HC Deb 28 October 1965 vol 718 cc398-9

Lords Amendment: In page 2, line 31, at end insert: Provided that this Act shall continue to have effect in relation to any murder not shown to have been committed after the expiration of this Act, and for this purpose a murder shall be taken to be committed at the time of the act which causes the death.

Mr. Sydney Silverman

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.

I call the attention of the House to the fact that this is an Amendment of a very different kind in a sense that it is a hypothetical Amendment—and a hypothetical Amendment in a double sense. It can come into effect only if one hypothesis supervenes upon another hypothesis.

The House will recall that on the proposition of the right hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) a Clause was added to the Bill—which has not been questioned in another place—by which this Bill would come to an end in five years' time unless by Resolution of both Houses it were continued. Moreover, the new Clause also provided that if the Bill came to an end, then the Homicide Act which this Bill repeals should again become the law of the land without Parliament having a word to say or the opportunity of saying anything whatever about it.

I always thought that this was a rather astonishing constitutional proposition to be accepted by both Houses of Parliament, and I still think so. However, I have been assured in all sorts of responsible quarters that this first hypothesis—namely, that the Homicide Act should be re-enacted in silence—will in practice not happen, and I am content, with certain reservations and doubts, to accept this assurance. This is why I took no further step about the matter.

But supposing all these assurances turn out to be mistaken and supposing the hypothesis comes to pass that the Homicide Act is re-enacted, say, some time in 1970. There then comes a further hypothesis, which is that a man commits a murder during the liftetime of the present Act but comes to be tried and sentenced after the Homicide Act has automatically and in silence been re-enacted. What the Amendment is designed to ensure is that in such a highly unlikely hypothetical event the man shall be punished in accordance with the present Act and not in accordance with the Homicide Act which the present Act is designed to repeal.

I do not believe that this contemplated event is ever likely to occur, but I suppose that no hon. Member has any doubt that if it occurred then in those circumstances this Act should govern the sentence and not the Act which we are now repealing.

Question put and agreed to.