Scotland: Devolution

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I regard myself as English and Scottish. I had an English father and a Scottish mother who both were very proud of their nationhood. Therefore, I have always seen the United Kingdom as a marriage between two partners, each with their own vivid background. History, culture and religion—each has its identity. I look at the right reverend Prelates opposite and I am glad to see them here as members of the Church of England. When I look at them I think of the vivid stories told to me by my mother and my grandmother. They spoke about the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and all that that meant to them, and the character and the verve of the General Assembly and the rest. That was very real too. My grandfather was a minister in the Church of Scotland and secretary of its foreign missions.

I keep very close to my English and my Scottish family. I was surprised and rather shaken by the number of them who told me in very firm terms that they were going to vote yes. They were mostly church people. I confess that they were professional, middle-class people who were mainly in the caring professions and education. When I reasoned with them and said, “Look at all the issues facing both England and Scotland, and Wales and Ireland. Can’t we tackle them more effectively together?”. One cousin, in very firm terms, said, “Frank, that is a very powerful argument but it is too late. We are absolutely exasperated and fed up with the arrogance of the south-east and London, which runs the United Kingdom almost totally from that standpoint and does not recognise our identity”.

We have to recognise that there is a powerful feeling in the people of Scotland of a strong desire to express their nationhood, and their self-confidence in their nationhood. We may have won a vote by 55% to 45%, which is a quite significant result, but we have not finished the argument. What now follows will be crucial. If there is disillusion in what follows, goodness knows what will happen the next time that there is a referendum. I agree with those who argue that it will come sooner rather than later. We must discharge what we have promised, and we must discharge it rapidly and by the timetable that has been announced.

Some of these issues, of course, are not just about Scotland. In many parts of England and Wales there is a feeling of alienation from the political system. There is a feeling of loss of significance and identity, and people are yearning for them. When we know that the body politic, of which we are a part here in Westminster, is held in great disrepute by many people in our country, we have to recognise that it is this feeling of loss of personal significance that is very central to it and which lays many people in this country open to appeals from populists and extremists.

We therefore have to get on with the final, comprehensive constitutional settlement. When I look at what has been happening with our constitution in recent years, it seems that it has been a patchwork affair, and very confusing for many people throughout the United Kingdom. It has been dealing with this or that issue, which always has implications for other issues, but there has been no road map, no master plan, no goal, and no sense of destiny or direction. I think that is why a royal commission or other convention is so essential, and quickly, so that we produce a road map which can enable people to look at the interrelated issues and how we are going to take the situation forward convincingly. This is precisely not the time for knee-jerk reactions and populist moves of one kind or another.

That work has to be transparent. It has to engage and involve the widest possible cross-section of the community. I am quite convinced that, unless we have it, we will be facing one constitutional crisis after another. I believe that, given the logic of all that has been happening, with the priority that devolution has been taking in recent years, the logical way is to get on with building a federal United Kingdom. We will have a stronger United Kingdom on a federal basis than we do by trying to insist that it remain upon a unitary basis.

Scotland: Independence

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, the challenge we face in this debate is immense in itself, but it is also symptomatic. We live in an age of paradox. Never have the people of the world been more interdependent in terms of security, economics, health and all the rest. Yet somehow there has never been such a widespread sense of alienation and disenchantment with existing political structures. I believe these two factors are working together in the situation that confronts us.

It is not just about economics. In the case of Scotland it is clearly about emotion and culture as well. There is a deep-seated yearning for a sense of identity and personal significance and the confidence that comes out of a sense of identity. The challenge is how we recognise that identity and enable it to flourish but at the same time enable people to see that in the world in which we live it is simply impossible to find a way forward without co-operation; and that therefore it is not really the right time to dismantle a very effective part of co-operation, as demonstrated within the United Kingdom.

I am a half-Scot, and I hope that the House will forgive me if I am a little personal in my approach to this debate tonight. I had a father who could not have been more English, rooted in the Surrey-Hampshire borders. I had a mother who could not have been more of a Scot. She had lost two brothers, serving the United Kingdom in the Army, one not yet 20, who after being awarded an MC was killed in action. The other, as a young captain serving in the Indian army 84 years ago—a kilt-wearing captain, when he had the opportunity—was killed on the north-west frontier.

During the war my mother was working and therefore my grandmother had a great deal to do with bringing me up. She had gone out at the age of 19 to marry my grandfather in India, and they lost two of their children there. He was a missionary in the Church of Scotland. He ended his life as secretary of the foreign missions of the Church of Scotland. He was not, as I understand him, an evangelical, but he was dedicated to the cause of education and had concentrated on education in his time in India.

During the war, my grandmother used to tell me vivid stories about Scotland all the time—often in the cosiness of the shelter as the bombs fell round about. My mother identified very strongly with London during the Blitz, but always as a Scot. She never doubted or questioned her Scottish identity. That was true of her work in academia, at London University and the LSE, on the Bench and in local politics.

What did all that mean for me? How did it affect me? It meant, I realise in my older age, that I grew up with a sense that England and Scotland were inseparable. They were different—that I was very clear about—but they were inseparable. There was a certain confidence about that. Indeed, at times, the humour was quite strong. One of the stories I was brought up on was the story of the Scottish businessman who had been building up his business very successfully and had always resolved any difficulties that arose at St Andrew’s House but was finally confronted with something that meant that he had to go to London, to Whitehall. The family were rather anxious about what would happen, so when he came back, they asked him, “How did you get on with all those Sassenachs?”. He said, rather puzzled, “Sassenachs? I did not meet any Sassenachs; I only met the heads of department”. That story made a great impression on me.

It was therefore not altogether a surprise when, as a very young Member of the other place I became a PPS at the then very large Ministry of Housing and Local Government for England and Wales and went to ministerial meetings on Monday mornings. There was quite a big team of Ministers. Down one side of the table were the Ministers and down the other side were the civil servants. Bang in the middle, opposite the Secretary of State, was the Permanent Secretary. Who was the Permanent Secretary? Stevenson, a rugby-playing Scotsman, if ever there was one.

I think that that is central to the story of the United Kingdom together. England and Scotland together have had a great and successful past. Yes, we have had our differences. Yes, there are some historic resentments in Scotland about how the Scottish aristocracy perhaps sold out the Scottish people to the English. Those things are real; they do not go away. What we must face is that if there is a no vote in the referendum, that will not be the end of the story. We will have gained a political victory, but the issue will remain. I do not want to be a Jeremiah, but I have a foreboding that it will accentuate and could turn quite ugly. I see some Scottish Members of the House indicating their doubts, with me, on that matter.

Therefore it is essential that, with no further prevarication, we get down to the job of restructuring the United Kingdom in a way that meets that challenge. Let us stop theorising about the possibilities of a federal United Kingdom. A federal United Kingdom is what is required. It is the logic of all that is happening in terms of devolution and the talk of greater opportunities and financial powers for Scotland. I am convinced that we will have a stronger United Kingdom on a federal basis than we do when we are always trying to sweep the issue back under the carpet.

It seems to me that there are parallels here with Europe. Looking back at the European story, I happen to believe that we would have had a stronger Europe if we had had a greater confederal approach rather than the emphasis on a unitary approach. Sometimes, strength lies in the co-operation and effective operation of confident people with a strong sense of identity. From that standpoint, I would be the first to applaud the creation of a commission to look at the future constitutional structure of Britain, but I would want that commission to have a firm remit that it was to look at it in terms of the contribution to be made to our mutual future on the basis of a federation.

Immigration Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, I am delighted to support this amendment from another part of the Celtic community. I do so because the Bill says that you can integrate more easily if you speak English, but that is not so in many of our Welsh communities. There are still 600,000 people in Wales alone who speak the Welsh language and in some villages and areas of Wales it is the first language. It is the language of the community, the chapel, the church and the pub. It is their language. If someone came from a distant place and wanted to settle there, they would feel lost. They would need to be able to speak that local Welsh language.

As has already been said, we battle on to maintain the language. About 21% of the people of Wales speak Welsh and the Government of Wales have a Welsh Language Policy Unit, which spends about £14.5 million a year to promote the Welsh language. We also have Welsh television, S4C—S Pedwar C yn Gymraeg—which will claim £90 million to £100 million per year. This is all investment in the language. If somebody came from a distant place to a Welsh village without any knowledge of the Welsh language, you might say that they should learn English. However, we have only one other Welsh settlement of any size in the world, which is Patagonia. That is where 10,000 people speak Welsh and Spanish. What if one of those people—it happens—wanted to become a teacher or a church minister in Wales? They would not be accepted unless the amendment were also accepted by the Committee.

There does not need to be a great fuss about this. We do not have millions of people speaking Welsh in the world, but we do have a certain number who might well be interested in coming to the homeland—to the land of their fathers and grandfathers—and they would not be welcome because they do not speak English. I will not go to Patagonia to invite them to come over immediately, but if this amendment is passed, I would be delighted to go to Patagonia and invite those people from the Welsh tradition to come up.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes a powerful and emotional, in the best sense, statement in favour of the amendment. Will he tell me what its implications would be for an Englishman wanting to settle in that community?

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

It would not hurt that Englishman in any way at all. We would still allow people who speak only English to come into Wales, but we would allow those who do not speak English but who do speak Welsh or even Scottish Gaelic—we might have one or two from the highlands wanting to come to Wales—to come in. I urge the Minister, as a fellow Celt, who I know has the well-being of our communities at heart, to give a thought to this, although perhaps not in the wording of this particular amendment. Is there no way that we could allow those who do not speak English but who do speak Welsh, Scottish Gaelic or Ulster Gaelic to come along? I am sure that there is a way, and we can show the nations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland that we still consider them brothers and partners in this United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for introducing this amendment. He has raised a crucial matter. I have no legal qualifications whatever but as a citizen I care about the operation of the law. It is one thing for legislation to stipulate what issues should be taken into account, but to start saying how much weight a judge should give to particular considerations seems a dangerous precedent. Where is this going to stop? One of the things that is crucial to our understanding of justice and the operation of the law in this country is the independence and objectivity of the judge within the law.

This matters as a principle for all citizens in Britain because this move, if implemented, is a precedent, but it also matters very much in terms of community relations. How are we going to build positive relationships with our ethnic minorities if they feel that the Government are issuing such instructions to judges on how they must behave? The good will of ethnic-minority communities depends on their being able to depend on the law and the principles of the law as we like to claim they traditionally operate in this country.

I will not repeat all the anxieties that I have expressed at other points in consideration of the Bill, but all I can say is that we live in very dangerous times. I worry about the alienation of young people when they begin to say, “Look what is happening in reality”. This plays into the hands of sinister elements and I really think that this revision is an unfortunate and dangerous precedent. The whole House should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for having alerted us, in his usual expert and convincing way, to the need to oppose Clause 14.

Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 21st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I should like to add a word of tribute to the Joint Committee on Human Rights for the thoroughness and courage of its work, and I pay tribute to those who put these amendments forward.

I am not a lawyer, but what concerns me in all this is what lies behind the issues we are discussing—we are trying to protect a society that is worth having. Central to the society that is worth protecting in the United Kingdom, as I understand it, has been the evolution of the cause of justice and fairness in our legal system. That has been the central pillar of what has made Britain a country in which it is good to live. Alongside this, of course, has been the independence of the judiciary; and the judge has a key role—not a role that is perceived by just those in the know, but one that can be widely seen as the key role—in ensuring that this happens.

The first thing I will say is that I find myself troubled by the fact that if we compare ourselves now with how we were 20 years ago, the quality of justice in our society is not as good; there has been an erosion. Of course I understand the acute and sinister pressures behind this trend. We are up against sinister, ruthless techniques and people. I worry that we are giving them the victory and legislating to underpin that victory by taking steps that may diminish the quality of our justice.

Let us look for a moment at the kind of issues that are being considered in the cases about which we are worried. They include torture and human rights, which are sensitive and emotive matters. If it becomes a growing concern in society that things are not as they should be in the administration of justice in these areas, and if it should be thought that the Government and Executive want to conceal things that happened which should not have happened, that will play into the hands of the extremists who are trying to build anxiety, doubt and instability into our society.

This is the very time that we must stand steadfast. Of course I am not suggesting—it would be madness to do so—that there are no matters that simply cannot be revealed in a court case. However, we must not regard this as something that on balance is right. If we are going to diminish the normal standards that we expect and see as central to our justice system, it must be an absolute last resort because we have to do it, and it should be confined to the narrowest possible areas of control. The amendments in this group are a step towards resisting a further erosion of our system of justice.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I accept that my noble friend the Minister has an acutely difficult task in dealing with this part of the Bill and with these amendments. I do not think that anybody in this House pretends otherwise. Balancing national security against individual liberty and due process is judgment-of-Solomon stuff. However, I concur with the virtually unanimous voice of those who have said that there is a want of balance and proportionality in the arrangements in this part of the Bill.

In particular, I support Amendment 36. I will not repeat what others said very well, but I will draw the attention of the House—and perhaps of some beyond the House—to a very plangent example of the failure of the Bill to balance as it should the two competing issues. As was explained, Clause 6 requires a judge—it is not discretionary—to grant an application for a closed material procedure if,

“disclosure would be damaging to the interests of national security”.

There is no qualification of “damaging”. There is no talk of “substantial” or “significant” damage. As it stands, a judge would have to grant such an application if the damage were marginal or even trivial. That is why it is essential to agree Amendment 36—and Amendment 37 with it—and some other amendments in the group that would ensure that no judge was put in the difficult, highly undesirable circumstance of having to grant a closed material proceedings application in circumstances that, on any common-sense basis, would not be warrantable.

Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 21st November 2012 Lords Chamber

In its outstanding report, the JCHR was careful to give its considered assessment of the case the Government have made for the insertion of this quite extraordinary procedure into our criminal justice system. It was very frank. It said that the Government have not made a convincing case. For my part, I would not introduce these processes into our system without the most compelling evidence to justify this extraordinary change, and I do not see it.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the noble Lord has spoken very powerfully about the importance of public trust and how the amendments before us are emphasising the means by which that trust can be secured. But when we divert from the practices of justice as we have come to understand and appreciate them, we must do so only in the most extreme and exceptional circumstances, and there must be no opportunity for a drift towards this process becoming a matter of convenience. I may be overegging it slightly but that is a fear one must have in mind.

The noble Lord also spoke about the importance of public confidence in the law and the administration of the law. I want to take that argument a little further. My noble friend Lord Reid, in a very powerful intervention that I am sure we all took extremely seriously, underlined the danger of small numbers of people with modern technology and devices at their disposal.

That is why the whole case for maximum, transparent justice in the process of law is so important. Many of the issues behind the cases involved will be extremely controversial and elicit a lot of passion in particular sections of the community. If it can ever be argued or demonstrated that we are not applying a commitment to justice in the way it can be achieved, but are finding that because of the terrorist element we are deserting that position, that will play straight into the hands of the extremists who want to exploit frustration, alienation and the rest. We are giving ammunition to the enemy—if you like me to put it as bluntly as that—and I find that unforgivable. Why give ammunition to an extremist who is determined to undermine our society by failing to stand by the principles of what we know justice is about, unless it is a most exceptional, extreme case where special circumstances have to apply?

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, the Justice and Security Bill demands justice and security. We have been quite rightly reminded by, among others, the noble Lord, Lord Reid, how important it is to consider security. In human rights terms, Article 2 of the convention places a responsibility on the Government to protect life and to take all steps appropriate to ensure that the human rights of citizens generally are protected, so that human rights are not just for the litigants involved in these proceedings but for all of us. However, justice is to be done by this Bill and there is undoubtedly a justice gap. I thought that, during Committee stage, we had moved towards a consensus that CMPs, although not a desirable option, were nevertheless a necessary evil in order that justice should be done.

Contrary to what my noble friend Lord Strasburger has said, the JCHR, of which I have the good fortune to be a member, acknowledged, relying in part on the evidence of David Anderson, that there were a limited number of cases in which justice could not be done in the current situation. That is why the Bill has been brought before your Lordships’ House. As to the possibility of justice being done under these provisions, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, who has experience of these things, said in Committee that the special advocates were underestimating their capacity to represent those clients. Nobody suggests that it is an optimal position, but my own experience of judges tells me that they customarily do everything they can to remedy any disadvantage that a litigant might have—and of course they will have a disadvantage in CMPs. The suggestion that the Government’s case will simply be accepted by a judge without challenge or question is wholly unwarranted. Within the Bill as it is at the moment, judges have considerable powers; now that these amendments have become part of it, they will have considerably more powers.

I therefore suggest that the Bill presents an opportunity for security and justice, as the name suggests. The amendment proposed will wreck that opportunity and justice will be denied.

Constitutional Settlement

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, it is always a good thing to follow the noble Lord, Lord Steel. He is someone whom I have known, liked and admired throughout my political life. It was good to hear him endorsing so warmly the objective of his noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, to establish a convention to look at the constitutional challenges to the United Kingdom as a whole. That must be right. I would argue that if ever there was need for an example of the dangers of pragmatism without a strategy, it is in the story of constitutional reform in recent decades in the United Kingdom. We have not had a road map of where we are going or our objectives and what we are ultimately trying to sustain, which is very foolish of us all. It is high time that we had a strategy to which we are all working.

I have something in common with the noble Lord, Lord Steel. His father was a pillar of the kirk. My grandfather was a minister of the Church of Scotland and secretary of its foreign missions. Originally, he was in the United Free Church but was part of those who brought the United Free Church and the Church of Scotland together again in 1929. He could not have been more Scottish but if you delve into his family history, there is migration from Ireland to Scotland and from Lancashire to Northern Ireland. The story of the British people is very complex. While my father could not have had a family more rooted in southern England—Hampshire and Surrey and, to some extent, East Anglia—if we go back far enough into that family history there are all sorts of issues about exactly where they came from, including the Middle East or wherever.

We are not just dealing with the pieces of a puzzle. We are dealing with people, their origins and their stories. We have to be sensitive about that. My mother was always completely loyal to her Scottish origins. Emotionally, she felt strongly about Scotland and deeply attached to her Scottish family. But being in London during the Blitz, as a young boy I saw her change. She also developed a deep-rooted sense of loyalty to that part of England in which she was living—London and the south-east—which would never change. She went to her grave committed to the people of the south-east of England. But that was not to deny her Scottish origins. It was to build on them and to enjoy the change of which she was a part.

Perhaps I might add that my wife’s story has Wales, England and France in it, which again is an illustration of this complexity. I always say that her grandfather was one of the Welsh who came to England to educate the English. In the 12th century, the north-west corner of England in which we live was part of the kingdom of Strathclyde. The Vikings and the Welsh tribes had more or less colonised that part of England. It was so difficult, resistant, obstinate and wild that the Normans got fed up with it and ceded it to the kingdom of Strathclyde for a while before it was taken back. Those are only glimpses of the complex story of the United Kingdom but it is just as well to remember the human dimensions that are there.

For myself—the House has heard me say this in one context or another on many occasions—the starting point of political reality is that we are locked totally into an international community. From the moment we are born our destiny is that of an international community. We as a generation of politicians, whoever we are and whatever our convictions, will be judged by the success we make of that international reality. Any temptation to deny it is leading the British people badly astray. We have to make a success of that international reality.

However, when I was serving on the Commission on Global Governance, which was chaired by the former Swedish Prime Minister and Sonny Ramphal, the former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, I came to a mind change in my own attitude. As an internationalist, I suppose I had been a bit intolerant and insistent that we had to build the international institutions that were going to make a success—I am a bit dogmatic about this—of our future. It was a very interesting commission in which to work with people from all over the world and I came to realise that we, in a sense, were part of the problem because in the age of globalisation and impersonal technology, there was a real crisis among people in the world about their sense of dignity and identity, and of their importance as individuals. All those remote systems were making it worse.

I became convinced that we had to generate a political reality in which we recognised the importance of identity that then went on with leadership to say, “We can’t possibly run the world on a base of a lot of separate identities. We have to have effective co-operation to make a success of our approach to this international reality”. I think that we could take a look at the United Kingdom in that context and I am glad that there have been references in this debate to the possibility of a federal United Kingdom. I wish that that had been much more thoroughly examined and I hope that it would be one of the things that would be looked at very closely by any convention that was established.

Of course, there are all sorts of issues, including the disparity in size between Scotland and England. But I sometimes wonder whether we would not in the end have a much stronger United Kingdom if it was a federal United Kingdom, rather than one that was simply being imposed. That brings me to the decision on the form of the ballot in Scotland. I am sorry to introduce a word of dissent but I am not sure that I am very relaxed about this yes-no approach. We will get a result but will we get a settlement? Even if there is a significant majority against independence in Scotland, there will still be a significant minority who are not reconciled to this prospect. It seems to me that it would have been wiser to include that third question, which was, “Or would you prefer more authority and a stronger place for Scotland within the United Kingdom as a whole?”. At least there is an issue to be examined again by a possible convention.

I would only say this about Scotland, but I can give another dimension to this complex reality. One story that I was brought up with in the Scottish part of my family was about the businessman in Scotland who had been building up his business and had various problems to resolve. He had taken them to St Andrews House and had success but, finally, there was a problem that he simply had to take to London. When he came back, his family all gathered round him, feeling rather anxious about how he had got on there. He said that it was fine. They asked him, “But how did you get on with all those Sassenachs?” He looked at them rather puzzled and said, “Sassenachs? I didn’t meet any Sassenachs—I only met the heads of department”.

That reality was reinforced for me as a young Member of Parliament in my first PPS job at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government for England and Wales. At our weekly meeting between senior officials and Ministers, there, towering in the room, was a great rugby-playing Scot who was, in fact, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry. We have a very complex story to tell.

I say to my friends in Scotland that they should not, in considering their own future, believe for a moment that everything will be resolved with the issue of independence or no independence. They should look at the fraught, divisive, warring history of Scotland—and still there are all the issues of the borders, the central belt, the east coast and the highlands and islands, which all have very strong identities of their own. They are not all happy to be dominated by any one particular part of Scotland, which might be concentrated in the centre. So there will be challenges ahead.

I conclude by repeating what I said earlier. I do not want to overegg it but I believe that our approach to constitutional reform in the United Kingdom in recent years has been a disaster and will be seen as such in history. What the hell were we trying to do, where were we trying to go and how were these pieces meant to strengthen and underpin our ultimate objective? We need to get that ultimate objective very clear.