King’s Speech

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, this is a difficult, sombre time and I rise with a heavy heart. It is a shocking thing to lose a friend and mentor. The death of Lord Judge will be announced in the usual way tomorrow by the Lord Speaker. I am very grateful to the Leader of the House for confirming to me just now that there will be an opportunity to pay tributes at that time, which I will use to pay my tribute to Igor.

It was, as ever, very special to hear the gracious Speech yesterday—the first, I hope, of many from our King and the last of this Parliament. I will restrict myself to a subject on which very little was said—devolution—but I start by saying how much I am looking forward to the three maiden speeches today, from my noble and learned friend Lord Burnett of Maldon and from the noble Lords, Lord Houchen and Lord Bailey. I also look forward to hearing from my noble friend Lord Meston, who is making his first speech on returning to the House.

During the previous Session, quite a lot happened in devolution terms. Many times, the importance of clarity and consistency in devolution settlements has been remarked on. Lack of clarity and consistency and too much complexity inevitably lead to the risk of clashes between layers of government, and poor dispute resolution mechanisms exacerbate matters. The citizen in the street generally wants none of this, and it is in their interests that this Parliament does its bit in trying to prevent poor outcomes.

The core of the relationship between the UK Government and the Governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales is the intergovernmental relations structure that surfaced at the start of last year. It is a vastly improved and updated structure, replacing its 2013 predecessor with ambitions to achieve regular dialogue and an effective dispute resolution mechanism between the parties. There was a substantial diet of common framework issues to be worked through the revised intergovernmental arrangements. The committee structure of this House has been riding shotgun alongside these matters, and in reports and correspondence continues to seek to nudge things to be better.

However, my impression is that this is unfinished work. Some of the ministerial strands—Defra should be complimented here—have got to something akin to what was hoped for by the parties as the IGR review was settled; others have not. The suspicion is that dialogue has been wanting. I dare say that the blame for this lies with more than one party.

Our work as a House on common frameworks has not ended. Although the committee—which I warmly salute, along with its doughty chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews—has now stood down, these frameworks replicate similar arrangements that existed in the EU when we were a member and which were scrutinised by the EU committees of this House. I know therefore from long experience that the common frameworks will necessarily change over time—perhaps quite often, as was the case in the EU—and this House will inevitably continue its scrutiny.

I say all this without even having mentioned the devolution difficulties posed by the situation in Northern Ireland, which others will no doubt cover fully in their contributions on the gracious Speech. The Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, with the Windsor Framework agreement that so welcomely surfaced in February this year, presents further devolution complexities. Here I salute the work of our Select Committee so ably chaired by my noble friend Lord Jay.

It is against this background that we are now starting out on the road for devolution in England. The White Paper of February last year set out the goal of every part of England having a devolution settlement by 2030 and that there would be three general levels of devolution deal on offer. That is a lot of complexity.

The trailblazers—deals for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands—were announced in March this year and their full implementation is expected by the end of 2025. The enabling measures for all this are in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act which spent so many months going through your Lordships’ House until very recently. I fear this Act is hard to construe, even though I have spent much time in the Chamber, and indeed in the Chair, and with the Act’s written materials. This would seem to me to make consistency and clarity in new devolution under the LURB, as I still think of it, a challenge.

So many Bills that come before us contain important elements of devolution. Just as much as we patrol Henry VIII clauses, we must patrol these elements. Clarity, consistency and lack of complexity will remain the enablers of successful devolution, underpinned by dialogue and good dispute resolution mechanisms. Parliament and Government together should look to these principles in the new Bills that will be put before us.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 10th March 2021 Lords Chamber

We will keep the position under review but, for the reasons I have set out, we have principled objections to both amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, intends to divide the House on each amendment and, as she has given that intimation of her intention, I invite all noble Lords to reject each of them.

[The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

I have received no requests to speak after the Minister; accordingly, I call the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am of course disappointed but not surprised by the response, as it was indicated that I would not receive the response that some other amendments have. It is regrettable, because all the evidence points towards problems in both these areas. There are women being convicted of crimes where they have clearly been coerced and their abusive partners are forcing them to commit crime. In relation to homicide and, indeed, lesser crimes, self-defence is not available to women because of the “disproportionate” issue. The measure should be just the same as in the intruder case. The distinction that the noble Lord seeks to make between that and the householder is really without merit and not convincing. I am sure he is having to read from a brief and he will know himself.

Anyone who really knows about domestic abuse knows that this is instinctive: when someone snaps, in the end, it is because they cannot take any more. That is why they reach for a weapon; they know that they cannot take on the sort of force that they have experienced in the past. This is a failure of understanding. It is being unable to stand in the shoes of someone in these circumstances.

I do not blame the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, in any way. It is just that there is a process of learning here, which we have all been on. It may be easier to understand someone nearly being strangled, but harder to understand the moment when, instinctively and in terror, a person who has been abused over a long period suddenly reaches for a weapon in their defence. Not to understand that is regrettable, so I will move both these amendments and test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

Schedule 2: Amendments relating to offences committed outside the UK

[The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 53. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in the group to a Division must make that clear in the debate.

Amendment 53

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

Amendment 66 agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

We now come to the group consisting of Amendment 66A. Anyone wishing to press this amendment to a Division must make that clear in debate.

Clause 71: Homelessness: victims of domestic abuse

Amendment 66A

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

I call the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull. We are having connection difficulties. I call the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I am pleased to offer my full support for Amendment 66A, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. I would have happily signed the noble Lord’s amendment and apologise for not doing so. The noble Lord set out his case well—namely, that victims of domestic abuse must often endure lifelong risks from the perpetrator. The risk does not end when the relationship comes to an end and, as the noble Lord, Lord Randall, told us, it is often when the relationship has ended that the risk significantly increases.

I can see, therefore, as I am sure other noble Lords can, that some victims will want to get as far away as possible from the perpetrator. However, the action of some local authorities in introducing a local connection rule, whether for access to refuge places or for the provision of housing, puts victims at risk. The noble Lord’s amendment seeks to ensure that, in England, victims can seek the protection of moving away to another place when seeking new housing, and that no local rules can be brought to bear that frustrate that protection or that desire if that is what the victims wish to do. With this and the other amendments that we are debating about enabling victims to make a choice that affords them the protection that they feel comfortable living with—that is what this is about—the noble Lord is looking for a positive response from the Minister on how we can move this forward. I am confident that we shall get that.

I should declare my relevant interest as vice-president of the Local Government Association, as this is a housing matter. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Property Boundaries (Resolution of Disputes) Bill [HL]

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Friday 11th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl on bringing the Bill to the House, the second in his suite of “neighbourly matters” legislation—the first being, as he said, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, of which more in a second. I welcome the very clear reasoning that he has just set out.

Boundary disputes of course happen naturally and always will. Those who sit in tutorials learning Roman law at Oxbridge have to learn about them from several thousand years ago, and Citizens Advice has advised that last year alone it was giving advice on 3,700 such disputes. I dare say that there were many more.

The situation in England and Wales at the moment means that such disputes are extremely expensive to sort out and very slow. They give rise to blight on an affected property, and that blight is expressed both in the saleability of the property and in the ability to raise mortgage finance on it. They give rise to problems between what one might term big party property owners and small party property owners because the big party will be tempted by use of wallet to be, frankly, unfair to the small party, and abuses can and do happen. They also clog up the courts, about which I shall say more in a second.

I feel that the Bill is in line with a general policy in life of trying to provide better access to justice for people. It would speed things up and produce much lower costs. It would also blunt the abuse weapon, to which I have just referred, between larger and smaller parties.

I have much direct experience of the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, both as a private individual and corporately. At least two of the things that I have been involved in have become very contentious indeed. I feel that, after nearly two decades of it being in service, the one thing that one can say is that the mechanism provided under that Act really works well.

One party wall surveyor, who I think is the chairman of the Pyramus & Thisbe Club and who has been in practice for more than 25 years, told me proudly that he has never had to go to a third surveyor in his line of work. There is a very clear reason for that, which is that to be a successful surveyor you have to have as a core skill relationship management; otherwise, you simply will not get any clients. That ability to have relationship management is, I am sure, at the core of being able to bring together parties whose feelings often run very high and at the core of being able to get a deal done.

The noble Earl mentioned previous criticisms of efforts to bring forward legislation of this kind. There is one more criticism, which is that surveyors lack legal expertise. I think that is a weak point and I shall make three counterpoints, although there are more. The first is that, very often in these disputes, the issues are not legal but factual. A surveyor with gum-boots on is probably much better suited to facilitating a resolution in a dispute than someone sitting in a lawyer’s office.

The second point that I make in rebuttal is that surveyors can and do employ a lawyer if a legal point comes up. Indeed, in one of these very contentious cases that came up, precisely that happened. Both surveyors immediately wanted to instruct a lawyer on a very arcane point. Legal advice was taken and prepared, and the dispute was eventually resolved.

The third point concerns the judiciary. We have had various quotations and in fact the law reports are littered with interesting quotations from the judiciary about how little they enjoy boundary disputes. I have a quotation from Lord Justice Mummery in Bradford v James in 2008:

“There are too many calamitous neighbour disputes in the courts. Greater use should be made of the services of local mediators, who have specialist legal and surveying skills”.

He went on:

“Litigation hardens attitudes. Costs become an additional aggravating issue. Almost by its own momentum the case that cried out for compromise moves onwards and upwards to a conclusion that is disastrous for one of the parties, possibly for both”.

I think that the judiciary would certainly want to try to export a lot of boundary disputes to another method of resolution.

In summary, I agree very much with the noble Earl that the current arrangements produce disputes that go on for too long, are too expensive, are open to abuse—there are instances of abuse—and clog up the courts system. I have three very short questions for the Minister. First, does he agree that it is preferable to do something about this issue now than to let the status quo be? Secondly, does he agree that the Party Wall etc. Act mechanism has been a great success over its nearly two decades? Thirdly and accordingly, does he agree that such a mechanism could successfully be applied to other boundary disputes to the benefit of all?