Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Judge

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judge (CB)]

I want us to pocket the clauses that the Government are going to give way on. Let us get rid of clauses that are unacceptable.

We are all rushing around trying to find a solution. I draw the Minister’s attention to paragraph 8.132 in the Companion, which I would like everyone sitting here today to consider. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is right: the present arrangement means that there would be no Report stage on the new clauses, and there would be no Committee stage on the new clauses. There will be a Committee process, which is quite different, and which will culminate in the ping-pong arrangements. The Companion states:

“Other bills may, on motion (which is debatable and of which notice is required) moved at any time between committee and third reading, be recommitted to a Committee of the whole House or Grand Committee in their entirety, or in respect of certain clauses or schedules. This course is adopted when it is desirable to give further detailed consideration to the bill or certain parts of it without the constraints on speaking which apply on report and third reading; for instance: when substantial amendments are tabled too late in the committee stage to enable them to be properly considered; where there is extensive redrafting; or where amendments are tabled at a later stage on subjects which have not been considered in committee.”


That seems to me to cover all the new clauses that may be put into the Bill as and when it gets to the Commons—if it gets to the Commons. We must not get to Third Reading; we must make any application, or move any Motion, before Third Reading. I would love to be an expert in procedure but I am not, but I think that may be an answer to the problem that is obviously vexing a number of Members of the House. There could be a recommitment of the amendments and we would then go to Committee stage.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord. In view of the extraordinary and frankly unprecedented mess we are in with this Bill, would it not be sensible to adjourn the House so that there can be conversations between various key people? It might indeed be far better, neater and tidier—and, in the long run, far speedier—if the Bill were abandoned and a new one brought in when we have a new, effective Government in power.

European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Judge

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 8th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I think we should remember that there is no precedent, no parallel, to the situation in which we have found ourselves in recent weeks. As we said at Second Reading last Thursday night, a group of very courageous Members from both sides of the House, and from minority parties, came together to fill a vacuum. After that, the Prime Minister made her welcome overture to other parties, something that should have been done after the general election when we lost our majority.

That changed the situation. Nevertheless, I believe that those who promoted this Bill were entirely justified in so doing. We have had this welcome development from the Prime Minister, so it is entirely sensible that the amendments moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, should be accepted by this House. They give the Prime Minister, in this, the ultimate hour—because that is what we are talking about—the freedom to be able to negotiate on Wednesday. It would be manifestly absurd if she did not have that freedom.

We should accept these amendments. I think they improve the Bill. I very much hope that those in another place accept them in the spirit in which they have been moved, and then, perhaps, we can all move on.

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak. I do not think that this is a good Bill. There have been much better Bills, and the process that we have been through has not been the House at its best, because events have forced the situation on us. Therefore, I apologise to the House. I did not put my name down to speak at Second Reading—I had not intended to speak at all. I support this amendment, because I think it will make a bad Bill rather better.

May I diverge, however? We are setting a precedent. There is no point in pretending that we have not set a precedent by what has happened. If I may, I offer this comfort: sometimes precedents do not have to be followed. This allows a precedent. I suggest to whichever side of the House is in power for the next 20, 30, 40 or 50 years that we do not allow it to be followed again. At least we should communicate our view that this, whether precedent or not—and it was—is a one-off and goes no further.

The point of Amendment 7 is very simple: we want to make the Bill a little better than it is by removing the constraints that are otherwise imposed on the Prime Minister. That, I respectfully suggest to the House, is desirable. As I do not intend to speak or have my speaking taken as support for this—

Ivory Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Judge

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 12th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for having failed to address the issue involved in this legislation at an earlier stage. In the past few weeks, I have had two meetings with Ministers, and I thank them very much for their courtesy and patience in having listened to me. I beg leave to oppose the Question that Clause 17 should stand part of the Bill. There is cross-party support for this amendment, and, as the Committee will appreciate just by looking at the Marshalled List, each supporting name on the Marshalled List is that of a member of the Constitution Committee.

Before I come to the amendment, I would like to emphasise that the broad objectives of this Bill have my complete support. The slaughter of a single elephant diminishes us all. You do not have to have seen an elephant in the wild; it is enough to look at it on the television. When the tusks of a lifeless elephant, killed for ornament or vanity or perhaps for investment purposes, are worth more than the noble magnificence of a living creature trundling about in its natural environment in an organised herd or as a solitary elephant, we know that values have become inverted.

It follows from what I have just said that my support for the broad objectives means that I entirely agree that a Bill that does not have provisions for enforcement is pointless, and I agree that the provisions in this Bill should be properly enforced. This amendment is concerned, when one analyses it, with three words in the enforcement process—three simple little words. What a lot of fuss about three words. The three words are “accredited civilian officer”. Those words create a new enforcement body additional to the police but not subject, as the police are, to police discipline, answerable to a chief constable or equivalent and ultimately answerable to a complaints procedure or its equivalent.

I am going to read the Bill, because I am going to be hearing later on this afternoon all about Explanatory Memoranda, possibly ministerial letters, possibly ministerial assurances in this House:

“In this Act … ‘accredited civilian officer’ means an officer of the Secretary of State who is authorised by the Secretary of State for the purposes of this Act”.


No more, no less. No single embellishment. Absolutely stark. No other safeguarding. No other provision of any kind. He or she will be, if this Bill comes to pass, a civil servant authorised by a Secretary of State and accountable to him. This individual, man or woman, will effectively, if one studies the Bill, have the same powers as a police officer with no provision for oversight, for control, for discipline—all ultimately, in the Bill, left to the Minister.

Clause 17 is troublesome enough, but I accept that it has some limitations on it. It cannot be operated without notice. The Minister’s officer may enter premises for the purpose of,

“promoting awareness and understanding of the provisions of this Act”,

which means that you will get a pep talk, or,

“assessing compliance with those provisions”,

which means rather more. Clause 17 is clear that he may search premises: “any place”, except a dwelling-house. Fair enough. However, that includes any office, factory, shop and, presumably, any garage that is not physically attached to somebody’s dwelling-house, which may be searched for items made of ivory, or containing an appropriate level of ivory.

Given the way the Bill is drafted, we might think that that is it; that is what the accredited officer will do. Indeed, some of the observations I have heard from the Minister rather imply that this is going to be low-level work, not quite as high as that of the police. But if you thought that, and thought that Clause 17 was the end of it, you would miss the subsequent provisions and all the wider powers that are being granted.

I do not want to bore noble Lords, but Clause 18 equates this body of civil servants with the police. On the authorisation of a grade 7 civil servant—that is what the Bill means, though it does not say the words “civil servant”, but only “grade 7”—an application may be made for a search warrant. This time, the search warrant can encompass a dwelling-house as well as all the other premises covered by the previous clause. It may be granted to an accredited civilian officer. Lo and behold, if we read more deeply into this provision, the authorisation may extend to an individual who is not in fact an accredited civilian officer. On the basis of the warrant, that individual will have the same powers as an ACO, who has the same powers as a police officer.

If we go through the provisions in Clauses 20 and 21, they would enable that individual, on entering the house, to examine anything in the home and to carry out tests on any object, while causing the least possible damage, whatever that may mean—what an argument lies ahead about whether this was the least possible damage. However, it is causing damage to somebody’s property. The officer,

“may break open any container”—

they may, therefore, open any drawer; they may require the production of documents; they may,

“seize and detain or remove”,

any item, as they think appropriate in the context of the Bill, from your home, your office or your shop. They may also use “reasonable force, if necessary” to achieve the objective. In other words, if you object, they may use reasonable force to take the item away from you.

If this was a series of powers granted to a police officer, I would have no objection. That is consistent with our having police officers who act independently of Ministers and are answerable for their conduct. However, if this applies to civil servants answerable to a Minister, and subject ultimately to his approval, I respectfully suggest to the Committee that it is a very serious provision. Entering your home and seizing your property may be fine, if justified. It may be fine if subject to limits that we in Parliament put on; but what are the limits here? I can go only by the passages that I have read in the Bill that is before us. I am sorry to sound discourteous, but I do not attach any significance to an Explanatory Memorandum or to a ministerial letter—which are of no relevance whatever in assessing what the powers are—or, indeed, as I have said, to ministerial assurances here, though I mean no discourtesy to the Minister. Of course, it will not be used for this purpose or that purpose or the other purpose.

This Bill has come from the House of Commons and is being proposed or countenanced in Great Britain in our name. It proposes that we should give these powers to such officials. If noble Lords read about this happening in a country that they were fond of—let us say, for the sake of argument, Australia, New Zealand, Canada or France, or wherever it might be—and heard that an Act, passed by whatever the legislative assembly might be, gave a Minister in what they thought was a democracy, anxious to protect its liberties, the power to deploy civil servants in the way in which this Bill proposes, they would be immensely troubled.

We can look at this as a ministry “taskforce”, but if it were happening abroad, “taskforce” would not be the kind of word that we would use. We would use words that indicated a much deeper degree of trouble and concern. We would have to recognise that, as the Bill stands, it is a ministry’s private law enforcement body. This is not our way. This simply will not do, and we must not let it do. I beg to move.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, my name is attached to all the other amendments in the group. I need to say very little, because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has spoken with passion and eloquence. He has made a case that is impossible to refute. The noble and learned Lord has done many services to your Lordships’ House. Many times, he has drawn attention to Henry VIII clauses. Many times, he has drawn attention to giving by those means and others more and more power to the Executive in the person of their Ministers.

This is a most alarming example of passing power from Parliament to the Executive—in fact, to a Minister’s nark who will have invested in him or her all the powers rightly possessed by the police and perhaps more. There are implications for our society and our democracy in a clause such as this being accepted in a Bill which everybody accepts has noble intentions. Some of us have sought to demonstrate that it is not a very well-conceived Bill, but whatever view one takes on the importance of antique ivory, which I and other noble friends have been talking about on Monday and today, this issue is wholly separate. It concerns the independence of the citizen and his right to retain his private property and not to have it molested by those who would not ordinarily be in a position to examine it. The provision to allow the use of minimum force is again alarming. That is why I went through the Bill and deleted every reference I could see to those three very innocent-sounding but alarming words, “accredited civilian officer”.

I do not want to over-dramatise, but this is Orwellian. We should not have anything to do with this in either House of Parliament. I am astonished that this should have come from the other place. It illustrates, if anything is needed to illustrate it, how important it is that we have a more dispassionate assembly to scrutinise our legislation. It also illustrates how exceptionally fortunate we are to have in your Lordships’ House those who have no party political affiliation, who cannot by any stretch of the imagination or vocabulary be accused of making a political point. We have in this House Cross-Benchers, among whom are some of the finest lawyers in the land.

Forget this Bill and forget our differences on other aspects of it. We would be doing a grave disservice to our democracy if we allowed this Bill to proceed with these words in it. I devoutly hope that my noble friend will be able to give a much more encouraging answer to this group of amendments than he has given to other amendments, and I hope very much that we will not have to return to this subject on Report. I hope that it will have been dealt with by that answer. But if it is still in the Bill, it is your Lordships’ duty at that stage to take it out of the Bill.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Judge

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

Our leaving the European Union is an exceptionally unfortunate measure that will do great damage to this country, in my opinion. But the answer to my noble friend’s specific question is that it was enacted by Parliament—a Parliament of which he was not a Member but of which my noble friend Lord Deben and I were—and that, knowing the consequences, we voted for it because we believed that it was in the general interest of our country. We were behaving as Members of the House of Commons should behave. It was properly debated, thoroughly approved and it came on to the statute books as other things have done.

I go back to what I was saying when my noble friend interrupted me. We have a duty to protect and to urge the other place not to abdicate the central power of an elected House—to deal with taxation. I hope that when my noble friend replies we will have a slightly more satisfactory and understanding reply than we had last Wednesday. I hope, too, that he will ensure, if not today, that we have a glossary of all these terms, including charges, fees, taxes, contributions and levies. At the end of the day they all mean something very similar: imposing an obligation to pay. People should never fall under that obligation unless it is imposed by their representatives in Parliament. We have a duty, as the second Chamber—the unelected Chamber—to say to our colleagues at the other end of the Corridor, “Please do not abdicate; please flex your muscles; please do not give to Ministers—the 109 whom we talked about the other night—or to other bodies or authority a power that is only rightly yours”.

[Lord Judge]

My Lords, my name is to Amendment 126. I do not want to say very much. I can think of another word to add to that great list and I could give my view of the history of how taxation became the weapon for democracy, ultimately. Taxation is the ultimate control that the Commons has over the Executive. Just reflect on the set-to in the United States of America a few weeks ago: Senate and President at odds over money. These issues must be resolved at parliamentary level and House of Commons level—not by regulation.