Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

The has bounced back from the Commons to the Lords, with several emotive issues still in play.

Both Houses have to agree the final form of any bill and this is proving quite a good example of the way the Lords can force the Commons to look again - and sometimes extract concessions, as the deadline of draws closer.

Already the bill has changed a lot with new clauses creating a specialist Treasure coroner (a major triumph for one of Parliament's most effective lobby groups, the fiendishly tenacious All Party Archaeology Group) and new laws against people being held in "servitude".

Here's the scorecard on the remaining issues outstanding:

Secret Inquests
A term the Lord Chancellor Jack Straw insists "parodies" what he is actually proposing.

The issue is how to ensure that highly-sensitive intelligence gathering techniques are not compromised if the intelligence they produce is central to determining the cause of death in an inquest, and so, unavoidably, has to be revealed to a coroner and jury.

The government has now produced a new compromise amendment strengthening the "judicial lock" on the decisions to have an inquiry rather than a normal inquest, so the Lord Chief Justice, the head of the judiciary, has to approve the displacement of an inquest by an inquiry, and approve the choice of the presiding judge (a solution first proposed by the former Conservative spokesman, Lord Kingsland, who died in July).

This approach was approved by the Lords when the Conservatives decided they had taken the matter as far as they could and abstained - although the Liberal Democrats Lady Miller did continue to resist, and the Crossbencher Lord Pannick, a human rights barrister, remained pretty queasy. Expect it to be finally approved by the Commons on Thursday.

Sexual infidelity

Sexual infidelity provoking "loss of control" as a partial defence to murder. The Commons opposes allowing such a defence to reduce a murder charge to manslaughter; the Lords think it should be there. MPs voted 299-145 to disagree with Lords amendment that sexual infidelity could be a "qualifying trigger" to the murder defence of loss of control.

Despite arguments from the Liberal Democrat Lord Thomas of Gresford that the law of provocation was a mess and that the government was merely tinkering with an area that required fundemental reform, the Conservatives Spokesman Lord Henley said his party would abstain - he doubted sending the clause back to the Commons would change any minds.

Again the Lords drew back from a further clash with the government.

Homophobic hatred

The Lords voted through an amendment reintroducing the free speech proviso to the offence of inciting homophobic hatred.

The Commons disagreed by 342-145. The result was an extremely sparky mini-debate which included the former Chief Inspector of Constabulary Geofffrey Dear saying to Lord Bach, the Justice Minister, that in another era he would have sent his seconds to call on him (to arrange a duel). That was after Lord Bach questioned his claim that the police supported the amendment.

All the speakers for the amendment, proposed by the former Conservative Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Secretary Lord Waddington, emphasised they were not in favour of homophobia, let alone of homophobic violence. They argued that without a guarantee of free speech built into the law, criticism of sexual practice which did not seek to incite hatred, would be inhibited. And they won the day by 179 votes to 135.

The government now has to consider whether or not to try and reverse their vote in the Commons, with only one day of the current parliamentary session left.

So there will be a nail-biting bit of parliamentary brinkmanship to savour on Thursday, before the session ends with the clerks in the Lords reading mysterious incantations in Norman French. Both Houses have spent a lot of time on this bill - I wonder who'll blink first.

UPDATE: I understand the government is not going to seek to overturn the Waddington amendment in the Commons. Having won on two other issues, they're conceding on this one.

Which may have something to do with Jack Straw's presence in the Lords Chamber, sitting on the steps of the throne. Presumably, he saw the strength of Lord Waddington's support and decided their Lordships' heels were now dug firmly into the ground.

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