Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, it is a measure of the importance of the matters that we are now debating, and upon which we will have to vote, that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, made special arrangements to fly back this morning from Moscow at 5.45 am, Russian time. I do not know whether the Lord Chancellor has ever been to Moscow, but I suspect that Mr Putin’s views about holding government and other public bodies to account for the lawfulness of their decision-making would be closer to the Lord Chancellor’s than to the noble Lord’s.

After all, Mr Grayling has proclaimed that judicial review is,

“not a promotional tool for countless Left-wing campaigners”,

or, as he put it in the course of the 58 minutes that the House of Commons devoted to debating the amendments passed by your Lordships’ House:

“Judicial review was never intended to be a tool for pressure groups to seek to disrupt perfectly lawful decision making in Government and Parliament, it was never designed to be used as a political campaigning tool, and it was never intended to put the courts above the elected Government in taking decisions over the essential interests of this country”.

He went on to claim that,

“in far too many examples, that is precisely what it has become”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/12/14; col. 70.]

Oddly enough, the Lord Chancellor failed to provide any examples of these malign abuses of the system, the essential interests of the country that he felt were under threat or indeed the identity of the so-called abusers. On Report, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, at least condescended to cite an example. Members may recall shuddering with horror at the revelation that the building of a supermarket in Yorkshire was delayed by all of six months due to an application for judicial review—brought, incidentally, not by a left-wing or other pressure group but by a commercial rival of the developer. I do not blame the Minister at all for relying on this underwhelmingly persuasive case. He was struggling with a grossly inadequate brief—something that I suspect from time to time he has had to deal with over the years, though perhaps in less important contexts.

The Secretary of State for Justice, moreover, whose title looks increasingly like one coined by George Orwell, gives the game away in presuming that, “perfectly lawful decision making” is what is at stake. The implication is clear: what the Government legislate is ipso facto lawful. In the fantasy world in which the courts are besieged by meddlesome litigants pursuing left-wing causes—litigants such as the Countryside Alliance and the Daily Mail—the courts are deemed to be wholly incapable of sorting out the legal wheat from the campaigning chaff. Typically, though, Mr Grayling, in the amendments that he has produced, which were never spelled out or indeed debated in the Commons, ignores the basic requirements, already enshrined in law and practice, that permission from the courts is required both to bring a case to hearing and for third parties to intervene. The Government, themselves a possible defendant in these cases, seek to restrict the exercise of judicial discretion in their own interests, and on the basis of the flimsiest evidence of the abuses that they affect to detect in the working of the system and the decisions of the courts. In the unlikely event of Mr Putin becoming aware of the Government’s approach, he would be lost in admiration.

The Opposition support the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, Motion B1 and Amendment 102B to Clause 64, which would preserve the court’s discretion to grant judicial review where the court considers it in the public interest to do so. I invite my colleagues and others to join the noble Lord in the Content Lobby.

It would be convenient if at this stage I indicated the Opposition’s position in relation to the other amendments. We support the noble Lord’s amendment to Motion C, dealing with Clauses 65 and 66, and his amendment to Motion D, which sets out in Amendments 107A to 107E what purport to be the Government’s concession in relation to the financial position of interveners. I remind the House again that interveners must obtain permission before taking part in any application. The Government’s amendments would oblige the court to order an intervener who has been granted permission to pay costs to any other party in any one or more of four instances. The instances are: under subsection (4A)(a) of Amendment 107B, where they act as a party, although the court already has a discretion in such a case; under subsection (4A)(b), where the intervention has not provided significant assistance taken as a whole, whatever that is supposed to mean; under subsection (4A)(c), where the intervention relates to matters not necessary to resolve the issue—although, again, if they did not, permission would presumably not be granted in the first place; and under subsection (4A)(d), where the intervener has behaved “unreasonably”, whatever that means in a context in which the court already has a discretion.

The potential for mandatory awards of large costs against interveners is self-evident and self-evidently chilling. In addition, I understand that the question of financial resources and the extent of any liability would be left to the Rule Committee to determine, subject only to a negative resolution. In this context, it might be thought that this is a highly debatable procedure for dealing with such an important issue in such an important area.

I do not need to enlarge on the weight of opinion opposed to these measures in the senior judiciary, past and present, or the wide range of opinion, including that of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, not to mention such subversive organisations as Age UK—I declare my interest as honorary president of Newcastle Age UK —Mencap, Mind, the National Autistic Society and many other highly esteemed and reputable organisations in the voluntary sector.

I conclude with a particular appeal to Liberal Democrat Members of this House, several of whom voted for the amendments in your Lordships’ House when we last debated this matter on Report, and several of whom joined some of us—from the Cross Benches and these Benches—in the Division Lobby in the vote just taken. Sadly, very few of their colleagues voted in support of this House’s amendments in the House of Commons. If anything has distinguished the Liberal Democrats—and particularly the former Liberal Party—it has been a sincere attachment to civil liberties and the rule of law. They have been vigilant in questioning, and, from time to time, opposing, policies of different Governments that were perceived to be in conflict with those legitimate concerns. I believe that many are troubled by what this part of the Bill seeks to achieve and by the Government’s amendments. There is nothing, of course, in the coalition agreement that refers to the measures we are now debating. If ever there was a case—with a general election only six months away—for this House to exercise its role in scrutinising and amending important legislation, and in making a judgment on the merits rather than according to political calculation, this is such an example. My appeal to Liberal Democrat Members—

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, and I know that what he is saying is being said in a constructive spirit, but he might like to bear in mind that lectures from the Labour Party on civil liberties are not popular in the Liberal Democrats. He might possibly just leave it to our own consciences to determine how we vote on this matter.

[Lord Beecham]

It is, of course, entirely a matter of conscience for the noble Lord and others, and I would not defend everything that Labour Governments have done in this area either. That is why I referred to the stance that Members of the noble Lord’s party took on proposals made by more than one Government. It is a perfectly fair point.

I hope that, in addition to Members of those Benches, there may be other Members—from the Conservative Benches, perhaps—who will follow the example not only of some Conservative Members of Parliament who voted for this House’s amendments in the Commons, but even, much to my surprise, of the two UKIP MPs. I would not normally be encouraging people to follow where UKIP has led, but in this particular case, they were for once on the side of the angels. I hope, therefore, that this House can support the noble Lord’s amendments and, in so doing, encourage the Government to rethink their direction of travel in this very sensitive area of the rule of law and of the way in which government in this country—not just central government, but local government and other executive agencies—carries out its important responsibilities.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I agree with the noble Lord. Indeed, there is a very slippery slope from saying, “I feel an obligation to my family or the NHS” to it being said, “Well, we have to deal with people who are an obligation to their family or the NHS”. The safety that this provision would introduce into the system is, in my view, very important.

[Lord Beecham]

Before the noble Lord sits down, for the third time he has referred to a person ending the life of another person. Will he concede that that is not a description of what the Bill sets out to permit?

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I do not concede that for one moment. The purpose of the Bill is for a person to be put in the position of facilitating the death of another person in circumstances in which that death would not otherwise occur. It seems to me to be a distinction completely without a difference. Indeed, if one were to analyse it as a matter of criminal law, there is no difference. I beg to move.