Health Taxes

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Baroness Brinton

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. The Treasury said last week that it will not be changing or reviewing the three-year public spending settlement. However, last Friday, the NHS chief finance officer said that that will result in a further £20 billion of efficiency savings as a result of the increased costs that the NHS is having to pay following inflation, and two-thirds of the new integrated commissioning services started by this Government on 1 July are already in deficit because of inflation. How will the NHS will cope with pressures on top of the existing pressures it has with the backlog of cases?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The Government are very much aware of the pressures that the NHS is facing. I think we will have to wait until 31 October for the fiscal plan to understand exactly how expenditure will work out in line with the OBR forecast and in line with how we intend to roll out our growth programme. However, I reassure the noble Baroness that the NHS is vital; there are a lot of pressures and issues to tackle.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Baroness Brinton

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Monday 13th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am a patron of the Traveller Movement. I thank the Minister for reaching out to those of us interested in this issue and I am sorry that the change in date meant that I was unable to attend. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for her dedicated work in co-ordinating the efforts of those of us who remain very concerned about these clauses in the Bill.

In Committee, we had a full debate on how the clauses on authorised encampments are a breach of the human rights of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities to live a nomadic life. I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, because he has tried to propose a compromise regarding stopping sites. It certainly merits listening to, and I hope the Minister will take account of it.

In my contribution today, I wish to focus on just one area. Clause 63 also creates the right for the police to confiscate a vehicle that may be an individual and their family’s main residence. That confiscation would have the most extraordinary consequences, giving the police very strong powers that they do not have in respect of other people’s principal residences. If the police were to confiscate a vehicle under this clause, families would not only become homeless, but because they would be deemed to have become intentionally homeless, there is a possibility that their children would be taken into care, especially if there was no appropriate emergency accommodation locally. By doing that, parents may also not be able to move on to their next planned place of work.

I support Amendment 55ZC from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, which protects individuals by preventing police confiscating their vehicles if it would make the individual owner, and their family, homeless.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council could not be clearer. It said:

“We believe that criminalising unauthorised encampments is not acceptable. Complete criminalisation of trespass would likely lead to legal action in terms of incompatibility with regard to the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Public Sector Equality Duty under the Equality Act 2010, most likely on the grounds of how could such an increase in powers be proportionate and reasonable when there are insufficient pitches and stopping places?”


In Committee, the Minister said that these clauses are not targeted at the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community, but it certainly looks that way, especially as the Government explicitly referenced Traveller caravans in the background briefing to the Queen’s Speech. The Government have also made it clear that they are not criminalising trespass more generally. Even if the outline of these proposals were in the Government’s manifesto, actions that target one particular community, infringing their human rights and giving the police powers that they have said repeatedly that they do not want, cannot be right. I hope that the Minister will rethink this deplorable legislation.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not raising my eyes to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, initially. Her remarks are well worth paying attention to.

I am flattered by the attribution of influence by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. I have taken a slightly different route, but his amendment is interesting. All the amendments in this group are aimed at resolving prejudice against and actual homelessness of the Gypsy and Traveller communities. They all deserve serious consideration. Amendment 57 in the name of my noble friend Lady Lister and the cosignatories of my amendment would deal with the underlying social situation of these fellow citizens, in particular the non-arrival of the strategy initiated quite some time ago by the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, when he was the very effective Minister responsible, and I think endorsed by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams.

I will speak to Amendment 55ZB in my name and supported by a distinguished cross-party group to whom I express my gratitude. I will move it to a vote if its thrust is not accepted by the Government. I am also grateful to the Minister for the meeting she gave several of us last week, when she said that the provision of the sites for Gypsies and Travellers was a planning matter and an amendment that dealt with that was not for this Bill. Indeed, it is a planning matter, as the police said in their evidence to the consultation on the Bill, but the trouble is that the lack of sites and consequent vulnerability of Gypsies and Travellers to summary eviction is inexplicably linked. Despite the noble Baroness’s assurance at our meeting that she would consult DLUHC on a way forward, I have heard nothing further.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Baroness Brinton

Monday 14th January 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, there is a balance in these cases. I accept the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, has made, but an issue has concerned me for some time about there being no defence for breach of duty for organisations that have done their absolute utmost to prevent an accident.

Let me give the Committee an illustration. An organisation with catering facilities for conferences has an extremely good record in public hygiene, effective written policies for staff at all levels and good training in management oversight of practices in its kitchens. A casual chef was employed from an agency. The chef was briefed that he was not to use raw egg in a mousse. He was given a written recipe to follow as well as the policy about why raw egg should not be used in such recipes. He disobeyed the order and, as a result, a conference delegate became seriously ill and had a miscarriage. That is a dreadful outcome from a single thoughtless incident by someone who was not even an employee but an agency worker not following instructions.

The lack of defence for the breach of duty legislation meant that the organisation itself was sued both civilly and criminally, but so were the people who had put in place the policies and monitoring, even though they had explicitly told this particular individual not to follow that course. As a result, individuals further up the organisation were extremely concerned that there was nothing further they could have done. Everything that the managing director, for example, had asked to happen had been carried out by those working beneath him. The organisation was rightly fined and compensation was rightly paid. However, the point is that there has to be some defence for breach of duty.

[Baroness Whitaker]

I apologise for interrupting so early in the noble Baroness’s speech, but it is important to say first of all that almost all provisions in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act include the little phrase,

“so far as is reasonably practicable”.

Some have strict liability but there are very few. I hope that the noble Baroness will accept that, on the whole, lack of prior knowledge and lack of control does not mean that you will be judged to have committed a criminal act.

[Baroness Brinton]

I am grateful for the intervention by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. Unfortunately, that was not true in this case. Only at the last minute were the managing director and someone else removed from the criminal action, which was helpful, but it was only after months of papers going between the Health and Safety Executive and others.

The point that I am trying to make is the one that I started with: there is a balance. I accept the undertaking that employees need to be protected, but there are occasions when there should be a defence for a breach of duty. I believe that new subsection (2D) in Clause 61 attempts to do that. The concerns that the Baroness has raised should be looked at and I hope that there will be some scope for the Minister to address them. But I would not want the record to show that concern was only one-sided. Certainly, some organisations do their utmost to make sure of something and they appear still to fall foul of legislation.