My Lords, I spoke in Committee and, subsequent to that, I had an exchange of correspondence with Marie McCourt. I would not like anything said today, and I do not think that any noble Lord would mean it, to take away from the need to right the hurt that she, and those dear to her, have felt.
I said on the last occasion that the Parole Board itself needed a thorough overhaul and the Minister, if I remember correctly, agreed with me. My concern here, as it is in many places, is that any law brought in to right a specific wrong can often be wrong itself—you need a much more generalist approach.
None the less, I welcome the Bill. My point is that, when you deal with mental capacity, you also have to remember human frailty. The fact of the matter is that people can just forget. There is at least an element of possibility that someone could just forget what they had done. It is also possible that they could just forget who photographs were of. I know that that may not be a popular thing to say but, going back many years to when I was in the Territorial Army, we used to have exercises where we dropped people and they then had to find their way to places. I was always amazed at how people could not recognise things. There is a genuine defence that someone has just forgotten.
Secondly, I hope that the Minister can assure us that we are not passing a law that will go to Strasbourg to be interpreted. When I look at this, I wonder whether it will pretty quickly end up in the European Court of Human Rights, where it will not be us doing the legislating but the judges in Strasbourg. I welcome the Minister’s assurance that he really does think that it is proof against even a reasonable prospect of a challenge in the court.
Finally, I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, that wording matters. It can matter quite strongly in the case of a Bill such as this one.