Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Lester of Herne Hill Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, that is very kind of the noble Lord; I apologise for not being in my place. I shall speak to my Amendment 211. In doing so, I declare my interest as a patron of the British Liver Trust and several other charities related to health issues that arise from alcohol abuse. In particular, as I said earlier, I declare my membership of the House’s Select Committee on the Licensing Act 2003. One of the questions that we have posed in our call for evidence is:

“Are the existing four licensing objectives the right ones for licensing authorities to promote? Should the protection of health and wellbeing be an additional objective?”.

We have received a lot of evidence on this and continue to do so in the oral hearings that we are currently running, and I do not want to trespass much on the committee’s continuing review.

I know it could be argued in light of what happened in the debate relating to the previous amendments that maybe this should be left until the committee’s deliberations come out. Alternatively, the Government might argue that as Scotland already has a fifth objective relating to health and well-being, we might wait and see what develops with the Scottish position. However, given that I have seen the Government decide that they can put an amendment through and then stay their hand until such time as they receive the report from us, I think I am perfectly in order to move this amendment today and, I hope, persuade them that there is a case for it to be adopted. Maybe then we could wait until spring to see what comes out of the Select Committee’s review; and if the recommendation in its report is in accord with what I am putting before the House we could then implement it.

There are more pressing reasons why this needs addressing, even more than the earlier amendment about the conduct of affairs relating to alcohol at night. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, enumerated this morning a range of the problems that we continue to have with alcohol. However, the second and more pressing issue is that the topic on which this amendment has been brought forward is not a new one; I brought forward a Private Member’s Bill on it about two years ago, supported by the Local Government Association. We can go back quite some time to 2010, when the then Government were looking at the difficulties that had arisen then. They had recognised a problem with the 2003 Act. They then consulted on the addition of a specific prevention of health harm objective in the 2010 Rebalancing the Licensing Act consultation. Some 38% of the respondents were supportive, 37%—primarily the drinks industry—were against, and 25% were neutral. The Government decided not to legislate at the time but did not really explain why. They simply stated that they saw,

“merit in the proposal to make the prevention of health harm a material consideration in the Licensing Act 2003. We … will consider the best way to do so in the future”.

So we have been at this now since around 2010.

The reason why this is now becoming more imperative is that as time has gone by, while I concede that in many respects we are getting evidence that the 2003 Act has worked quite well in certain areas—we have seen less alcohol being drunk than was the case in 2003, though whether that is related directly to the Act is questionable, and there are fewer violent incidents and less crime associated with alcohol than perhaps was the case originally—on the other side of the coin we have seen a dramatic increase in the deleterious effects of alcohol on the health of the nation. We saw about 400,000 people being admitted to hospital in 2003 with health difficulties related to alcohol but the figure is now in the order of 1.2 million and is getting worse. The charity I am associated with, the British Liver Trust, is seeing an increasing number of people dying from liver disease, mostly associated with alcohol consumption and abuse, with increasingly a number of younger people being affected in that way. We now have 9 million adults drinking at levels that increase the risk of harm to their health, while 1.6 million adults show signs of full alcohol dependency. Alcohol is now the third biggest risk factor for illness and death.

I am speaking entirely personally here, not representing anything of the Select Committee’s view, but I believe that in many respects the 2003 Act is now out of date. It was designed in 2003 primarily to deal with the on trade, relating to pubs, clubs and fixed premises, where people in the 1990s and at the turn of the century drank. However, we have seen a complete shift over the last 10 or 12 years in the growth of the number of licences being granted—almost like confetti, in my view—to supermarkets, mini markets, small shops and even petrol stations. Almost everywhere you go now, you will find alcohol on sale. In a sense, alcohol has become an ordinary commodity. In supermarkets it is being sold no differently from soap powder or a tin of beans. It has become normalised in our community and has changed the culture. This needs to be examined to see whether it is moving in the right direction, in the same way as I argued earlier when noble Lords proceeded to pass the legislation regarding “will do” on introducing powdered alcohol into the community. Anything goes, we move towards liberalisation, and it gets worse in health terms.

In my opinion, the 2003 Act does not adequately deal with what is happening on the off side of the licensing trade. We now see big developments taking place online that were never envisaged when this legislation was laid before us. Amazon has a most amazing array of products. Noble Lords who like drinking a lot and cheaply should go on Amazon and see just what is on offer to them. It can be delivered in hours on any day of the week, any week of the year. It is available very cheaply right through the year. Before long, no doubt, we will have Uber doing similar deliveries as quickly as possible. In no way is that touched by the Licensing Act; it is a different world entirely.

People will argue that you cannot do anything with the existing Licensing Act because it relates solely to premises—“What does that have to do with health?”, “How do you prove it is damaging health?”, and so on. In my view, there are changes ahead. Most of the major supermarkets, apart I think from Morrisons, have plans to increase the number of convenience or metro mini markets around the country, moving away from big premises to smaller ones. They have plans to extend these around the country and I am certain, sure as night follows day, that they will all have a licence to sell alcohol. If we go in there and queue to pay at the till, we will find that alcohol is piled up to the ceiling all around us, not just in our full view but in the view of children. This is changing an attitude generally so that the commodity of alcohol is normalised and just becomes part of our way of life, but it is damaging health and we are doing nothing about it.

There is an opportunity, I believe, if we are prepared to consider what I am putting before us, to explore ways in which we could at least start to pull it back a little bit. That does not mean to say that we stop issuing licences, but we should attach conditions to those licences that would stop alcohol being sold at the front of the supermarket in everybody’s face. Asda managers have tried to do it voluntarily, but when they saw that their competitors were not doing it, they said, “Well, why the hell should we bother?”, and they went back to putting it at the front. The voluntary approach is not working.

We now have demands from the police, from the police commissioners, from the health authorities, from the BMA and from almost anybody you can mention who has an interest in the health side that a change is needed. It should not be attached solely to the way in which we have run the Act up to now based on the premise that we should look to do something on a cumulative basis. If there are far too many people selling alcohol in a particular area, there should not be further licences; or if further licences are given, there should be more stringent conditions that would be related to the changes in the health of the area affected. They are doing it in Scotland and they are making progress; it is high time that the UK should do the same.

Sarah Wollaston, the chair of the Health Select Committee in the Commons, is in full agreement on this, and wanted to table amendments herself for this change, so there is some good support in the Commons for it. If the wording is wrong, I offer the Minister my willingness to talk about a change in the wording to a form that would be more acceptable. If the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is responding, I make a further suggestion, particularly because she comes from Manchester. That city will be the first test-bed area, where it will not only be responsible for health and care and well-being but have total control over its funding. I suggest we consider whether, in conjunction with Manchester, we might run an experiment in the north-west to see what we can do. Manchester would be up for it, and all the responsible bodies would welcome it. Accordingly, I would be happy to consider drafting an amendment to the Bill. We could then review the provision after, perhaps, two years.

I am open to a conversation on this, but we must do something. We cannot just leave it as it is, making all the excuses under the sun, saying that it is too difficult, and listening to the drinks industry—which, understandably, says, “We can’t do it; we shouldn’t do it; we don’t want to go near it”. For the sake of the health of the nation, and for the sake of the harmed, cash-strapped National Health Service, which has great problems ahead of it, alcohol is one of the major problems that we have to tackle. We should do it forthwith, without delay.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, during the Second World War, Archbishop William Temple once said:

“Whenever I travel on the underground I always intend to buy a ticket, but the fact that there is a ticket collector at the other end just clinches it”.

The reason why I strongly support Amendment 210, moved so powerfully already, is that it just clinches something that ought not to need an amendment of that kind. What it clinches is the need for licensing authorities to perform their duty by complying with the terms of the Equality Act 2010.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, when she was deputy chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission, and the noble Lord, Lord Low, with regard to the Disability Rights Commission, will both remember how those two commissions carried out strategic law enforcement functions effectively. The problem at present is that the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has far too broad a mandate, especially in terms of human rights—it lacks needed resources and having priorities determined—is not carrying out the kind of duty in the way that was done by the previous equality bodies. It is not giving effective, strategic law enforcement. Therefore, there is no use relying on the admirable Equality Act 2010 by itself if it is not going to be translated into practical action.

Public Bodies: Israel Boycotts

Lord Lester of Herne Hill Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My Lords—

Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [HL]

Lord Lester of Herne Hill Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the Minister and others on this issue. I have had a letter from the Comptroller and Auditor-General, who clearly says that the Government listened to many of the concerns at Second Reading and that the threat to his role as Parliament’s auditor has been reduced. That aspect is very important.

The power of veto was one of the first things on which people came to their senses. It was explained to me that the Bank would publish its view when it refused the NAO, to which I said, “Well, it means that it would go before the Treasury Committee, and the NAO would probably go before the Public Accounts Committee”. If the Treasury Committee and the Public Accounts Committee felt that that was not very good, they would probably have a Joint Committee. I think they thought that it was the best idea to drop the power of veto, which was a good outcome.

I accept that the Bank of England’s independence is essential, particularly in the former role I had as chair of the Treasury Committee. That was very important, particularly during the financial crisis. But the democratic accountability element is important. I see this memorandum of understanding not as something set in stone but as something that can adapt to time as we go along. The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, made a point about whether it would be public. I am sure that it has to be public if there is to be credibility. If there is no intention to have it be public, that would be a backwards step on that issue. If it is not going to be public, the Treasury Committee and the Public Accounts Committee need to have sight of this as it goes along. Let us hope that we do not have that second aspect and that the memorandum of understanding is a public document. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, it should be here before we finish the passage of the Bill.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I have not taken any previous part in the debates on this Bill. I intervene only to explain why I fully support these amendments and the Minister’s statement. Many years ago I represented clients in the Crown Agents inquiry, which was concerned with how millions of pounds came to be lost in an unwise investment in Australia. The Bank of England’s role in that inquiry was important. It turned out that there was no legal adviser within the Bank at all. It seemed to me and many that the amateur system that then prevailed was quite bizarre. I very much welcome the fact that this Bill moves the Bank of England from the dark ages to an enlightened situation.

Parliamentary Privilege (Defamation) Bill [HL]

Lord Lester of Herne Hill Excerpts

Friday 27th June 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords, Section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996 provides that:

“Where the conduct of a person in or in relation to proceedings in Parliament is in issue in defamation proceedings”,

he or she may waive the protection of parliamentary privilege given by Article 9 of the Bill of Rights for the purpose of those proceedings. The purpose of my essentially one-clause Bill is simply to repeal Section 13 of the 1996 Act. I am very pleased that my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern has been able to remain in the Chamber because he will remember, as I do, what happened 14 years ago.

First, I should say what this Bill does not deal with. It does not deal at all with the merits of the Defamation Act, to which my noble friend Lord McNally made such a contribution as Minister. It does not deal with the passionate arguments about press regulations, Hacked Off or any of those matters. It is confined to a very important issue about parliamentary privilege in the context of defamation and nothing more.

If this Bill is read a second time, it may well not have to go any further because the Deregulation Bill that reached this House on Tuesday says in Clause 82—to be read with paragraph 40 in Part 8 of Schedule 20—exactly the same as my Bill. If the Deregulation Bill goes through this House, I will not take the House’s time seeking to push my Bill any further because it will be completely unnecessary.

A bit of background: on 7 May 1996, with my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern on the Woolsack, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffmann, moved an amendment that was addressed to the Neil Hamilton problem. The problem of Neil Hamilton MP was that he sued the Guardian for defamation and a High Court judge decided that parliamentary privilege under Article 9 of the Bill of Rights of 1689 prevented him doing so since it involved questioning proceedings in Parliament outside Parliament. Hamilton did not appeal against that judgment—as I, if I had advised him, would have recommended. Instead, he lobbied for an amendment to be made to the Defamation Bill which had been introduced as a Private Member’s Bill by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffmann.

There was then a strong and well attended debate in which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffmann, made it clear that he was agnostic about his own amendment; he expressed the arguments in favour and against very fairly. Since he was at the time a sitting judge it was obviously a delicate matter. Nor did he reply to the debate. Again, that might have caused some difficulty. Instead, both he and my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern showed their attitude towards the Bill by not voting in the Division called on it. The Bill was carried in this House and the other place and has been on the statute book ever since.

Every commission that has looked at the matter has criticised Section 13 and recommended its repeal. The first example was in the heavyweight 1999 Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, which strongly criticised Section 13. In my Private Member’s Bill in 2010, I sought to do what the Bill is intended to do today. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, indicated in debate on the Bill that the Government were thinking about other matters of reform of parliamentary privilege and, therefore, it was unlikely that they would want Section 13 removed at that stage. Indeed, in their draft Bill and actual Bill, they did not do so. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffmann, said at Second Reading of my Bill:

“I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who piloted that Bill through the House, will agree that Section 13 was hastily put together at the last minute, and that hasty reforms tend to cause trouble”.—[Official Report, 9/7/2010; col. 431.]

That was a fair observation of the position.

On Second Reading of the Defamation Bill, Mr Robert Buckland, Member of Parliament for South Swindon, again criticised the section and urged its removal. At that stage, the Government did not have a firm position. Then there was the report of the 2013 Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege. It, too, reported that Section 13 creates great damage, and the Government agreed in December 2013 that repealing Section 13 would be the wisest course.

In the debate on a Motion to take note of the committee’s report on 20 March 2013, the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, the chairman of the committee, said that he would welcome the repeal of Section 13, the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said that the committee was disturbed by the failure to take action, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, said much the same, and the noble Lord the Leader of the House, Lord Hill of Oareford, said that the Government adhered to the committee’s reservations about Section 13. He continued:

“I understand that my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill … proposes to introduce a Private Member’s Bill to deal … with this small but important change. The Government are in principle supportive of this measure to make that clear, and we look forward to seeing if it can make progress”.—[Official Report, 20/3/13; col 344.]

In the other place, in the debate on the Deregulation Bill, Sir William Cash and other Members from both main parties joined together to say that the section should be got rid of. Thomas Docherty, MP for Dunfermline and West Fife, made a strong speech advocating reform.

Everybody, as far as I am aware, agrees that we should now undo what we did 14 years ago and remove that unconstitutional provision. In the original debate, it was condemned by jurists who are, sadly, no longer with us, such as Lord Simon of Glaisdale and Lord Renton, for constitutional reasons. I submit that it is undesirable for a Member of Parliament or Member of this House to be able to pick and choose on an individual basis whether or not to waive parliamentary privilege according to whether it suits them as claimants or defendants in individual proceedings. No other legislature in the world allows that, and this is a day on which one can at last begin to get rid of it. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

Before the Minister sits down, I will make just two points. First, does he agree that one can never take anything for granted? In other words, we cannot know at this stage what the fate of Schedule 20 will be: therefore, this is a belt and braces approach. Secondly—I think I gave notice of this—can he clarify the Sewel amendment? My Bill says that it applies to the whole of the United Kingdom. The Explanatory Notes to the Deregulation Bill go into the Sewel amendment in various ways. Can he confirm that if the Deregulation Bill goes through in its present form, because this is about parliamentary privilege it will apply to Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as to England and Wales? It is not absolutely clear from the language that that is so; obviously it should be so, but I would be grateful if my noble friend could clarify that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, on the first point, I entirely take the noble Lord’s belt and braces approach—nothing is certain in life apart from death and taxes, and some people are quite good at getting around taxes, too.

On page 146 of the Explanatory Notes, it states very clearly:

“This repeal forms part of the law of England and Wales and Scotland”,

and Northern Ireland, and,

“will come into force at the end of the period of 2 months beginning with the day on which the Bill becomes an Act”.

I hope that that provides the reassurance that the noble Lord looks for.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

I am very grateful to the Minister and to all noble Lords and noble and learned Lords who have spoken. Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, I thought that what he was saying sounded like Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies. It certainly reminded me of a great deal that I had forgotten about those events. It would not be conducive to an entirely harmonious situation were I to add to the noble Lord’s description as I could. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said at the time that the Government were neutral about the amendment; those were his words. All I can say is that it was a strange form of neutrality, and seemed so to me at the time. I thought that it was inappropriate for a serving senior judge to have moved the amendment—and I have said so in the past. However, having said all that, I do not think that there is any point now in doing much about what happened then.

The noble Lord, Lord McNally, has criticised me for my lack of arithmetic, because that happened not 14 years but 18 years ago—and he said that I would be hopeless in the Treasury, which is probably true.

I thank everybody. I hope that the Bill will be read a second time.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Poland: Restitution of Property

Lord Lester of Herne Hill Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not sure how far back the noble Lord wishes to take that. I remember being taken around Prague Castle in 1993 and shown the empty spaces on the walls where the pictures that the Swedish army had taken away in 1643 had been. As we know, the issue of cultural property, particularly that of the 20th century, is actively being pursued. A number of museums are extremely hesitant about this, and there was an interesting article in one of last weekend’s supplements about this. We are engaged in the whole issue of cultural property and restitution but, as the noble Lord knows from a number of current cases in New York, this can sometimes raise immensely complicated questions.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

Is the Minister aware that at least one case on this very issue is already pending before the European Court of Human Rights, and it would therefore be completely inappropriate for the United Kingdom, during its presidency, to take up this issue? Is it right that British Government received £5.4 million under the indemnity agreement made after the Second World War to cover the international legal aspect; that under the Polish law of 1997 Jewish religious communities in Poland can file applications before a regulatory commission on Jewish religious communities; and that 5,500-odd applications have been received?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am aware that the issues of restitution of communal property are in some ways rather different from restitution of individual property. I stand to be informed by the noble Lord on the case before the European Court of Human Rights, and he is of course correct to say that we are, in a sense, in the second round on the issue of restitution. There was a first round in the years immediately after the Second World War. The second round began with the end of the Cold War and the whole set of issues that then opened up regarding restitution from post-Communist Governments.