Legal Aid: Social Welfare Law

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

He is certainly my friend. I will leave the nobility to the opinion of the House.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, going back to the question of the risk assessment, does the Minister agree that the purpose of a risk assessment is indeed to look at the worst-case scenario under a number of headings, and to propose what should be done in mitigation should such a scenario eventuate? Can he say what measures the Government have in place should those worst-case scenarios eventuate? There is no point in writing them down if there is not at least some risk that they will.

[Lord McNally]

That is why we have to take a holistic view of these matters. Much of what is being talked about here will be impacted by the reform and simplification of the welfare system that is being carried out, as well as a whole range of other measures, many of which we will be discussing in the next few hours, that will prevent the worst-case scenario from coming to pass.

Public Disorder: Restorative Justice

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

Within the budget constraints that affect both central and local government, we are looking to the voluntary sector to continue to play a part in this area. Where and when we can make resources available, we will do so. There is no doubt that where the voluntary sector, including churches, plays a positive role in a community, the impact on such issues as vandalism and small-scale crime is very favourable, so we will certainly be keeping that in mind.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, in view of the Minister’s answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, does he see any tension or contradiction between his declared support for restorative justice and the attitude taken by the courts to many of those who were caught up in the riots?

[Lord McNally]

Possibly. In the end, it must be the courts, the judges and the magistrates who determine sentencing. It was right that the courts took into account in some of those sentences the fact that the offences occurred in the process of a riot. The riot was a legitimate factor for the courts to take into account in determining sentencing. In the broad sweep of things, I believe, as I indicated to the noble Baroness, that the evidence is that proper restorative justice that has a real impact on the offender is more effective in avoiding repeat offences than sending the offender to a young offender institution. I hope that we can develop a sentencing policy that is based on the facts and what works rather than on knee-jerk reactions.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, I add my support to the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Stevenson. I do so as someone who served until the general election on the Select Committee on Communications of your Lordships' House. Shortly before the election, the committee produced a detailed report on the state of the UK film and television industry as it was then—that is only just over a year ago.

A lot of the evidence taken by the committee then was in the wake of another huge success for the British film industry, although of a rather different nature from that of “The King's Speech” which we have been celebrating today. That film was “Slumdog Millionaire”, which also had huge success at the Oscars and elsewhere and depended for some of its success not on money from the UK Film Council but on a small amount of money, very early in the film’s development, from Channel 4. The reason that I mention that in relation to the amendment is that, as my noble friend Lord Wills just remarked, the UK film industry exists in a very fragile ecology. Its fragility concerns how difficult it is not so much to get things finished as to get them started.

The UK Film Council’s intervention, which allowed “The King's Speech” to be made, was at the beginning of that process. Anyone who has spent time over the past few weeks reading all the interviews and material generated by the success of “The King's Speech” will know that Tom Hooper, his screenwriter and the other people—the small group who believed in the project—struggled to get it going. Always, when we look at UK films that have big success, we think, “Of course. Why would it not be successful?”. It is not like that. One valuable thing that the UK Film Council has done, which is mentioned in the amendment, is to collect data and research on all the various ways in which the UK film industry is active. Those data reveal that the industry is in constant flux. It has moments of huge success and, at other times, moments when its success falls away.

In my view, that is partly because the industry has a relatively small domestic market. It has to get out there and sell itself into a wider world market before it can really start to make money. That is why film export is so important and why it is therefore necessary for the Government and the Minister, when she comes to reply, to explain how the film export aspect of the work of the UK Film Council will be supported and continued as we go on. The American film industry has a massive domestic market, and films can be a success in America using just that domestic market. Our film industry cannot rely on that market. It has to get out there and sell itself. The success of “The King’s Speech” is remarkable in that it has become a worldwide success. That is very hard to achieve from a UK base, and anything that is likely to undermine the continuing success of UK film by not properly supporting the export side of it is very much to be regretted.

I would also like to mention one other thing that is not specifically mentioned in this amendment, but I hope the Minister will find something to reassure the Committee about it when she comes to reply. It is about supporting film artists at an early stage in their career. Whether you are a director or a writer, the difficulty of getting your work funded at an early stage in your career is extreme in this country. That is probably an issue everywhere, but it is certainly so here. Among its many functions, the UK Film Council has over the years put some money into development and into making sure that a certain number of screen writers get to develop their work. I would like to feel that the Government understand the importance of this function and that when they come to review the way in which the functions of UK Film Council are to be transferred to the BFI that aspect of what it has been doing will be protected.

It is a very great matter of pride to all of us when a film such as “The King’s Speech” comes along and has such extraordinary success at home and in America, but it is an extremely long, hard journey to get a film such as that up and running and to get it to be as successful as that film has been. We cannot afford to lose any of the potential support for UK film makers.

Prisons and Young Offender Institutions: Education and Training

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I hate to keep saying “Shortly a paper will be published”, but the Department for Education is about to publish a Green Paper on special education needs, which will look again at the special education needs of prisoners. One of the things pointed out in the Green Paper published by the MoJ—it is still open for consultation for another four days—is that far too many prisoners have undetected mental problems. We are making every effort to ensure that opportunities and facilities are in place to detect and help to treat those problems.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, going back to the noble Lord’s answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, can he confirm that the Government value the broad educational opportunities created by the use of the arts—including the performing arts—in prisons? Will he also confirm that the Government will not fall victim to the strident voices telling us that that kind of opportunity in prison is going soft on prison life?

[Lord McNally]

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness. Often our media like to leap on an initiative and present it in a way that, as she says, suggests it is soft on prison. The whole rehabilitation strategy tries to break into the ludicrous situation of people going through the prison system and reoffending shortly after being released. If we can find ways of engaging them in cultural interests by providing education, we will save public money and avoid further crime. That is plain common sense.

House of Lords: Working Practices

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for setting up this debate and, in particular, for his announcement of his intention to set up a Leader’s Group and to give it the widest possible remit on the issues that we are discussing today. That is remarkably welcome, and I am sure that the whole House is grateful to him.

There are several disobliging terms sometimes applied by natives, mostly of rural communities, to describe those that they regard as outsiders. Among those that can be repeated here are “grockle” and “blow-in”. It can take several generations for the stigma of being one of those to wear off. I have been a Member of this House for almost 11 years but, like my noble friend Lady Jones, I still feel like a new girl and occasionally like a fraudulent interloper, so I venture into this debate with some trepidation. I do so armed with a little confidence having been a member of the cross-party group chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, and of the group of Labour Peers referred to by my noble friends Lady Royall and Lady Jones, chaired by my noble friend Lord Grocott, so I feel that I am slightly better informed than I might have been a few months ago.

I am not a natural radical. I have little appetite for change for its own sake. I respect and admire the resilience of things that have survived the test of time, whether they be pieces of old furniture, the language of William Shakespeare or, indeed, the traditions of this House. I especially and vehemently do not want this House to become a replica or shadow of the other place. However, in my short time here—as, for Peers, it is a short time—a lot has changed. We have seen the loss of most hereditary Members, the exit of the Lord Chancellor, and the very welcome, in my view, creation of the post of Lord Speaker. I take this opportunity to join the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in paying tribute to the enormous contribution made by the present incumbent in her time in office. There have been changes in sitting times, the working week and the working year, and we have seen a much increased use of Grand Committee. As my noble friend Lord Grocott observed, most of those changes were not universally welcomed, but have since become established parts of our practice.

However, in the world outside and, I have to say, to some extent within Parliament itself, the impression persists of this House as obstinately adhering to arcane tradition and exclusivity. We need to look only at how we are routinely portrayed in the media—it is always the ermine that gets into the picture. This is not good. It makes us vulnerable and calls into question the value of what we do. We have a duty to do our best to correct any misapprehensions but, more importantly, to try to see and hear ourselves as others do and to review our working practices and procedures with humility and on a continuing basis, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Norton.

We have just been through a very turbulent year. At the start of this new Parliament, with many new Members—to whom, whether they come from another place or from outside Parliament, I imagine that the practices of this House must appear somewhat perplexing, at least at the beginning—and faced as we are with the prospect of major reform, this House could adopt one of two positions. It could either decide to do nothing, reasserting its independence and unique character by setting its face against any challenge to the way that it does things now—thankfully, so far this afternoon I have heard no support for that position—or it could take the opportunity for some further incremental change that could significantly improve the effectiveness of the House and help to enhance its reputation. I am delighted that the noble Lord the Leader of the House, by setting up a Leader’s Group, is encouraging us to take this opportunity.

I want to draw attention to two specific points. I fear that they are the same two specific points that my noble friend Lord Filkin drew attention to, and he probably did it rather better than I will but, in the true traditions of this House, that is not going to stop me. The first concerns the observations made by his group about ensuring that legislation, when it comes forward, should,

“meet objective tests of being adequately prepared”.

That point was eloquently made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and mentioned by a number of other noble Lords. My noble friend’s group proposed a committee on legislative standards, with a remit to examine upcoming Bills against a clear set of criteria, which I will not read out because he has already enumerated them. I very much support this recommendation, and I also support the various suggestions about evidence-taking before Committee stages. I agree with my noble friend Lady Royall about pre-legislative scrutiny, an issue that has been raised by many other speakers. If legislation were consistently well prepared—this was a point noted by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, who is not in his place—much of the time and effort taken by both Houses to scrutinise that legislation would be much better used and some of the difficulties discussed elsewhere in the paper by the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, and the paper by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, would diminish.

My second point concerns governance and accountability, which were covered by the group chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, of which I was a member. It was subsequently addressed in a very useful briefing paper from the Hansard Society, which I received this morning, and by the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and other noble Lords. I am well aware that these matters are sensitive—probably more so than those concerning the House’s legislative role. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, I urge that we do not flinch from considering whether our governance arrangements would bear the kind of scrutiny to which other aspects of lives have recently been subjected. It is no longer enough, as he pointed out, that we should understand and be content with how we do things—although, as was evidenced in what the noble Lord, Lord Luce, said, not everyone does—we must also consider whether we are taking into account the way that things are done elsewhere. In a community—I hesitate to use the word “organisation” or “institution” —as complex and unusual as this one, there is a great temptation to think that everything not only is, but has to be, sui generis. I worked for years in the arts where this kind of view was for long enough prevalent, but eventually it dawned on us all that emphasising what made us different did not always work to our advantage. It was far better to look about, adopt what was best in business and other practices and become more efficient and effective by learning from others. Perhaps paradoxically, the things that really made us unique emerged much more strongly once we began to join the rest of the world.

I hope that this House will review its own governance in the same light and take seriously some of the suggestions that have come forward about accountability and transparency. They are not frightening nor, frankly, especially radical, but they might be—to mangle Robert Burns, and with apologies to my Scottish colleagues—power that,

“…the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!”.

Defamation Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Friday 9th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, standing up at this point in such illustrious company teaches me the perils of asking to speak early in a debate. Be careful what you wish for. However, it gives me an opportunity to be the first to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lester, on bringing forward the Bill and to say how much I am looking forward to the maiden speeches of my noble friend Lady Hayter and the noble Lord, Lord Willis, both of whom, I am sure, will make distinguished contributions to the debate, no matter how nervous they are feeling at this moment.

I know that the House is hugely indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, not only for this Bill but for other pieces of enlightened legislation for which he has been responsible in the past. I hope that if the Bill or something like it is enacted, his name will be for ever attached to it. Given the number and quality of the speakers the noble Lord has attracted today, I am aware that I can contribute little more to the debate than my support for his enterprise. I do so with great humility, having no special experience or expertise—only a long-standing awareness of the inadequacies of the current state of the law. Those inadequacies are hugely magnified now by the impact of the internet.

I come from a background in theatre and the performing arts. You might think that it is an area wherein the laws of defamation would not have any particular traction, but, of course, they do. I spent a significant part of my time while I had executive responsibility for theatres worrying about the work of playwrights who were writing about contemporary events or living people, and whether those writings might incur the kind of action which this Bill is partly designed to prevent. However, it is not new writing that I want to quote from in starting my remarks; it is old writing from probably the best of old writers; namely, William Shakespeare. At a crisis moment in Act 2 of his great play Othello, Cassio—who is one of several hapless victims of Iago’s malice—says:

“Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial”.

These are very powerful words. They reminded audiences then—as they still do—how vulnerable and exposed we are when our reputation is called into question, even when, like Michael Cassio, who was induced by Iago to drink too much and started a fight, we are partly the architects of our own disaster; the more so when we are not. That phrase,

“the immortal part of myself”

is peculiarly resonant, so it is perhaps no surprise that, historically, reputation has been defended at least as fiercely as property—it seems to be what duelling was mostly about, for example—or that the urge to defend even indefensible reputation has led people to bring libel actions—I think of Oscar Wilde, but there are other notable examples—with disastrous consequences. Therefore, it is no surprise also that over time the law has developed strong protections for those who are attacked in this way. Loss of reputation is no small matter.

But who is being protected by the law as it is applied today? It seems pretty clear from what we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Lester—I am sure that we shall hear much more of the same from other noble Lords as the debate continues—and from the mass of evidence provided by the many individuals and organisations supporting the introduction of his Bill, that it is not always the right people. As the noble Lord has pointed out, this Bill is not intended to limit the ability of those, whether individuals or corporations, who have been defamed to go to law, but it is intended to bring some balance into a system which presently favours the plaintiff in libel cases—as is plainly evident from the amount of so-called “libel tourism”—not only because the burden of proof lies with the defendant but because the costs of mounting a defence are so prohibitively high that those accused often prefer to settle out of court.

I am particularly concerned about the effect on writers and publishers, among whom the “chilling” effect already referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has become a serious problem. Although the full impact of self-censorship is impossible to quantify, it is plainly at work, judging from the evidence collected not only by the noble Lord but by the many supporters of his campaign. I draw your Lordships’ attention, for example, to a briefing I received yesterday from Mumsnet.com, somewhat to my surprise as I did not have them down as particularly given to sedition. But there we are; what do I know? They support the Bill but make the point that there is further to go in protecting websites such as theirs. They say:

“Mumsnet welcomes this serious engagement with the need for reform of our antiquated libel laws ... However we are sorry to see that the Bill does not provide explicit cover for hosts of third-party content. Sites like Mumsnet provide a great deal of authored editorial information, as well as hosting unmoderated discussion; as such we are concerned that our status as innocent facilitators (as opposed to editors or primary publishers) is unclear. A statement in the Bill that ‘hosts of unmoderated third-party comments will be considered innocent facilitators’ would clarify matters. If uncertainty remains and the Bill becomes law we are concerned that Mumsnet would have to continue to remove potentially defamatory material, even when we are not convinced that it represents a breach of the law, thus severely curtailing freedom of speech”.

We should particularly note the words “continue” and “potentially” in this submission. Caution is already the watchword of these people and many others. When the noble Lord replies to the debate, will he say whether there is any reason why the Bill, or a subsequent Bill, should not be amended to meet this point?

The Libel Reform Coalition, to which the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has already referred, made up of Index on Censorship, Sense About Science and English PEN, among others, tells us in its excellent briefing:

“Fighting a libel case in England costs 140 times the European average and routinely costs £1M”,

and that,

“out of 158 cases from 2008 identified in Justice Jackson's review of civil litigation costs, none was won by the defendant”.

I do not want to take up time citing examples of recent cases although, having had the privilege of working with Dr Simon Singh when we were both trustees of NESTA, I watched the progress of his recent appearance before the courts with dismay, even though he won his case. Nor can I add anything to the important questions around legitimate defences or jury trial versus hearing before judge alone, with which the Bill deals and the noble Lord, Lord Lester has outlined. I simply observe, before sitting down, that the figures from the briefing to which I have just referred are enough on their own, even without all the other evidence before us, to indicate that something is grievously wrong. Writers on all subjects—scientists, biographers, reviewers—now live in a world where avoiding the risk of libel action is more important than telling the truth. This is a bad state of affairs. The enactment of the Bill, or something like it, would go a considerable way to putting it right. I wish it a fair wind from the Government, who really should take this opportunity to do something about a long-neglected problem, and a safe passage through your Lordships’ House and beyond.