Probate Service

Debate between Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted and Lord Keen of Elie

Monday 27th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]]

Are any of the temporary measures adopted during lockdown under consideration for becoming permanent—for example, signed statements of truth replacing affidavits or HMRC accepting estimated values and then subsequent corrected values?

[Lord Keen of Elie [V]]

Certainly, it is intended that permanently replacing affidavits with statements of truth will be considered, as will electronic signatures on probate forms—albeit that the whole issue of electronic signatures should be considered more widely. Going forward, we will seek to learn from these changes what permanent improvements can be introduced to the service.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted and Lord Keen of Elie

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 5th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted]

Perhaps I may make an observation. Leaving general principles out of it, if you categorise all the legislation as secondary legislation and then deem that some of it can be amended only by Act of Parliament, you do not have to sort it all. You would have to sort it only when you wanted to amend it—and at that point you would look at the basis on which it was made.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am obliged to the noble Baroness for that observation. Obviously, that is something that we would take into account. It perhaps touches on a question I did not answer from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with regard to Clause 5(3), where he queried the reference to the “intention of the modification”. Of course, what that makes clear is that this will need to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted and Lord Keen of Elie

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 5th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am quite prepared to discuss the point with the noble and learned Lord because it may be that we will look more closely at those provisions in the Scotland Act in the very near future.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted]

I thank the noble and learned Lord for his response and all noble and noble and learned Lords who have spoken in this debate. I think that it has been confirmed that it is every bit as bad as I thought it was, and in fact I am not even sure that it is not worse. We now seem to have some kind of parallel jurisprudence which appears not to be actionable either under general principles or under common law, so we have created a kind of lacuna that cannot be approached. I also reject the fact that we would not be going on indefinitely applying general principles because the whole point is that we have the law as it is in the snapshot until such time as we change it. While I understand that one would not necessarily want to go in for a sudden wholesale redrafting of things, as amendments are necessary—especially if we avail ourselves of some of the mechanisms we have talked about where an Act of Parliament is going to be needed either because it is primary legislation or because we have put that on as a safeguard—these things are going to be revised and updated. I am still concerned and it is something that along with others we might want to return to on Report. However, for now, with the leave of the Committee I shall withdraw the amendment.