Bishop speaks against return of death penalty

The Right Reverend Michael Turnbull said that although the moral case for bringing back capital punishment as a deterrent to save innocent lies "stood up", he did not accept it.

The murder of ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman has reignited the debate over capital punishment, with a new opinion poll suggesting more than half the population wanted the death penalty restored for child killers.

The Bishop said it would be detrimental to society if the death penalty was reintroduced and that no decision should be made in the immediate aftermath of the Soham deaths.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, he said: "If, in fact, you included the possibility of a death penalty, even that, then you rule out the possibility of rehabilitation. It does actually come down to pragmatic matters in the end about the question of how we run our society.

''If we are admitting defeat by putting the penalty into place and killing off those who have committed dreadful crimes, then I think that is a detriment to society as it stands.''

A poll of 2,000 people by YouGov for the Daily Mail found that 56 per cent believed in the death penalty for child killers and 35 per cent would back capital punishment for paedophiles.

Former Tory Home Office minister Ann Widdecombe, speaking on the same programme, said there was a moral case for reintro-ducing the penalty as a deterrent.

But she said it was "somewhat vacuous" because MPs would never back it and the Government had handed responsibility on the issue to Brussels.

She said: "There is a moral choice to be made. If it is a deterrent - let's use the 'if' - there is a moral choice to be made between saving the lives of the innocent and taking the lives of the guilty.

"That is the choice we have to make. I don't think you can ignore that choice because if you say it is a deterrent but we will not have capital punishment, then you are condemning innocent people."