An extraordinary case

I wasn't terribly impressed last year when the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, was convicted of breaking a law which she herself had helped to draft.

If anyone else had been convicted of the offence concerned - essentially failing to get the paperwork right when employing a cleaner from overseas who turned out not to have the necessary permission - I would have been strongly in favour of clemency. There's far too much onerous paperwork as a result of silly laws passed by the present government.

But for one of the people who drafted the law - and one of the government's law officers - to be unable to comply with it suggests either incompetence in drafting the law or, more likely a lackadaisical attitude to complying with it. E.g. a view that laws are for other people to obey, not Labour ministers. And that attitude should be driven out of politics.

(I would have been equally convinced that a Tory minister found guilty of breaking a law which he or she had helped to draft should be sacked.)

Now the Attorney General has been trying to increase the penalty awarded by the courts against a man who inflicted injuries in self-defence against an aggressor who had not just threatened him with an axe, but actually hit him several times with it.

A report of the incident is given by the Daily Mail here. Doubtless there is more to the story - there always is - but I note that the Lord Chief Justice dismissed Baroness Scotland's argument that the suspended sentence imposed on Kenneth Blight, who spent four months on remand awaiting trial, was "unduly lenient" and indeed cut the suspended sentence from two years to one.

The Lord Chief Justice described Mr Blight as a 'decent' and 'mild natured' man, and argued that the decision to impose only a suspended sentence was 'humane and justifiably merciful' on the grounds that

'This man feared for his life and initially picked up the knife to defend himself'

in 'the most extenuating and exceptional circumstances'.

I find the fact that the government was trying to increase this sentence to be cause for concern.

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