Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Baroness Turner of Camden

Monday 23rd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 70 in this group. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has covered the points and I do not wish to weary the Committee with repetition. Amendment 70 would remove subsections (3) and (4), as well as subsection (2), and is therefore more brutal in its application. One of the briefings I received on this part of the Bill said that this was a potentially,

“unwarranted extension of an unsatisfactory procedure”.

I therefore support what the noble Lord was saying about the dangers of mission creep, which we have discussed before. As we keep hearing it stressed that this is going to be a very rare procedure, it seems strange that we should allow courts to be added in what is essentially a pretty cavalier manner. I am all for statutory instruments and their positive nature, but they are unamendable and inherently too weak to tackle something that is as dangerous and difficult as this area that we have been discussing these past few days.

Subsection (4)(a) refers to “explaining the meaning” of “rules of court”. Do they really need to be explained? Are we not, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has explained to us, able to rely on judicial discretion and ability to interpret? I am concerned that explaining the meaning of the rules of court carries with it, in some more sinister way, an instruction as to what they mean and what judges should do. Similar wording in subsection (4)(b),

“enabling provision of a particular description to be made by such rules of court”,

seems to me, as a non-lawyer, to carry with it a degree of direction and fixed purpose that does not fit well with the sensitivity of the nexus that we have been discussing between civil liberties and the need to protect national security.

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I am not a lawyer but I am a former trade union official and tend to look at the proposed legislation before us from the standpoint of people who are working in industry and are members of unions. I am most concerned about the possible impact of this law on employment legislation.

We know that the Government are currently considering employment law and have been considering employment tribunals now for a very long time. Every time I have asked about employment tribunals I have been told that they are under consideration and that the Government are looking at them, and so on and so forth. Every time that employment tribunals, or tribunals of any kind, make an appearance in legislation, I ask what the Government are up to and what it means. Can we be told whether there is an impact on employment in subsections (2) and (4)? It is these two subsections, referred to in Amendment 70, that first attracted my attention. Can we be told precisely what these subsections are intended to involve regarding reference to tribunals, with all that that could mean for employment law?