Compensation Bill [HL]

As the noble Lord says, this raises an interesting point. I hope he will not mind if I say that if this had been an amendment to the Occupiers’ Liability Act, it would have been more appropriate in that legislation than in this. But I take the point that he is referring to. Certainly, Anne McIntosh’s Bill—and I remember the Radio 4 end-of-year debates about what people would like to see—caused the Government to look very carefully at the whole issue. We concur with the noble Lord in saying that we strongly support the right of householders and others to defend themselves with reasonable force. But he would accept that this is what the current law allows, and the Bill that Anne McIntosh introduced was, we felt, unnecessary and not necessarily helpful—not least because we did not believe that the term ““not grossly disproportionate”” was any clearer than the term ““reasonable force””. It was in the spirit of understanding where those proposals came from, but not seeing that they would be an appropriate way forward, that the Bill was talked out at Second Reading, as the noble Lord will know. The ““Tony Martin”” issues came up under the Criminal Justice Act. I shall not refer in detail to Section 329, but noble Lords will know that we were looking to see how the courts would respond to issues when someone sought to claim compensation. The amendment would create difficulties in the Bill because of how it is positioned. It would require a Girl Guide camp, for example, to consider all the issues when someone went on to the land and whether it was a desirable activity, because someone came onto the land with a view to stealing the equipment. In other words, you would be assessing the activity regardless of what the individual who came on to the land was seeking to do. I am not sure that it is relevant to put that provision in this particular part of the Bill. When the courts look at these issues, I do not believe that they do anything other than look at the whole range of circumstances; what I would be nervous about—and what concerns me with this amendment—is that we do not move away from proportionality. I shall try to think of a frivolous example, but do it deliberately—because I am not trying to suggest in any sense that someone who commits an offence of any kind is doing anything other than something terribly wrong. But let us say that a bunch of kids decide to come onto your land to nick your apples, which when I was growing up and we had an orchard was something that was a familiar pastime for most of my friends; let us say that you have set out a kind of mantrap at the bottom, so that the children suffer terrible injuries. I know that it is a ridiculous example—but when you look at the implications for any particular way in which we approach something, you have to be proportionate in what you do. The kids come in, get the apples and fall off and try to claim—but they were actually there to steal apples—of course, the courts would take that into account if it was appropriate. But you have to keep things in proportion and be proportionate in response, and I am nervous again that, although I see the logic behind the proposal, we will find ourselves walking into that difficult area. The issues that the noble Lord raised about the Tony Martin case were covered in a large part in the Criminal Justice Act. I think that the noble Lord, when he originally considered this matter, was looking to amend that Act—but I do not believe that the place for that provision is here, although I accept the need to raise the issues.