Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of (a) the effectiveness of the law on automatism as a legal defence and (b) its role in miscarriages of justice.

Automatism has developed as a defence under the common law for a long period of time and is a full defence to a criminal charge where the defendant’s consciousness was so impaired that they were acting in a state of physical involuntariness.

The Government understands how difficult it must be for innocent victims of acts for which automatism may be a defence to accept that in law no one is to blame but we believe it remains unjust to punish someone for something they genuinely had no control over.