Member

I therefore found the exchange of correspondence that the noble Baroness referred to rather baffling. She is entirely right to put forward her compromise and seek to limit the scope of “reasonable excuse” to only the narrow set of cases that the Government have outlined, especially given that the Government have previously stated that prosecutorial discretion is sufficient to ensure that an offence that could violate a qualified right under ECHR is nevertheless compliant with it. Of course, she is right to require a review of the way the defence operates.