Matthew Offord
Main Page: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)Department Debates - View all Matthew Offord's debates with the Ministry of Justice
Homicide Law Reform
Matthew Offord Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. This is my first time doing so, and I am very pleased to see you in the Chair. I want to take this opportunity to welcome the proposal made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and highlight why I support it.
I want to raise the case of Stephen Martin. He is a 55-year-old man from West Sussex. I have sought the permission of my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) to mention the case, and he has said that he is happy for me to do so. He worked hard to rectify what I considered to be a miscarriage of justice.
I am keen on scuba diving, and I dive in Malta with my good friends Viv and Alan Whitehead. I often dive at a location called the Blue Hole in Gozo, which was where Mr Martin went diving with four other people. As he was considered more qualified than the other divers, it was decided that he would be the dive leader. However, during the dive, two of the participants—Mr Martin’s partner, Larissa Hooley, and another diver called Nigel Haines—lost consciousness. Larissa Hooley was taken to the surface, where she later died. Nigel Haines was missing for just a few moments before he was found and dragged to the shore.
The coroner’s court in Brighton and Hove decided the deaths were accidental, but the magistrate in Gozo sought an extradition warrant against Mr Martin, who spent six months on curfew. He had to report to the police station three times a day and was forced to wear a tag. The Maltese magistrate sought a charge of involuntary manslaughter. I bring up that case to demonstrate that we should consider an extension of murder offences and having an offence of involuntary manslaughter. No such charge exists in the UK.
As a British national, Stephen Martin was subject to the whim of an overseas judiciary for an offence that is not a criminal offence in this country. I would like not only the charge of murder but that of manslaughter to take in a different range of incidents. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is right that there should be no change to the law to reduce the sentence tariff, but there is an arguable case for extending the variety of charges available to the Crown Prosecution Service when bringing a case against an individual. I wanted to raise that case in the House and extend to Members my views on changes to murder legislation.