European Court of Human Rights
Lord Lansley Excerpts(6 months ago)
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Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, we are discussing the Human Rights Act and the convention at the moment, and I am not able to comment any further on collective responsibility.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest in that John Howell was my Parliamentary Private Secretary and remains a good friend. Does my noble and learned friend agree that his nomination is a manifestation of the Government’s continuing commitment to the convention and, indeed, to the principles that it enshrines?
Independent Review of Administrative Law Update
Lord Lansley Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, with respect to the noble and learned Lord, we are not seeking to limit the remedies at all. On the contrary: one of the things we are consulting on is whether we should expand the remedies available to the court so that it has more tools in its toolbox that it can use in appropriate cases.
Of course, I understand the noble and learned Lord’s point about the Coronavirus Act. It is important to recognise that, in those contexts, the level of scrutiny that was able to be afforded by Parliament was perhaps different from what it would normally be but, in consulting on these matters, it is no part of this Government’s intention to limit the scope of judicial review. We are trying to make sure that judicial review is appropriately focused for the particular purposes for which it is used. We are consulting on expanding the remedies available, not contracting them.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I approach this from the standpoint of a parliamentarian, not a lawyer. I observed with some surprise that Parliament did not feature in the review’s terms of reference, so I welcomed the central role for Parliament in the panel’s recommended approach to the questions asked of it. Does my noble friend therefore subscribe to the view expressed by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, in her submission to the review:
“If Parliament does not like what a court has decided, it can change the law”?
To be preferred even more is that Parliament should be crystal clear in both its terms and purposes about what it wishes the law to be, thereby restricting the scope for judicial review to the conventional purposes of failures of process or abuse. Does my noble friend also share the reservation expressed by the panel about the excessive use of framework legislation, which leaves too much to statutory instruments to set out? The result of that is that the Executive and the judiciary engage in trying to determine what Parliament intended. Will the Government avoid seeking to make the regulations proof against judicial review, and instead put more effort into securing clarity and certainty in primary legislation?
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
My Lords, I agree entirely with my noble friend that Parliament is sovereign. Its role is central and sovereign when we are considering questions around judicial review—I hope that the Government’s response to the panel’s recommendations reflects that. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, is of course correct that Parliament can act to reverse any judgment, but I also agree with the panel that it should do that only with great care.
I also agree with my noble friend that Parliament should legislate in terms which are as clear as possible. The corollary of that is that the courts ought to respect Parliament’s obvious intent. I repeat the points I made earlier about ouster clauses in that context.
As for legislation, the factors in play when drafting legislation are many. It is not always easy to decide whether something should be in primary or in secondary legislation, but I certainly agree with my noble friend that clear and unambiguous wording, particularly with regard to the extent of delegated powers, is something to be aimed at.
European Union Referendum Bill
Lord Lansley Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, I wonder if I could set out on a very brief quest which I fear most of your Lordships will regard as hopeless. That quest is to prick the conscience of Liberal Democrat Members of your Lordships’ House if they are thinking of supporting this amendment and thus voting it through. I do so by reminding them of their policy before the last election of appointing Peers to your Lordships’ House in accordance with the votes cast in the previous general election. I take the opportunity of reminding the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and his colleagues that the percentage of their votes in the last general election was 7.9% of the votes cast. That would give them 43 Peers in this House whereas at the moment they have 112—69 more Peers than they ought to.
We have heard much from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and Liberal Democrat Peers about democratic legitimacy and all the rest of it, but I recall our debate on 15 September about the future of your Lordships’ House. I have to say to the Liberal Democrat Peers that if they are thinking of using their hugely unconstitutional and undemocratic position in this House to vote the amendment through, I remind them that the Bill has already been through the House of Commons and has the approval of that House.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, with Labour and with others that we need a constitutional convention to restore our democracy because not only is the position of the Liberal Democrat party in your Lordships’ House absurd but so is that of the Labour Party—and indeed that of the Government in the House of Commons, where the Government of the day, the Conservative Party, got a mere 24% of the electorate, 37% of the votes cast, yet that gave them 330 seats and an outright majority. I am sure that your Lordships would be disappointed if I did not compare that performance to the UKIP result in the House of Commons, where we got a big percentage of the electorate—one-third of the electorate of the Government of the day, 12.6% of the votes cast—but that gave us just one Member of Parliament. Still, I do not want to labour that point now. I simply say to the Liberal Democrats: are they wise if they are going to use this position to vote through the amendment? Otherwise, I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Forsyth, who say that this is a transparent attempt to rig the referendum in favour of those who may wish to stay in the EU. As for the amendment itself, I oppose it and I hope it fails.
Noble Lords
Lord Lansley
I will be brief, not least because I agreed with much of what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. That might surprise some of my noble friends. I cannot agree that it is right to argue that the giving of access to rights and civic rights to young people is analogous to the age at which we protect them from harm and abuse. They are different things, and the noble Lord, Lord Blair, was quite right in making the point that he did. We should not construct this vote, on this issue, on this Bill as determining or seeking to determine the franchise for general elections.
My personal view has been for some time that 16 and 17 year-olds should be able to vote in local government elections but not yet in general elections. I think that what this comes down to—and I have not yet heard this point expressed—is that this is not just a singular election, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said by reference to the Prime Minister’s view about the singular nature of the referendum as an occasion upon which votes are taking place, but it is singular in terms of its impact on those young people. Of course that would be true for younger people, but we have to make a judgment where we can. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, was right to say that we know from recent experience in Scotland that we have young people who are well equipped to take a decision on an issue of this kind in a debate of this kind, so in my view we should support them in doing that.
The singular nature of this is that these 16 and 17 year-olds of whom we are speaking will be able to vote at the next general election—but at the next general election they will not be able to change the outcome of the referendum. So often in the past, one of the reasons that has been adduced for not extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds is that, “You will access your civic rights and will have your chance to vote, and at subsequent general elections you will have the chance to change the Government if you don’t like it”. On this referendum they will not have that subsequent chance. If they do not like it, I am afraid they are stuck with it. In the course of what I hope will be next year’s extensive debate about the future of the country in which they have to live, I, for one, would not want to argue to 16 and 17 year-olds that they should not participate in that election.