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Page 1 of 20 ANY QUESTIONS? TX: 14/01/05 2000-2045 Page 1 of 20 ANY QUESTIONS? TX: 14/01/05 2000-2045 PRESENTER: Nick Clarke PANELLISTS: Robin Cook John Bercow David Bell Julia Hartley-Brewer FROM: Walton High, Fyfield Barrow, Milton Keynes CLARKE Welcome to Walton High, serving the eastern part of Milton Keynes, a school with the sort of reputation which has attracted no fewer than three ministerial visits in the past 12 months. One jointly by the Prime Minister and his Chancellor - they were on their best behaviour, gold stars all round. Our panel: Robin Cook has been busy since leaving government two years ago and I don't just mean public appearances like the award ceremony in which he was embraced by the Big Brother housemate - Brigitte Nielsen. He's kept up the pressure on Tony Blair over the Iraq war and by contrast spoken increasingly warmly about Gordon Brown, describing him recently as the dominant force in sustaining the British economy. John Bercow has had a bit of bother with his party bosses too. He's in and out shadow ministerial career has looked definitively out since he lost his job as shadow international development secretary reportedly for giving too much credit to Tony Blair's foreign policy. He thinks Mr Blair was honest about the war too. Such views mean that he now has to endure regular press reports that he's about to defect to Labour. Julia Hartley-Brewer is a newspaper political editor for the Sunday Express with a taste for broadcasting, she's co-presented LBC's breakfast show and been a guest on Have I Got News For You. One of her recent exclusives was about the government's plan to make every school accept disruptive pupils, even those described as unteachable. Which leads rather neatly to David Bell, Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools and himself a former head teacher and director of education. He may be slightly less outspoken than one of his predecessors Chris Woodhead, but he's still delivered some pretty tough judgements on current school standards, most recently about the reading abilities of 5-11 year olds. And if things get too gloomy at the chalk face he's quite likely to let his hair down with a bit of Scottish country dancing. Ladies and gentlemen our panel. [CLAPPING] Can we have our first question please? Page 2 of 20 KENYON Tony Kenyon. What would the panel do if they found an intruder in their daughter's bedroom? CLARKE Thank you. The Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, has decided there's no need to change the law which allows a householder to use reasonable force. Robin Cook what would you do? COOK Well I would hope I would use reasonable force in these circumstances and I would be confident in doing so that I have the law on my side. There has been some quite extraordinary misrepresentation of the legal position on this. If you go back over the last 15 years there have only been seven cases when homeowners have been charged with using violence against an intruder. And frankly in those seven - I don't think there's anybody in this audience who would not actually agree with the case being brought. I mean one of them was against Kenneth Noye for stabbing to death a policeman who he found in his back garden staking out Kenneth Noye's house. And therefore there is no doubt that you are entitled to use reasonable force. The only caveat I would enter here Nick is that for many years the police very sensibly have advised people against - caution about having a go and I found myself this past week actually on the streets when a youngster came running past me on a bike, tried to grab my mobile phone, failed to do so I'm happy to say, so my colleagues still can have their numbers in security, they're not out there in the public with somebody else dialling them up. And I just for five seconds was about to run up and have a go. I didn't, frankly I'm rather glad I didn't because I'm now 59 and he was I think 19, I've spent most of my life sitting down talking like this to people like you, he had spent most of his life on a bicycle going up and down that road getting fit and hearty and I think the outcome of that was probably sensible for me showing a degree of restraint. And I do think those who are tempted to have a go should bear in mind that left to themselves once disturbed most burglars leave then, if it turns nasty they've got the law on their side - that is the homeowner has the law on their side - but you should think very carefully before you yourself raise the stakes. CLARKE Thank you. David Bell. BELL Well I'm an easygoing pretty relaxed sort of person but I'd use force. Would it be reasonable? I'm not sure because one of the difficulties of judging what is reasonable force is it relies on a cool dispassionate analysis and if I found an intruder in my daughter's bedroom I'm not sure that I would be cool and dispassionate about it. Nor would I be consulting the proposed Home Office guidance about what constitutes reasonable force. I think that wouldn't scare the burglar away pretty quickly. I think this has been quite an interesting case however because there was a kind of reaction to it that said something must be done. I think wiser counsels have prevailed and I think there is a reflection now that existing law is sufficient to deal with such circumstances. So for just for a change perhaps politicians have reflected and decided actually something needn't be done because the law appears to be robust enough as it stands. [CLAPPING] Page 3 of 20 CLARKE Julia Hartley-Brewer, obviously you would ask your husband first, but … HARTLEY-BREWER My husband? I have a hammer for those purposes, thank you very much. I don't know what I'd do if someone entered my daughter's bedroom, not having a daughter, but if they entered my bedroom the hammer would be used. And this is the problem isn't it, as David just said, what counts as reasonable force in a court of law before 12 people on a jury in the cold light of day may not be what you consider to be reasonable force at 3 in the morning when you see someone above you when you wake up in your bed. I think especially for the women in the audience. And I think that to expect homeowners or householders to have to prove that they did not use unreasonable force is absolutely incorrect in those circumstances. And the move to change the law was simply aimed at making the burglar be the person who has to prove that gross negligent force was used. I reserve the right to protect myself and my property and anyone else in my home as I see fit when I'm in my own home. And when someone enters my home without permission - and I do think climbing through a window at night probably counts as that - then they do not have the full civil rights that they had before they entered my home. And I think most of the people in this country recognise that. And we don't need an education programme to tell us what our rights are and what we can and can't do. The CPS and the police need an education campaign to tell us what we already know to be the truth. [CLAPPING] CLARKE So just very simply that the idea of changing the law so that grossly disproportionate violence or attacks would have had to have been proved in order for you to be taken to court you think that would have been a good idea? HARTLEY-BREWER Yes certainly because although not many people are prosecuted a lot of people are arrested and go through an awful lot of distress and pain and anxiety while they wait to find that their case is not going to go to court. CLARKE John Bercow it was one of your colleagues, Sir Patrick Mercer, wasn't it, who had this - or has this still as a private members bill idea? BERCOW Yes Patrick Mercer is introducing it as a private members bill. Let me just very simply respond to the original question. What would I do in the circumstance of finding an intruder in my daughter's bedroom. The answer is that I would try to get rid of that intruder with whatever force I judged in the circumstances necessary. But let us be clear - as I understand it, though obviously it is a matter of some confusion, the law does allow for the use of reasonable force in self defence. And the interpretation of reasonableness is not based on a dispassionate analysis in a calm environment, the interpretation of reasonableness is and has usually been shown by the courts to be based on an interpretation of what the person confronted by the burglar instinctively thought he or she needed to do. There is a difference between reasonable force in self defence on the one hand and premeditated retaliation on the Page 4 of 20 other. My reading of the history suggested that actually there'd been something like 11 cases brought to court in the last 15 years and only six or seven convictions.
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