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

Lord Scott of Foscote Excerpts

Friday 13th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scott of Foscote]

My Lords, I speak in the gap—and I am grateful for the House’s indulgence in allowing me to do so—to make just one short point on the Bill. It is an excellent Bill and I thoroughly support it. I agree with everything that has been said in support of it already, but I wanted to say a word about the scope of the forfeiture rule. The noble Lord, Lord Flight, mentioned that the forfeiture rule might be applied to cases of mercy killings. So it might. If the mercy killing is held to be unlawful, that would trigger it. “Unlawful killing” is the expression used in the Forfeiture Act 1982. Murders are obviously caught in that description. Manslaughter would also be caught, as there would plainly have been an unlawful killing.

However, we now have another criminal offence on the statute book: causing death by dangerous driving. Children drive their parents. Parents drive their children, obviously, but it is children driving their parents that might give rise to some point under the Forfeiture Act. The court has the discretion to grant some relief from the fact of the forfeiture, but that is a discretion, and how the court exercises a discretion will obviously depend on the view of the judge and the facts of the particular case. It must be recognised that the scope of the forfeiture rule may have been considerably increased by the advent of the crime of causing death by dangerous driving. That is the point that I wanted to make when considering the necessity for the Bill.