It will be within the recollection of the Committee that at our last sitting my hon. Friends the Members for Cornwall, North (Mr. Scott-Hopkins), Truro (Mr. Geoffrey Wilson), Bournemouth, West (Sir J. Eden) and Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) spoke strongly in support of the Amendments. Their arguments were fortified by speeches made by my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) and the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Bessell), who, although they were professed abolitionists, nevertheless thought that serious consideration should be given to the Amendments.

Last week, we had the opportunity of hearing the views of the promoter of the Bill, the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman), and the right hon. Lady the Minister of State, Home Office, who was in charge of the Government's exposition of the case. Both urged rejection of the Amendments and that consideration given to them should be fairly short because they felt that they were at variance with a principle which, they maintained, the House had established on Second Reading. The views advanced by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne were not necessarily the reasons which he gave for a majority decision being taken on the Bill. He gave one reason which, I suppose, enjoys wide acceptance, namely, that there was objection to what he called the beastly ritual of the death penalty. Then he went on to argue that the fact that a majority decision had been taken by the House more or less settled the issue.

I am sure that it is not the generally held view of hon. Members that a majority decision, once taken, is for ever binding on us. Nor would it seem to be reasonable to advance that as the main argument for the rejection of these Amendments. It is not unknown for majority decisions to be resisted and eventually overcome. Many hon. Members opposite will remember a majority decision which was taken in a different context. Very rightly, those who were aggrieved by it decided to fight, fight and fight again and eventually the decision was reversed. Therefore, majority decisions are not necessarily binding. Nevertheless, consideration obviously must be given to whether this argument by itself is the only one which can be adduced in rebuttal of the very persuasive arguments advanced by my colleagues.

I detected in the speech of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne two main trends of argument in rebuttal of the Amendments, apart altogether from the general principle. He argued that, on the whole, murderers, once caught, were well behaved. I do not find this remarkable. If a man has been convicted of murder, and has been lucky enough to escape the death penalty, I should think that he would be very well behaved for the rest of his life as long as he was under supervision in gaol, because he would realise that his only chance of entering into a free life again would be to be on his very best behaviour once we had succeeded in catching him when committing his first crime of violence. I therefore do not find this surprising.

Then the hon. Gentleman went on to argue that it would be wrong to draw a distinction, as the Amendment seeks to do, between a murderer committing a second murder and somebody who previously had never committed one but who committed one within the terms of the Amendment. That is an ingenious and interesting argument.

If I understood the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne correctly, he argued that murders were not committed by professional criminals and that although professional criminals have gone in for crimes of violence and bestiality, which naturally arouse indignation, they have not so far committed murder. I wonder whether, in the hon. Member's argument, it would be wrong to draw a distinction between the punishment of a murderer and the punishment of a violent criminal committing his first murder. What has given the hon. Member reason to doubt that professional criminals will depart from their accepted practice of the past? Does the hon. Member now feel that, if the Bill goes through, professional criminals who hitherto have kept away from murder will be encouraged by the Bill, knowing that the penalty will not be much different whether they commit murder or not, to extend their violence to murder? If that is what the hon. Member feels, he should be able to give considerably more support to my hon. Friend's Amendment than has so far been the case.

It seems obvious from the hon. Member's argument that although violent criminals have always, or nearly always, stopped short of murder, his anxiety that they should not be unfairly treated, or treated advantageously, as a result of the Amendments seems to presuppose the fact that they may well change their habits in the future. This is one reason why hon. Members on this side, even those who are in favour of abolition, see an argument in recognising that if the Bill were to be passed unamended, it would result in an entirely different position from that which now obtains and that murderers who may in the past have been restrained from activities which we would all deplore, and violent criminals who have kept away from murder, might well be persuaded to enter this field knowing that the punishment will not be very serious.

Last week, the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne said:

"Most murders are not committed by people with any previous record of crime at all, still less of violent crime. We are dealing with a group of people, as a class, who, individual by individual, have found themselves in circumstances which have compelled them to commit the greatest crime of all but who are in other respects people who have lived law abiding lives."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th March, 1965; Vol. 709, c. 508.]

It is because this is the greatest crime of all that so much feeling is felt on this side of the Committee among a large number of hon. Members that we should be extremely circumspect in the way in which we deal with it. We want to be sure that the penalties which are to prevail in the future for this worst crime of all will not be whittled away without some kind of safeguards being provided.

Surely we are right in taking the view that, although it may be argued that the existing law on murder has resulted in the creation of a large number of anomalies, with which the Committee might well wish to deal, we must be quite certain that we do not create even more anomalies by making murder a more attractive trade than it now is. That is why this reasonable and sensible Amendment of ours has been moved to ensure that if the House of Commons, in its wisdom—if it is its wisdom—has decided to remove the death penalty for murder, nevertheless there should be provision for retaining within our code punishment for those who are guilty of a second murder.

At a time like this, when hardly a week goes by without crimes of violence being committed every pay day, wage packets being snatched and people using firearms to pursue these crimes of violence, the Committee should be particularly careful not to resist Amendments which seek to inflict the capital penalty only for a second murder.

During our discussion last week, the Minister of State, Home Office was challenged by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Sir C. Taylor), who, I am sorry, is not in his place, who said to the hon. Lady:

"I want to know, as a matter of practical policy, what happens to a man who commits a second murder. Is he put back in prison only to be released again after a while? Do we let him out to commit a third murder?"

That seemed to me to be a perfectly reasonable question to ascertain what was envisaged. I am sorry to say that the hon. Lady, who is always charming and usually helpful in these matters, replied:

"I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is asking what has happened in the past or what would happen in future under the Bill. But if it is the latter case, perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to make his contribution when we come to later Amendments." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th March, 1965; Vol. 709, c. 508, 527.]

10.45 a.m.

That did not seem to me to be the kind of information which my hon. Friend wanted. He wanted to know from the Government what were their ideas on the subject. One would have thought that somewhere in the hon. Lady's speech we might have had her views upon it. It is true that she went on to talk about how violent prisoners would be dealt with in future and said that a maximum security prison would be constructed in the Isle of Wight. That, of course, was some consolation, but the hon. Lady went on to say that it would not be ready for some years yet. I, with my simple mind, would have thought it much better to have got that maximum security prison actually constructed, and to have a period in which we saw how it worked and whether it was effective, before we eased the path of those who have a record of violence and who might to incited to commit murder if the Amendment is rejected.

In recent weeks, we have had experience of people breaking into prison to release violent criminals. I am sure that if in the course of that breaking-in they found themselves resisted, after the passage of the Bill in its unamended form, it is extremely likely that the methods which they would use to break into gaol and to release known convicts, criminals and murderers would be much worse than anything we have experienced so far.

Therefore, at a time such as this, when drugs are being so widely used by so many young people and by so many middle-aged and violent criminals, when every day we see the tactics of the strong-arm man being used in their most violent form, we should seriously consider restricting as far as possible all the incentives which now exist for people to commit murder.

While I am encouraged at the slow realisation which has dawned even upon the promoter of the Bill that its passage may well result in violent criminals departing from their well-known habits and that, having kept away from murder in the past, they may be persuaded to go in for it in future, that is an additional argument in support of my hon. Friend's Amendments. I very much hope that they will receive the earnest and sincere consideration of hon. Members who, as I said last week, for reasons best known to themselves, do not seem to represent public opinion.

When we have the extraordinary position that the whole of the party opposite, except one, is in favour of the Bill, I am not surprised if some hon. Members on this side are disappointed in that kind of reflection of public opinion, which, honestly, I cannot understand. I hope that the Home Secretary may be able to tell us what is this strange compelling thing that unites people, who from time to time are inclined to be contentious with each other on all kinds of other matters, to the extent that they have all come down on the same point of view with regard to capital punishment and have shown themselves to be completely out of touch with what is going on in the country.

When the Committee met last time I was challenged by an hon. Member, if I use his words correctly, to come out in the open. I am not conscious that I have concealed my views about this matter, but if I have not made them specifically plain let me try to remedy that defect.

I have listened to and read very carefully the speeches which have been addressed to the Committee in support of the Amendment. It seems to me that although the arguments were differently expressed, they had, broadly speaking, one common feature, and that was an anxiety about whether society would be properly protected from the violent criminal if the death penalty was abolished. It was differently put, but it seemed to me that that was the common feature of the arguments addressed to the Committee, and it may, I think will, be said that perhaps there has been some misconception amongst the public as to what is likely to happen to murderers, and, in particular, to the most violent and evil-minded type of murderer if the death penalty is abolished.

If I have been in any way responsible for that misconception, I am sorry, and I must try to remove it. I have read again the speech that I made during the Second Reading of the Bill. I then carefully chose my words, and I hope that nothing that I then said was responsible for that misconception, but whether it was, or whether it was not, may I now try to remove it and say how, so long as I hold this office, I will think it my duty to try to exercise my discretion in dealing with prisoners who fall within the province of Section 27 of the Prisons Act, 1952, namely, those prisoners who have been sentenced to imprisonment for life, and with regard to whom the Home Secretary has a discretion as to how long he will cause them to remain in prison.

May I go back to the beginning. In my speech, which I have reconsidered, and from which I do not think I would desire to resile in any way, I did at the outset make it plain that in my opinion the first duty, and the first necessity, was to protect society. That must come first. That must displace every other consideration, and it seems to me that it is the bounden duty of the Home Secretary of the day to see to it however he exercises his discretion that fundamental principle is safeguarded. I adhere to that, and, so long as I hold this office, in any decision that I make with regard to Section 27 of the Act, I will certainly put that first and foremost as the criterion by reference to which I exercise my discretion.

Having said that, within the limits of that exercise of discretion, obviously in individual cases there will arise a number of alternatives. In each case one has to weigh up the individual and try to consider, having regard to his character, his characteristics, his propensities, the likely effect on him of prolonged imprisonment, the possibility of returning him in due course to society as a useful, and may I add safe, member of society, what is appropriate in his case. I know that the Committee would agree with me about that; indeed, that is what the Statute, by implication at any rate, says.

I know, also, that whatever view right hon. and hon. Members take with regard to the Amendment they will all be agreed on this, that in this great country of ours we should endeavour always when it is possible to take the humane, and, I will not say kindly, but human, attitude, as distinct from an attitude which involves any unnecessary cruelty to any individual, however bestial he may be. I am sure that all hon. Members would agree upon that. Therefore, in exercising a discretion, one has to try to reconcile those general principles, always bearing in mind what is the first and foremost of them.

I then went on to say this, and I would, if I may, venture to inflict it on the Committee again:

"One may have to deal with a sex murderer."

I simply took that as an example. My own view of a person who, for example, murders a child in a sexual outbreak is a person who, unless there is some extremely marked change which can be clearly diagnosed in him, is extremely dangerous to society, and one would have to consider very carefully before one ever let a man like that out again. I do not want to strike dismay into the mind of any persons whom that may affect who are at present in custody, but I must say that.

I went on to say:

"One may have to deal with a murderer who, obviously, has inherent vicious propensities and of whom one has to say to oneself, albeit reluctantly, 'This man will aways be a danger and menace to society'. A man like that must be kept in confinement for a very long time—maybe even for the whole of his life, though that would be a conclusion which I know any Home Secretary would be most reluctant to reach."

I say "any Home Secretary", but I feel that any hon. Member of the Committee would be reluctant to reach that conclusion.

Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman give us an assurance that there will be certain instances in which a prisoner will be kept in prison for the term of his natural life, and that in no circumstances whatever will he be allowed to leave prison? I say that for one reason because, as was mentioned last week, Peter Dunford is a prisoner who has committed murder twice. I do not wish the Home Secretary to comment on this case, but it is clear that my vote on the Third Reading of the Bill will depend on the right hon. and learned Gentleman giving us an assurance that in certain cases there will be an absolute necessity to keep a man in prison for the term of his natural life.

I read what I said on Second Reading, which I meant, and still mean. I was talking about the man who was a permanent menace to society and I said that he

"must be kept in confinement for a very long time—maybe even for the whole of his life, though that would be a conclusion which I know any Home Secretary would be most reluctant to reach."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st December, 1964; Vol. 704, c. 927.]

I say "any Home Secretary" but I include, and I feel the completest confidence in including, every hon. Member present in this Committee, every hon. Member who is not present, and the vast majority of the public.

The hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Hordern) mentioned a prisoner. I hope that anything that I say today will not be thought by that prisoner, or by anybody who is concerned with him, to involve any conclusion with regard to his case. It depends on his future development. It would be terrible if anything said during this debate led any prisoner, any human being who is in custody, the responsibility for which at present devolves on me, to say to himself, "I have no hope of every regaining my future". It would be dreadful to say that.

I was at great pains to make the point that the case I mentioned was not one on which I wanted a judgment. We are not sitting here as judge and jury.

The hon. Gentleman made that point. When I say that there may be cases—I hope very few—in which an extreme course of that sort will be the only course which can be adopted to protect society, it will have to be done. Everybody responsible will hate doing it. If it were my responsibility, I would take such a course with extreme reluctance and dislike. As what I say may be read by the prison population, I emphasise that what I say is not intended to apply to any person at present in prison.

11.0 a.m.

The case of each prisoner will be considered from time to time, as it is at present. So far as I am concerned, I shall examine most carefully the reports made on him and I would not wish it to go out from this Committee to the mind of any prisoner at present in custody that he has no hope. I am bound to say that some prisoners must realise that they have less hope. When my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) said that a great many persons who have committed murder are, shall I say, not necessary inherently evil, I think that the whole Committee would agree. A man may murder under the influence of sudden, almost uncontrollable, outbreak of jealousy, or fury. He may be a man of perfectly unblemished reputation until that time. He might be a man who has been subjected to years of domestic strain or to other misfortune. A man of that sort who suddenly gives way to such an uncontrollable outbreak has committed a terrible crime. It is the worst crime in the calendar.

Nevertheless, not only the courts, but the public and this House, would say that they would view a man of that sort in a much more indulgent light than the type of murderer referred to by the hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Hordern)—the vicious, violent man who has no pity for man or beast and who will slay to promote his own ends. That is an entirely different person, and the whole point of Section 27 of the 1952 Act is to impose on the Secretary of State the duty of trying to distinguish between cases.

I know that we would all regard as the objective which we wish to try to accomplish to send people back, whatever their offence when it can be done consistently with the safety of society, to their friends and to their family to lead the rest of their lives as useful citizens in the community. My hon. Friend the Minister of State has pointed out that in a great many cases that happens now. One of my responsibilities is to study cases individually with regard to whom a question mark arises, "Should you let them out or should you not?" The night before last the House discussed an individual case. I had a difficult discretion to exercise then and many people think that I exercised my discretion wrongly. I feel that it was perfectly right and I greatly hope that the result in that case may be that a citizen is regained for the the community.

When I express these views, and those who are like-minded with me express views of the sort that I am expressing, it does not mean to say that we think that the crime of murder is the sort of crime which could be glossed over. It is still the most terrible crime in the calendar, knowingly and purposefully to take away life from another human being. Of course it is.

May I digress to say this? Sometimes language is used, I think a little incautiously, by hon. Members engaged in this Committee, in a controversy which would seem to imply that nine years or 10 years is—I do not wish myself to exaggerate, as the language seems to suggest—something very light, something which any would-be criminal could contemplate with complete equanimity.

I hope that hon. Members will re-think that language. Nine or 10 years is a terrible punishment. In my respectful submission, to think that a person who is minded to commit an act of violence which may have a fatal conclusion will say to himself, "I have only nine or 10 years to be frightened of", is unrealistic. It is a terrible penalty in itself. It becomes more and more terrible when nine or 10 years may be 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 or 15 years.

There may even be cases where people lose all hope of ever coming out of prison and it becomes more terrible. I ask the Committee not to take the view that nine or 10 years is—I do not wish to use exaggerated language—something which anybody may contemplate without being frightened of it. It is a terrible thing in itself.

Would not the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that, quite apart from the crime of murder, there are, as we can see every single day, a tremendous number of the criminal population who, quite frankly, undertake a crime for which they know the penalty in their case would be imprisonment for nine or 10 years, and it does not have the slightest effect upon them?

I have always thought that the real, shall I say, defect in our arrangements is not that our penalties are not sufficiently severe, but that the person who is minded to commit a crime thinks to himself, "I shall escape. I shall get away with it." My own view is that if we had penalties which were even considerably less than those habitually inflicted by the courts now, if there was a much higher likelihood of conviction, a virtual certainty of apprehension, the level of crime would drop tremendously.

Since I have had my present responsibility I have concentrated a very large amount of my thinking and endeavour to trying to put the police in a better position to combat crime. The Committee knows that if one looks, for example, at the question of firearms—

Order. I hesitate to interrupt the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but he must link his remarks to the two Amendments which the Committee is considering and which relate to the question of double murder.

I will certainly do so, Dr. King.

The relevance, such as it is, of my speech, consisted, I hope, in this, that I think that the anxiety, as I pointed out at the outset of my remarks, of a number of hon. Members who support the Amendment is that if one does not retain the extreme penalty in some cases society will be insufficiently protected. What I was endeavouring to assure the Committee about was that the punishment will, nevertheless, be very severe, and that it is quite wrong to think that the punishment will be only nine or 10 years' imprisonment. That is the relevance of it and I hope that you will think that is within order.

May I reinforce that remark again in an endeavour to remove public misconception which exists and remind the Committee that when one talks about persons being let out after nine or 10 years' imprisonment, generally they are persons who have been sentenced to death and reprieved. They have been reprieved because it was thought that in their cases there was a mitigating factor. It certainly does not follow at all that persons who have been sentenced to life imprisonment, with regard to whom it is impossible to point to any mitigating factor, can have any expectation that they will meet with the same treatment or that they have only to consider the possibility of a term of nine or 10 years. Therefore, I hope that it will not be thought that nine or 10 years is anything like automatic. It is not. Penalties may be considerably longer.

I have been trying to follow the argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman—which has been put courteously and clearly as is always the case—on the queston of a person who commits a crime of violence and is sentenced to a term of imprisonment of nine or 10 years. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said, as I understood it, that a criminal is buoyed up by the hope that he will never be caught. Would not the right hon. and learned Gentleman also admit that if the Bill, as drafted, becomes law, and a person knows that the penalty for trying to resist arrest if he shoots someone will be no worse than if he does not, he will be encouraged to commit violence?

With respect, I cannot accept that. I just do not believe that it is the case. I think that if a person was trying to resist arrest, and knew that the game was up and he was going to be caught, if he thought he was going to be sentenced to a fairly short term of imprisonment it would be a very great deterrent to him. The difficulty is that people think that they will get away with it.

In view of the volume of crime as it is at the moment, they have—I do not want to exaggerate—more ground to hope that they will escape. That is why I think that my prime duty is to see to it that that possibility is reduced to the absolute bare minimum. That is what I have been trying to do.

Is not the position slightly worse even than my hon. Friend suggested? If the potential criminal is faced with circumstances in which apprehension seems inevitable and he knows that his only chance of escaping is to take some action which will result in murder, would not his temptation, as my hon. Friend implied, be all the greater?

Looking at it from the point of view of the criminal, if he knows that his offence will be detected and will inevitably result in his being imprisoned—because the likelihood of his being apprehended is so strong that he has practically no chance of escape—that person is far more likely to say, "I cannot get away with it. Better not aggravate it by shooting my way out as well." His temptation would be—

This is absolutely the fundamental point for those like myself who, for a long time, supported the abolitionists' case. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is advancing the proposition that the greatest deterrent is police detection. Now we have a situation in which we are not certain that the detection is good enough. Secondly, if such a man is caught, the tendency will be, as in the last few months, to use a firearm—that is the way the criminal mind works—to avoid being caught.

I think exactly the opposite. If the likelihood of being caught is extremely high—

It is not at the moment.

That is why I am trying to improve it. I am trying to increase the likelihood and that is what I have been arguing, that the endeavour of the Government and my own endeavour will be to try to increase that likelihood and put the police in a better and better position. Suppose that I achieve a modest degree of success. If one looks at it through the eyes of a criminal who knows that he is about to be caught, he would far sooner be caught for an offence for which he might be imprisoned for three years than for an offence for which he might be imprisoned for 10 or 12 years. Therefore, the likelihood of his trying to shoot his way out would be reduced proportionately as the chances of his being apprehended increase.

This relates to the question which I raised before, that of the prisoner who is doing a life sentence. I was told that he was doing it for raping a young girl. If he had murdered that young girl as well he could not have got more than a life sentence. He might just as well have murdered her; he could not have been worse treated.

I deplore discussing individual cases. In that case, a person was sentenced to life imprisonment for rape of a young person. If there is any discussion about that individual, I would call the attention of the Committee to the fact that the court which sentenced him for that offence thought that the circumstances were such that they should impose the maximum possible sentence which could be imposed, that is to say, life imprisonment. I shall say no more about that case.

I have tried to say what I thought was proper, if asked what my intentions would be and how I would exercise my discretion as long as I am responsible. On the other side of the Amendment, I would put the considerations which I would like the Committee to consider on the broad question. It has been said that if the Amendment is accepted it will be going against the general view which those hon. Members concerned expressed on the Second Reading of the Bill.

I would respectfully submit that this is a perfectly right argument and perfectly rightly put in that form. I would seek to reinforce that consideration in this way. When we were considering the Homicide Act, we were trying to do exactly the same thing. We started from the general proposition that the death sentence was something which was—I do not want to use superlative adjectives—out of accord with modern thinking with regard to what penalties society should inflict. Some people have used very strong adjectives about it. I hold a very strong view about it and think that those adjectives are appropriate, but I shall not repeat them.

What we did in 1957, in effect, was to pick out those types of murder of which it could be said that they were particularly dangerous to society or that they were, for some reason, types of murder which particularly call for the supreme penalty. That is what we were trying to do. I would submit that those who think that this Amendment ought to be introduced to the Bill are retracing precisely those steps. We did not succeed when we put the Homicide Act on the Statute Book, just because it is virtually impossible to make anything like a logical selection of the worst type of crime. Hon. Members say that this is the worst sort of situation—a man who, having been convicted of one murder, commits another.

I would venture to challenge that. There may be cases of men murdering children in the course of rape. I cannot think of anything more terrible than that. A man who would do that is a person who deserves the worst sort of penalty which can be imposed upon him. One can go right around the whole panorama of possible murder and select all sorts of murderers who are worse, in individual cases, than the persons who commit two murders.

A person who may commit two murders is, perhaps, mentally ill-adjusted, whereas another person may murder as a result of a long course of blackmail, by poisoning or something of the sort. An impartial observer would say that the murderer who murders in the course of poisoning or blackmail or rape has done something much more offensive and abhorrent to the conscience of the public than the person who, in an individual case, may have committed two murders.

I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not misinterpret our attitude towards the Amendment. I am not talking in terms of whether it is a particularly horrible murder or not, but about the whole question of deterrents. If a man has been in prison for a long time and murders a second time while he is in prison, or when he comes out, it is not a question of the horrific nature of the murder. It has been shown that the normal form of deterrent in the form of prisons is not effective, and one has to go back to another form of deterrent which may operate.

What the Royal Commission said, in effect, was that one cannot draw anything like safe conclusions from experience. I would submit that this is a basic point, that if we try to single out cases which ought to be excepted from the general rule of abolition for various reasons, because they need a particularly severe deterrent, a terrifying punishment, because they are particularly anti-social for some reason difficult to discover, because their commission involves a particularly heinous attitude of mind, or because it means that the murder must have been planned and executed over a long period in utter disregard of any sense of pity for other human beings, I would put it to the Committee that it is absolutely impossible—as we found when we were considering the Homicide Act of 1957—to work out any scheme which is not immediately open to the most obvious criticism and which is not immediately shown to produce the most obvious anomalies between one case and another.

I therefore say to hon. Members that if they take the broad view that the penalty is abhorrent in itself, and if they felt that sufficiently strongly to be moved to support the Second Reading, then they ought to accept the conclusion that, short of this, one cannot find any way of singling out particular types of murder, even repetitious murders which one wants to keep within the purview of the death penalty. I ask that the Amendment be rejected.

I profoundly agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) said in the debate last Wednesday—that the Bill and the problems which we face raise a detestable dilemma for every hon. Member. I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) that the whole procedure of bringing about the hanging of a man through judicial processes and through the exercise of the sovereign powers of the State is utterly horrible and detestable. Everybody concerned with it at every stage must abhor it.

But everybody who has ever been concerned with a murder, and has seen photographs of the victims, who knows the bestiality and brutality of the act, who has seen the havoc which can be created amongst the families and the friends of the victims, knows that when an innocent life has been cut off in its prime he equally detests and hates the act which has brought about such a crime.

The only way in which any hon. Member can approach the problem, therefore, is by trying to ignore the emotions on either side which are raised by consideration either of the judicial processes or of the crime which has set them in motion and to try to consider, rationally and logically, as far as possible, what we are proposing by the Bill and what the results of the Bill must be—whether it is likely to do more harm or more good by accepting the principle of the Bill and deciding that not even this Amendment should be incorporated in it.

In the Standing Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. John Hynd) stated a principle which I personally think sets the matter too high. He said:

"… if I thought for a moment that the passage of the Bill … would lead to one additional murder, or would create conditions which would lead to additional murders, I would vote against it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee C, 24th February, 1965; c. 188.]

I do not think that that is right. If only one single murder were likely to happen as a result of the Bill, I should willingly accept the abolition of the death penalty. But if there is to be an increase in murders, if the result of the Bill will be that each year more innocent people will be done to death, then I think that the public are right in believing that the Bill and its principles are wrong. Therefore, the interests of hon. Members on this subject—both those who have always been retentionists and many who up to now have been abolitionists—is to see whether the effect of the Bill in the long term will be that the numbers of murders will be increased.

We are grateful to the Home Secretary for the views which he expressed about the way in which he personally approaches the problem and in which he would exercise his powers if the Bill were passed. We do not doubt for one moment that on every occasion when the safety of the public and public order arose it would have first priority in his mind. But the anxiety of those who support the Amendment is that he is depriving himself of an essential weapon for the protection of the public and putting himself in an impossible dilemma of a conflict between penology and deterrence. They are two quite different subjects. The question of how we treat a man and what effect that treatment has on him is a wholly different question from whether we prevent people from committing murder. The point on which the public and hon. Members must form their judgment is whether the presence of the risk of being caught and hanged will prevent people from committing murder, and whether it has done so in the past.

Nobody can estimate how many murders have been prevented by the existence of the death penalty. We must form our own opinion about that. What I fear, as do others who take the same view, is that by the removal of this supreme penalty we shall see an increase in the number of murders. It is, of course, true that punishment by imprisonment alone can be very severe and can have some deterrent effects, but we think that it will not have a sufficiently deterrent effect and that the result will be to increase the number of murders which will be committed hereafter.

But that is not the issue—

On what premise—

Order. The right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) must decide to which hon. Member he is giving way.

On what premise does the right hon. Gentleman base the statement that the number of murders will increase? If he is using that argument he must give reasons for it and show that this has happened in other countries.

I will confine myself to this country. The first fact on which I base the argument is that while crime has been steadily increasing in this country, particularly crimes of violence, those crimes which since 1957 have remained capital have not increased, and indeed in the last three years the number of such crimes which have always been capital are precisely the same as in the three years before 1957. That is not conclusive, because we are not trying to see how many crimes were committed but how many have not been committed and, as I have said before, this must be a matter of judgment.

Having prosecuted, defended and otherwise appeared in a number of criminal cases, having been on the Home Secretary's Advisory Committee and on the Royal Commission for the Police, and from my own experience of the criminal classes and the way in which these murders are committed and in which criminal classes behave, I feel, as a matter of judgment—and it can be only a matter of judgment—that the result of the Bill is likely to be an increase in the number of murders because the deterrent is not there.

On a point of order. I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has been speaking for a long time, and I hesitate to interrupt him, but surely he has not so far made an intervention which is not purely a Second Reading speech.

I hope that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) will allow the Chair to guide the Committee on points of order, but, frankly, I was about to ask the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson), as I invited the right hon. and learned Member who preceded him, to link his remarks to the Amendment.

I appreciate the difficulty and I am sorry if I have gone too wide. But the Home Secretary made a very important pronouncement which he said was related to the general approach to the Amendment. It is difficult to consider this long series of Amendments without looking at the background. I am sorry if I have gone too wide. I will try to come to the Amendment.

The particular problem in every case, whether it is second murders or other murders, is the factor between the chance of discovery and the result which follows. The Home Secretary is right in saying that if we could guarantee 100 per cent. discovery of every crime, in particular, of every murder and every second murder, we might be able to contemplate a reduction in the penalty for murder. But we all know that this is not the situation. When crime is increasing and detection is decreasing, that, surely, is not the time to reduce the deterrent effect of the punishment for those who are caught. I leave the generality because we could go on discussing the generality for a long time.

There can be no more extreme case than the one dealt with in the Amendment, for it is the case of a man who has already been convicted, has already been sentenced and has already served one sentence of imprisonment and who, while either serving that sentence at the time commits a second murder, or, having been released after serving that sentence, commits a second murder. In those circumstances, he either murders a prison officer, or a fellow prisoner, or, if after his release, murders an unfortunate member of the public.

11.30 a.m.

On both murders he had no defence of insanity. He did not even have the defence of diminished responsibility and he could not show on either occasion that he had any abnormality of mind impairing his mental responsibility. In other words, he was a sane, deliberate double killer. No Home Secretary could, in such circumstances, release such a person except until his dotage. It would be a very heavy burden indeed for a Home Secretary to release such a person unless it was after a very, very long period indeed of that man's life; as I say, when he had almost reached his dotage.

What we would be doing, therefore, in such a case would be preserving him so that he could rot for most of his life in prison. We must remember that in the meantime there would be substantial risk and danger to the prison officers who were looking after him and to his fellow prisoners who had to live with him. And what would happen if he murdered a third time? Suppose that the double murderer in custody—assuming that he had not been released—murdered a third time. The Bill would still leave him with his life, in custody, still able to commit a fourth murder. Because of this we say that the Measure does not face up to the problem of the determined killer who simply decides that he should kill a prison officer or fellow prisoner.

I am sure that my hon. and learned Friend appreciates that such a thing could happen; for example that Christopher Simcox was convicted in 1948, was released in 1959, committed a second murder in 1964 and was sentenced to a second term of life im- prisonment. I should like to know what happens after that. Will he be released again?

This, admittedly is a rare case. Admittedly, I am not suggesting that this will happen often, but Parliament is responsible for dealing with all cases. We must deal not only with the likely, but with the possible. If we are not to hang a murderer, however many times he commits murder, we arrive at the position when there is no deterrent and when the prison officers who look after him and the fellow prisoners who must live with him are left at substantial risk.

We say in the Amendment that it is better to draw the line at the second murder. We want to ensure that a murderer, having been given one chance, will never be able to have another chance if he should be such a killer, such a determined, morose, violent man who embarks on a deliberate second murder.

Is the hon. and learned Gentleman not putting an argument for hanging the insane?

With great respect, no. Maybe the man may become insane, and I agree that there is a narrow line between sanity and insanity, but nobody has ever suggested that those who are insane should be treated in any way other than by being kept throughout their lives in safe custody. The double killer is not insane. Very different problems arise.

While people may have to take the risk of guarding and caring for the insane—and the insane can be treated in many ways nowadays—the deliberate killer who retains his sanity and chooses his occasion to kill presents a different problem for those who must keep him. I suggest that we should not put prison warders and prisoners at the risk of having to live with such a man.

I will now deal with the arguments put forward at the outset by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne. He began by saying that the matter had already been decided on Second Reading. That cannot be right. It means that this Committee stage is a complete waste of time. The matter goes deeper than that and we should consider each Amendment. I cannot see why, because, in general, the principle of the Bill has been approved, we should not consider individual cases.

The hon. Member said, secondly, that the death penalty was not a deterrent. I have advanced my arguments on that and have pointed out that it must be, and cannot be other than, a matter of judgment. As to whether the existence of the death penalty prevents murders and has, in the past, prevented them from being committed, one cannot arrive at an answer either by looking at the details of the murders which have been committed, or the types of people who have committed them, because it is those who have not committed them whom we must consider.

The hon. Member said, thirdly, that most murderers were of good character. [Interruption.] That is true. As the Home Secretary said, people have violent fits of passion and may be under great pressure—and who, perhaps through circumstances, their characters deteriorate and they commit murder but regret it bitterly from the moment they have re-established their control.

I am bound to say that of all the criminal classes for whom I have appeared, some of the most charming have been murderers. However, I do not think that anybody claims that the double murderer could normally be described as agreeable. There are men who are violent, insubordinate, sullen, morose and utterly brutal creatures. It is necessary for us to realise that such people exist and to provide penalties which they understand and which are likely to deter them.

The next argument used by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne was that because some people commit violent crimes which do not amount to murder and are not hanged, therefore no murderer should be hanged. That seems to be a wholly illogical argument. It ignores the fact that throughout the centuries of history—since the Ten Commandments and even before—the crime of murder has been an exceptional and wholly different crime. We all know that the powers of survival of the human being are very great indeed and that without a gun it takes a great deal to kill a man. Someone not armed with a gun must be of great strength and deter- mination to achieve the death of a another. And with a gun he must mean to kill or certainly to come very near indeed to killing.

The Minister of State made two principal points. The first was that there are very few known second murders. I entirely agree and, as I said, we must still recognise that there are some of them and that there may be more in future. I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) who said that the category of prisoners in the care of prison officers will be in a significant and important respect altered for the worse as a result of the passage of the Bill. There will be a category of persons in prison who up till now have been hanged and who have not had to spend long years in the custody of prison officers. We should face up to the possibility of these events happening, and I submit that the proper way to deal with them is to accept the Amendment.

The second point which the hon. Lady made was that one should look for examples overseas. I do not know about that, but certainly the avant garde frequently like looking behind the Iron Curtain. I understand that Russia has re-established the death penalty for a number of crimes, including black marketeering and burglary. I certainly would not want to draw any analogy with the society in Russia. The hon. Lady was very selective. She selected four countries only, three of them being Scandinavian and the other Holland. There are a lot of other countries in Europe and there is America, and the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment made it quite plain that it was unsafe to draw conclusions from the experience of other countries.

Paragraph 64 of its Report states:

"An initial difficulty is that it is almost impossible to draw valid comparisons between different countries. Any attempt to do so, except within very narrow limits, may always be misleading."

It goes on to state that this arises because of

"… differences in the legal definitions of crimes, in the practice of the prosecuting authorities and the courts, in the methods of compiling criminal statistics, in moral standards and customary behaviour, and in political, social and economic conditions, it is extremely difficult to compare like with like, and little confidence can be felt in the soundness of the inferences drawn from such comparisons."

Would not the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree, having read that passage, that it is far more relevant to look at Scandinavian countries, with their democratic traditions, and it being agreed generally that they are more similar to us than other countries, than to start off that red herring about the Soviet Union?

All I say is that we should not look at any of them or, if we are to look at any of them, we should look at all of them. I only say that the Royal Commission pointed out that it is not safe to rely on these comparisons, and that we should form our own judgment about conditions in this country.

I know that my right hon. and learned Friend wishes to be entirely fair here. The next sentence in that paragraph states:

"An exception may legitimately be made where it is possible to find a small group of countries or States, preferably contiguous, and closely similar in composition of population and social and economic conditions generally, in some of which capital punishment has been abolished and in others not."

On the basis of those comparisons, the Royal Commission came to the conclusion that there was no evidence that capital punishment was, in general terms, a deterrent and, on the basis of that sentence, I think that there is probably something to be said for comparing our own situation in this respect with that of certain other European countries.

If my hon. Friend reads on a little further he will see that the Royal Commission did not speak of European countries, but of New Zealand,

In the paragraph following that which the right hon. and learned Gentleman quoted—paragraph 65—the Royal Commission says that it is more reliable to look at countries before and after abolition, and the paragraph ends by saying:

"The general conclusion which we have reached is that there is no clear evidence in any of the figures we have examined that the abolition of capital punishment has led to an increase in the homicide rate, or that its reintroduction has led to a fall."

rose—

Order. From time to time we are drifting into a Second Reading debate on the Bill.

I appreciate that, Dr. King, and I will not endeavour to deal further with this quotation of passages from the Royal Commission Report.

I suggest that we should look at this Amendment in the circumstances of the criminal classes today, of the crimes statistics in this country, and of the risks there are that people will commit second murders. For that reason, I suggest that where we are dealing with the deliberate, sane, second murderer, we should retain the death penalty.

rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

I beg to move Amendment No. 2, in page 1, line 5, after "murder", to insert:

"except a person who murders a police officer acting in the execution of his duty".

It would be convenient also to discuss Amendment No. 7, in line 5, after "murder", to insert:

"except for any murder of a police officer acting in the execution of his duty or of a person assisting a police officer so acting".

It has been customary throughout the debate for those hon. Members who move Amendments to give the Committee an indication of how they voted on Second Reading. I have to explain to the Committee that I had much heart-searching on how I should vote. The position was made much more difficult for me by reason of the fact that for many years I have been making long and frequent visits to Persia, a country where public hanging is still accepted as part of the normal way of things. During the course of these visits, I had the misfortune to be present in one or two villages when these public hangings took place and, naturally, I was very much distressed by what I saw.

I therefore found it even more difficult to make a decision on this matter, but I finally voted against the Bill because I think it is the duty of the House and of Parliament to protect the victim rather than the murderer. I was extremely thankful that in this country public execution had been abandoned and, in criticising the Persians, I was fully conscious of the fact that it was not so many years ago that we had these spectacles ourselves. But my thoughts went most to the victims, and in moving the Amendment I am conscious of the fact that we are talking of a particularly vulnerable type of victim—a victim who is a servant of the House and of the Queen and who, in carrying out his duties, is taking an unusual risk.

I thought that the Home Secretary, speaking on the previous Amendment, when your predecessor in the Chair, Mr. Deputy-Chairman, called him to order, was making a better case for this Amendment that I could possibly make, because he laid particular emphasis on the fact that imprisonment for nine years was a very serious punishment which most criminals would detest and would try to avoid at all costs. It is in this connection that I direct my argument. I believe that the criminal class in this country have now become a profession who will calculate the risk, very much like a businessman or, probably more appropriately, a gambler would calculate a risk. In calculating that risk, the criminal has regard to what will happen to him if he is caught. Part of his calculation must be his means of escape, and we expect and demand of our police force the carrying out of special duties in that connection. They are rather like firemen in a brigade who will always be nearest to the flames. I think it is the duty of the Home Secretary to give them special protection. This is the very matter to which my Amendment directs special attention.

When a policeman is apprehending a criminal caught in an act of robbery, what does he say, and how might his approach be altered if the Amendment is not accepted? Incidentally, I do not believe that enough people in the House or in the country realise what sentences can be imposed under the Larceny Act. In the confrontation between policeman and robber, the policeman says, quite naturally, "Come along quietly", and the robber will be able to say,"What have I got to lose if I shoot you with the gun in my hand?" We shall be taking the last argument out of the policeman's mind, because he will no longer be able to say to the robber, "You have got your life to lose". The robber will know that he can be sentenced to nine, ten or, perhaps, more years of imprisonment.

I do not call in aid the mail train robbery, and I do not wish to argue on that basis now because, for this purpose, I regard it as a special case. I am arguing from the standpoint of the ordinary habitual criminal who has probably been caught once or twice and convicted and who is again carrying on his business. He is the gambler who is looking to the "getting out" stakes, and I do not want the "getting out" stakes to be applied to the wife of one of our policemen.

I have no doubt that it will be said by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) that the number of policemen murdered could be counted on the fingers of two hands, or even less, but this is of no consequence in the argument at all. It is a national tragedy when one policeman is murdered. We have seen this only too recently. We have a sense of shame as a nation when such a thing happens. We know the tragedy for the families involved, we know the effect on the morale of the police themselves, many of whom are moved to feel more vindictive than we should like them to be. We know also that it puts an argument in the mouth of the criminal.

I respect the views of the absolute abolitionists who believe that to hang a man at any time is wrong, but I reply that we are talking about one man's life against another. I am pleading not that we should hang the criminal but that we should save the life of a policeman and give him an argument by which he may save his life.

The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne is a splendid debater, and he may well base an argument upon what happens in other countries, pointing out that violent crime did not increase there. But I remind the Committee that in many other countries the police are armed. If we do not accept the Amendment, the logical outcome will be that our police will eventually have to be armed. The police do not want to be armed. The public do not want them to be armed. But, ultimately, we shall face the danger of the Chicago gangster effect in Britain.

I do not for a moment accept that I am exaggerating, but to those who may say that I am I reply that in countries comparable with ours policemen generally go about in pairs. In Britain, this is most unusual. The only time when policemen go about their beat in pairs is when a young constable is receiving instruction or when they know that they are likely to meet a gang of criminals. We are so short of police in this country that we cannot apprehend the present number of criminals. It is one of the nation's complaints against the House of Commons that we have not done enough to protect the public. If we now arrange, as a result of the Bill, that the police must go about in pairs, just in order to satisfy a doctrinaire policy, we shall further increase the criminal's chances of not being apprehended.

I am glad that Amendment No. 7 is to be discussed at the same time, but I do not address myself to that at all except to say that I support it. I have an overwhelming case for acceptance of my Amendment for the protection of our police forces, and I do not want to give the sponsor of the Bill any opportunity to slide out of it. Indeed, if this Amendment is not accepted, I can see no other Amendment which will be accepted.

12.15 p.m.

This Amendment raises the issue on which we, as a House of Commons, must accept direct responsibility for the life of a civil servant, a servant whom we expect to undertake a difficult duty and to run exceptional risks. Unless we are prepared to give him this small support in the performance of his duties, we shall be asking him to do too much. If the Amendment is not accepted, it will not be for lack of strength in the case but for lack of ability in me to persuade the Committee of the urgent need to meet a very present danger. For the rest of my life, if a policeman is murdered, I shall feel in myself some responsibility.

At any time of any day or night, in any town or village or part of our countryside, one can see a remarkable sight, a police constable patrolling along, unarmed, and with nothing but a whistle and a truncheon to protect himself. I am sure we all desire to see this feature of our life preserved. I sincerely believe, having regard to what little experience I have had, that unless the Bill incorporates a provision of this kind our hopes of preserving that feature of our life will become remote and may even pass away.

The police officer is the shield, the only shield, standing between the general public and the criminal. He does his work out of an extraordinarily keen sense of duty and high integrity and a degree of courage which we should never cease to acknowledge. The majority of policemen believe that when they do their duty in this way they are protected from violent assault and even from the criminal killer because, at present, the death penalty stands between them and the perils which they otherwise would face. The Committee would be doing a grave disservice to our police forces if it were lightly to accept that the police could still perform their duties without the protection of the death penalty in the safety which they feel today.

Let us, for the sake of the argument, take it that the average spell of life imprisonment is nine to ten years—although I am not content that it should be taken as nine to ten years. I find the contention that the prospect simply of nine to ten years' imprisonment is a sufficient substitute to take the place of the death penalty a very disturbing philosophy. Of course it is a long time, and anyone contemplating a fatal attack upon a police officer might well hesitate at the prospect of being in prison for about ten years. But let us be realistic about it, as the Royal Commission was realistic about it. Imprisonment is the ordinary professional risk taken by the criminal. He accepts it. It carries no stigma for the criminal community. Many criminals have a perverted pride in it. But one thing which does matter in the criminal community and which puts fear in their minds and acts on their decisions not to go about armed, in the main, is the fear of the death penalty.

No.

If the hon. Member reads the Royal Commission's Report he will see that the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, in giving evidence, cited the case of a gang of shop breakers one of whose members was convicted of murder, sentenced to death and then reprieved. The gang still held together and continued operating. Later two further members of the gang were convicted of murder, and they were hanged—and the gang disappeared and no more was heard of it. The Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis—and I do not think his conclusion can in any way seriously be attacked—said that it was reasonable to suppose that one of the reasons, if not the main reason, for the dissolution of the gang was the fact that the others took notice of the death penalty, whereas they were prepared, as the majority of criminals are, to take the risk of imprisonment and to set that on one side of the balance sheet against the loot which can be obtained from successful crime.

The hon. Member is referring to the Captain Benny case. I am quoting from memory, but I think a question was put to the Commissioner, "Might not the gang have dissolved because the two leading spirits were no longer there?" He said, in reply, "Yes, that might account for the dissolution of the gang".

I am obliged to the hon. and learned Member. He makes a point which I should have hesitated to make.

Even if the deterrent perhaps does not work against some criminals, does not my hon. and learned Friend think that it has some effect among the family and relatives and those around the criminal classes?

I entirely agree. The question is whether nine or ten years of imprisonment, representing life imprisonment, is sufficient to frighten the criminal. Personally—and these are matters for personal decision—I think that really long terms of imprisonment must have the most alarming effects upon the criminal mind.

We have the position, which leaves us in a state of surprise, that the Home Secretary views ten years as adequate to frighten a killer from using a gun on a policeman without in any way referring to the consequences of other crimes which are not comparable. Murder is the gravest of all crimes, and the Royal Commission accepted that for it there is the most severe of all penalties. Consider the case of a man who has just robbed a bank. He has a gun in his pocket. If he is caught, and bearing in mind sentences which have been imposed recently, he might get a sentence of imprisonment of up to 30 years. Whether we say that this is good or bad is beside the point. Seeing the policeman approach, he may decide to use his gun in order to shoot his way out to freedom. If, having killed the policeman, he is then caught, he will go to prison not for 30 years but for an average of nine or ten years. This seems to me to be provocation, not prevention, and not protection of the police force.

Does the hon. and learned Member seriously suggest that if murder had been committed during the train robbery the sentences passed would not have been as long as those already passed—30 years?

I am grateful to the hon. Member for making the point. If a person commits murder with a gun, or in the course of or furtherance of theft, then under the provisions of the Homicide Act he attracts the punishment of hanging. That is the present law. If capital punishment is abolished we shall reach what I submit is the quite absurd and unacceptable position of the robber who kills being exposed to the peril of nine or ten years' imprisonment—that is, life imprisonment—for murder, whereas the robber who does not kill is at the peril of going to prison for 30 years. That is the reality of the situation.

Those who support the Bill in toto, without seeing any of its grave defects—and they are there to be seen by anyone who carefully examines the Bill—will not face up to reality. All I am trying to persuade the Committee is to face the reality of the situation. I beg the Committee to accept that as we look upon the police constable as a shield against the criminal community, so the police constable in his turn may look to us for protection. What protection shall we give? Shall we abolish the protection which he has had up to now? It is easy, in the comparative quiet and safety of the House, to say, "We do not have to worry about policemen. Only a few are shot at. It happens only once in ten or fifteen years that a policeman is killed. Why need we concern ourselves with a remote possibility of this kind?" If it lets the Bill go through without an Amendment such as this, the Committee will be removing, from policemen the protection in which at the moment the majority of them can believe.

12.30 p.m.

it seems to me to matter very little whether their belief is well or ill founded, particularly so if it happens to be—as appears to be the case if the statistics are any guide—that the killing of policemen is rare. How can one say—and this is a point rehearsed time and again—"Where are the statistics to enable one to conclude how many policemen now walk the streets in safety whose lives have been saved by the fear in the minds of criminals that they have been apprehended"? It is proposed to remove that fear. It is all very well to say that we can do this with safety. Those who claim it must prove it. It is not for those who say that the protection should be maintained to prove that it is necessary. The onus lies upon those who say that we can do away with it. Let us see the evidence that it can be done away with in safety.

People believe that capital punishment operates to protect the police, that it gives them safety and certainly gives them comfort. The majority of the police will tell one that they firmly believe that the death penalty as a punishment for the killing of a policeman is one of the most substantial safeguards that they have at the moment against the violence welling up around them.

One must bear in mind, although this is a Private Member's Bill, that when we are considering the safety of policemen who are protecting the public, the Government's duty cannot be shifted on to the shoulders of a private Member, however sincerely the views of that hon. Member may be held and however much we may admire his tenacity of purpose. It is a responsibility that the Government have to take upon themselves.

With the greatest respect and deference to the Home Secretary, I say to him that it is a duty which lies inevitably on his shoulders. Whatever he may feel personally about abolition or retention, I submit to him that, in his great office, he has, among other responsibilities, the grave one of seeing that everything is done to give the police the maximum protection they need and deserve against the criminal community.

If anyone wants to desire authority to support this point of view, I draw their attention to what I am sure all hon. Members have carefully read—the memorandum to all hon. Members on the subject of capital punishment sent out by the Police Federation. Paragraph 11 says:

"Although we have no proof that the special provisions in the Homicide Act are a deterrent against murdering policemen, it is a positive fact that in this country remarkably few are murdered; and also that very few criminals carry firearms, as distinct from coshes, pick helves or other similar weapons, which are carried and used to repel and not to kill. It is also a fact that policemen and policewomen consciously feel that the special provisions serve as an effective protection. So do their wives and families."

And so do a multitude of other people in this country. I submit that the majority of them believe it.

Last Friday I addressed a small meeting of about 33 people in a village hall. They were ratepayers in part of my constituency. We discussed the Bill. At the end of the meeting the chairman asked for a vote on a motion that capital punishment as a protection of the police should not be rejected. Those 33 people came from political parties of all colours, and not one showed any support for the view that we could with safety abolish capital punishment for the murder of policemen. Not one was not convinced that to do this would be to introduce a danger entirely unacceptable to the majority of the people and particularly unacceptable to the police.

I oppose the Amendment precisely because I believe that it would have the opposite effect to what is intended. Psychological factors have not been properly assessed by hon. Members discussing the so-called deterrent effect of capital punishment. I agree completely with the Home Secretary that the prime object must be to protect the public and, as legislators, we surely must try to achieve a balance, for no one can give any guarantee that any course he chooses will produce the result he expects in 100 per cent. of cases.

There must, therefore, be a balance and one must be sure that, by plugging one outlet, one does not thereby open a larger one. I believe that this is precisely what the Amendment would do. I do not think that the professional criminal class is a violent one. It has been recognised that the professional criminal is not violent, particularly when it comes to committing murder. Murder is usually committed in the heat of the moment. It is not, in general, committed by people who have had previous records of violence.

To say that the retention of capital punishment will protect the police is giving an assessment to factors which do not apply and leaving out factors which do apply. I believe, indeed, that we might increase the risk to the police by continuing to have capital punishment because there are individuals who have a necessity to kill and to whom there is a glamour about capital punishment. The hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) talked about the "gamble" involved, but did not say what the stakes were. Sometimes the stakes are not what appear to be obvious.

Would the hon. Gentleman give a simple answer? A policeman confronts a criminal he is about to arrest. The criminal says, with gun in hand, "What have I to lose if I shoot you?". What does the policeman reply?

I am not in a position to say what the policeman would reply. Surely we are talking about what we should do as legislators in this respect.

When the potential murderer is in a position to kill, the gamble involved is sometimes not a gamble as one would normally expect. The gamble in such a case is concerned with the necessity for this individual to go out in a blaze of glory, especially when it comes to killing a policeman, because the kind of man who would be involved would not be concerned with the risk of his life being taken. That would be his object, his fundamental, psychopathological desire, and it is, therefore, possible that rather than protect the policeman, we would increase the chance of his being killed by a criminal of this type if we had a provision such as the Amendment suggests.

Too little attention has been paid to the interplay of psychological factors. When we are arguing about what the criminal would think, we tend to believe that the violent criminal, the potential murderer, thinks as we do, that he weighs up the possibilities before taking action. If he does think about it, his innate desires may well come to the fore and make him kill because he wishes himself to be killed. It would obviously be a deterrent to us. It would be a very great deterrent to me, but I do not think that I am likely to commit a murder. It does not mean that it would be a deterrent to people such as those whom hon. Members opposite have described as the criminal classes.

Would not the hon. Gentleman agree to go even further and say that while it may be a deterrent to him to make his speech in the atmosphere of this Chamber, if he were committing a robbery while armed with a lethal weapon, and a policeman suddenly loomed up at him from nowhere, if he had a pistol in his hand his actions might be very different and he would have no time to do this type of calculation, even if he were that type of individual?

That is precisely the point which has been made over and over again—that something happens on the spur of the moment. The balance of whether the individual will be hanged or go to prison does not enter into it. The action is taken and that is all that there is to it.

Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that the word "gamble" implies "stakes"? The hon. Gentleman has put forward this complicated opinion about a man who might desire to kill and who might set out to kill, but will he not bear in mind that, at the same time, the police officer, in the execution of his duty, also has a very large stake in this matter—his life?

That is precisely the point I am making, that the policeman's life might even be safer if hanging is abolished.

There have been such cases, and I can think of one myself concerning an individual who was a multiple murderer and who was hanged in Glasgow a few years ago. I am sure that he had a desire to be killed, and that if there had not been capital punishment five people might have been alive today. This man wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, and he did. He had a desire to die and he died on the gallows. That is what he wanted.

When we consider these balances, we have also to remember the occasional possibility of the murderer who may have made the calculation and who murders to escape, who is the extreme case, as against the individual who kills precisely because he will be hanged, the individual who would not kill precisely because there was no capital punishment and who would kill only because of a desire to die on the scaffold. Future generations discussing this issue will probably do so from an entirely different point of view, with a knowledge of what goes on inside the mind of the individual, from the psychological or psychopathological point of view. I hope that the day is not too far away when it will be seen that there are individuals, who can be detected beforehand, who have psychopathic tendencies, violent tendencies. We shall then know very much more about what goes on in the mind of a potential murderer.

The hon. Member for Glasgow, Kelvingrove (Dr. Miller) has made a very sincere and thoughtful contribution to the debate. I appreciate his sincerity, but I fear that I cannot accept his argument. One point he made was in respect of the background of those guilty of capital murder. He said that the bulk were not professional criminals as such. I only remind him of some figures, which I have given to the Committee before, of previous convictions of 52 men convicted of capital murder since 1957. Fourteen had no previous convictions, but 38 had, ranging between one and 21 offences. I do no more than point to the hon. Gentleman the fact that we are not dealing with an isolated class of murderers such as we considered before the 1957 Act, but more than ever before with the professional criminal.

As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Gardner) suggested, this is not the least important of the Amendments which we shall consider. There is no category of public servant, not excluding the category we have just discussed, which would be more affected by the passage of the Bill unchanged. Hon. Members opposite must not beguile themselves by thinking that the risk some of these people run is imaginary, because it is not.

We had a measure of that risk only this morning in some figures which the Home Secretary published in reply to a Question from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Epsom (Sir P. Rawlinson). These concerned indictable offences known to the police and in which firearms had been involved in the last four years. They show a marked increase in the use of firearms and when there is a marked increase of that type, it is the police almost certainly who are most at risk.

In view of what is at stake for the police, a word of tribute is due to them for their behaviour over the Bill in recent weeks and months. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Billericay quoted the very restrained language of the paper from the Police Federation. Throughout these discussions all the policemen I have encountered have shown marked restraint towards a Bill which will affect their lives much more than it will affect the lives of any of us here. They have shown a marked degree of unselfishness.

All my inquiries lead me to the conclusion that they are genuinely more concerned with the risk which might befall the public from gunmen than with the safety of their own skins. It is important to stress that we are speaking not for a frightened force, but for a force which is genuinely concerned about the consequences to the public.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Billericay quoted the paper from the Police Federation. The Home Secretary will have made inquiries of his own among more senior policemen as to how they feel about this proposal. I think that he has stated in answer to a Question, or perhaps in a speech, that he was conducting such inquiries. I hope that he will be able to help the Committee with the conclusions that he has drawn from these inquiries. It is very important that we should be armed with the views, not only of the Police Federation, but of the more senior policemen, whom, I am sure, the Home Secretary in his duty has consulted, as they have always been consulted when a Bill of this kind has been before the House of Commons. I hope that before we go too far on this Amendment the Home Secretary will be able to assist us.

I am not saying that the view of the senior policemen should be decisive, but it is highly relevant, and we should know what they feel. The police are very heavily engaged in combating violent crime, more heavily perhaps than at any other time. Frankly, the battle is not moving their way. I do not want to exaggerate or to dramatise this matter because it requires neither, but it is fair to say that there has emerged in the last year or two a rather miscellaneous minority of criminals who are ready to resort to extreme measures. As has been said very convincingly, they are playing for very high stakes.

That is not all. The danger of gunfire to the policeman is not limited exclusively to the professional criminal, the man who may shoot his way out of a difficult situation. There is also—and I know that the Home Secretary is well aware of this—the hoodlum, which is a more expressive word than "hooligan". I accept that against this development we are ranging the Firearms Bill, which I think is now a stronger Measure than it was when it was introduced. It will undoubtedly reduce the number of guns in circulation. What the Home Secretary will do by way of an amnesty will reduce the number of guns in circulation. But it will not deny arms to the determined criminal, and it will not of itself prevent him from using arms against the police in certain circumstances. I am sure that that will be accepted even by those who have great hopes of what the Firearms Bill may do.

It will be argued, on the other hand, that the fact that so many policemen have, alas, in recent months been involved in shooting affairs proves that hanging is not a deterrent. That is a very rash assumption. This argument is constantly used in one form or another in favour of abolition. I would merely refer—I will not quote it all again—to the views of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in paragraph 59 of its Report which states:

"We can number its failures. But we cannot number its successes."

None of us knows how many men have been deterred from shooting a policeman, in particular, at a critical moment by the existence of hanging.

Alternatively, it may well be argued that we had 18 months' experience between the Second Reading of the Bill of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne in 1956 and its rejection by the House of Lords and that in that 18 months no policeman was shot.

That was not the 18 months. The 18 months period was between the passing of the Second Reading of the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill and the passing of the Homicide Act the following year.

I accept the correction in point of time, but there was a period of 18 months during which no policeman was shot.

indicated dissent.

I would not seek to make too much or too little of that; it was eight years ago. Hon. Members must weigh for themselves whether circumstances today appear to them as they appeared eight years ago. It is not unfair to suggest that on appearances the police today are at greater risk from certain quarters than they were then.

I cannot but think that any member of this Committee who is prepared to weigh up coolly the merits of this Amendment in present circumstances must conclude that it might be a wise exception to the Bill. What depresses me is the knowledge that it will not be so weighed. The case for this Amendment, and other Amendments, is not being weighed on merit. It is not being weighed on what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Billericay described as the realities of the situation. It is being weighed on other considerations.

Do not some Members here say that the opposite argument can logically be made?

I was about to say, because I am most anxious to be fair, that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) and his closest supporters view the Bill in the light of a crusade. I take no exception to this. The hon. Gentleman has a right to do that. He and his supporters are crusaders for total abolition. Nothing less will suit them. I am not without some respect for their attitude. The House of Commons would be a very poor place if it turned its back on crusaders, and I should like to acknowledge that.

But this is not quite the position of the Government and the Home Secretary. I do not think that members of the Government, and the Home Secretary, in particular, can quite regard themselves as acting as crusaders. The Home Secretary has other and graver responsibilities. I want to echo what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Billericay said. I do not wish to appear presumptuous in saying this, but it is part of our argument. He has the gravest responsibilities for law, and order and for the police, one-third of whom, in the Metropolitan area, come under his direct responsibility. An obligation rests on the Home Secretary to weigh up coolly the merits of this Amendment.

The point on which I have been waiting to hear the right hon. Gentleman's views is this. The police are so much safer in the "Abolitionist Stakes" than in the "Capital Punishment Stakes", particularly in America. This has been one of the principal reasons why a number of American States which formerly had capital punishment are now going abolitionist. Has the right hon. Gentleman seen the evidence, for instance, of the Chief of Police of Rhode Island, just the other day, who supported the abolition of capital punishment because experience showed that it made things so much safer for the police?

I would not deny that there are sincere abolitionists among policemen. This is why I have asked the Home Secretary to give us information on the results of his inquiries among senior policemen. While there may be abolitionists among policemen, men who sincerely hold that point of view, there is for them a bigger risk than for anybody else.

Would not my right hon. Friend agree that, while it is desirable to ask the Home Secretary to obtain the opinions of top policemen, it is also very important for him to pay full attention to the opinion of the Police Federation, which represents the man on the beat?

I am assuming that the Home Secretary will have taken note, as other hon. Members have taken note, of what has come from the Police Federation. The point that I am making is that there are other views besides those of the Police Federation. There are men in senior positions in the police force in London and outside it who will have a view, and it is extremely important that the Committee should be able to share any findings which the Home Secretary has been able to gather from them. I am sure that he will appreciate that I am not anticipating dereliction of duty on his part. I know that we shall hear from him on this matter.

In answer to the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), may I say that it is not conclusive evidence to point to policemen in the United States or anywhere else who may take a certain view about capital punishment and relate it to the present criminal situation in this country and the situation which confronts policemen in dealing with the criminal population. It is the situation in this country with which some of us are concerned and which, at this moment, renders aspects of this Bill so very difficult and possibly so very dangerous.

What I was saying when the hon. and learned Gentleman intervened was this. He—