Queen’s Speech

Lord Bhatia Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, the Government have stated their intention to introduce several measures relating to the constitution. These include a review of the constitution, repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and legislation to improve the integrity of elections. In its 2019 general election manifesto, the Conservative Party said that it would aim to restore public trust in government and politics. To do this, it said, it would establish a constitution, democracy and rights commission and repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. The Government have also said they will introduce measures relating to the integrity of elections.

In its manifesto, the Conservative Party said that it would establish a constitution, democracy and rights commission to examine the broader aspects of our constitution and said that the commission would look at, first, the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts; secondly, the function of the royal prerogative; thirdly, the role of the House of Lords; fourthly, access to justice; fifthly, the balance between the rights of individuals, national security and effective government; and, finally, judicial review.

The commission was announced in the December 2019 Queen’s Speech . However, in evidence to the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in December 2020, the Lord Chancellor, Robert Buckland, stated that this work would now be carried out in a series of independent reviews rather than in one commission. He further stated that the Independent Review of Administrative Law, set up in July 2020, and the independent review of the Human Rights Act, which started in December 2020, were to be the first pieces of work in this series and said that this change of approach was called for by Covid-19.

One determining factor that led us down this path was the importance of postal votes. Since the election, the Covid-19 emergency has had the potential to have, in effect, put back any work on these important issues. There was also the benefit of having individual focused reviews involving people with particular expertise on specific questions. The review panel has issued a call for evidence and has scheduled a series of public events to be held in universities across the UK. It aims to produce its report, which will be submitted to the Lord Chancellor in the summer of 2021.

Finally, the Lord Chancellor stated that the other work streams will be announced to take forward other elements of the commission on the constitution, democracy and rights.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Lord Bhatia Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Lords Chamber

The Bill has given many the impression that the Government have made a decision to deal with serious terrorism by resorting simply to even tougher sentencing, but with too little consideration given to some of the more unpalatable consequences of that approach. I and my colleagues on our Benches do not believe that that impression gives the whole picture. From discussions we have had with Ministers and officials, it is quite clear that they are all determined to do the best they can to cope with an increasing number of convicted terrorists in our prisons—a number that will increase even further as the result of the Bill. However, that process can be greatly assisted by a transparent process of reviewing both the successes and the failures that follow changes of the importance of those included in the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I fully agree that the different treatment is justified because of the consequences of the early release of the offender. The offender must remain for the maximum sentence of 25 years as stated in the Bill.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak to the whole group but I have co-signed Amendments 24 and 25 in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, respectively. I signed those agreements because they seemed so sensible. It is all very well making up rules and imposing limitations on people’s liberty but, if you do not have the facts and you do not actually know what the statistics are, it all seems a bit academic. Post-legislative scrutiny is incredibly important, especially for Bills such as this which implement contentious and possibly damaging and complex arrangements. They can either work very well or be disastrous.

The Government are taking a very worrying approach to counterterrorism with this sort of “tough on crime” mentality where we just lock people up and throw away the key. We need an evidence-based, multidisciplinary approach to deradicalisation. We need to rescue people from these deeply destructive ideologies, recognising that they are pretty much groomed and brainwashed until their thinking becomes so warped that violence seems like a legitimate tool.

I agreed with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said earlier about prisons. I have visited prisons and have spoken to a lot of people who have been in them and, quite honestly, there is a huge risk that issues and behaviours like this can spread in prison and in fact the prisons become a recruiting ground. That is pretty much how ISIS started, in the prison camps in Iraq, so we have a precedent for some quite damaging events coming out of locking people up. We have to be very careful that the Government’s attempts to imprison people indefinitely do not just make the problem much worse. Could we please have independent reviews and get the evidence base, and compare the Government’s approach with the other options, which could be much better?

Bribery Act 2010: Post-legislative Scrutiny (Select Committee Report)

Lord Bhatia Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, in November 2009, the then Bribery Bill was introduced in the House of Lords. Its purpose was to reform and update bribery and corruption legislation. This included creating offences for offering, promising or giving an advantage—bribing another person—and requesting, accepting or agreeing to receive an advantage: being bribed. Both offences carry the same maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment and/or a limited fine for individuals, with offences relating to commercial organisations carrying a maximum penalty of a limited fine. In addition to the UK, the jurisdiction scope of these offences covers those which took place either partly or entirely outside the UK, providing that the alleged perpetrator of the offence is a British citizen or is considered to have close connections to the UK.

On 17 May 2018, the House of Lords Select Committee on the Bribery Act 2010 was established to conduct a post-legislative review of the legislation. The House of Lords recommended that the committee focus on several areas around bribery, including whether the Act has led to stricter prosecution of corruption conduct or a higher conviction rate in the reduction of such conduct. Can the Minister state whether the directors of commercial organisations can be imprisoned instead of the company paying the higher fine?

Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill [HL]

Lord Bhatia Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 17th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford [V]]

My Lords, I support this amendment and I, too, was shocked by the lack of response to the very detailed speech by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, in Committee. It seemed to me that the Minister did not give a proper response to what had been said. I think it underlines the Conservative Party’s problem with devolution: either it does not understand it or, if it does, it does not accept it. To give one example, a Conservative Member of Parliament called for the end of devolution to Wales altogether and the scrapping of the Senedd, because his constituents could not, as they normally do at this time of year, go to the Welsh beaches to swim in the sea. That was sufficient to call for the end of devolution in Wales. With that sort of attitude, and with the noble and learned Lord’s attitude to the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, it really makes the case that the Conservative Party is at odds with devolution and what it means.

Throughout the legislation going through Parliament at the moment, there is a gap in recognising the need for consultation and if possible agreement with the devolved Administrations. This is so on the Agriculture Bill, as I pointed out last week. The Joint Ministerial Committee is a joke; it has never worked properly and is ignored by English Ministers. These are great gaps that have to be filled if the devolution settlements are to be properly appreciated.

[Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, under Amendment 11

“the Secretary of State must consult … Scottish Ministers … Welsh Ministers, and … the Northern Ireland department.”

Can the Minister confirm that this has been done and that the three departments are fully satisfied?

My main concern is about family law. There are family litigations in progress in the courts. A light has been shone on what happens if one of the spouses is resident in the UK and the other is in another EU country and has a different nationality. The question of the children’s custody will have to be resolved. As the UK will be out of the EU by the end of 2020, there are bound to be pending cases that will have to be resolved. Ratifying the Hague conventions will also have to be done.

There are other problems when one spouse is British and the other is in the subcontinent with the children. In such cases the children suffer the most, as the questions of their upkeep and final custody remain unresolved. This will be a very complex issue, and solutions will have to be found with diplomacy and patience. It would be useful if the Minister could explain how the above issues of children’s maintenance, cost and custody will be dealt with.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames [V]]

My Lords, I have nothing to add to what was said by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford on this amendment, which we support.

Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill [HL]

Lord Bhatia Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, explained in Committee on 13 May, the Official Opposition had no objection to the three treaties covered by the Bill being brought into domestic law via primary legislation, but they had very considerable objections to Clause 2. Their primary objection to Clause 2 on 13 May, repeated today, was that it would allow the Government to change the law by delegated legislation.

I have no doubt that other noble Lords who have yet to speak, like noble and learned Lords and noble Lords who have already spoken, will support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, in his arguments while paying due regard to the contribution of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern. For my part, I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, on the matter of principle but gently remind your Lordships’ House that none of his arguments based on constitutional impropriety found favour with the Government of which he was a distinguished member between 1997 and 2007.

I spent a fair amount of time, when on the Opposition Benches, arguing with the noble and learned Lord’s colleagues, as he does now with mine, that the misuse of secondary legislation to alter or extend primary legislation is wrong. I thought it was then and I think it is now. If, as he appears to have done, he has changed his mind, I am delighted, but he must know, having been in Governments with majorities of 179, 167 and 157, why Governments with large majorities resort to this device: it is expedient, it is convenient and they can.

There is generally far too much legislation and most of it is inadequately considered in the House of Commons. Bills are closely whipped and programmed and Governments of all stripes—Conservative, Labour and the recent coalition—have used Henry VIII powers allowing Ministers to make law with insufficient parliamentary scrutiny. I make that observation coolly.

I am neither shocked nor surprised that the Bill contains such provisions, nor that the Official Opposition have taken the stance they have on the question, today and in May. I simply point out, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, must know, that this is what happens and will continue to happen until Governments with large majorities do less and do it better.

I think I am right in saying that only two of us speaking to this group of amendments—the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and I—were Members of Parliament, and government and shadow Ministers, in the other place before arriving in your Lordships’ House. I am quite sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, will not agree with me when I say that we have brought with us a degree of realism or cynicism, but as Front- and Back-Benchers we served on Bill committees and secondary legislation committees using the affirmative and negative resolution procedures. We know how Governments manage the agenda in the other place.

Therefore, when I see Amendment 20, which would ensure that all regulations made under Clause 2 were subject to a lengthy and protracted super-affirmative resolution procedure, I see a procedure which, if it cannot be killed at birth, will be neutered. I do not wish to be unhelpful, and I readily acknowledge that the noble and learned Lord has said that this is a probing amendment, but I fear that what I see is a cul-de-sac. I confess that I took part in similar debates on Henry VIII powers when in opposition to his Government. His fellow Ministers smiled sweetly and the provision was passed into law exactly as they had drafted it. My noble and learned friend Minister will be less direct than me, but one only has to read the terms of the amendment to realise that, but for the noble and learned Lord’s advertised withdrawal of it, it is heading nowhere but the butcher’s block, if not in your Lordships’ House then when it gets to the other place.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is of course right to highlight the constitutional problem, a problem that he could not see quite so clearly when he was in government. I do not wish to discourage others from arguing against these ministerial powers even if, as I learned when I was in opposition, nothing will come of them today through the Bill. The arguments must be made, but in the context of the Bill I do not want the migration of these conventions into UK law delayed by this bigger constitutional question. I thus urge your Lordships to let it through unamended, not because I agree with the overuse of Henry VIII powers but because it is going to happen anyway and today is not the day to reform their use piecemeal. That said, I hope this very necessary reform will soon come about more widely with the agreement of both Houses and all parties.

[Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the Bill is highly technical for a person who is not trained as a lawyer and does not have a degree in international law. I am not one of those legal minds. I have gone through the various features of the Bill and its policy background in some previous debates.

My concern is about divorces. Children often suffer most when a divorce takes place. The Advocate-General for Scotland, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, said in a debate in March:

“Private international law is viewed by some as a technical and specialist area of law, but it is an essential one. Without private international law agreements, UK businesses, individuals and families would struggle to resolve the challenges they face when dealing with cross-border legal disputes.”


He went on to say that

“if a family relationship breaks down and one spouse moves abroad, they make it easier to sort out arrangements in the best interests of their children.”—[Official Report, 17/3/20; col. 1439.]

These issues become very important when the marriage has taken place in a religious ceremony in a foreign country and one of the spouses is not British and the other is British by nationality. Often the non-British spouse gets the children and goes back to their country of birth. Here I refer to the sub-continent countries such as India and Pakistan. The spouse who is British and lives in the UK finds it difficult to fight a legal battle over the custody of the children when the other spouse is in India or Pakistan. The issue is further compounded because the cost of litigation is high and the British spouse cannot afford it. The other issue is that the legal processes in these countries can take many years to go before a judge because of the calendar of the courts, which have to deal with many cases each day. In many cases the British Embassy tries to lend assistance, but there is a limit to how much it can help.

I do not wish to raise the issue of forced marriages in this debate. I am just raising this issue because I feel that it will raise its head in future. From 1 February this year the UK has regained full competence to enter into international agreements on PIL in its own right. Such agreements with many countries will take a long time and could cause considerable costs and delays to pending court cases. Can the Minister assure the House that special arrangements will be made for such pending cases, particularly where children are involved?

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, this is a short piece of legislation but an incredibly significant one. That why I wanted to speak to this group of amendments.

Before going into the detail, I would like to make a general point to my noble and learned friend the Minister. Does he agree that the very nature of English law—how it has developed and how it is seen around the world—gives us huge potential post December as a tremendous export as it is respected and highly used across the globe, and we really should seek to maximise its positive impact to this respect?

I turn to the amendments. We see, as we have heard from other noble Lords, that it is envisaged that these powers would be used only infrequently—infrequently, yes, but with potentially extraordinarily huge impact for the individual. So, building on other noble Lords’ comments, my concluding question for my noble and learned friend the Minister is: as currently constructed without these amendments, how does he see the necessary level of scrutiny taking effect? What is his overall view of the coherent use of secondary powers and the coherent and sustainable way to legislate not just on matters such as these but across the piece?

Criminal Justice System: Women

Lord Bhatia Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for initiating this debate on the Motion that this House takes note of the needs of women in the criminal justice system. One has to look at the reasons why women end up in prisons. These are varied and many, and largely depend on whether the woman is from a BAME community or the majority white community. However, the common factors are: violence at home by the husband or other family members; the poverty of the family; and, because of poverty, shoplifting, which becomes necessary to feed or clothe the family, particularly the children.

From reading the documents of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and from my own experience, there is perhaps a need for women judges to preside over these proceedings, since male judges may not comprehend why a woman is being charged. The law in such cases is blind as to which sex is being charged. Similarly, there may be a need for women lawyers and solicitors to appear on behalf of a woman being charged, and the Crown prosecutors should also be women. The best practice is to increase the number of women police in charge of such cases.

There are also considerable variations when women from BAME communities come to court to face trial. Translators should be present to translate questions put by prosecutors and judges. Some women from BAME communities do not speak or understand proper English. Many years ago, before there were translators in court, there was a case in which an Asian woman was asked whether she was guilty of killing her husband. The woman thought that the judge was asking whether she had made a mistake, because there is a word, “gulti”, that means “mistake” in her mother tongue, and she said yes. The judge thought she had pleaded guilty and put her in prison for a long time for murder. In the prison, some white inmates were very friendly and asked her what had happened and why she had killed her husband. She was able to explain that her husband had continually beaten her for the smallest error, or came home fully drunk and assaulted her. She suffered this over a long period until, one day, she could take this violence no more and, while her husband was sleeping, she murdered him. The women in the prison persuaded her and her solicitors to go to court to reopen the case, because she had not pleaded guilty and because she had been provoked to end his life by years of being beaten up. The Court of Appeal finally released her.

In the subcontinent, a woman’s position is still considered inferior. While I was a trustee of Oxfam, many years ago, I was given a very moving report and a letter from a social worker in India, Dr Jha, a lady with a great understanding of a woman’s position in an Indian family. I would be happy to give the full report to any noble Lord who would like to read it. It was a story of a family with a son and a daughter. The mother said that whenever she or her daughter fell sick, the local village quack was called in, but if the husband or the son fell ill, the trained doctor had to be called and they were hospitalised in the best hospitals. During mealtimes, the son and the husband ate first, and if there was meat, most of it was eaten by the husband and the son. The statement that the mother and the daughter made was, “Do you see why we look so frail and thin?”

The women are second-class citizens in many families. There is a belief in some families that the girl will one day be married, therefore there is no need for her to be sent to a good school for education. We hear of many cases in which rich or middle-class families are able to determine the sex of the unborn child and, if it is a girl, they get the mother to abort the child. In Pakistan, where, because of sharia, Muslim families have to give part of the family estate to the girls and the boys, many rich families do not get their daughters married but keep them at home until they die. I emphasise that such practices have considerably lessened because of new laws put in place by Governments in the subcontinent.

One last thing that needs to be said is that, despite the inequalities for women I have mentioned, there have been women Prime Ministers such as Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto and Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh. In the UK, however, inequality and violence against all BME communities continues, resulting in deaths and divorces, and women escaping from home to shelters provided by the Government and by the work done by the Seven Sisters. In addition, husbands bring in brides from the subcontinent to become baby machines. They are expected by the family to cook and do housework, and are rarely allowed to go out.

In past years, I was involved in a project funded by the Government, through which female staff were able to train women to learn English and revive their skills of dressmaking, cooking, working as beauticians and using their henna painting skills. The result was that these women were able to speak English and communicate with their children. They learned to use computers and were able to read newspapers and reports from their countries of origin. They had their own income and did not have to ask for money from their husbands, and were able to provide more and more facilities for their children.

In the name of equality for women, I firmly believe that the Government should ensure that women’s rights are protected and that special training should be given to judges and lawyers when women appear in the courts.