thought it a misuse of the defence of provocation to say that a man was provoked to kill when his wife left him. They had a power to withdraw the defence from the jury's consideration when it was levelled against rightful acts, or acts that were not wrong. In such circumstances, the judges did withdraw the defence. Of course a woman has a right to leave a man if she does not want to live with him. He can divorce her but he cannot kill her, unless he wants to be convicted of murder.

However, in this century the requirement that the provocation must be wrong in some way has disappeared. One man was acquitted of murder when he claimed that he had been provoked to kill by a baby crying.

In recent years, there have been cases in which women have been killed and men have said that they were provoked to lose their self-control by nagging. For one man, the final provocation was the way that the woman moved the mustard pot across the table. In a case in Leeds, the defence of provocation was successful in a case in which a man had killed his wife not because she had left him but because she had told him that she was thinking of leaving him and going to live with her gym trainer.

We must remember that there are two parts to the defence of provocation. It does not work unless, in addition to showing provocative conduct, the defendant
 
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shows that a reasonable person might have reacted to that conduct as the defendant did. Surely killing a partner for moving the mustard pot in a certain way and saying that she fancies her gym teacher is not the reaction of a reasonable person, so how did it come about that these men were acquitted?

The culprit is the House of Lords. In the case of Morgan James Smith in 2000, the Lords said that, when considering whether a reasonable person might have reacted to the provocation as the defendant did, all the characteristics of the defendant must be taken into account. Clearly, to be fair, one must consider whether a reasonable person of the same age might have reacted in the same way, as self-control goes with maturity. However, in the Smith case it was stated that all the defendant's characteristics have to be taken into account, including any that might lower his standards of self-control below the ordinary.

For that reason, a defendant's bad temper and alcoholism are his characteristics and must be taken into account when consideration is given to whether any reasonable person would have done as he did. Therefore, one is supposed to impute the fine characteristics of the reasonable person, and then ask whether a reasonable person who is bad tempered and alcoholic might have behaved as the defendant did.

However, if one imputes the defendant's characteristics to the reasonable person, the reasonable person turns into the defendant. Therefore, the question of whether a reasonable person—who has now become the defendant—might have reacted as the defendant did is meaningless, as there is no second requirement. At present, there is no need for conduct to be wrong to be called provocation, trivial behaviour cannot be withdrawn from the jury by the judge, and there is no second requirement at all. Add it all together and the only question left for the jury in a provocation defence is whether he lost his self-control because of something she did. If so, he has a defence. That is hopeless. It offers no protection or rational basis for jury decisions. In addition, what does it say to her children or parents if the state says that his blame is less and she bears responsibility for her own killing because she moved the mustard pot?

The typical killing by a battered woman is not from anger and does not fit the sudden and temporary loss of self-control model of provocation. Almost all such killings take place when she is under attack. She flees into the kitchen, he comes after her, she seizes a knife, she turns and she stabs him once. There is no defence of killing out of fear or despair that accommodates battered women in the way that provocation and killing out of anger accommodates men. However, there is far more emotional and psychological stress to justify a finding of less blameworthiness if someone kills after long tolerance of harsh wrong treatment, rather than suddenly in anger.

One might think that the run into the kitchen and the turn round under attack is self-defence, but it is excessive. To be a defence, self-defence must be proportionate. If a woman is attacked only with fist or boot and even if the man is stronger and has used violence before, if she takes a weapon, lashes out and kills him, the jury will not acquit her on self-defence. It is excessive. It is disproportionate. Excessive or
 
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disproportionate self-defence leads to a conviction for murder, not for manslaughter. If I overreact to provocation, as a man may do, it is manslaughter. If I overreact to being attacked, as a woman may do, it is murder.

Women in court are now defended on two bases. First, the defence tries arguing that the act was proportionate self-defence. Secondly, if that fails, she falls back on the claim that the attack provoked her into a sudden and temporary loss of self-control that would have caused a reasonable person to do as she did and kill. But proportionality in the first defence of self-defence requires measurement and deliberation. The defence of provocation requires a sudden and temporary loss of self-control and a lashing out—an overreaction. It requires that a person has acted disproportionately. The two defences are inconsistent.

Women do not fit the hot-tempered provocation model into which one tries to squeeze them. The jury can see perfectly well that the woman is outside provocation and that she has not killed from anger at a wrong, but in terror and despair at yet another beating. So both defences usually fail, and thus do violent men who lose their self-control get away with murder and battered women get convicted of it. That is unjust. It is also sexist. The Government will introduce a duty on public authorities to promote gender equality, but the courts, which have to implement the current law on provocation and manslaughter, will not be able to comply.

The Government know well that the need to reform the law is urgent and they have asked the Law Commission to consider the issue and make proposals. The Law Commission has done so. I am told by Mr. Justice Toulson that the proposals are unlikely to change and have been well received, with few exceptions, by the judiciary and by academics. I can say that the Fawcett Society, Justice for Women, Rights of Women, Southall Black Sisters, Women's Aid and all the women's lobby groups who deal with the issue are 100 per cent. behind the proposals.

The purpose in asking the Law Commission to look at provocation was to consider legislation, so the terms of reference asked for special attention to domestic violence. However, the Law Commission has worked out a defence for all manslaughter to an outstanding level, which goes much wider than the terms of reference. The calibre of the proposals is very good. Under them, unlawful homicide that would otherwise be murder would be manslaughter if the defendant acted in response to various factors. Change No. 1 is gross provocation, meaning words or conduct—or words and conduct—that caused the defendant to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged. That would restore the moral basis for provocation—that the conduct in question must be wrongful. The defendant would have to have legitimate grounds for feeling strongly aggrieved by the conduct of the person. The question of whether that was justifiable would be for the jury, not for the defendant. Gross provocation ups the level of conduct needed to arouse a justifiable sense of grievance. Anything less than gross, anything less than wrongful and the court will be able to withdraw the defence from the jury, because change No. 2 is that the judge will not
 
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be required to leave the defence to the jury unless there is evidence on which a reasonable jury, properly directed, could conclude that it might apply.

Under change No. 3, homicide that would otherwise be murder would be manslaughter instead if the act was carried out from fear of serious violence, so the woman under attack in the kitchen would not have to pretend that she acted out of loss of self-control; she will be protected if she acted from fear of serious violence. Of course, before the jury looks at that partial defence it will have to look at self-defence, where that has been raised, but if it finds that the defence was disproportionate it will ask whether it was too much because the woman was afraid.

It is a measure of how fair and realistic the report is, and of how commendable it is, that the Royal College of Psychiatrists gave evidence to the Law Commission, challenging the assumption that anger—the male emotion—cannot be a justification for responsive violence, while fear—the female emotion—can be. The RCP pointed out that the two emotions of anger and fear are not distinct and that physiologically anger and fear are identical. Many mental states that accompany killing also incorporate psychologically both anger and fear. Hence the abused woman who kills in response even to an immediate severe threat will be driven at least partly by anger at the years of abuse meted out to her and perhaps to her children.

Change No. 4, homicide that would otherwise be murder, can be reduced to manslaughter by a combination of gross provocation causing a justifiable sense of wrong and fear. Morally, of course, the common element is that it is a response to bad conduct. The person would not kill at all had they not been attacked.

Even if there is gross provocation engendering a justifiable sense of wrong it by no means follows that an ordinary person would have reacted in the way that the defendant did. Most people suffer gross provocation from time to time but they do not kill. The final change is that the defence would be available only if a person of ordinary self-control in the circumstances of the defendant might have reacted in the same or a similar way. That would still take into account all the defendant's characteristics, such as age, but not matters that bear simply on his capacity for self-control—so no more bad temper, no more alcohol.

A man or a woman, seriously wronged, justifiably feeling that they have been seriously wronged and exercising ordinary self-control, but who kills will have that defence. Women, killing under serious fear of violence, will also have that defence. All will become far more equal. The case for change is overwhelming. The Law Commission's proposals are rational, clear, just—not sexist—and fair. They can be put into the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill through an amendment that has already been tabled, so this is my sole question to my hon. Friend the Minister: why not?

7.13 pm

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