Taking Control of Goods (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, even before I thank the Minister, I owe the noble Lord, Lord Low, an apology. The Minister shot up rather quickly after the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, but I think the noble Lord, Lord Low, was planning to speak. I should have stood up and said something, and I apologise that I failed to do that.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

I am happy.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord.

I thank the Minister for his response. I will make just a few tiny points. The Minister made quite a play on how not all debtors have overpaid the VAT sum or equivalent. In fact, 95% of debtors have been in this position and have been improperly overcharged, so we have to bear in mind that the vast majority of debtors are in this position.

The Minister indicated that of course creditors can be in great poverty. I point out to the Minister and your Lordships that we know that the vast majority of these cases involve utility companies and local authorities, not your little man with thruppence ha’penny in his pocket. So I do not think we can buy that one.

I am glad that the Minister accepted—I think—that the ministry should have acted earlier. Most importantly, I thank him for saying that the Government will be keeping an eye on the legislative process. That is our one bit of assurance. I, like others, thank Just very much indeed for pursuing this issue on behalf of these very vulnerable people. We have to rely on the courts to make a sensible decision; let us see how they go.

I thank the Minister but also very much thank noble Lords who have stayed around for an inordinately long time, waiting for this debate. I beg leave to withdraw my regret Motion.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, in the six years since assisted dying was last debated in Parliament, lawmakers around the world, including in five Australian states and New Zealand, have recognised that banning assisted dying is both dangerous and cruel. In jurisdictions such as Victoria in Australia, parliamentarians have worked with disability rights campaigners to craft laws that work for all citizens, balancing choice and protection for vulnerable people. We can and should do the same here. A polarised debate will achieve neither choice for dying people nor protection for the vulnerable.

There is a strong moral and ethical case for supporting the Bill, but there is also a logical one. Opposing assisted dying because of speculative concerns about how safe or unsafe it might be is hypocritical when we look at the lack of protections around current end-of-life choices. We are told that the licensing of assisted dying is a particular threat to disabled people, but there is far more potential for abuse and harm towards disabled people under current arrangements than there would be a under a robust assisted dying law—for example, through outsourcing the problem to Dignitas, or doctors making end-of-life decisions without robust safeguards, transparency or oversight.

As a disabled person, I would personally feel greatly reassured to know that, should I be diagnosed with a terminal illness, I would be able to consider the option of an assisted death. This knowledge would increase my peace of mind—and this is surely something we would all want. A recent survey of 140 disability rights organisations in the UK indicated that only 4% explicitly opposed assisted dying laws. Polling has shown that 86% of people living with a disability support assisted dying as a choice for terminally ill people. It is therefore wrong to oppose assisted dying laws on the ground that people with disabilities and disability rights organisations oppose them. Not only is this incorrect, but it fails to take seriously the full range of opinion among disabled people across society.

EU Referendum and EU Reform (EUC Report)

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, as I listened to the wonderful speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Jay, Lord Cormack and Lord Bilimoria—picking just three out of what could have been a much larger number; I could certainly have included the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, which we have just heard—I found myself lamenting with a sinking feeling the fact that we did not hear more of them on the airwaves than Messrs Johnson and Gove and the other mendacious purveyors of snake oil, to whom we are so relentlessly subjected.

We should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and his committee for making clear, particularly in their report on the process of withdrawing from the EU, a number of things that will be of pressing concern if the British people vote to leave the European Union. However, while the noble Lord’s committee has done us a signal service in helping to get to the bottom of these questions, I hope that they will remain purely academic, because I hope that the British people will not vote to withdraw from the European Union.

I say that as a disabled person because it is clear to me that disabled people will get a much better deal by remaining within the European Union. I therefore propose to come at this from a slightly different—I hope not too self-regarding—angle. In so far as it is self-regarding, I declare my interest as a disabled person, but I venture to think that what I say about the situation of disabled people could be said, mutatis mutandis, about numerous other specialised constituencies.

As president of the European Blind Union between 2003 and 2011, I was involved in advocating for disabled people’s rights at a European level. On the basis of that experience, I would argue that we were able to achieve a great deal for disabled people using EU mechanisms that we could not achieve at a national level. I said something about this in the debate on the humble Address three weeks ago, but I am even clearer about it now, having attended a seminar last week where disabled people considered whether they would be better off in or out of the EU. They were in no doubt that they would be better off in.

I could illustrate that by reference to a number of areas where the EU has competence to legislate, but I will limit myself to the single market, where disabled people probably have most to gain from remaining within the EU, and will take as examples just three pieces of legislation or proposed legislation.

In 2014, disabled people successfully influenced the revision of the EU’s public procurement directive. Accessibility is now a mandatory criterion for all public tenders above a certain financial threshold. According to the European Commission, public procurement accounts for 14% of the EU’s GDP. At home, according to a 2015 House of Commons briefing paper, in 2013-14 the UK public sector spent a total of £242 billion on the procurement of goods and services—33% of public sector spending. In sectors such as energy, transport, waste management, social protection and the provision of health and education services, public authorities are the main buyers, so public procurement regulations offer a substantial lever to improve accessibility and bring about change, just as they did in the United States many years ago.

Turning to accessibility of the world wide web, despite initial strong resistance from national Governments, we are now on course to have a European directive that will ensure the accessibility of all public sector bodies’ websites. It will cover their mobile applications and include an enforcement mechanism. This will ensure that disabled citizens can access e-government services right across Europe. In conjunction with the previously mentioned new rules on public procurement, this directive should ultimately ensure that industry delivers digital solutions that are accessible to all. We already have European standards for accessible information and communications technology—ICT—but technology is moving very fast in this area and it is good to have this new legislation to ensure that disabled people are able to keep up.

Finally, on accessibility of goods and services, the European Commission has now tabled a proposal for a directive that would harmonise accessibility requirements across the EU on a wide range of goods and services, including smartphones, computers, ticket machines, ATMs, retailers’ websites, banking, e-books and associated hardware, such as Amazon’s Kindle, as well as audio-visual media services and related equipment. Travel-related information is also included. Items not complying with the standards will not be able to be brought to market.

In the UK, neither the Disability Discrimination Act nor the Equality Act applies to manufacturers and manufactured goods. At first sight this is unfortunate, because that is where many accessibility barriers are built into the things that we need to use to live independently, to keep in touch with friends and family and generally to be part of the world in the same way as everybody else. But what initially looks like a major defect in disability legislation may ultimately be for the best. A harmonised market of 500 million EU consumers is far more attractive to industry than the much smaller UK market, and a common set of accessibility standards will drive innovation and encourage investment. This proposal does not include everything that one would want—it does not include white goods such as washing machines or microwaves—but it does provide a very good basis for legislative change.

Disabled people in the UK and across Europe have much to gain from the proposal for a European Accessibility Act, which is probably the most important piece of disability legislation yet to come out of Europe. In the debate on the humble Address, I spoke of one’s general philosophical orientation being more important than what the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, who will be speaking after me, more aptly termed “bean counting”. What I omitted to say was that, whereas the UK is often spoken of as punching above its weight, I have absolutely no doubt that, if we were to withdraw from the European Union, we would soon find ourselves punching well below our weight.

Legal Aid

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, with whom I so often find myself in accord. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for securing this debate. The legal aid landscape is in such flux these days that it is important for Parliament to keep on top of it. I apologise to the noble Lord and to the House that I arrived so late for his opening speech. On the way here, I am afraid I dropped my BrailleNote on the floor and could not get it to start again. It is only thanks to the doorkeepers and staff of the House, who, with great resourcefulness, managed to connect it to the mains, that I have anything at all to say to your Lordships this afternoon.

I first came into contact with the legal aid system some 50 years ago when I was doing a PhD—sadly, still unfinished to this day—on legal aid in criminal cases. To that extent, I suppose I am one of those people whom JK Galbraith described as having built a successful career on their unpublished works. Fifty years later I was brought into contact with the legal aid system again—although things are very different now—when I was asked by the Legal Action Group, with funding from a number of charitable trusts and foundations, led by the Baring Foundation, to chair a commission on the future of advice and legal support on social welfare law in the wake of the cuts to legal aid introduced by the LASPO Act.

When I saw who else was on the commission, I said I did not think I had sufficient expertise to be there at all, to which they said, “That’s why we thought you’d make the ideal chair”. As regards the name, we went for something completely boring and bureaucratic—the Low commission—because all the other names seemed too close to campaigns against the LASPO Bill. Some people thought it was a misprint for the Law Commission, and the Guardian even got hold of the idea that it was the Low Pay Commission, presumably thinking it had something to do with barristers’ remuneration. It was intended to be just a one-year inquiry but the charities were so pleased with our work that they kept funding us to do more. We have now produced three reports but we will probably be drawing things to a close next March.

We saw advice and legal support as a continuum, including public legal education; informal and formal information and general advice, often provided by local authorities; specialist advice; legal help; and legal representation. However, in a situation where we have to accept that there will be less money for legal help and representation, it seemed clear to us that the advice end of the spectrum was going to need to take more of the strain. That is why we have been focusing more, of late, on what needs to be done to strengthen local advice services.

We argued for a national advice strategy, supporting local advice and legal support plans, produced by local authorities with the local not-for-profit sector and commercial advice agencies. I am happy to say that there seems to be an appetite for this on the part of government and a recognition of the contribution the advice sector makes to society. The Minister has always been very supportive. I remember that, at one Question Time, he even commended the Liberal Democrats’ endorsement of this approach in their election manifesto.

Money is not really the issue. There is no shortage of potential funding streams—Help Through Crisis, Reaching Communities, Building Better Opportunities, the Local Sustainability Fund, Commissioning Better Outcomes, the Social Outcomes Fund and the Troubled Families programme. What is needed is co-ordination of these funding streams, with provision for advice services as a central strategic theme.

There is one other matter I want to raise because of the impact it has had on access to justice. There has been a massive hike in fees for taking a case to an employment tribunal. From nothing at all in August 2013, the issue fee can now be £250 and the hearing fee as much as £950 in more complex cases. These may include discrimination, equal pay and unfair dismissal claims. For claims to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, the issue fee is £400 and the hearing fee £1,200. It has been said that the remission system operating in the civil courts, under which fees can be waived if a party cannot afford to pay, is to be extended to employment tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal. However that may be, since the introduction of fees, the volume of employment tribunal claims has plummeted. Between October 2013 and September 2014, single claims brought by individuals were 64% down on the previous 12 months. Multiple claims were down by 67%. Even if one accepts that the imposition of fees flushed out some unmeritorious cases, it is clearly having a very negative impact on access to justice.

The Government’s recent decision to abandon the criminal courts charge is extremely welcome. Can the Minister say if the Government are minded to row back on the system of fees which has obviously had such a deleterious impact on access to employment tribunals?

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Friday 16th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

Of course the Bill is about assisted suicide, but equally obviously, it is expressly confined to the suicide of those who are already terminally ill—those who are therefore already actually in the process of dying; that is, dying in an altogether more meaningful sense than when one says that everybody is born to die and we are all dying. That is perfectly plain already in the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, but at the end of the day, for my part, I am entirely relaxed about this group of amendments. I urge that the House proceeds speedily to the critical issues on which the Bill should stand or fall, so that the public will in all this can be given effect. The public will not give a fig what Title is given to it.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, just said. We need to recognise that the amendments are not really about clarity but about conferring on the Bill the stigma which traditionally attaches to suicide. The use of the term suicide breaches the Samaritans’ guidance on language, which states that:

“Inappropriate or careless use of language can perpetuate stigma or sensationalise a death”.

The term suicide is inappropriate when discussing the rational choice of a mentally competent terminally ill patient who is seeking a peaceful and dignified death. The American Psychological Association has stated that:

“It is important to remember that the reasoning on which a terminally ill person [whose judgments are not impaired by mental disorders] bases a decision to end his or her life is fundamentally different from the reasoning a clinically depressed person uses to justify suicide”.

The amendments add nothing to what the debate should be about and distract us from discussing the mechanics of the process, which I think we should get on with.

The Bill would legalise the provision of assistance to a dying competent adult to control the time and manner of their death when that death is imminent and unavoidable. It would not legalise assistance with suicide for those who are not terminally ill, and I think that we should leave the Bill as it stands.

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Low, but I do so for the following reason. I have previously declared my interest as chairman of Hospice UK, the umbrella organisation for hospices in this country. The hospice movement has no collective view on the Bill, so inevitably I speak for myself, not for the hospice movement, but I know that the point that I am about to make is widely shared within that movement. To put the matter at its lowest, if the Bill becomes law, the challenges which the hospice movement and the people who work in it will face will be much more complicated. It is therefore essential that clarity is achieved.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in his characteristically powerful speech, said to your Lordships that anyone who reads Clause 1 can be in no doubt about what it means, and he read out Clause 1. That would be a very persuasive argument in a court of law, but I fear that most people who will be faced with the terrible decision which the Bill will legalise will not have read Clause 1. That argument does not advance the issues before your Lordships on the amendments. I believe that clarity is essential, and can best be achieved by agreeing the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I wish to make three brief points. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, has told us that disabled people are worried that disability will be equated with terminal illness and that they will be made the subject of “do not resuscitate” notices—indeed, that this happens or, at least, has happened in particular cases. Like all of us, I hugely respect the sincerity of the noble Baroness and appreciate the strength and eloquence of her advocacy, but I genuinely believe that the fears that she has expressed, that this Bill will make the situation worse for disabled people, are misplaced.

I say this for two reasons. First, it is very important that we should be clear that the disabled person has to ask before they can be offered the facilities of this Bill to end their life. Secondly, they need to make an act of conscious choice before they avail themselves of these facilities. With all the safeguards in the Bill, it will actually make the situation of disabled people better.

Thirdly, it is further argued that, in consequence of these fears, disabled people are strongly opposed to this legislation. However, in actual fact, a recent YouGov poll found that 79% of registered disabled people—that is nearly four-fifths, very much in line with the rest of the population—support assisted dying for adults of sound mind with a terminal illness. So, for all these reasons, with the greatest respect, I believe that the arguments that have been advanced on behalf of disabled people are misconceived.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, I feel urged to come in here after the noble Lord, Lord Low, with whom I have worked and whom I have known for many years. We have discussed this subject on numerous occasions, and noble Lords will imagine that we have had some quite heated discussions. I shall add a little bit of information to add clarification. The disability community is made up of people with terminal illnesses. Outside the House today, as noble Lords will know if they have gone out to talk to them, are people sitting in their wheelchairs with terminal conditions saying, “No, this is not about choice—this is not about me asking”. They have often been in situations when they have felt so low that they felt that they had no options; their social care and healthcare was bad and they wanted to die. They could have taken advantage of the Bill proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, because they have a terminal illness. There are at least six people outside these walls today in the freezing cold who have a terminal illness.

There are many people with terminal illnesses in the disability community, and those people have come together to demand that on this Bill we should slow down and think again. They have campaigned for choice and autonomy all their lives, and now they are saying, no, this is not about choice—and we have to listen to them. So please do not tell me that this is not about disabled people. It is very much about us because we are the people with experience of these issues. With the greatest respect, many people who are campaigning for this measure have not experienced these issues. They are people in control of their lives. They are people who fear becoming what they see us as. So I ask, please, that disabled people should be very much a central part of this debate. We have to listen to what they say, even if we do not like what they have to say.

I wish also to make a point of clarification. There seems to be a misunderstanding among noble Lords that I think that terminal illness is about having a chest infection. If I thought that, I would think that I was dying at least three times a year. I am not talking about that. I am talking about life-threatening terminal situations, such as muscle deterioration in the throat, whereby you can no longer eat or drink. That is what I have. Part of the GMC’s guidance on terminal illness concerns that process. I refer also to muscle deterioration within the lungs so that you can no longer breathe. That is terminal. Muscle deterioration around the heart is terminal. COPD is terminal. People with these conditions are part of the disabled community. They are out there—go and talk to them. Answer the letters from disabled people who say that this is not about choice. Ask them why they are saying this. Do not make assumptions about them. This is why I felt that I had to intervene at this point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Low of Dalston]

If people with terminal illnesses do not wish to take advantage of the provisions of this legislation, what is there about it that forces or requires them to do so?

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord’s question is that they fear that they will take advantage of this legislation when they are at their lowest with no choice. The noble Lord, Lord Low, will understand as much as I do about terminal situations where you do not have choices. These people have said that they do not want this Bill because they know that they might take advantage of it.

Legal Aid

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

I am not in a position to comment on the individual case but, in a number of cases, as the noble Lord will know, the legal aid scope remains. In cases of abuse, for example, it was retained. After careful scrutiny of the provisions by this House among others, we have tried to ensure that in all sorts of cases where it is most necessary there will still be legal aid.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Scott of Foscote (CB)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Noble Lords]

Cross Bench! Low!

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, will the Government give serious consideration to making provision for the continuation of the advice services transition fund when it comes to an end next summer? That would surely be a way to ensure cost-effective provision of a basic legal advice service and, if it is to be maintained when the fund comes to an end next summer, provision will need to be made before the election.

[Lord Faulks]

The noble Lord has frequently, before this House and elsewhere, helpfully advanced suggestions for providing legal assistance other than through legal aid. The Government are grateful for those suggestions and they continue to consider the report that he provided.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to find myself speaking after the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope—not for the first time. I am very worried about a particular aspect of the provisions we are considering today; namely, their impact on children. That is thrown into sharp relief by Clause 73, which requires that interveners pay the costs of their intervention in the circumstances outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, save for those which are “exceptional”.

We had a briefing here, which a number of noble Lords may have attended, from a number of children’s organisations representing children and manifesting their concern for the rights of children. The points that they made were extremely powerful, and I am glad to have the opportunity of raising them in this debate.

Following cuts to legal aid, children are increasingly forced to face court proceedings without a lawyer. In these circumstances, litigation brought by charities, NGOs and children’s rights organisations in the public interest is ever more important. Equally, in the new environment where they are increasingly faced by litigants in person, the courts increasingly value the contribution of third-party interveners providing expert advice to assist them on specific points of law and fact, including points on what is in the children’s best interests.

As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, said in a speech that she gave to the Public Law Project conference in October 2013:

“Once a matter is in court, the more important the subject, the more difficult the issues, the more help we need to try and get the right answer … interventions are enormously helpful”.

That is the testimony of a justice of the Supreme Court. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, pointed out, the noble and learned Baroness will not necessarily be deprived of such interventions in the Supreme Court, but I am sure that she was referring also to the value of interventions in lower courts.

Children and young people are disproportionately affected by the legal aid changes. They are often powerless to prevent the circumstances that give rise to the legal problems for which they seek resolution, such as homelessness, and they certainly cannot assert their rights without the help of a lawyer. They are either forced to fend for themselves as litigants in person without the skills to do so, have their problems inappropriately channelled to overstretched and inadequate complaints procedures, or have them go unresolved altogether.

The effect of the proposals about which we are talking today will be to inhibit legitimate challenge, limit judicial discretion to act in the public interest and shield public agencies from effective scrutiny. Despite what the Minister said earlier, it is difficult to escape the feeling that these provisions curtailing the scope of judicial review are animated by a belief that applications for judicial review are somehow vexatious. However, consider the sort of cases that we are talking about—cases where highly vulnerable children and young people seek protection from abuse and exploitation. Those affected include homeless children and young people; children who have been sexually exploited or abused—how salient is that today?—trafficked children; those with mental health problems and learning difficulties; children in care, care leavers and children affected by care proceedings; and young refugees and asylum seekers. The changes we are considering will inevitably have a chilling effect on charities and other organisations that seek to protect children’s rights through court action in the sort of cases I have mentioned. I urge noble Lords to support the amendments, which would negate these provisions, Clause 73 specifically.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, I wish to make a couple of points in addition in support of the amendment. My personal experience in cases has been that third-party interveners in judicial review proceedings perform a vital task in enabling the judicial review court, if it so wishes, to open its windows on to a wider range of considerations. We are not dealing with a dispute between two civil parties. We are dealing, as has been said, with judicial review designed in the public interest to resolve questions of public law. One such case has been implicitly referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—the case in which the High Commissioner for Refugees intervened in a difficult point about the proper construction of the refugee convention read with our other provisions. The court found it extremely valuable and it enabled the court, led by Lord Bingham, to give an authoritative ruling on what were novel issues about the refugee convention.

Another case was from Northern Ireland. One of the strange things about the Bill, which I hope the Minister will deal with in his reply, is that this provision does not apply to Northern Ireland or Scotland. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission had to struggle for some years to have a right of audience at all and to be able to make third-party interventions. Members of the House will remember that a couple of years ago, the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland wanted to commit Peter Hain for scandalising the judiciary by daring in his memoirs to criticise the Northern Ireland High Court judge. The Attorney-General applied to commit for contempt. I was instructed by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission to make a third-party intervention. I like to think that the result of that written submission is what caused the Attorney-General to drop the whole idea, as he did.

Unless I am completely wrong, we are now in the curious position that the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission will be able, with its very limited budget, to be a third-party intervener without this costs effect, whereas the Equality and Human Rights Commission, for example, with its limited budget, will not be in the same position. That seems arbitrary and it will make it harder for our senior judiciary to be helped by third parties, which is the whole object of the third-party intervention.

Another example from the distant past concerned privacy in relation to the disclosure of patients’ medical information in the Court of Appeal. I seem to remember that a third-party intervention in that case was absolutely crucial. It is vital that small NGOs and ordinary citizens who have something to contribute, if the court decides that it wants to hear from them or read their written submissions, should be able to do so without the threat of costs orders being made against them.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Low of Dalston]

55A: After Clause 40, insert the following new Clause—
“Protection arrangements for children and dependants
(1) The Criminal Justice Act 2003 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 174 (duty to give reasons for, and explain effect of, sentence) insert—
“174A  Duty to ask about children etc left behind
(1) Directions must be made in accordance with Part 1 of Schedule 2 to the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 to secure the results referred to in this section.
(2) Immediately after a court has given its decision to pass an immediate custodial sentence on a defendant who was on bail when awaiting sentence, the court must ask whether the defendant has children or elderly, disabled or otherwise vulnerable adults dependent on them for their care (“dependants”), and, if the defendant or any other person in court states that the defendant does have such responsibility, the court must ask what arrangements there are for their care.
(3) If it appears that there are no arrangements in place for any such dependants, the court must either —
(a) allow the defendant to make a telephone call to secure such arrangements, or(b) direct any appropriately skilled person present in the court to make enquiries with the aim of ensuring that such dependants are provided with suitable short-term care to meet their needs;where necessary, this may require contacting the appropriate local authority children’s or adult social care team.”(3) The Bail Act 1976 is amended as follows.
(4) In section 5 (supplementary provisions about decisions on bail), after subsection (5) insert—
“(5A) Directions must be made in accordance with Part 1 of Schedule 2 to the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 to secure the results referred to in subsections (5B) and (5C).
(5B) Immediately after a court gives its decision to withhold bail in criminal proceedings from a person to whom section 4 of this Act applies, the court must ask whether the defendant has children or elderly, disabled or otherwise vulnerable adults dependent on them for their care (“dependants”), and, if the defendant or any other person in court states that the defendant does have such responsibility, the court must ask what arrangements there are for their care while the defendant is on remand in custody.
(5C) If it appears that there are no arrangements in place for any such dependants, the court must either—
(a) allow the defendant to make a telephone call to secure such arrangements, or(b) direct any appropriately skilled person present in the court to make enquiries with the aim of ensuring that such dependants are provided with suitable short-term care to meet their needs;where necessary, this may require contacting the appropriate local authority children’s or adult social care team.”(5) The provisions inserted by this section shall come into force two months after the day on which this Act is passed.”

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I can be quite brief. This amendment arises from a conversation which began at Second Reading when the noble Lord, Lord Blair, and I identified the problem of children and vulnerable adults who are dependent on an adult who is sentenced to a prison sentence being left without support when the offender is sent to prison. It is estimated that some 200,000 children have a parent in prison at any one time, which is nearly three times the number of children in the care system. They are twice as likely as other children to experience behaviour and mental health problems, and three times as likely to go on to commit an offence themselves. Sixty-five per cent of boys with a convicted father will themselves go on to offend. Therefore, there is an obvious need for these people to be picked up and supported, yet there is no official way of identifying them or ensuring that their need for support is taken care of.

Organisations such as Barnardo’s and other members of the Families Left Behind campaign report from their work in prisons that a lack of identification of the children or vulnerable adults dependent on a parent or carer remanded in custody or sentenced to imprisonment often puts the child or vulnerable adult at risk. They have records of cases where children have been left with friends or neighbours as a temporary measure and are then passed on to other friends or associates; cases where children have been left with individuals who misuse drugs and alcohol; cases of children left at school with no one to collect them and with no one contacting the school; and cases of children left with elderly relatives, relatives with disabilities, relatives in distress or relatives living in poverty who have offered to step in to provide emergency care but do not really have the resources to do so.

In the past, the probation service would have stepped in to bridge the gap but, with the probation service progressively becoming more of an offender management and less of a social service, a vacuum has opened up. In 2011, with the support of the NSPCC, Action for Prisoners’ Families and HM Courts and Tribunals Service, Pact published a range of resources aimed at promoting good practice in relation to children and dependent adults whose primary carers had been sent to prison, including guidance asking magistrates to check that there were no immediate welfare needs. Three years on, however, it is clear that many courts are not following this guidance, and there continues to be a lack of awareness of the need to make sure that arrangements are in place for the care of children and dependants of people placed in custody. Accordingly, the Families Left Behind campaign is calling for a statutory duty to be placed on courts to ask an individual, when they are sentenced to prison or held on remand, whether they have any dependants. If they do, steps can then be taken to ensure that appropriate care arrangements are in place.

At Second Reading, the Minister acknowledged the problem and undertook to consider it. I am very grateful to him for the constructive discussions he has made possible and to the members of the Bill team for the positive contribution they have made and for all their help in getting the amendment right. As a result, I am hopeful that we now have an amendment that the Government can broadly support. The Minister felt that a statutory duty might be a bit heavy-handed and suggested that the amendment might be better couched in terms of guidance. Accordingly, the amendment now seeks to achieve its effect through directions, although I note that the word “duty” remains in the heading of the proposed new clause. The Minister may have something to say about that.

The amendment would amend the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and the Bail Act 1976 to put in place a system for courts to establish whether an individual sentenced to prison or held on remand has children or vulnerable adults who are dependent on them and who may need immediate welfare support. The proposal is that, immediately following the decision to send someone to prison, the defendant will be asked by the court whether they have children or vulnerable adults dependent on them and, if so, whether care arrangements are in place. If there are no such arrangements, the defendant will be given the opportunity to make a phone call to family members to inform them about the situation and make the necessary short-term arrangements, such as for collecting a child from school or nursery, or ensuring that they are not left at home alone. If this does not achieve a satisfactory result, the court should direct an appropriately qualified person in the court—for example, probation staff, the defendant’s legal representative, court staff, a voluntary sector organisation or a police liaison officer—to take specific action before the defendant leaves court. Where necessary, this may entail contacting the appropriate local authority children’s or adult social care team.

I hope the amendment may give us a basis for moving ahead consensually on a matter which, once pointed out, has prompted concern across the whole House. I beg to move.

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Low, in this matter and I am grateful to the Minister for the co-operation that he and his office have shown in relation to the amendment.

I declare an interest as the chairman of the Thames Valley Partnership, a criminal justice organisation which, as it says on the tin, is in the Thames Valley. I came across this problem in relation to some of the partnership’s work, as there is at the moment absolutely no statutory requirement for anyone, for instance, to inform a school that a child attending the school has a parent who is now in prison. The failure to do this is also often compounded by the embarrassment of the other parent. She is not going to mention it but the other children in the playground will know who has just had their father sent to prison and the bullying and exclusion start. This relatively short amendment, which imposes the lightest of requirements on the sentencers, fills an obvious lacuna.

I apologise to the House that I was not in attendance for the first 30 seconds of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Low, so I do not know whether he mentioned the fact that the numbers are vast—200,000 children, which is three times the number in care. Obviously, that is not every year in terms of sentences but there is a long-term impact. Some of the work done by the Thames Valley Partnership shows that children increasingly, as they grow older into their teenage years, lose contact with the parent in long-term custody.

I hope the Government will accept the amendment. I understand there are a number of routes we can take between now and Report. Whether this is done through statute or practice direction, I hope that we can close the gap which leaves children vulnerable when some parts of the agencies of the state know what has happened but are not talking to one another.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Faulks]

No, I am saying that I do not think that a statutory duty is the answer.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have spoken in this debate. It bears out my contention that there is concern about this issue across the House. Indeed, that concern is shared by the Government. Like the Minister, I would hope that we are not yet at the end of this discussion and that discussions and work can continue with a view to finding a solution around which we can all unite. We have a bit of time because of the Recess and we will not be coming back to this until Report in the autumn. In particular, I would like to thank the Minister for his meticulous reply, to which I have listened carefully. There are obviously a number of issues that need to be addressed. There was the question that the amendment related purely to after sentence. We put that in because we were concerned about issues of this kind contaminating the sentencing process. However, if the noble Lord feels that that is not an issue, that can certainly be revisited. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, made some useful points about the inadequacy, perhaps, of a telephone call and that in some respects it is important that whatever process we put in place should go further than this amendment. I very much welcome having further discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, about that and seeing whether there are ways in which we can take account of the concerns that he raised.

The most important points came from the Minister about the inappropriateness of trying to achieve what we want to achieve through a practice direction. We thought that, in that way, we were seeking to put in place a more light-touch process than creating a statutory duty, but if that is not appropriate, we can certainly revisit that and avoid trying to do things by statutory practice direction—trying to effect practice directions by referring to them in the amendment.

I would make this point, to which I think the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, also referred. The Minister indicates that we should work through a range of pragmatic steps that can be taken by a variety of bodies and that they might be collected together in guidance, but there is evidence that guidance is not working. There is guidance around but there is still a problem. I continue to feel that there is a need for whatever we put in place to have a statutory basis. Therefore, I would like to continue discussions with the Minister to see whether we can get a statutory basis with which he is happier and which would give what we are all trying to achieve a bit more teeth than the guidance, which is not working, would appear to have. With those remarks and, in the hope that we can do more work over the summer and come back with an agreed result in the autumn, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 55A withdrawn.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I echo the tributes that have been paid to those who have brought this legislation before the House; to those who have written to us, often by hand, with moving and compelling testimony; and to the quality of the debate. The Bill arouses strong passions, but it behoves us to approach it in as dispassionate a manner as we can. The speeches we have heard have largely done that.

There is little doubt that the Bill is wanted. I have had people come up to me in the street, urging me to support it. My postbag has been running 4:1 in favour, closely reflecting the sentiments of the general public. One woman told me her dog had had a better death than her mother; another said her grandmother died under harrowing circumstances, palliative care having proved entirely inadequate.

I want to concentrate on just one area of the debate: the impact on disabled people. It is said that the Bill defines terminal illness in such a way as to encompass large numbers of people with chronic conditions and disabilities, as well as terminal illnesses. However, this is not the case. It is a very narrowly and precisely targeted measure aimed at assisting those who are terminally ill to avoid further suffering by assisting them to take their own life. It does not license voluntary euthanasia by authorising someone to take the life of a person not covered by the Bill. It relates only to someone who is likely to die within six months and is mentally competent in making the request for assistance to die. It would not license assisting someone who is simply disabled, having, say, broken their neck playing rugby or, as in some recent cases, someone who suffers from locked-in syndrome, although there may be some overlap at the margins, it is perfectly possible to distinguish between the disabled and the terminally ill. I am disabled but I am certainly not terminally ill, as is plain for anyone to see.

It is said that the Bill gives carte blanche to anyone who thinks that a disabled person’s life is not worth living, but what is forgotten here is that, all importantly, the disabled person has to ask. Questions of the robustness of safeguards do not arise until that hurdle has been cleared. So the Bill actually protects anyone who does not have a terminal illness and it will give dying adults peace of mind. As the poster says, no more people will die as a result of a change in the law, and not just self-evidently, as the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, says; importantly, I would stress, fewer people will suffer.

The leaders of disabled people say that disabled people are against assisted dying, but that is not borne out by the facts. It is not just particular individuals like me who take a different view; as a YouGov poll recently found, 79% of registered disabled people, very much in line with the rest of the population, support assisted dying for adults of sound mind with a terminal illness.

The argument for assisted dying is fundamentally that it gives people choice and control at the end of life. It is curious that the leaders of disabled people campaign for choice and control in every other aspect of life but balk at it in this one. I wish to speak for the overwhelming majority of disabled people who do not welcome the tendentious advocacy of their self-appointed spokespersons but, rather, wish to see this Bill progress. I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for whom I have the greatest respect, would also want to listen to that majority and not just to the vocal and articulate minority.

Legal Aid: Social Welfare Law

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, that is a little way from social welfare law. Of course we need lawyers to represent those in every section of society in all sorts of fields. The fact remains that there is less for lawyers to do and inevitably there will be fewer lawyers to do it. It is important that the profession maintains high standards but I do not think that I can comment on numbers in particular chambers.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, getting back to social welfare law, the Minister will be aware of the report of the commission, which I had the honour to chair, on the future of advice and legal support on social welfare law. One of the chief recommendations of that report was that the Government should develop a national strategy for advice and legal support in England and that there should be a Minister for advice and legal support within the MoJ with a cross-departmental brief to lead the development of such a strategy. Will the Government give serious consideration to the early implementation of that recommendation?

[Lord Faulks]

I am indeed aware of the noble Lord’s commission and its report on the future of advice and legal support on social welfare law. Indeed, I answered a debate on the subject on 25 February this year. As I told the House, we keep the position under review and are keen that there should be effective mechanisms to help individuals. However, it was made clear in the Cabinet Office review of the not-for-profit social welfare advice sector that while the Government accept the role they have in supporting the sector there is a need for the sector to adapt to the new funding realities. Indeed, that was very much acknowledged in the noble Lord’s report and during the course of contributions made in that debate.