Baroness Levitt (Lab)

My Lords, again, that is a fundamental misunderstanding. If the CPS had got it wrong, the judge would have withdrawn it at half-time. It would never have got as far as a jury. The two things —one of them being the fact that the jury has acquitted—simply do not correlate. The noble Lord’s amendment gives no indication as to how this proposed test would fit with the Code for Crown Prosecutors, save that we would then have a two-tier system, with one rule for the police and another for the citizens they police. It is hard to see how such a situation could command public confidence. As the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said, the unique position of firearms officers will be taken into consideration at both stages of the full code test. In cases involving fatal police shootings, the Crown Prosecution Service already considers whether the officer’s actions were necessary and reasonable in the circumstances, as the officer honestly believed them to be, recognising how difficult it can be to make fine decisions in the heat of the moment. It is the same law that applies to every citizen. Prosecutions in these cases are very rare, reflecting the high threshold already applied; an additional statutory presumption is neither necessary nor appropriate. Lastly, I turn to Amendment 403 from the noble Lord, Lord Carter, which was, as ever, attractively advanced by him. The Government’s position remains as it was in Committee: there cannot be a separate criminal law for police officers in homicide cases. The current legal framework already offers robust protection for those who act under a genuine and honest belief, even if that belief later proves to be mistaken. In any event, the Law Commission is considering the offence of homicide, and the Government will consider its report carefully in due course. I am grateful for the debate that we have had today. It is clear that there are strongly held views on both sides, but the Government believe that they have struck the right balance to protect our highly valued armed police officers while not standing in the way of the principles of open justice and a single-tier justice system. For that reason, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.