Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Lord Garnier and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

This is the first of three very short amendments to deal with the independence of the Parole Board. I do not think—and I hope—it is not disputed that the Parole Board is a judicial body and independent. If that is contested, we shall we be here for much longer today—so I hope it is not. I assume it is not going to be.

The second issue is that, if a body is judicial and independent, that independence must be recognised. There are three ways in which Clauses 53, 54 and 55 breach the independence position. First, in Amendment 169, the intention is to remove the power of the Secretary of State to predetermine the membership of the board. We have been very successful with judicial bodies in this country in allowing the judicial body itself, or its president, to determine who sits on panels. I can think of no good reason to change that—unless, of course, the previous Lord Chancellor had other plans for the kind of body he wanted.

The second is the business of sacking the chair. I use the word “sack” as I think it is a good, earthy word for what the previous Lord Chancellor wanted to do. We are the nation that established the idea that Kings could not sack judges, at the end of the Stuart period. We led the way forward, and virtually every proper democracy has that principle. It would be absolutely astonishing if we regressed from that, away from the rule of law. This is a pointer to it: it is quite wrong and should be removed.

The third aspect is quite disingenuous: the desire to remove the provision in the Bill that the chairman of the board should not deal with individual parole cases. It is absolutely unintelligible. Why would you want to make the chairman of a judicial body incapable of dealing with cases? The reason for this was that it could then be claimed that, if the chair of the board was not dealing with cases, the chair did not have a judicial function, and that could therefore justify the sacking. This is both disingenuous and very bad in principle. The chair is turned, effectively, into a pay, rations and hiring functionary rather than a leader.

Secondly, if you are chairing a board dealing with parole, you want to lead it, to know what is going on in the cases, and you want views. You have to sit and do the cases. From my own experience, it is quite clear that, if you have a judicial leader who does not actually understand the business of the courts, the fellow members of the judiciary—in this case, the Parole Board—will have no respect whatever for them.

These are three short points; there is no more I can really say about them. They are all bad points in the Bill. This seeks simply to remove them.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my former neighbour, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for permitting me to jump the queue. I want to make some equally brief points to the points made by the noble and learned Lord just now. I will start with Amendment 171. This makes as much sense as requiring the Lord Chief Justice, as head of the judiciary, not to be able to sit in individual cases, either at first instance or at appeal; to deny the Master of the Rolls, who I believe is the head of the civil appellate system, the ability to sit on cases; to deny the chancellor of the Chancery Division the ability to sit on cases; and to deny the president of the Family Division the ability to sit on cases.

These are judicial functions which may have an administrative function as well. If we were really to go down a road whereby the shadow of Dominic Raab is to spring forward into the enlightened era of Alex Chalk, I think we would be making a mistake. That is enough about that.

None of the judicial officers to which I have just referred is removable on the say-so of the Secretary of State. Equally, the constitution should not suffer the embarrassment of having the head of the Parole Board, who is a judicial officer, being removed on the say-so of the Secretary of State. I have a suspicion that if Alex Chalk had written this Bill it would not have contained these clauses.

Amendment 169

“seeks to ensure that the decision as to the composition of the Board is an independent judicial decision made by the Parole Board”.

Again, to go back to my references to the senior judiciary, it is the Lord Chief Justice who deploys the judges within the court system, it is the Master of the Rolls who decides which judges in the appellate court should sit on which particular case, it is the Chancellor of the Chancery Division who decides which of the Chancery Division judges should do what, and it is the President of the Family Division who does the same in relation to Family Division cases. It strikes me as being a perfectly normal and respectable constitutional arrangement. It would be a pity for Mr Raab, who has now moved on, to be able to continue to control the system. He is gone; these should go as well.

Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Garnier and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd

Report stage
Wednesday 8th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, we are all being very diffident this evening. I apologise because I did not speak at Second Reading or in Committee on this Bill, but I am as concerned as my noble friend Lord Duncan and the two noble Lords on the Cross-Benches about the way this Bill is going to deal with this particular subject. Unless this amendment is made to the Bill, we will be the poorer for it.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I spoke to and signed the amendment in Committee. I entirely support the new wording. I said in Committee that the judges could be trusted. The Government might have had a little doubt about some of it but, with the changes to the clause, I cannot see what greater protection any Government could legitimately seek.

Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill

Debate between Lord Garnier and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con) [V]]

My Lords, we have discussed the arguments behind these amendments in Committee and, to some extent, at Second Reading. I am not sure that much has changed since. For my part, while I entirely accept the motives and intentions of those behind the Bill itself, as well as the amendments in this first group, I remain sceptical about the utility of the Bill as an addition to the criminal law. That said, I have every sympathy—who would not?—for the living victims of the abhorrent criminals covered by the Bill, and know why they, and those who support the Bill so enthusiastically, want it enacted. I am sure it will be very soon.

Both the Minister and my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern were not favourably impressed with my suggestion of a discrete criminal offence. From memory, only the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, was prepared to agree with me about the value of the Bill in its current form. My suggestions have now sunk below the waves and can be forgotten. However, I urge the House, despite the experience and wisdom of those supporting these amendments relating to the offender’s state of mind—either through the greater emphasis demanded of the Parole Board in Amendment 1 of the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, or through a Newton hearing under Amendment 3 in the next group, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford—not to curtail the Parole Board’s independence and discretion.

As I indicated in our earlier debates, I would like the Parole Board’s work to be more accessible to the public. Despite the powerful analysis of the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, I agree with the Minister’s argument in Committee—which he seems to have repeated in his meeting with the noble Lords—that the Bill in its unamended form enables the Parole Board to fully consider the offender’s state of mind and their reasons for not disclosing the requisite information.

As was pointed out in our earlier debates, when considering the public safety implications of permitting a long-sentenced offender to return to the community, the Parole Board is looking at information and coming to a decision many years after the offence and the trial. A finding made by the trial judge shortly after the verdict about the offender’s failure to disclose the site of the victim’s body or—as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, properly reminded us—the identities of children in criminal images is valuable, and will surely be brought to the Parole Board’s attention, as will be the effect of that finding on the judge’s sentence. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, pointed out in Committee, we need to be careful not to confuse punishment for the original crime and the public safety implications of the prisoner’s much later release.

It must seem to many noble Lords that, not for the first time, I have got to the church by way of the moon. However, in short, let us leave the Bill as it is. It will be no more effective if amended.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier: the Bill is best left as it is. Although it is a limited purpose Bill and to be welcomed, there is plainly a need for a proper review of the Parole Board in due course. That is the occasion on which we should look at matters in the round.

In my experience, the Parole Board approaches the exercise of its discretion with the greatest possible care and, in cases where there are issues of mental capacity, takes infinite care to ensure that it has available all the necessary information, including reports from the prisoner. Occasionally, mistakes are made. However, there is always the remedy of judicial review, and it seems to me that it would be much better to leave the Bill as it is, allowing any errors on matters as obvious as mental capacity or findings of the trial judge to be taken into account. The Bill should be left alone; we should not amend it.

Earlier this week, we considered the state into which the law of sentencing has got by a piecemeal approach. It is not something we should do in criminal justice. Although I shall have something to say in detail about Amendment 3, I accept entirely the analysis of the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. However, my acceptance of their analysis of the proper approach does not persuade me that it is necessary to amend the Bill. The issues can be safely left to the discretion of the Parole Board, and there is a remedy if it fails to do that.

Courts and Tribunals (Online Procedure) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Garnier and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 10th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd]

I make two brief observations. First, I support the introduction of the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and emphasise that HMCTS provides a lot of advice on various areas and, because it is now jointly accountable to the Lord Chief Justice as well as to the Minister, its independence ought to be seen. Secondly, if Amendment 13 is adopted, I would hope that due regard is paid to the provisions of the Welsh Language Act; subsection (5) does not do so properly at present.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, before my noble and learned friend replies, I gently support the amendment and the way in which it was proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Marks. The policy behind the Bill is clear and sensible: it is to provide easier access, cheaper access and cheaper administration of litigation in certain types of cases. It seems from Clause 2 that the ambit of those cases is broad at the moment. For the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, if we do not provide appropriate assistance—if not in the terms expressly set out in his and his supporters’ amendments, at least in some form—I fear that the good intentions behind the policy and the Bill will lead to the unintended consequence, again spelled out by the noble Lord, of a breakdown of the smooth operation of the system because people either do not understand the system or, having got into it, do not understand the technicalities behind internet access. As others have mentioned, that will lead to delay, expense and frustration within the justice system, which the Bill is surely designed to do away with.

I, for one, am certainly not wedded to any particular wording—like the noble Lord, Lord Marks, I am much more interested in outcomes—but the Government need to apply their mind to providing cost-saving and effective forms of assistance. It is not just to the elderly or people with language difficulties, whom the noble Earl mentioned a moment ago, that we need to offer our help: we need to make the system work well and efficiently and be genuinely part of the justice system.