Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Lord Beith and Edward Leigh

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman suggests that the Queen has no relationship with the Church of Scotland, when in fact she appoints the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly, and it is the Church that she has consistently and regularly attended in Scotland throughout her life.

[Mr Leigh]

If I made a bad or weak point, I willingly withdraw it and accept my right hon. Friend’s superior knowledge.

Amendment 1 makes an important point. It is almost as important as the one that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset made. If the legislation stays as it is, we will return to the world of the Act of Settlement, in which people were incredibly suspicious of some kind of papist plot. If someone had been tarnished in any way at any time in their life with Catholicism, they were excluded from the throne. As it happens, my eldest son is 640th in line to the throne, because he is descended from the Electress Sophia through his mother. He is not excluded from the throne as he was baptised as Russian Orthodox, although he has been raised a Catholic. So in our family we have found a way around the bar, but if the Bill stays as it is, we will return to a ridiculous, bizarre and absurd situation in which someone must never, at any point in their life, have taken communion in a Catholic church. As my hon. Friend pointed out, there are many mixed marriages and we go to each other’s churches regularly. Even those who oppose new clause 1 must accept that the logical and right thing to do is for the person to be able to make an election at the time they become Head of State.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Alan Beith]

It depends whether one thinks that Her Majesty was reconciled to Rome by that action, which did not involve being in communion with the Church of Rome—something from which the Church of Rome would exclude Her Majesty in any event—so it is only on the first of those two possibilities that what my hon. Friend describes might be so regarded. I do not regard it as such, because “reconciled” in that legislation meant accepting the authority of the papacy over the Church in England. That was what the argument was really about. Members of all Churches are very much reconciled to each other these days, because they realise that they share a common faith that is more important than their points of difference.

[Mr Leigh]

To reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) through my right hon. Friend, the Queen has attended vespers at Westminster cathedral, but in her entire reign she has been very careful never to attend a Catholic mass. Dare I say that I think that in this day and age that sort of care is not necessary?

Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Beith and Edward Leigh

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), a former Home Secretary who always brings a refreshing frankness to the proceedings. I do not agree with him on his last point. I think that the Government were right to move away from the idea of the Lord Chancellor sitting on the panel that makes the crucial appointments to the top of the judiciary. I do not think we would ever have been able to persuade anybody that that did not represent an excessive direct involvement of a politician in the process of choosing judges, notwithstanding the fact that the Lord Chancellor is involved at the end of the process.

The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) described the Bill as a typical Home Office—or, in this case, Home Office and Ministry of Justice—Christmas tree, but it does not contain quite as many unwanted gifts as previous such Christmas trees. Indeed, it contains many welcome things, and I want to concentrate on those that relate to the work of the Justice Committee.

I should say in passing that I very much welcome the Government’s acceptance of clause 38, which relates to the Public Order Act 1986. I noted Labour Front Benchers’ dithering on this matter, if it is indeed dithering; perhaps they will retain their past position of wanting to keep the law as it is—I do not know. From a free speech and civil liberties point of view, bearing in mind the clear statement by the Director of Public Prosecutions about what can be done without having the word “insulting” in the law, the Government have sensibly accepted an overwhelming decision in the other place.

[Mr Leigh]

Of course, it was in the Lib Dem manifesto, and when we can agree on things, we should agree—that is what marriage is about.

[Sir Alan Beith]

It is what coalition is about.

I welcome the drug-driving provisions, which I am very glad to see in the Bill, but I will turn first to family justice issues and the single family court, which I strongly welcome. There is still a problem about openness in the family courts, and the lack of it helps to feed very strong views among fathers about how private law cases are decided and among families about how public law cases are decided. That creates, or strengthens, a sense that wrongful decisions may be taken, and people do not understand the reasons for decisions. We have had some advances through anonymised judgments being brought forward, but it remains a problem.

In 2005 and 2006, my predecessor Committee argued for openness provisions of the kind that were eventually legislated for, but when they were on the statute book and we took further evidence for our 2011 report, we did not find a single witness who was happy with them. In the face of that, we were right to say that the Government cannot proceed on this basis, and they are right not to do so. However, we cannot simply abandon the issue. We have to look at more ways of spreading understanding and recognition of what goes on in the family courts and having them exposed to the pressure that public justice—open justice—applies everywhere else. There are compelling reasons why that cannot be done in the same way in the family courts, but we have to take account of the fact that the absence of transparency presents a problem.

On the delegation of functions to legal advisers, the Committee felt strongly that there must be clear supervision by a district judge of any judicial function that is being carried out by a legal adviser.

Fine collection is one area where the Committee said that improvement was still needed. We recognise that some improvement has taken place, but there certainly needs to be more. We welcome the chasing of old debts and recognise that there is potential benefit from the private sector being drawn into this activity. However, there is not merely a loss of public revenue when fine collection is not achieved; there is a serious undermining of the justice system when people see that fines have not been paid and that those involved have got away with it.

The self-defence provisions are probably not legally necessary, but they may have some beneficial impact as regards how the police view cases of this kind. Someone who has been attacked in a terrifying way—whose house has been frighteningly invaded—deserves to be treated as a victim of a crime and have the respect accorded to such a victim even while there is some consideration as to whether there was any grossly disproportionate response on their part. The underlying purpose of the change in the law must be to get that recognition. I do not think that it will actually change the way in which any cases are decided; if I thought that it would, I would worry that it had gone too far.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) referred to deferred prosecution agreements, on which he has done a great deal of work. My Committee took evidence from the Director of Public Prosecutions on such agreements. He saw them as an additional tool for prosecutors, but not in any way a replacement for bringing cases to court in many circumstances. However, there are clearly cases in which it would be to everyone’s benefit to take action that did not involve a long drawn-out court case, but that none the less provided restitution for the victims of fraud and perhaps enabled the continuance of a business under new management. The alternative, as my right hon. and learned Friend vividly described in referring to the Arthur Andersen case, can involve a massive loss of jobs and many other adverse consequences that are in no one’s interest.

I want to talk about the provision for non-custodial sentences, and the requirement for a clear element of punishment in such sentences. I do not disagree with that principle, but we should remember that many offenders regard community sentences as more arduous than prison sentences. On more than one occasion, ex-offenders appearing before the Justice Committee have told us that they have committed further offences because they were sick of the requirements of their community sentence and thought that a short spell in prison would be much easier. That might seem counter-intuitive—it might not be what most of us would imagine—but for plenty of criminals, a long and arduous community sentence that places requirements on them, whether it appears punitive or not, is more exacting. They would rather be sitting in prison getting three meals a day and not having a great deal to do.

This provision must not result in our administering a measure that is not the most effective way of changing someone’s life and preventing them from reoffending. We are trying to ensure that there are no more victims of a particular person’s crimes, and to turn around the way in which they behave. We should measure what we are doing in accordance with that aim. More often than not, the challenging requirements that the provision will place on the person to face up to the consequences of what they have done—through restorative justice, for example—to face up to a victim when that is possible, and to make effective reparation to society will be more punitive in practice than a prison sentence. We need to have an understanding of that process.

That leads me to the subject of restorative justice, which has great potential; I am glad that there is provision for it in the Bill. We all recognise that it cannot be forced upon victims, but the level of satisfaction among victims that we have seen in evidence to the Committee has been very encouraging indeed. There is also a growing public view that it makes sense for criminals to be faced with the consequences of their crimes and with the harm that they have done to others, and required to change their lives as a result.

The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East referred to a provision that was added to the Bill in the Lords, relating to non-custodial sentences for female offenders. The Justice Committee is embarking on an inquiry into women offenders, and we have already expressed the view on more than one occasion that more needs to be done to ensure that courts have at their disposal appropriate and effective means of dealing with women offenders. Indeed, our report on the probation service, which we produced in July 2011, stated:

“The probation service’s approach—where resources tend to be directed towards dealing with offenders who present the highest degree of risk—can fail adequately to support women offenders. The approach recommended by Baroness Corston for the provision of holistic services that address all women’s needs is still a long way from being realised.”

The Government now need to include in the Bill a reminder that more needs to be done in that respect.

This Home Office and Justice Bill provides an us with an opportunity to welcome an unusually large number of provisions. There are others that will be pored over in detail in Committee. The effective implementation of the provisions on fines and on non-custodial facilities for women offenders, for example, will add to our ability to do what we are supposed to be doing, which is using the criminal justice system to stop people becoming the victims of crime in the first place.

Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Beith and Edward Leigh

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

rose—

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

Let me move on, because I am probably moving on to the point of concern—