Law Commission

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Beecham]

I have no idea, but I am not bound by every decision, right or wrong, made by the previous Government. I hope that they did. I might equally ask, did the noble Lord’s party ask for such a facility? I assume he does not know that either. Let us start from a clean sheet, and suggest that it is an innovation that would be worth pursuing, whatever the Government of the day. It is not a political issue: there is nothing between us politically in this agenda.

The second thing sits rather oddly with the following paragraph of the triennial review report:

“The continuing pressures on public finances will add to these challenges”.

I wonder why that should be the case, unless the commission’s manpower has been reduced, or the capacity within Government departments to deal with it has been reduced. For the most part, these are not expenditure-related Bills. The report goes on:

“This has brought to the fore the need to clarify the Commission’s funding model so that clear principles are established. To live within its means the Commission will need to be flexible and agile and will have to make difficult choices about the projects it takes on”.

Yes, but I repeat: is the financing a real issue? I have spoken for 13 minutes; I shall be very quick now.

My last point is that the Lord Chancellor currently produces a report on behalf of the Government as a whole. There does not seem to be a proper connection between the relevant departments and the Ministry of Justice in the course of the consideration of implementing these programmes. It seems to me to be necessary for there to be a single body, and it may well be the MoJ, to oversee the whole process from the government side. That is where the delays seem to occur. There may or may not be good reasons for them but no one on the government side seems to be taking responsibility for the overall programme. If they did that, we might not have the disappointment that has been voiced by other noble Lords today, and we might have a better realisation of the commission’s objectives, which the Government certainly share, in principle.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

If the Lord Chairman will allow me, may I ask a question before the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, sits down? It looks as though he would be prepared to answer one. I volunteered in the Chamber when the new arrangements came in—I think the noble Lord was by then in your Lordships’ House. When my brother was chairman of the Law Commission, he made considerable progress by the conversations he had with the shadow Law Officers in what was then the Labour Government. I am not in any way seeking inside information, but I would be interested to know whether that route was being pursued today in the same way that it successfully was in those days.

[Lord Beecham]

That is really the point that I was making about the commission. I confess that I cannot say what approaches my colleagues in the other place have made as shadow Law Officers, and I do not think that the Minister would know either. I will certainly look at that from my party’s perspective.