Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I may return briefly to the point that I made in Committee, which is directed to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, about the solicitor advising—no doubt—an employer. The problem to which I drew attention was where somebody such as a fireman, police officer or some other person in the emergency services wanted to take the kind of action for the benefit of society that is talked about in Clause 2, but his superior officers said, “No, you can’t, because if you do that, my organisation is liable to be sued”.

My point is that Section 1 of the previous statute deals with outcomes and separates the outcome from the person who is being sued. The problem with this Bill is that it links irrevocably and inextricably the person who is being sued with the person who is acting. With great respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, I do not think that this clause and the section deal with precisely the same thing. I think that this is a much narrower clause, dealing with a particular part of the subject. Therefore, it just adds to confusion when we have an existing piece of legislation which covers all the aspects and is perfectly serviceable to then come along with something which covers only part of it.

When the Minister replies, I hope that he will say why the Government have not taken the opportunity to broaden this clause so that it covers precisely the same ground as the existing legislation, because to have two pieces of legislation, one half-baked and one dealing with the whole thing, just adds to confusion. It is a great shame to be invited to pass a measure of that kind.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, with great force and fervour, invites the House to consider that a silver bullet from this place and the other place is perhaps not a bad thing at all. That may well be so, and both Houses are entitled to fire silver bullets by way of resolutions, debates and in a number of other ways, but not in their legislative capacity. That is really all that this issue is about.

There are only three areas of law—or at least there used to be when I was a law student a very long time ago—statute, common law and custom. If a statute is to have any purpose or meaning at all, it has to change to some extent one at least of those three areas. Custom can be left out of it; it is agreed universally that it does not change the content of a statute by one hair’s breadth. There was, I think, some dubiety in Committee about common law, but I honestly think that that is answered by a long-standing principle in our law—namely, that a statute to change the common law has to say so expressly on the face of it and to make it clear beyond peradventure or doubt that that is happening: otherwise, there is a presumption that the common law is not changed. I should have brought Maxwell’s Interpretation of Statutes along with me but I am sure that the Minister will accept that that is still a fundamental principle of our law. The right to legislate is a sovereign right and privilege to be used sparingly. It is not to be used for propaganda purposes.

[Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe (CB)]

My Lords, in speaking in support of this amendment, I draw attention to a matter which I believe to be of general importance and relevance to all the contentious amendments before the House this afternoon, but which has not, I believe, been referred to at all in previous debates on this Bill either in this House or the other place—namely, that the Law Commission has had no input at all into the Bill. The subject matter of the Bill is not on the published programme of current work of the Law Commission: nor—I checked this point a couple of days ago with the press officer of the Law Commission—have there been any informal consultations or amendments concerned with the Bill. Neither the substance of the Bill nor its drafting has had any input at all from the Law Commission. Yet this is a Bill which is said to make significant changes in the common law.

Whether it does, indeed, make significant changes in the common law is highly contentious. Along with many of my noble and learned friends, I believe that it makes no significant change at all. However, on the hypothesis that it does make significant changes in the common law, it is eminently a matter of law reform which should be the subject of systematic and intense study by the Law Commission and a consultation with judges, the legal profession and the wider public, conducted by the commission. None of that has happened.