Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Bill

Lord Flight Excerpts

Friday 13th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, I support the Bill. I am not a lawyer, but I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Marks, on very clear legal presentations. It came across to me as fascinating, obscure territory where quite a big issue of justice is at stake. In many ways, I am quite surprised that it has not been addressed previously. I cannot help commenting that I felt that the territory, if they had appreciated it, might have been a subject for Gilbert and Sullivan to produce a successor to “Iolanthe”. I well remember:

“He shall prick that annual blister, marriage with deceased wife's sister”.

This is a blister to be pricked, and I very much hope that this House will support it.

When I saw that the Bill was coming up, I thought that there was no one better than the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to present it, although I confess that I was a little disappointed, where I imagined that it was his fertile brain that had discovered these strange anomalies, that it was the recommendation also of the Law Commission in 2005. The Bill was of course presented so fully in the other place by the Members of Parliament for East Yorkshire and Berwick-upon-Tweed. I am delighted to see my old colleague the right honourable Greg Knight here in the Chamber to listen to Second Reading in the Lords.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, pointed out, the Bill is all about the law of unintended consequences and the interaction of common law and intestacy law. As the noble Lord, Lord Marks, pointed out, there are key reforms which the Bill seeks to bring about.

I was surprised to learn from reading the debate on the Bill in the other place that as many as 200 cases per annum have been affected by the law as it has stood. I can only hope that these are about people disclaiming their inheritance rather than being involved in killings. Perhaps I should say that I have no interest to declare: sadly, both my parents are dead of natural causes.

As pointed out, the issue at the bottom of the Bill is very clear: innocent children should not be unjustly disinherited; the sins of the parents should not be visited on the children. The noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Marks, presented the case far better than I could, and I see little point in repeating it. Indeed, the case was very fully presented in the other place. However, some points relating to it occurred to me which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, may see as worthy of comment.

First, if this Bill were enacted, would it work legally? Are there any quirks that have not been thought about or is it as straightforward as it appears? Secondly, I hope that the number of cases of children murdering their parents remains few and that there is no trend towards an increase. Cases of mercy killing seem to be the key territory, and these are likely to rise until the laws relating to this matter are changed. Will the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, confirm that, as I understand it, the Bill would allow a mercy killer to inherit directly at the court’s discretion and covers that individual as well as their children? Thirdly, I was quite interested to know what the code Napoleon provides in this territory, as there seems to be some possibility that this country might in future be invited to change its laws and adopt that code. I understood entirely the point on children with deceased minors, but I could not quite understand the applicability of civil partnerships as opposed to marriage, which did not seem to be likely to be relevant to the situation.

I congratulate the drafters of the Bill on the very simple legal device of deeming killers or disclaimers of intestate situations to have died before the intestate party, albeit that, in reality, they are still alive. Again, does this simple device actually work? Is it potentially open to challenge? I also assume that the Bill is so drafted that this issue can be applied only in this narrow circumstance of succession cases. I would be interested to know if the number of those dying intestate generally is stable, rising or falling. My observation is that in the society in which we live there is less enthusiasm and activity of people to produce wills in comparison with the past 300 years.

Finally, I wonder if there are any other quirks in succession law that need addressing. This case obviously prompts that question. I trust that we will be hearing in due course that the provisions have the support of the Government, whereas I understand that they are in effect an alternative to a rather more complicated Bill that the Government decided to withdraw for lack of time .

This is an obscure issue. There is an obvious case of justice and it is a positive thing that both Houses of Parliament of this nation have made the time to put right an injustice. That is, ultimately, what we are all here for.