LARCENY BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 27 July 1916)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD BUCKMASTER)

My Lords, in making the Motion that the House do resolve itself into Committee on this Bill, I think it right that I should call your attention to the position in which the Bill now stands. Your Lordships may remember that you granted a Second Reading to the Bill upon the statement that I made that it was designed to consolidate the existing law with regard to larceny, and your Lordships accordingly referred it to the Joint Committee of both Houses whose business it is 964 to consider Consolidation Bills and report upon them. The Joint Committee have considered this Bill and made a Report. They have proposed a number of Amendments to the Bill as it was originally drawn, and these proposed Amendments are grouped under three heads. With those under the first head I do not think your Lordships need be troubled, because, in fact, they are nothing but verbal Amendments for the purpose of making clear what the law undoubtedly is.

The second class of Amendments stand in a different category. They are designed to remove certain inequalities and anomalies in the existing law, and they undoubtedly effect a slight alteration of the law. If your Lordships thought fit, after I have placed before you the nature of these Amendments, to permit them all to be inserted together in Committee, it would be a convenient course; but that is, of course, entirely in your Lordships' hands, and must depend on the weight and importance which your Lordships give to these Amendments. I will refer briefly to the Amendments under the second head. The first is an Amendment in Clause 26. As the Bill was drawn, it provided that every person who breaks and enters any dwelling-house or any building within the curtilage thereof and occupied therewith, or any school-house, shop, warehouse, or counting-house, shall have committed a felony. That is the way in which the law stands now. The proposed Amendment, which I trust your Lordships will think is a reasonable one, is to add "office, store, garage, pavilion, factory, or workshop, or any building belonging to His Majesty or to any Government Department or to any municipal or other public authority." The effect of that Amendment is merely to extend the definition of a "building"; it does not really affect the offence. It must be just as much an offence to break into a garage as into a counting-house. The Amendment is in effect an extension of the definition of "building" to what is more in accordance with the needs of modern times. There is another Amendment of the same class in Clause 27, where the same words are introduced for exactly the same purpose. There is also an Amendment in Clause 31. That clause provides that every person who with intent extorts valuable property from any person, or induces any person to confer or procure for any person any appointment or office of profit or trust shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, 965 and, on conviction thereof, shall be liable to imprisonment "for any term not exceeding three years." The joint Committee in their Report point out that the term of three years' imprisonment is obsolete, and that in practice the period of two years is never exceeded. It is therefore proposed to reduce the maximum punishment to two years' imprisonment. The only other Amendment under the second head is in Clause 34. This clause provides that every person who corruptly takes any money or reward, directly or indirectly, under pretence or upon account of helping any person to recover stolen property shall be guilty of felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be liable to penal servitude for any term not exceeding seven years, and in addition, if a male under the age of eighteen years, to be once privately whipped. In all other offences for which whipping is a punishment the age is sixteen and not eighteen years. It is proposed, therefore, to alter eighteen years in this clause to sixteen years. I cannot help thinking that your Lordships will agree that if the punishment of whipping is to be administered at all, most of its objections are taken away if it is administered to young people. Those are the proposed Amendments which are grouped under Part II of the recommendations of the Joint Committee. If your Lordships thought fit, after this short explanation, to permit these Amendments to be inserted, I would, with your Lordships' permission, move them en bloc in Committee, and then, if your Lordships thought they were matters which required further consideration, that could take place on Report.

Finally, a further set of Amendments were included in what is called Part III of the Report of the Joint Committee. Those of your Lordships who were present when I moved the Second Reading of this Bill may remember the peculiar position in which I stated that the law of larceny stands. Speaking generally, it is not larceny to steal a wild bird that is not fit for human food, but it is none the less larceny to steal a hawk, which I think no one would suggest was a suitable subject for human food; and in the same way it is larceny to steal the eggs of a hawk, but it is not larceny to steal the eggs of a swan. As the law stands, a lark is, but a canary is not, capable of being stolen at Common Law, because the latter is not fit for human food. The proposed Amendments will alter this, and leave the law in what I cannot help thinking is a much more sensible form.