Human Rights and Civil Liberties

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow noble and learned colleagues in this debate and I have appreciated all the contributions. I am surprised to realise that I am the only woman contributing to this debate, which seems a bit odd particularly in a debate on human rights and civil liberties.

I have found it disorientating and disconcerting to observe just how un-Conservative is the attitude behind demands to repeal the Human Rights Act, to defy the Strasbourg court or even to pull out of the convention. My noble friend Lord Lester referred to this attitude as one of zealotry; I am coming to regard it as a sort of “Syriza Tory” attitude. It is a revolutionary spirit that one does not associate with the Conservatives—the clue is in the name. We have always thought that we could rely on the Conservatives to be rather resistant to extreme change.

As I travelled in on the Tube today, I saw a poster advertising a book on Churchill by the aspirant Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. It is called The Churchill Factor and is apparently in the top 10 list in the Sunday Times. This is the same Boris Johnson who, like Syriza, wants to have two referenda, with the public being told to vote no in the first one in order, apparently, to get more leverage in negotiations with the EU before a second. Well, it does not work for Syriza and I do not think that it will work for Boris Johnson.

I shall not repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, said about the Conservative role in the writing of the European Convention, but there is also a strong history of Conservative support for incorporation of the convention into British law. I am reminded that in 1976 the Society of Conservative Lawyers recommended that,

“the ECHR should be given statutory force as overriding domestic law”.

There are other examples; I am sure that my noble friend Lord Lester is very familiar with them. So to call the Human Rights Act “Labour’s Human Rights Act”—I am sure that Labour in some ways wants to take credit for it—is simply not accurate.

The Prime Minister has given laudable support to the UK’s role in upholding human rights internationally. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is championing effort to combat sexual violence and I warmly welcome the role that the Foreign Secretary William Hague had in that; it has been taken up now by our colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. So why do we not want to take a lead in Europe on upholding human rights? In the European Union context, we are not in the euro nor are we part of the Schengen agreement, so it has always seemed to me—I spent 15 years in the European Parliament and was on the justice and civil liberties committee with the noble Lord, Lord Cashman—absolutely appropriate that the UK should play a leading role on justice and rule of law issues. I should perhaps express a note of regret that the UK has so far declined to opt in to the EU directive on access to law, which has nothing to do with legal aid and does no more than express what we already do in the UK. We are missing opportunities to put into practice our strong record.

My noble friend Lord Lester drew attention to the incoherence that we are hearing from Conservative Ministers, from the Prime Minister down, about whether their intention is to leave the convention. I join my noble friend in saying that I would welcome clarification on whether that is the aim. Certainly, the former Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, has said that,

“it is time to examine how to curtail the involvement of the European Court of Human Rights in UK domestic matters”.

Many have commented that the only effective way to do that is by denouncing or withdrawing from the convention. That would have repercussions for our role in the European Union—maybe that is the intention—because Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union makes the declaratory statement:

“Fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and as they result from the constitutional traditions common to the Member States, shall constitute general principles of the Union’s law”.

So it is clear that you cannot be a member of the European Union if you are not a party to the European convention.

We understand the wish in the Conservative manifesto for our Supreme Court to be the ultimate arbiter of what the convention means in this country but, as others have said, it is already. Except for final judgments directly applying to this country which we are bound to implement under international law through Article 46 of the convention, our courts only have to take account of Strasbourg judgments. A fruitful dialogue has developed. There may have been a bumpy period but now there is a creative partnership between our Supreme Court and the Strasbourg court.

It was not Parliament’s intention in the Human Rights Act for domestic courts to be banned by the convention. However, I understand that during the passage of the Bill a Conservative Peer, the late Lord Kingsland, tabled an amendment to make convention case law binding on British courts—another example of a Conservative input which is thoroughly at odds with what we are hearing these days. The court cannot enforce a change in the law in the UK and Parliament remains sovereign. I have heard my noble friend Lord Lester say in the past that the Human Rights Act is a brilliant balancing act of the tension between the different branches of government. It was a wonderful solution to the dilemmas of how to right it.

It seems that the ultimate wish of these revolutionaries, these “Syriza” Tories, is to throw off external supervision of the Executive on how rights are observed in the UK—whether that is external to government, meaning the courts, or external to the UK, meaning Strasbourg—so that the Executive are able to pick and choose which aspects and beneficiaries should count as worthy of protection. That, of course, is completely against the spirit of universal human rights protection.

It would be fatal to our international reputation, to our role in the EU, the wider Europe and the Council of Europe, and to our moral authority to withdraw from the convention. However, that has to be the logic of what is proposed by the Conservatives. Frankly, I do not want to be on the same level as Belarus. It is not worthy of the Conservative Party. I am upset and angry that this short-sighted, cynical and irresponsible party policy could help to see the end of our United Kingdom as well as the end of our centuries of leadership in Europe and internationally. I hope the Minister can assure us that that is not going to happen.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

I think that the noble Baroness is referring to universal credit. The point about social welfare reforms I have already answered. Of course the Government are aware of all the potential difficulties that may confront individuals with cuts in either welfare provisions or access to legal aid, which was the subject of the Question. We will be having a careful look at these as they happen, but there must be a systematic review, and that is our intention.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, will the Government act to ensure that all company directors are obliged to have legal expenses insurance so that they do not need to have recourse to legal aid if they are prosecuted, for instance, for fraud?

Data Protection: Legislation

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Ludford]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the case for updating domestic data protection legislation in the light of the reported comments by the Information Commissioner that European Union law requiring notification of data breaches is three years away.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government do not have any plans to update domestic data protection legislation in respect of data breach notification in advance of agreement and implementation of the proposed EU regulation. The Government take the protection of personal data very seriously and believe that a strong system of breach notification will be an important element of a revised EU data protection framework, but that the changes should be made only once the package has been agreed in full.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer. However, should the Government not act with greater urgency to incentivise organisations, from which we have seen a series of major scandals of lost data—whether through lost discs or laptops, or hacking—such as from HMRC, Sony, or health organisations? Would it not be salutary for them to have to report major breaches to the regulator and to customers, who might suffer fraud or identity theft? We cannot wait possibly three years until we get EU law. We need to prioritise this so that we encourage companies to get their act together on security.

[Lord Faulks]

In fact, companies, conscious of their reputation, do—and quite rightly, should—report any breach of security, as indeed Sony did. That would be good practice. The proposed regulation would provide an obligation to notify the breach no later than 72 hours after it occurs to the ICO or equivalent in the relevant country or the subject, but only where there has been a serious breach. I entirely accept the noble Baroness’s concern, but these things must be approached as a whole, which is what the Government intend to do.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on what he has said and the courage that he has shown. There are just two other questions that I should like to ask the Minister. I was once upon a time, and for some years, a Prisons Minister.

The first question rests on the fact—noble Lords can check this—that young women are most likely to engage in serious self-harm between the ages of 16 and 20. Self-harm is much more common among women prisoners than among male prisoners; it is four times as high—so disproportionate is this attempt to raise sympathy and get attention. Is the Minister aware of these quite striking figures for the very high level of self-harm among young women, some of it serious self-harm, in the very age group that we are considering sending to secure colleges? What steps will be taken to ensure that any girl sent there has no previous record of self-harm?

My second question is quite different. We have all listened closely to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and we respect his extraordinary integrity in this House on issue after issue. Is the Ministry of Justice determined effectively to rule Parliament out of a system of consultation, advice and help, which I believe that most of us in this House are crying out for? We have seen an astonishing list of dismissals of Parliament in the course of proceedings on this Bill. I find it very unfortunate, and I am not sure that it is what the Minister intended, but it is certainly the net effect.

Will there be any consultation with the House about who will be the author of this report? In the light of the Home Office committee on sexual abuse, one can see what an intensely controversial question that will be. Will there be any willingness to listen to the House on consultation after the plans have been put forward for submission to the ministry? Finally, will the Minister consider whether the response given by the Commons to our amendments—namely, “it is not appropriate”—is an appropriate argument or even an appropriate answer to the many issues raised by the deep concern of many of us, of all parties, in this House?

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister briefly explain precisely why the Government feel unable to take the further step, which seems very reasonable to a lot of noble Lords who have spoken, of allowing parliamentary approval of that next step—for younger boys and girls to go into secure colleges? There is some bemusement over why the Government could not take that further step, as it seems unreasonable to withhold it. It would certainly help me in my decision in voting to understand the reasons why the Government feel unable to agree to that procedural step.

[Baroness Afshar (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that teenagers and pre-teenagers are the most racist groups, particularly those who are disturbed? Putting young, vulnerable minorities in the context of intense racism creates future terrorists. Has the Minister considered the cost to this nation of creating more enemies within its own people?

Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations 2014

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2014 Lords Chamber

The arrest warrant is working extremely well. You do not, if you are sensible in life, throw over and destroy a mechanism—particularly if it is a complicated mechanism that depends on the co-operation of 28 other nation states—unless there are very sound reasons for doing so in substance. Not a single sound reason for doing so in substance has come to my attention either in this debate or in the debates in the House of Commons which I tried to follow last week. This House should support the Government on the substance of these issues. I pay tribute to the way that they handled their dealings with the European Union on this matter in substance, while berating them over, and regretting very profoundly, the way that they think they can treat Parliament. They must not be allowed to get away with that; they must remember that. They must never try on again the tactics that they used either in the House of Commons last week or those that they have used—as the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, set out—in dealing with this matter in the House of Lords. It is quite a disgraceful episode and it should be carved on the record of this Government that they actually descended—quite unnecessarily, quite absurdly—to such very disgraceful behaviour.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I strongly welcome the prospect of finalising renewed participation in the 35 measures, even if the procedures—as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell—have been far from ideal. It is, as other noble Lords have said, axiomatic that cross-border co-operation against major crime and terrorism is essential for the security of the UK and the safety of its people. Just this evening, the London Evening Standard headline is: “Met war on 200 cyber crime gangs”. You do not really need to read the rest to know that their operations are extending across the United States, Russia and the rest of Europe.

I am proud of the Liberal Democrats’ role in this coalition. As my noble friend Lord Stoneham said in the debate on 17 July:

“I hate to think what would have happened if the disciplines and the support of the coalition had not been in place”.—[Official Report, 17/7/14; col. 753.]

However, perhaps we would not have chosen to start from here. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, that the opportunity of the opt-out—in the words of the EU Committee, its origins are obscure—was essentially drawn up on the back of an envelope by the previous Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, on the margins of the intergovernmental conference in Lisbon seven years ago, presumably to avoid a referendum. The former Home Secretary Charles Clarke has said that he regretted that it had been negotiated, so perhaps there has to be some humility on the Benches opposite about why we are in what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has referred to as,

“the infernal machinery of Protocol 36”.—[Official Report, 17/7/14; col. 761.]

There were strong arguments that measures that were old or defunct could have been allowed to wither on the vine. The idea that the European Commission was going to concern itself with pursuing infringement proceedings for some ancient joint action from the 1990s was fanciful; it will have an enormous amount on its hands just making sure that 28 member states properly implement the most important measures, including the European arrest warrant.

It is unfortunate that this decision is preceding rather than following the results of the balance of competences review on policing and criminal justice, because that review could have enlightened the decision-making on this exercise, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, that it needs to be a pragmatic, not an ideological, exercise.

UK leadership on justice and security is very strong and these Benches believe that it must continue. We have had two British directors-general in the European Commission dealing with these matters; as has already been noted by the noble Lord, Lord Bates, the current director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, is British; we have had two British presidents of Eurojust; the present Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, was—as Sir John Thomas—chairman of the European Networks of Councils for the Judiciary in 2008 to 2010; we had the European Police College here, although it is no longer; and we have had judges and advocates-general in the Court of Justice.

Given that we are so strong, with a strong reputation for the credibility of our police—notwithstanding a few recent problems—and given the depth of reputation of our judges and our upholding of the rule of law, we should lead in this area of justice and policing. Our not doing so is having an unfortunate effect on negotiations in Brussels on the measures that we are trying to opt in to. That is perhaps not so much the case in the Council of Ministers but, from my recent experience up till last May in the European Parliament, I know that it is difficult to persuade MEPs to make changes, as they should, to accommodate the common law if they are not sure whether the UK will participate. Some of those changes are ones that they are prepared to make, but they would not be necessary if we were not around. It is necessary for the European Commission to do some spring-cleaning of the list of old measures and it is a pity that it did not do that before this exercise had to be undertaken.

I understand the frustrations expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and strongly thank him and his colleagues, the chairmen and the previous chairmen of Sub-Committees E and F.

I can count only 10 measures in the Explanatory Note to the regulations, but 11 are cited in the Explanatory Memorandum. I think that the missing one is the in absentia measure—which seems ironically apt—because I suppose that it is incorporated in other legal measures.

It is not appropriate to fear the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. There is no evidence of judicial activism in this area. In fact, the court has to be very cautious, including in the case of Radu, about a European arrest warrant, when there were great hopes two years ago that the court would rule on a proportionality test at EU level. Unfortunately it shied away and decided on a technical basis. However, that in itself demonstrates that the court is being quite cautious on criminal justice. The Government have said on record that they have no objection in principle to the jurisdiction of the CJEU and, of course, we welcome it in other areas such as the single market.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, that the preference should be to reform the EAW at EU level. I was grateful to be able to give evidence recently to the Extradition Law Committee, led by my noble friend Lord Inglewood, which very speedily got out its extremely useful interim report. I agree with the reforms that the Government made in August, although we have not fully seen how they are going to pan out. It would be preferable to have a proportionality-checking issuing state, and to have a broader human rights refusal test than the one we have incorporated in UK law, which the courts have regarded as a high threshold.

There are other flanking measures we need to do the procedural rights. The European investigation order, when it comes into place, will take some of the weight off the European arrest warrant, which should be a last not a first resort—certainly when things such as video interviewing or temporary transfers can be done instead of reaching for it. We need much more to be done at EU level to stop unnecessary pre-trial detention.

It would have been absurd if the Government had not implemented the European supervision order, which, although not sufficient to ensure that people will stay in their home country on bail, is a necessary step to ensure that that would happen. I am fully conscious both as of a patron of Fair Trials International—which I should perhaps declare in this debate—and as a then constituency MEP for Andrew Symeou, just how appalling an experience he and his whole family had a few years ago. He conducted himself with huge dignity through that.

I finish by saying that other noble Lords have mentioned some omissions that would be nice to see, perhaps principally in the European probation order. I hope the Government will be able to give that real consideration in the future, and consider opting in. The UK Government were one of the instigators of the Prüm decisions on the exchange of biometric information, DNA and fingerprints, because we are putting much more into the pool than we are getting back. Therefore, that would be a good one to pursue. Regarding the framework decision on incitement to racial hatred, we lead in Europe on these measures. It is sad that we are not opting into that. There are also one or two others that I have not got time to mention.

There are also some current measures, not part of the mass opt-out but part of the case-by-case decision on whether to opt in, that I hope the Government consider further. One is the internal security fund which, in its previous incarnations, has given considerable funding to UK police and NGOs for investigative operations, for instance Operation Golf, a Metropolitan Police investigation into a child trafficking ring, and other projects. The second is the directive on the right to a lawyer. The Government have rightly pointed out, in their opt in to the framework decision on child pornography, that Articles 72 and 276 in the EU treaty put the maintenance of law and order and safeguarding national security outside EU law and court jurisdiction. That means, for instance, that if there was real suspected criminality, you could intervene on legal, professional privilege, but not in an illegitimate way. I ask the Government to have another serious look at that measure, because we set the gold standard in Europe on access to lawyers—this is not about legal aid but on the right to have a lawyer present.

These are my last words. We do not want to become, in the words of Professor Steve Peers,

“a kind of Brazil of Europe, without the nicer weather. A place that you”—

that is, criminals—

“would flee to or move assets to”.

Britain should not become a safe haven for criminals, and I strongly welcome opting in to the 35 measures.