Consumer Rights Bill

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, noble Lords who were in the House during the second day of Report will have heard the case presented by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, in support of their amendments. Both were intended to remove a potential barrier to judges sitting in the Court of Session or the Northern Ireland High Court, from sitting as chairs in the Competition Appeal Tribunal. As I told the House at the time, I shared those concerns. I have met with the noble and learned Lords and I believe that the amendment before us today will address the issues they raised. I am pleased that we have been able to make progress on this matter.

First, as a consequence of the proposed government amendment, the Judicial Appointments Commission will no longer be required to recommend the appointment of judges as CAT chairs to the Lord Chancellor. Instead, the Lord Justice of England and Wales, the Lord President of the Court of Session and the Lord Chief Justice for Northern Ireland may nominate any suitably qualified individual who is already a judge sitting in the relevant court to be deployed as a CAT chair. This includes the Court of Session and the High Court in Northern Ireland. We are also providing that nominations in England and Wales may be from any division of the High Court, rather than restricted to the Chancery Division as at present. This will ensure that CAT chairs are drawn from the widest possible pool of expertise.

Moving to a nomination process will also address concerns that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, spoke about in relation to the limited appointment terms currently applying to CAT chairs. Currently, chair appointments are restricted to a maximum of eight years. As a consequence, experienced judicial officeholders are required to stand down regardless of their age and whether they wish to continue to serve. This requirement results in loss of expertise from the tribunal.

As part of the move to a nomination process, we will no longer impose such a limit on judicial officeholders who are nominated. Instead, judges will be eligible to be deployed to sit as CAT chairs until they retire or resign from their existing judicial office; if at any time they cease to sit in their judicial office, they would also cease to be a CAT chairman.

I should make clear that the changes I have set out here will apply only to those who are full-time salaried judicial officeholders. Fee-paid CAT chairmen—private practitioners who want to hold a part-time judicial office for the first time, or to add another part-time judicial office to their portfolio—will continue to be recruited through the Judicial Appointment Commission selection process and be subject to an eight-year term of appointment. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that this is an appropriate amendment, ensuring as it does that judges from all the UK’s jurisdictions are able to be deployed to sit in the CAT.

Before I sit down, I would like to convey my warmest thanks to my noble friend Lady Jolly who has provided me with such valuable support and assistance, and of course to the Bill team drawn from several departments, a great example of joined-up government. It has been a very great pleasure to steer this, my first Bill through your Lordships’ House and to engage with noble Lords on every side so very constructively. I beg to move.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for bringing forward these amendments. As she explained, the initiative was taken initially by me and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, at the request of the Lord President in Scotland and the Lord Justice of England and Wales. Their concern about the need for these amendments was, to some extent, due to the extended jurisdiction of the Competition Appeal Tribunal, which is the result of other provisions in the Bill.

As it is, the amendment that has been proposed today addresses all the concerns of all three senior judicial officers. I express on behalf of myself and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, our gratitude to the Minister and her Bill team for meeting us and checking whether the amendment would meet with our approval. We were happy to say that it did. This is a good example of the way that the House works to solve a technical, but not unimportant, problem. It says a great deal for the Government that they were prepared to accept this suggestion.