Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Lab)

My Lords, I wonder if I might help my noble and learned friend on the concerns that clearly have been expressed. A number of noble Lords have been talking about what evidence there is. The concern was expressed in the last debate last Friday that if you are not going to have someone who has been intimately involved with the family or the person who is making the request, that becomes more difficult. A number of suggestions have been made. For example, would it be possible to have a multidisciplinary assessment of need and coercion early, so that you could have the information? My noble and learned friend will know that when we make these multidisciplinary assessments, usually you hear from everyone—the social worker, the housing officer—just as we do for the multiagency risk assessment for domestic violence; and those domestic violence cases are really important. Will my noble and learned friend look again at how the Bill could make sure that the evidence upon which these decisions are going to be made is there? Secondly, I will deal with the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, on encouragement. My noble and learned friend will know—I disclosed this to the House, because, of course, I was the Attorney-General when the DPP’s guidelines were put out— that the whole purpose of looking at and assessing encouragement was to make sure that no one else had applied pressure. The word “encouragement” very much comes from the DPP’s guidelines, which has meant that since they came in, only four prosecutions have been made. They were made in relation to people who were identified as having participated in something which might have been homicide or manslaughter, and others were not prosecuted. I know that my noble and learned friend would think that entirely proper. Will my noble and learned friend think again about looking at those issues to make sure, perhaps through regulations, that we can have that clarity, which might give reassurance to those who are desperately concerned about these issues?