Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Lord Phillips of Sudbury

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, several groupings of amendments today and previously have called for quite a tour de force from my noble friend to respond. The House is very well aware of that and grateful to him for that, and for his openness to discussing the measures in the Bill. If I may say so, in the Modern Slavery Bill, too, he has set an extraordinarily high standard at the very end of the Parliament.

I follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, in my first point. My noble friend can take this as a comment or a question, as he feels most comfortable. My point is about further consultation. Such a strength of feeling has been shown in the debate on guidance that clearly the best outcome would be another round of consultation with the organisations concerned. The second best would be informal discussions between my noble friend and those who have expressed particular concern.

That takes me to my second point. I am well aware of the Government’s wish to move this along very quickly. My noble friend mentioned the commencement of Clause 28. I take that to mean that the guidance will follow shortly. People will be reading this debate in Hansard. They may have given up by this point, but some will have stuck it and will want to know when the guidance will be issued so that there will be a debate about it. If the Minister can say any more about the timing, that will be very useful to people outside the House.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I have one more technical question to ask the Minister; I have given him notice of it. His Amendment 14E starts by saying:

“Guidance issued under subsection (1) takes effect on whatever day the Secretary of State appoints”—

so it appears to start by saying that this is solely about the timing of when the guidance should be brought into effect. But the second part of the amendment is technical, stating:

“A statutory instrument containing regulations … may not be made unless”,

it is approved by both Houses.

That seems a very odd way to put the fact that the guidance is to be approved as to content as well as the timing of its coming into effect. It would have been much happier if the provision had said at the start explicitly that not only is the guidance taking effect on the day set out in the regulations, but that the content will be laid before Parliament.

One can erect a technical, logical argument that the content must be included within the timing, so to speak, but as this is so important, I would be most grateful if the Minister can confirm that Amendment 14E as drafted is intended to mean that both Houses of Parliament must affirmatively approve the content as well as the timing of the guidance.

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Lord Phillips of Sudbury

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I wonder whether Hansard will be able to resist its usual refusal to let us put lots of “ands” and “buts” in very long sentences.

I have been trying to think of something to say in Latin to the noble Lord, but my A-level Latin is too long ago for me to be able to do it. However, he is probably asking your Lordships the sort of question to which we should answer yes. I remember that from the very early days of my Latin education.

I am certainly on the yes part of the spectrum of answers to this, in principle. I think a large part of the problem is what I unkindly call “turf wars” between the MoJ and the Home Office about who should have the money when the proceeds are recovered. I realise it is more complicated than that.

On the wording of the amendment, I wonder whether it is possible to identify the communities and neighbourhoods affected in an effective and straightforward manner, if at all. For instance, on the proceeds of crime of someone high up in an organised crime organisation dealing with drugs, can you pin down the communities and neighbourhoods affected in the way suggested? I am very attracted to money going towards crime prevention and assisting those who are affected by crime, but I am just not quite sure about this provision. However, the questions the noble Lord asked the Minister about ARIS and the wider questions about how the proceeds of crime when recovered are applied are very important.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, on the face of it, this is a beguiling amendment, not least because of the way the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, moved it by giving an example of helping a primary school understand a bit more about the way our complicated world works. There is no one in this House who defers more than me to the need for this country and this Parliament to help our citizens have a better idea of what it is to be a citizen in our barbarically complicated society.

I concur with my noble friend Lady Hamwee, and I think there is perhaps another problem with the wording of the amendment in that it simply talks about,

“reinvestment in the communities and neighbourhoods affected”,

which seems as wide as the Atlantic Ocean and gives no reinvestment guidance about what, why or wherefore.

I have a deeper problem with the amendment. We heard the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, give the example of $20 billion to $40 billion that should be recovered from frauds in developing countries and is not. We heard other examples from my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach of the abject failure of our current laws to achieve their purpose. I am not in favour of doing anything to diminish the resources available to the prosecutorial authorities for seeking to make more as regards compliance with the manifold laws we already have. It is a sort of scandal that we go on passing law after law with the most perfect of purposes, but then fail utterly to give those charged with implementing those laws the wherewithal to do that.

My noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach talked with some satisfaction of six advisers. I have to tell him that when you are up against the big, bad guys, a team of six will look rather small, and he is talking about six to cover the whole landscape. Therefore my reservation about the amendment is simply that if its effect is to reduce at all the current grotesquely inadequate resources that go toward compliance, I am afraid that I am not for it.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Lord Phillips of Sudbury

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I admit that I have not read these provisions in whole more than once, but when I first read them I, too, thought that this smacked of plea bargaining. My reaction was—and perhaps I should be forced to face up to this—rather more xenophobic than I would really care to admit. Discussing the provisions at this early—perhaps too early—stage has led me to cross out an awful lot of what I might have mused aloud about. We almost need a seminar on this rather than a Second Reading.

My instinctive reaction was, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has expressed, against being able to negotiate and pay one’s way out of trouble and conversely being tempted to acknowledge guilt for the wrong reasons. The foreword to the Government’s response to the consultation says that this will be,

“a more just and effective system”.

I am not sure what “just” means in this context. If it means anything, I think it means something about encouraging a change in behaviour, as the noble and learned Lord has said. Is it effective—as distinct from efficient? I can see that it is efficient but I wonder about effective. If it is effective, it will be effective in deterrence, reparation and so on, and that is my analysis of “just”. But perhaps none of this will matter when we get down to the detail.

The fact sheet that the Ministry of Justice has issued to accompany this says:

“A criminal prosecution will continue to be the most appropriate course of action where an organisation’s alleged wrongdoing is such that prosecution is the only real option”.

I am not sure where I see that in the provisions, except by implication.

I think my noble friend said that the code would be available to Parliament. I understand that such a code may not normally be appropriate for legislation of any type, or maybe not even for public consultation, but paragraph 6(1) says that the code will give guidance on,

“the general principles to be applied in determining whether a DPA is likely to be appropriate in a given case”.

That seems to be such a significant part of the code that it really ought to be in legislation.

Finally, on the requirements to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has referred, I will be interested to know, during the recommitment of these clauses, when it will be thought appropriate that a donation is made to charity and how one reaches that conclusion. There is a lot for us to disaggregate, analyse and understand in this schedule.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I did not expect to be able to be here this afternoon. In many ways, I wish I was not, because I am afraid that I take a rather different view from anyone who has spoken so far—except the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. I sympathise with my noble friend the Minister because this is a really difficult area to address in terms of a change in the law, because plainly the present situation is utterly hopeless.

Following the staggering series of events of the past five years, with the collapse of the financial centres of the world, in particular the City, which has required £80 billion of taxpayers’ money to shore up a system that has, let us be frank, been deeply corrupted—a great deal of the failure of the markets was not through lack of prudential wisdom but through market manipulation and criminality of various kinds—not one single person has been prosecuted and put behind bars. I accept what my noble friend the Minister said in opening, that we need to do something, but what we need to do is not to compromise the basic principle of equality before the law—because that is what we are doing—it is to beef up, hugely, the prosecuting authorities in this country. We have played boys’ games with these matters until now.

I had a meeting with the previous head of the Serious Fraud Office and I think I am right in saying that there are a puny number of highly qualified lawyers there to deal with what are the most difficult forms of prosecution on earth. He told me that his entire team would be outmatched by the lawyers and accountants hired by a bank to face a would-be prosecution that the SFO was considering.

It is not right for us to contemplate this fundamentally unacceptable measure until and unless we have summoned the necessary political will to give the prosecuting authorities a chance of doing their job because, hitherto, we have not. I for one would be willing to see a tenfold or twentyfold increase in the necessary personnel, with the necessary increase in their remuneration. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, was correct that the disparity in remuneration between the gentlemen and ladies in the Serious Fraud Office and the private sector is crazy. I would confront those difficulties and pay for their remedy. Were there effective prosecutions in this country, the fines that resulted from prosecutions of very large institutions for very large frauds would, I suspect, pay for the increase in the prosecuting resources many times over.

We have to be honest with ourselves and with the country over this. This is plea-bargaining. This is breaking the rule of equality before the law because it places huge, powerful, sophisticated companies engaged in premeditated and long-term fraud in a different position from that of a man or woman had up before the local magistrates for shoplifting. That is another form of economic crime. We are driving a coach and horses through the ancient and proper traditions of this country by giving privilege—that is what it boils down to—to the already rich and powerful. My noble friend said in opening that they are not “getting off lightly”. Well, I have to disabuse him: they are getting off extraordinarily lightly. To start with, there is no naming and shaming. When these matters are brought before the court for approval, there will not be facts there given that will hold up for public contempt the main architects of whatever fraud we are talking about. Least of all will there be prosecution and conviction, which will then of course strike very hard at the reception of that by the individuals who are prosecuted and convicted. Perhaps I may ask my noble friend this important question. Will this legislation prevent individual directors and executives of companies entering into a DPA being prosecuted afterwards for their part in the frauds concerned? If they are not susceptible to subsequent prosecution, that is a further failure of the proposed new regime.

This is a more important departure from the status quo than some may realise. This is pure realpolitik of a sort that it is not right for us to contemplate until— I repeat—we have tried giving prosecuting authorities the resources to deal with the offences being committed. As I have said, we are a million miles from that.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Lord Phillips of Sudbury

Thursday 15th December 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I apologise in advance for a singularly technical group of amendments, but they need to be explained, if only so that Hansard can show to those who are not here why they have been put forward. They are inescapably dry, not to say turgid. This group contains Amendments 116 to 119, which amend Clause 37, and Amendment 132 which, via the Bill, makes four amendments to Section 22 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

Clause 37 incorporates new Section 23A into RIPA 2000, thus extending the cases when judicial approval has to be obtained for surveillance. It is a clause that is to be welcomed, as indeed is the Bill as a whole. Amendments 116 to 119 to new Section 23A are drafting ones, but having suffered from unnecessarily obscure wording during the original passage of RIPA, where I led for these Benches, it still remains one of the most complex statutes there is. I hope that the Committee will think that the amendments are worth while.

Amendments 117 and 118 delete what I think are superfluous phrases from Clause 37, the phrases being, “if any” in subsection (2) and “as the case may be”, which appears later in that subsection. Superfluity of language is to be avoided.

Amendments 116 to 119 to the same new clause rectify what seems to me to be a clear error of drafting. I may say that putting together this Bill must have taxed the drafting skills of parliamentary draftsmen to the limit, and one can hardly be surprised if there is the occasional wrinkle. Amendments 116 and 119 address a confusion repeated in new Section 23A. It distinguishes authorisations under Section 22(3), (3B) and (3F) of RIPA from notices required under Section 22(4) of RIPA. Broadly, authorisations allow surveillance to take place whether or not subject to judicial approval, whereas notices are mandatory and require postal or telecommunications operators to disclose data. Both authorisations and notices, which are distinguished throughout both RIPA and this Bill, can be renewed but they are renewable under different provisions in RIPA 2000 and in this Bill.

However, new Section 23A, set out in Clause 37 of the Bill, states in subsections (1) and (3) that the renewal of authorisations is derived from the same sections as the grant of the same. My Amendments 115 and 119 would rectify that by making it clear that renewals are made under subsections (5) and (6) of Section 23 of RIPA 2000. I am not now entirely sure, on rereading my amendments, that reference to Section 23(6) in Amendment 119 is appropriate, but the Minister will soon tell me. It is rather a lot to ask him to have a view on these arcane matters on the instant.

Amendment 122 contains four amendments to Section 22 of RIPA, which will be incorporated through this Bill. Subsection (1) of Section 22 of RIPA gives the context within which breaches of privacy so as to disclose communications data shall be permissible. At the moment, it says:

“This section applies where a person designated for the purposes of this Chapter believes that it is necessary on grounds falling within subsection (2) to obtain any communications data”.

Perhaps we tried when the Bill was passed to insert “reasonably” before “believes”. However, it is never too late and my first change to Section 22 would achieve just that. It seems obvious and follows the general tenor of this Bill that the belief of the designated person should be reasonably arrived at.

The third change in my Amendment 122 to subsection (5) of Section 22 again seems to me obvious: namely, that a lazy or perverse belief on the part of any official should not be sufficient to trigger the authorisations permissible under this important but necessary invasion of citizen privacy.

The second change of my four is to subsection (3) of Section 22 of RIPA 2000, which, as it stands, appears to allow a designated person in effect to delegate his or her power of authorisation to,

“persons holding offices, ranks or positions with the same relevant public authority as the designated person to engage in any conduct to which this Chapter applies”.

Unless my interpretation of this subsection in RIPA is misconceived, this less-than-clear wording would allow a designated person, whose designation has to be prescribed by the Secretary of State by order under Section 25, to delegate under Section 22(3) to persons in the same public authority of any office, rank or position inferior to that of the person making the delegation. Again, in common sense, that cannot be right; hence my insertion of “comparable” so that the delegation by an official under Section 22(3) must be to a person of comparable rank or position.

Lastly—noble Lords will be glad to know that I am coming to the end of this exciting oration—the fourth amendment in my Amendment 122 harks back to the earlier ones in this group. It would change subsection (4)(b) of Section 23 of RIPA by removing “authorise or”, since those words relate to authorisations whereas subsection (4)(b) is exclusively concerned with notices, which, as I have explained, are not permissive but mandatory, and require—that is the relevant word—this or that from the postal or telecommunications operator to which the requirement is addressed.

I am sorry to have taxed the patience of the Committee with these somewhat obscure points but I believe that these amendments would improve the Bill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My noble friend may not like this question, but we are all family here, are we not? I absolutely agree that one needs a good supply of hot towels when reading this Act. Almost the last point he made was about his Amendment 122, which draws attention to Section 22(3), granting authorisation “for persons holding”—he would like to say comparable—“offices”. I read that as meaning that if you are designated to grant authorisation, you can allow a colleague, whether or not of the same seniority, to engage in the conduct that is referred to in Section 21. What that seems to be doing is saying that the designated person is in a position to grant authorisation, but it is perfectly okay to grant it within his own authority and that the conduct referred to in Section 21 does not mean delegating or granting authorisation to a third party. I am sorry if I have added to the need for hot towels.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am not perfectly sure that I understood my noble friend’s point. I think she is talking about comparability.

[Baroness Hamwee]

I am asking what the conduct is.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Yes. The reason I think that Section 22(3) of RIPA is wrong is that it does not make any requirement, as I see it, as to the rank or the position of the person to whom any delegation is made by the person originally designated under very carefully confined powers. As my noble friend pointed out, the definition of a designated person involves the Secretary of State making the designation, but when in Section 22(3) a delegation is in effect made, there is no such requirement. Where it refers to the same relevant public authority, that is fine. The person to whom delegation is made has got to be someone else in the same relevant public authority, but there is no requirement as to what rank that person is.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, my point was that I do not think this is about delegation of authority. I think it is about authorising the conduct which, were it to be proposed to be undertaken by someone in a different organisation, would require authorisation.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, my noble friend may be right. We disagree, as things stand, as to the meaning of Section 22(3) which, I think she will readily agree, is obscurely worded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Speak for yourself.

[Baroness Hamwee]

I do speak for myself. I hope Amendment 124, at any rate in the drafting, is a little more straightforward. I declare an interest as one of a number of vice presidents of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, from which this amendment comes. The amendment is concerned with environmental health and, in particular, with noise.

There has been, I understand, a long-running issue as to whether the investigation of noise nuisance requires covert surveillance. It is not the Home Office but in fact Defra which has mainly been concerned with this. Environmental health officers listen to noise in its context and record, one of the technical terms, anything listened to which brings—as I understand it since it is as the institute understands it—what it does within the meaning of Section 26(9) of RIPA. The Home Office takes the view that dealing with noise nuisance does not ordinarily require covert surveillance and so it is not caught by RIPA. Perhaps this amendment covers it if and when it does. Therefore this amendment is a probing one. The institute is generally in support of the need for judicial authorisation but so far as its work is concerned in this area there are some difficulties.

As this has been long running, it is able to anticipate the arguments that may be made against the need for such an amendment so I am going to start with the response and then its response to each of the Home Office’s likely responses. The first is that surveillance follows complaints so quickly that obtaining authorisation would not be reasonably practicable and that this excuses the need for authorisation. The institute says that the exception is when surveillance is undertaken as an “immediate response”, such as when a police officer sights a suspect in the street. There is always going to be a delay between the making of the noise complaint and its investigation. Secondly, if local authorities warn noise perpetrators that they may be monitored surveillance following that will not be covert and so will not be caught by RIPA.

Giving a warning causes delay. It rather undermines the duty on local authorities under the Environmental Protection Act to investigate complaints and quite obviously it would tend to be self-defeating. I dare say many noble Lords will have experienced complaint in different contexts to noise or what they may perceive as noise. I perceive muzak as noise. I have often asked for it to be turned down. It is turned down temporarily in a place of entertainment and up it goes again. Thirdly, if local authorities warn noise perpetrators that they may be monitored, again surveillance will not be covert and so not caught. I beg your pardon. I should have said that giving a warning takes the investigation out of RIPA and the measurement of sound pressure levels does not require authorisation. But there is no numerical standard for noise nuisance because environmental health officers have to judge the noise in context. Depending on what else is going on, the noise may or may not be intrusive, and for evidential purposes it is accepted practice to record it.

Fourthly, private information is unlikely to be obtained because perpetrators have no right of privacy to information that is audible outside the premises it is coming from. However, the institute draws attention to the definition in RIPA of “private information” by reference to its content as distinct from its audibility. Fifthly, surveillance carried out without authorisation is not necessarily unlawful. That is the case where there is an equivalent process of authorisation in another statute, but that does not apply in this case. Lastly, the whole thrust of this part of the Bill is the protection of magistrates’ approval against unjustified snooping by local authorities, and both I and the institute have sympathy with that. The Home Office has confirmed in Answer to a parliamentary Question in another place that there is no evidence to suggest that noise investigations are being carried out inappropriately by local authorities. We have read of instances where local authorities have rather overstepped the mark in their use of the powers, but this is not one of those examples.

In the hope that I have not taken too much of the Minister’s speech in anticipation of the answer, I beg to move.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Lord Phillips of Sudbury

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, this amendment proposes that the commissioner should, within three years, prepare a report about the extension of the code to other operators. We have already touched on this in referring to Clause 33. My noble friend Lord Phillips, who has been taxing me with notes asking me to justify the drafting of this section, which is not my responsibility, asked under a previous amendment not about the extension of the code but about which operators were subject to it. He was asking why this chapter starts by appearing to be quite general and then becomes more restrictive once we get into the detail of Clause 33. He is nodding; I hope that I am interpreting him correctly.

My understanding of this is that because, under Clause 33(5)(k), more persons can be added to those who come within the definition “relevant authority”, Clause 29 and the succeeding clauses are drafted in that slightly wider way. I share my noble friend’s concern that “relevant authorities” should extend to a wider group of operators than are listed in Clause 33(5)(a) to (j).

A similar question was asked during the Committee stage in the Commons, and the Minister, James Brokenshire, said:

“The report—

this is the regular report to the commissioner—

“will be an instructive and formal means for the commissioner to telegraph clear recommendations about the code, its application and whether it is achieving its intended objectives”.—[Official Report, Commons, Protection of Freedoms Bill Committee, 26/4/11; col. 364.]

My amendment takes the matter wider to those who operate the code.

It occurred to me only during this debate that it will be helpful to have—and I am sorry to be technical, but the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, will probably tell me that I am not accurate in this question—reassurance that the sui generis rule does not apply and that by having a list that is very specific we are not stuck to those organisations and persons who are similar to those listed in paragraphs (a) to (j) of Clause 33(5). Clearly there is concern that a much wider group of persons—private companies do not quite come within this—and all operators of CCTV, those who run shopping malls, for instance, should not be brought within the scope of the code. We know how the concerns have started, but the more we talk about it, some of us feel that there should be a code that is observed by all operators. While I understand that getting experience of the use of the code under one’s belt might be a good thing, I think that we would like to know that the position will be reviewed in fairly short order. I beg to move.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I would just like to add a few points to those made very effectively by my noble friend Lady Hamwee. I regret to ask the Minister some questions, because it always seems churlish to spring technical questions upon a well meaning Minister, but I hope he gets advice from his rear quickly.

First, Clause 34 “Commissioner in relation to code” states that in Clause 34(2)(b) that the commissioner has the function of,

“reviewing the operation of the code”.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Hamwee that that does not, on the normal reading of those words, extend to consideration of the exercise of power to specify new bodies to be caught by the code under Clause 33(5)(k).

Secondly, will the Minister confirm that there is nothing in Clause 35 “Reports by Commissioner” that appears to authorise the commissioner in making reports to consider the point of extension of the code, which I would have thought justifies Amendment 113?

Finally, all those arguments would count for nought if in Clause 33(5)(k) the proper construction of “any person” is to confine “any person” to bodies comparable to “relevant authorities”. My own view is that it does not. In view of the opaqueness of the drafting of this part of the Bill and, as I said earlier, the fact that Clause 29 refers twice to “persons” but not at all to relevant authorities, I feel we need to be very clear of our ground here. In my humble view, there is a lot more concern about the operation of CCTV cameras by private interests than by public ones. I cannot think, for example, that the Sub-Treasurer of the Inner Temple is likely to abuse the CCTV cameras within his or her purview, but I am afraid I can foresee that some private operators might get up to things that are extremely undesirable.

The end of all that is whether the Minister can say to us now that he will take this away, look at it and if necessary bring forward his own amendment at the next stage of the Bill. I hope he might do that. I apologise again for springing this rather nasty group of questions upon him, but I was unprepared for the debate as it has evolved.

Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Lord Phillips of Sudbury

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hamwee]

I have Amendments 13 and 15 in this group, which also contains Amendments 14 and 16 in the name of my noble friend Lord Phillips. Amendment 13 is in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, who has asked me to say that he is sorry that he cannot be here this afternoon and that he very much supports the amendment, which in a way is a little embarrassing for me, as this is only a probing amendment, as indeed are all my amendments this afternoon.

Amendment 13 would insert the words “knowingly and” before “without reasonable excuse” in Clause 6(1). On the first day of Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, took us into some Latin terminology and I suppose that I shall, too, in asking whether mens rea—a guilty mind—is included in Clause 6(1). It is not obvious that it is covered by the phrase “without reasonable excuse” but, as the clause creates an offence, the “knowingly” aspect may well be imported in any event.

Amendment 15 would remove paragraphs (e) and (f) from Clause 7(1). It enables me to ask the Minister whether offences already exist relating to the misuse of driving licences. It struck me as odd to think that such offences came into effect only with the 2006 Act, so I would be interested to hear why it is necessary to refer to them at this point. I beg to move.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, the other two amendments in this group, Amendments 14 and 16, are in my name. I reiterate what my noble friend said about the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, who has put his name to both my amendments.

The purpose of Amendment 14 is to get on record—this may help those who have to interpret the statute—an explanation of the difference between Clause 6(1)(a), which my amendment would delete, and Clause 4(1)(a). If the Minister could explain the intended difference between the offences laid out in those two paragraphs, that would be extremely helpful, as they are close in wording, albeit with different conditions. Amendment 14 is truly a probing amendment.

Amendment 16 relates to Clause 8, which is headed, “Meaning of ‘personal information’”. The phrase “personal information” is used in Clauses 4 and 5. My amendment seeks to clarify paragraph (l) of Clause 8(1). I ask the Committee to humour my error in framing the amendment. Its first word, “or”, is redundant and my amendment should therefore read,

“in relation to any identity documents”.

The paragraph, as it stands, refers only to “documents”, not “identity documents”, which my amendment does. The term “identity document” is defined in Clause 7, but I am concerned that the paragraph could refer to, for example, a rating return, a television licence or any one of many other documents which identify the person to whom they relate and which contain numbers allocated to person A. I should be grateful if the Minister could say whether I am right or wrong in seeking to confine the personal information defined in paragraph (l) to that which relates only to identity documents, as defined in Clause 7.

House of Lords: Working Practices

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Lord Phillips of Sudbury

Monday 12th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, one of our new colleagues asked me last week how it was that the House was self-regulating when there were so many things that he could not do. That led us to talk about self-regulation starting one step back from day-to-day procedures but it being important that the process should take the House with it when agreeing what our procedures and rules should be. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cope, I have been thinking about some of the things that Lord Russell used to talk about. He felt strongly that if we had a Speaker with a role similar to that of the Speaker in the Commons, we would all rapidly begin to behave rather badly. We would push at the boundaries and wait to be pulled back, and our behaviour would worsen significantly.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Hear, hear.

[Baroness Hamwee]

I do not know whether my noble friend’s “Hear, hear” was a comment on the rest of us or himself.

There has been a band of brothers and sisters working energetically on these issues, many of whom are speaking in this debate and are to be congratulated. I should like to speak mostly about the “what”—what we do—rather than the “how”, but it is time to review the role and remit of the Lord Speaker, because if we do not do that now, it will be some time before we can do it. We are coming to the end of the first term of the Lord Speakership. I doubt that its role and remit will make it into the manifesto of candidates in future campaigns for the Lord Speakership or that the House would welcome that. We would not be comfortable turning the election of an individual into a referendum on the role.

Four years ago, we resolved to elect our own “presiding officer”—that was the term. The outside world and many inside the House would expect a presiding officer to have more of a role within the Chamber. Self-regulation has meant that Question Time, for instance, has become quite a noisy affair, as other noble Lords have mentioned, and the logic of the government Front Bench rather than the presiding officer acting as the traffic warden is not obvious to everyone. If we are to look at the role of the Lord Speaker, some changes to the role of the Deputy Speakers would naturally follow, but, as the governance group identified, there is scope for the development of their roles, and what was once a logical distribution of work between the Chairman of Committees and the Deputy Speakers may no longer apply.

Huge strides have been made, many at the instigation and under the guidance of the Lord Speaker, in demystifying the work of the House. One of our guiding principles—this was very much the thrust of the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones—should be not just transparency but intelligibility and accessibility. Democracy demands this. At a time of reform, there is a danger in being seen as having our gaze fixed on our collective navel, and we should be aware of what the public expect and want—although I am aware that they are not one homogeneous entity. Much of this comes down to common sense.

One thing that most people would expect of any organisation is that it reviews and evaluates what it has done to help it in future. That is why I am keen to see a development of the scrutiny of legislation both before and after its enactment. I declare an interest as a co-president of the Centre for Public Scrutiny. Most of us are alert to this House being complementary to the House of Commons—and we are all spelling “complementary” with an “e” this evening. This House is particularly suited to undertaking the work that many noble Lords have described. Parliament has a role that is distinct from government. I am perhaps the first this afternoon to say that we have a coalition Government, not a coalition Parliament. It is inevitable that Back-Benchers on the government side will be teased if we say anything mildly critical of the Government, but I have never seen scrutiny as equivalent to opposition. If you are on the government side, you hope to be a critical friend. Friends and opponents working together can do a very good job of scrutiny. Both want to test a proposal; the opponents because they want to show that it will not work, the friends because they want to ensure that it will. That was an observation that I gleaned fairly early on when I was chair of the London Assembly, the main job of which is scrutiny of the executive in London.

I hope that we will be able to extend our pre-legislative scrutiny. Once we in this House get stuck into a Bill that has had only partial attention in the Commons, we can be like terriers; but by this stage—and this applies also if the Bill has started here—Ministers are defending rather than debating. Positions are polarised, and that is not a good basis for taking forward a discussion. It might be easier for the Government, which is one reason why Parliament and not the Government should determine which Bills are presented in draft. Pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny are part of the same process, each building on the other. Identifying how legislation might have been better should feed in to improving it in future. It is a frequent complaint that Government do not let legislation settle down before introducing the next tranche. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, referred at the start of the debate to the quantity of legislation. Teachers, school governors and LEAs have been wearied by 33 education Acts in the past 26 years. Health has had 35, criminal justice 108 and the constitution 123. I am not arguing that these were all bad, but neither were they all good.

The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, mentioned the Digital Economy Act. We all have our candidates for post-legislative scrutiny. Freedom of information and data protection might well be high on the list, because the world that they were addressing has changed technically and politically. The previous Government committed themselves to reviewing legislation after three years. As I understand it, the current Government intend to continue this. I am not sure whether this refers to three years after enactment or after commencement. What might come out of post-legislative work could be the flushing out of the number of Acts and sections within Acts that are not in effect. It is very confusing—again I am taking the point of view of a member of the public—for those who need to know day-to-day what sections are actually implemented. My noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester, who is the new chair of the Delegated Powers Committee, would have made that point had she been able to be here this evening. Review by the Government is not the same as scrutiny. It is not a substitute for cross-party consideration of the operation of legislation, hearing from stakeholders, questioning Ministers, considering whether the legislation is fulfilling its purpose and whether the costs, risks and benefits were properly and accurately identified.

As I have said, this Chamber is complementary to the House of Commons. Our work could be done in conjunction with the House of Commons, or, if the Commons is not inclined to do this, separately, being mindful of what the Commons does not find time for. There is a case for a committee separate from the Commons Select Committees, because a specialised committee could develop expertise and perhaps be in a better position to disseminate best practice across the board. I am not arguing that every Bill should go through the process. We need to find the right balance. The workload is not negligible, and nor are the resources needed, but I hope that the Leader’s Group will look at the mechanisms available and perhaps, as a first step, undertake a scoping exercise.

I am lucky enough to have been appointed recently to the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee. Not everyone would say that was luck, and the size of the first agenda was a facer. However, as a Member of the House who has taken advantage of the committee's work in the past and who is now a member of the committee, I endorse it. Requiring both Ministers and civil servants to justify secondary legislation should lead to better practice. With around 1,100 statutory instruments a year, we need formal, structured attention, not a haphazard response relying on luck rather than management. In the short time that I have been a member of the committee, I have been very impressed by the workload carried by those officials who support the committee and who do a lot of thinking for us. It takes particular skill to give a critique while remaining on good terms with those you are critiquing, in this case the departments. However, they manage to carry through work that reflects the joint approach that we want to operate properly within our terms, even if we do not share policy objectives. There is a case for post-legislative scrutiny, including post-implementation reviews of statutory instruments.

None of this is groundbreaking: it is common sense and what the public expect. It should not be seen as threatening what is good about the way in which we work. If the message is to be got over, we will also need to work with the media. When I have said this before, in effect the comment has been, “steady on”; but they are part of the way in which our democracy operates. What is common sense but also novel in the UK Parliament, though not in other parts of our constitution, are procedures that recognise the changed political configurations within the Chamber. The public pretty much support political parties working together, as two of us now are, but they also expect us calmly to tweak the procedures to fit the new reality. I take issue briefly with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, who referred to an inbuilt government majority. That is not the case—I will not say “unhappily not the case”. The first vote of the Session made that clear.

Scrutiny is not a second-class activity: good government needs good scrutiny. I congratulate those who have done so much work. There is a lot more that could be said, but I will regulate myself and say simply that I hope that the House can do justice to all the work that has already been done.