Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Williams of Crosby and Lord Deben

Monday 27th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

Happily, we are not discussing the European courts at the moment. In case anyone did not know, I am entirely in favour of our membership of the European Union. I think we should keep the defence of people’s freedom by the Bill of Rights that we have in the European Union, invented after Winston Churchill. I could go on for a long time, but I will not be led there by my noble friend. The truth is that we are talking about British law, British judges, British courts and the British defence of freedom that is judicial review. I hope that your Lordships’ House will remember the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, when he remarked that this is part of the structure that saves us from having to have a written constitution. This is the mechanism that we have invented. As a mechanism, every now and again it is annoying to Ministers. That should be a judgment of its correctness. That is what it is there for: to make Ministers annoyed enough to make sure that they do the right thing. In that sense, I have in the past—as is bound to be true after 16 years as a Minister—been annoyed by the facts of judicial review, but it made me a better and fairer Minister because I had to think of the law and not of my opinion at a particular point.

I want to say just one other thing. My noble friend Lord Horam said we should trust the judges. That is precisely what those of us who support the amendments are asking. We are saying that we should not say the judge shall not; we should say that the judge has the right to decide. We think there ought to be discretion but the Government are saying that there should not. I find that unacceptable. I do not want the division of powers that one sees in the United States. I want the kind of elegant association of powers that we in this country have worked out over the years. However, an elegant association of powers is held in place by very delicate mechanisms, which we fiddle with at our peril. This is one of those very delicate mechanisms that we will not fiddle with without very considerable effects. Just in case anybody heard the comment about left-wing people misusing this, I remind the House of what happens in the United States where it is almost universally right-wing people who make life almost impossible for elected Governments by using their system of separation of powers. How extremely clever we have been over the centuries to produce something that works so well, is so delicate and interrelates so well. Having done that over centuries, let us be a bit careful about being too clever with it now.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

My Lords, we have heard a brilliant speech. I associate myself very much with what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said about the absolute necessity for Ministers to be obliged to bear in mind all the time how far their policies and decisions are in line with the law. Like the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I was also a Minister for a long time. During that period, on more than one occasion, I was confronted in a very direct way with challenges to the decisions I had made, particularly about issues around comprehensive schools. What I learnt from that experience was, first, to be very careful and thoughtful about any proposals that my department made in my name. Secondly, I learnt to have great respect for the often painful occurrence of reviewing my decisions in great detail, no doubt to the displeasure of a number of local authorities who did not share my view.

I want to make two other quick points. First, our own great Conservative Party has always been deeply suspicious of statism, unlike many right-wing parties in Europe and elsewhere, and has always had a commitment to the idea that the Government might be wrong and that they should be subject to the rule of law like all other citizens and parties in society. I find it, therefore, all the more puzzling that a party with that record and reputation can put forward this extraordinary Bill. I am here, not having taken part in the earlier stages—I had no intention of taking part—only because, when I read in detail both the Bill and the amendments, I became very troubled indeed.

The second crucial point is that the Conservative Party has always been centrally loyal to the concept of its patriotism to the British tradition and British values. As my noble friend Lord Marks, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, have all said, at the very heart of the best of British values is the concept of accepting the rule of law. It is worth saying that almost no other country in the world—certainly no court, such as the European Court of Human Rights, which is nothing to do with the European Union, as may not be realised; it is to do with the Council of Europe—allows an individual, someone with no standing, no resources and no money to challenge the might of the state itself.

I am very troubled by some of the clauses, which will make it difficult for that same humble individual citizen to stand up to the state because he or she lacks the resources to do so or the ability to pay for brilliant lawyers. That is exactly the opposite of what we thought—what I have always deeply believed—that judicial review was all about. Whatever the process may be called, the truth of the matter is that the public broadly, to put it bluntly, trust the judiciary rather more than Governments, who come and go. Our judiciary has undoubtedly formed itself a substantial reputation.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, rightly referred to the judicial system in the United States. Many Members of this House will be aware that over the past five or six years, there has been an absolutely steady uniformity of verdicts—five to four, five to four, five to four—on one issue after another, because, like it or not, the judiciary in the United States is politically chosen. That is why you cannot treat it in the fullest sense as independent; it is heavily dependent on who was President at the time that a particular judge was appointed.

Let us take pride in what we have been and what we are: one of the few countries in the world where an individual is treated as having the full right to challenge the Government and other forms of the Executive. Let us recognise that that has been treated in much of the rest of the world—not least on the continent of Europe —as one of the outstanding claims for the United Kingdom to be treated as an exceptional country, one that, ever since the days of Winston Churchill and the Council of Europe, has been persistently followed. It has had a huge influence on, for example, eastern and central Europe who follow us in that concept of the rule of law.

I conclude by saying that it would be an act of absolute tragedy if we were to allow a law to go through that begins to put in doubt that reputation.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Williams of Crosby and Lord Deben

Monday 19th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

For exactly the same reason that the National Health Service does.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said is well worth listening to, but I shall add one other important factor before I come on to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Owen. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, pointed out—and it is a crucial factor in our discussion—the risk register that was drawn up in autumn 2010 took no account of the changes made by your Lordships’ House. It could not because it could not foresee the future. That means that the risk register of 2010, the transitional register to which the chairman of the tribunal referred, is almost useless in enriching and informing the debate we are having in this House. Therefore, far from being helpful, it will in many ways be extremely misleading because it will confirm the incorrect beliefs of many members of the public who have not understood what has happened in this House. You only have to read the newspapers to see how widespread is the total ignorance of what we have done here, whether we talk about competition, training or constitutional change. That is the crucially troubling aspect of what we are discussing. It leads the general public and Members of this House and elsewhere back to an out-of-date and anachronistic finding.

I have one more thing to say about the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Owen. The House needs to recognise that he has made a very substantial change of great importance in it: he has accepted that there will be a Third Reading in this House. He has accepted that the outcome of the Third Reading will be binding upon everybody in this House and beyond because it will be part of the system of law. What he has asked for is more time and opportunity to have the finding of the tribunal discussed in this House. In that, he is absolutely correct. I do not believe that we have gone anything like sufficiently far in trying to accommodate that reasonable request because there is time left in this Session of Parliament. It ought to be possible to transfer a day or two from the Scotland Bill to the health Bill so that it could be properly discussed; or there is something that the noble Lord indicated he would accept, which is a very narrow redaction of anything in the risk register that would be seen as desperately dangerous to public trust in the NHS.

My view is a rather curious one. It is that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, is right in pointing to the real dangers of treating the risk register as a source of knowledge and truth, but I also believe that the Government should have gone further in trying to find time somewhere, if necessary—dare I say it?—even taking a day off the sacred Easter Recess to enable this House to discuss in detail what is coming out of the chairman of the tribunal’s decision on the risk register so that we can get it straight.