Ministerial Statements

Debate between Greg Knight and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am deeply grateful to, and flattered by, the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Knight]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent contribution to this debate. In essence, is not our problem that the ministerial code, upon which we rely for justice in this respect, is presided over by the Prime Minister acting as a judge, when in reality he must also be an advocate for, and on the same side as, his Minister?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is important that this be brought to the Commons as a matter of our procedure, and that we do not rely on the good will or benign nature of the Government to see that it is enforced.

I want to finish on the sympathy that I have for the Government. They have allowed the formation of a Backbench Business Committee, which is letting debates such as this take place. Ministers are regularly making statements and they are answering questions for over an hour on those statements. There is a more rigorous approach to the treatment of scrutiny, and the House of Commons is being treated more seriously. That is a thoroughly good and admirable thing. None the less, the House of Commons should be greedy and say, “We want more scrutiny of the Government. We want to push the Government further so that we may keep them under control and under a proper check because they wield the most gigantic power.”

The Government have all the organs of state at their control. They have as many press officers, briefers and leakers as one may wish to cast a stick at. The Opposition do not have that. Nevertheless, the day will come when the Conservatives are once again in opposition and we will want to claw our way back into government and will not want to have the dice loaded against us as they were between 1997 and 2010. For that, we must make tough decisions to hold the Government to account when it is a Government whom we support, and that scrutiny must be firmly embedded, reinforced and made solid in the culture of the House. Although the motion may not be ideal, it unquestionably moves in the right direction. If the Government do not accept it today, I hope that they will at least indicate what they will accept and how quickly they will pass this from the Government, the Crown, and back to Parliament.

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

Debate between Greg Knight and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Friday 21st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Knight]

If I may respond to that en passant, as it were, I accept that argument. The Procedure Committee has not yet considered this, but an argument can be made that we could consider bringing in a process whereby when a private Member’s Bill has had three hours of debate the question is then put. The Procedure Committee would wish to consider that option, although I would not wish to prejudge how it might decide to form its view on that proposition. That certainly could be done and it would mean that we would have more debates, which, in my view, is a good thing.

The next duty of anyone who comes fairly high in the ballot is to decide on the subject. Hon. Members basically make a choice in one of two areas. Either they choose a subject of great controversy or perhaps startling change and to have their day in the sun on Second Reading, knowing that the Bill will be opposed by the Government and even by the official Opposition and will be talked out, or they look for something less controversial but worthy in the hope that they can get it on to the statute book. I have to be honest and say that my first choice was to introduce a daylight saving Bill, but I was usurped by my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), who was higher up the ballot and who, to her great credit, has successfully piloted her Bill to Committee. I wish her well with it. Because of her decision, I decided to look around for another less controversial but worthy proposition, and I decided that I wanted to introduce a Bill that would make our law fairer in some way.

I had cause to look at some of the recent work of the Law Commission and of the Select Committee on Justice—I am delighted to see that the Chairman of that Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), is in his place—and I observed some of their reflections on the forfeiture rule and the law of succession. I therefore decided on my present Bill. I accept that it is not likely to be the talking point of the week in the village pub, but it deals with three related areas where, in my view, a small change in our law is both warranted and desirable.

I must tell the House that due to the complexities of the subject, this will not be a speech full of soundbites. I shall give some background. The Bill seeks to amend the law of succession in England and Wales where a person disclaims—that is, rejects—an inheritance or is disqualified from receiving an inheritance by reason of the forfeiture rule. What is the forfeiture rule? It has long been a doctrine of the common law of this country and I think it is a good doctrine to which no reasonable person could take exception. It states that if a man or woman is criminally responsible for the death of another, neither he or she nor his or her elected representatives can be entitled to reap any financial benefit from that act. As Lord Justice Salmon said in the case of Gray v. Barr, which was reported in 1971, 2 All England Reports at page 974:

“it would in general, shock the public conscience if a man could use the courts to enforce a money claim either under a contract or a will by reason of his having committed such act”—

that is, the act of murder.

Experience has shown that there are some cases—they might be few, but they are hard cases—where the public conscience would not want the full forfeiture provisions to apply, such as those involving mercy killings, the survivor of a suicide pact initiated by the non-surviving party and perhaps a battered wife driven almost beyond the borderline of sanity by the cruelty of a violent spouse. In such cases, the criminal courts will normally have been merciful and might have not even awarded any custodial sentence in the criminal proceedings. It was to deal with these situations and cases like them that the Forfeiture Act 1982 was passed. That Act provides for discretion to be applied by the courts in cases of manslaughter—I emphasise the word manslaughter, because there is no discretion in cases of murder. In cases of manslaughter where mitigating circumstances exist, the courts can allow the forfeiture rule to be relaxed, where appropriate.

The current rule is defined in section 1 of the 1982 Act as meaning the rule of public policy, which in certain circumstances precludes a person who has unlawfully killed another or unlawfully aided, abetted, counselled or procured the death of that other from acquiring a benefit in consequence of the killing.

My Bill gives effect, with some modifications, to the recommendations set out in the Law Commission’s 2005 report, “The Forfeiture Rule and the Law of Succession”. The subject of forfeiture and succession was referred to the Law Commission following the very unsatisfactory case Re DWS (deceased) 2001. Briefly, the facts of that case were that a person, whom I will call P, killed both his parents, neither of whom left a will. The court had to decide who was entitled to inherit P’s father’s estate under the intestacy rules, which are specified in sections 46 and 47 of the Administration of Estates Act 1925. P was not allowed to inherit because of the forfeiture rule, which I have just outlined. However, P’s child, the grandchild of P’s victims, could not inherit in place of P, because under the intestacy rules P was still alive and therefore P’s child could not take an interest in the estate. In that particular case, the victim’s estate therefore passed to a sister, which was unsatisfactory because by the time the court reached its conclusion the sister herself had passed away.

The Law Commission considered that the outcome of that case was unfair, and I agree. Equally unfairly, however, a situation might arise in which a killer forfeited an inheritance under a will. I do not believe that allowing a killer’s children to inherit from the victim in those narrow circumstances would encourage anyone who would not otherwise do so to commit a murder or attempted murder. The alternative is to stay with our present law and disinherit innocent children, which is most unfair. In any event, the law offers protection to prevent a killer from benefiting from a forfeited inheritance that passes to a minor, because the court has power on application to appoint two trustees or more where a minority interest arises on intestacy. It also has the power to pass over any person with a prior interest in a grant of letters of administration and appoint someone else to run the estate.

Similar problems can also occur where a person disclaims an inheritance under a will or on intestacy. For example, where in an intestacy—to the non-lawyers among us, that means where there is no will to say what should happen to the estate—the person who disclaims is the only child of the deceased, the inheritance will bypass the child’s descendants, because grandchildren can only inherit from their grandparent if their parent dies before the grandparent, in which case the inheritance passes instead to the deceased’s other, but more distant, blood relatives.

Let me give the House an example of how that might arise. Let us say that A, the deceased, dies and leaves a fortune, money which he lawfully made from his ownership of a nightclub and casino. He does not leave a will, but dies leaving a son, B, and two grandchildren, C and D. B is a strict follower of Victorian values and is a devout Baptist Christian, unlike his father. His views are similar to those of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the USA, which holds the views that God’s way is that we should earn what we get and that gambling is a sin. Because of those beliefs, B decides that he cannot in all conscience accept the legacy, so he disclaims—that is, he gives up his entitlement to money from his father’s estate. Under our law, in so doing he would prevent his own children, C and D, from inheriting, which applies even if they were to welcome the inheritance with open arms. Indeed, C and D might have embraced gambling as passionately as their own father had disowned it, but that would make no difference. Under our law, the inheritance would go elsewhere, which is neither right nor fair. That is why I am seeking to make a change with my Bill.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

If the strict Baptist did not want the money to go to his children, because he thought that

“the wages of sin is death”,

would he be able to take the inheritance and give it away, which would have the same effect as disclaiming, and therefore not lose his right to make that choice?

[Mr Knight]

B would be able to do that, although our law clearly states that one cannot refuse part of an inheritance—it is all or nothing. Once the decision is made, one cannot change one’s mind, unless others have not acted on one’s initial decision, in which case one can. The son would be at liberty to accept the inheritance and then give it away—indeed, he could give it to the church of which he was a member.

Stranger things happen where there is a will. If someone decides to give up something that they have been bequeathed in a will, what happens depends on the wording of the will. Such cases would need individual consideration.