Government-commissioned Research

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Sir Stephen Sedley made it clear that:

“There is no recent evidence of the indefinite suppression of research”.


The problem he identified was not suppression but delay. On medical research, the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, told the inquiry that the systems in place now support publication and said:

“Although a decade or more ago there may have been more of a problem with research being delayed, clearer guidance and publication frameworks in place today mean there isn’t a major problem anymore”.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, is not the beauty of Sir Stephen’s suggestion that it brings two benefits? It prevents Ministers commissioning backside-covering reports; and, if published, it gives other departments and the taxpayer the value of the research that they have paid for. I am a little worried that the matter is in the hands of the Treasury. Will the Minister draw the attention of the First Secretary, Mr Damian Green, to this matter and suggest that he should circulate an “action this day” memo?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The responsibility for publication does not rest with the Treasury, it rests with the individual department that has commissioned the research. The protocol makes it quite clear that research should be published as soon as possible. A number of the recommendations are being taken forward by the Government Digital Service and by relevant departments. But I will certainly bear in mind the noble Lord’s suggestion that there might be a fresh initiative by my immediate boss, the First Secretary of State at the Cabinet Office.

Queen’s Speech

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, as one who sat on the Cunningham committee on these matters more than a decade ago, like the noble Lord, Lord Richard, I was very tempted to follow on into that debate. However, in the brief time that I have available I want to take as my text the line in the gracious Speech:

“My Government will legislate to reform prisons and courts to give individuals a second chance”.

These are bold and encouraging words. They match similar statements made in recent months by both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Justice. Last week, I attended the launch of the report, and recommendations, by Dame Sally Coates, which reviewed education in prisons and has been referred to on a number of occasions already. It was an inspiring event for those who want to see penal reform as a priority.

My particular interest, as a number of your Lordships will know, is as chairman of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales. From the beginning I have seen the job of the Youth Justice Board as cutting crime off at its head stream. That task has been performed with great success over the last 16 years. Noble Lords with experience in this field say that before the Youth Justice Board, youth justice was the concern of many but the priority of no one. The Youth Justice Board gave it that priority by pioneering a cross-disciplinary, holistic approach to the young offender, which has meant that the number of children in custody and the number of first-time entrants to the system are now at their lowest ever. That, of course, is not the success of the YJB alone. It has been the work of many hands, including the police, the magistracy, children’s services and probation, voluntary agencies and individuals in many spheres. We have also worked with the troubled families units so that we can go downstream of the offending to the dysfunctional families that are so often the root cause behind the child offender.

That that success has been achieved does not mean that serious challenges do not remain. That is why the YJB so warmly welcomed the decision to ask Mr Charlie Taylor, a respected educationalist, to carry out a thoroughgoing review of the youth justice system. As with the adult sector, the Secretary of State has put great emphasis on education. There is an undoubted case for reform of the YJB, but that case is built on success, not failure. Of course we sometimes make mistakes and we try to learn from them, but let me also put on record something that was also referred to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark. I am constantly in awe of the work done by the men and women who, in our secure estate and in the community, work with children who are difficult, damaged and sometimes dangerous, both to themselves and to others. But thanks to the work of those who work in youth offending teams and in our secure estate, they are also capable of quite remarkable redemption and of taking the second chance referred to in the gracious Speech.

Mr Gove caught the spirit of his ambitions when he said recently that he wanted to change junior prisons into secure schools. It is an ambition that I fully support, but the reforms that the Prime Minister and the Justice Secretary have so eloquently espoused face a rocky road from where we are now to the sunlit uplands to which ministerial rhetoric beckons us. It is far better to have the major parties arguing about penal reform and the rehabilitation of offenders than clashing like rutting stags about how tough they are going to be about crime and punishment.

Thus far, Charlie Taylor’s direction of travel has been to propose a much more devolved youth justice system, with the new regional authorities controlling budgets and having far more opportunity for initiative and innovation in both the secure estate and the community. That offers a really exciting prospect for youth justice, although, if I may borrow a piece of advice given to me by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, there will still be a need for some central oversight about the “what”, even if a thousand flowers are allowed to bloom regionally about the “how”.

The task before us is to ensure that we manage the changes being proposed in a way that continues to prioritise the safety and welfare of children, who are all too often the victims as well as the perpetrators of crime. Mr Gove has set himself an ambitious agenda for reform. If he has any sense, and I think he has a lot of sense, he will call on the collective wisdom of this House in taking that agenda forward.

Deregulation Bill

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord McNally]

44: Clause 89, page 71, line 2, at end insert—
“(d) a regulatory function of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.”

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I am not sure that I can give the same assurance to the Minister about withdrawing my amendment because, as I will try to explain, even the offer he may make—that the Equality and Human Rights Commission will be excluded from future statutory instruments—will not relieve the commission from the sword of Damocles that is hanging over it, as a future Government could bring it within the ambit of this legislation.

Perhaps I may explain to the House the position and why I think it should take this as an exceptional case and put the commission into this primary legislation. First, I should like to make clear the commission’s current position:

“The Commission supports the principle and intention behind the growth duty. We do, and will continue to, exercise our regulatory functions fairly and proportionately, taking all relevant considerations into account—including the impact on businesses and economic growth. However, applying the growth duty to the Commission risks our status as an NHRI”—

national human rights institution—

“and a National Equality Body and introduces legal uncertainty into the exercise of our functions. We therefore consider that the Commission should be excluded from the scope of the growth duty, as proposed by”—

Amendment 44. It continues:

“The Commission has the highest possible UN accreditation (‘A status’) as an NHRI rated against the UN ‘Paris Principles’, which clearly and unequivocally require NHRIs to be independent of government”.

I made sure that I had that clear statement of where the commission itself is in terms of its attitude to this legislation.

I should give the House a little background. When the coalition came into office in 2010, there were many criticisms of the EHRC, some justified. Since then the organisation has been refocused, restructured, given a new board and a new leadership in the person of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, who I am pleased to see in her place. During my time as a Minister at the Ministry of Justice I became involved with the EHRC on two fronts: first, in attempting to regain A-list status at the UN, which we had lost; and secondly, regaining Britain’s place on the UN Human Rights Committee. With the help of the FCO and the DCMS, particularly the then Minister Maria Miller, we were able to achieve both. We were able to do that, however, by stressing the independence from government and the integrity of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

As noble Lords will be aware, Clause 88 places a legal duty on regulators to have regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth when exercising regulatory functions. The EHRC, as I said, supports that principle. However, when the Joint Committee on Human Rights looked at the matter, it opined that the Bill,

“raises serious questions about the EHRC’s independence from the executive”.

It concluded that the matter could easily be dealt with,

“if the proposed new duty did not apply to the EHRC”.

The committee went on to ask that the EHRC and the Government should continue to negotiate to see whether such a settlement could be reached. As I indicated, no such settlement has been reached. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, has gone on record to express her concern about this matter, particularly the threat to our hard-won A status.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, we are on Report, and the Companion is very clear about Report stage. I suggest that the noble Lord may not be in a position to speak.

[Lord McNally]

Another gem is lost to us from the noble Lord, Lord Jones. Let us not confuse this issue: the protection of a statutory instrument is not the same as the protection afforded by being in primary legislation. It is that protection of primary legislation that I want to give to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

I have no doubts about my noble friend’s commitments, but we live in strange times. For most of my life, the concept of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been accepted as part of our world governance. We live in an age when people think of the concept of human rights as somehow a western imperialist invention, but I believe that this country’s role in championing human rights since the Second World War has been a very great one, of which we should be proud. David Maxwell Fyfe drafted the European Convention on Human Rights, and when Eleanor Roosevelt launched the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, she called it a Magna Carta for all mankind. There was no need for a translation of what she meant.

This is an exceptional case that I am arguing. I know all the objections of the barrack-room lawyers and draftsmen to specifics in primary legislation, but by putting this in primary legislation, I believe we will be keeping faith with our tradition of protecting human rights and be giving the EHRC the strength to carry on its excellent work. As I have indicated, I would like to the test the opinion of the House.

Deregulation Bill

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord McNally]

93: Clause 84, page 58, line 38, at end insert—
“(d) a regulatory function of the Equality and Human Rights Commission”

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I do not think I have ever seen such a galaxy of talent on the Opposition Benches. I counted eight Front-Benchers in that debate. It was extremely interesting and I do not envy my noble friend in his further discussions.

I did not find it entirely helpful of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, to remind us that it was 52 years since he and I first met at University College London in that fierce, harsh winter of 1962-63. He and I think the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, also mentioned arm’s-length bodies. I am the chair of an arm’s-length body at the Ministry of Justice—the Youth Justice Board—but it is not in this capacity or due to anything related to that responsibility that I put this amendment down. It relates instead to my experience as an MoJ Minister responsible for human rights. With my right honourable friend Maria Miller, who was then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, I conducted a very vigorous campaign to help the Equality and Human Rights Commission gain UN accreditation.

I may be able to shorten the Committee’s debate on the basis of a letter that has been sent to the chairman of the ECHR by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable. Before I touch on that, I shall explain that at the moment, thanks to that exercise we conducted, the commission has the highest possible UN accreditation—A status—as a national human rights institution rated against the UN Paris principles which clearly and unequivocally require NHRIs to be independent of government. In addition, as a national equality body under EU equality directives, the body must be able to provide independent assistance to victims of discrimination. This need to operate independently is reflected in domestic legislation.

In the commission’s analysis, subjecting the commission to the growth duty presents a real risk of the UN NHRI A status being downgraded for non-compliance with the Paris principles because the growth duty is or could be perceived to be a constraint on the independent exercise of the body’s core functions. The growth duty also has the potential to compromise the ability to fulfil the requirement under EU law to provide independent assistance to victims of discrimination.

I hope that we are dealing with what the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, referred to as unintended consequences and that it was never the Government’s intention to compromise the EHRC in this way and that they wish to clarify the matter. Just to be clear, the Equality and Human Rights Commission believes that it needs to protect its ability to operate independently in order to preserve its a status as a United Nations-accredited national human rights institution and the UK’s compliance with European Union law, and to ensure that it can exercise that function and powers in accordance with clear and foreseeable legal limits. That is the objective of the amendment.

I was very pleased that, with his usual courtesy, Vince Cable, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, copied me in on a letter that he sent to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, in which he writes:

“I would like to take this opportunity to state that the Government has taken the decision to fully exclude the EHRC from the growth duty. This decision was taken to ensure that the Government mitigated the risk of this policy unintentionally triggering a review of the important ‘A’ status that EHRC holds as a National Human Rights Institution”.

At that point, I said “Yippee! I’ll be in and out in two minutes”. However, I thought it was worth checking with the commission what its reaction was. It said:

“While we welcome this undertaking we understand that this doesn’t mean that we’ll be removed on the face of the Bill”.

All I can say to my noble friend in the usual constructive way that I try to approach these matters is: get this out of the way clearly and now. If he is going to tell me that the letter is sufficient, or that somehow it will all be dealt with in the washing, he is inviting further grief and pain.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, as chair of the Joint Committee that scrutinised the Bill, to the best of my knowledge none of the regulators is mentioned in the Bill. The only time they are mentioned is in the guidance notes in preparatory work for the statutory instruments. If that is the noble Baroness’s worry—Ministers can confirm this—to the best of my knowledge, none of these regulators is mentioned in the Bill.

[Lord McNally]

Of course it is not mentioned in the Bill. Only one of the regulators is in fact part of an international scrutiny and accreditation process. The longer the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, stayed in office and had responsibility, the more a stickler he became for the rules. I am saying that this is an exception. I have already heard one argument that this would open the floodgates, but this is an exception, and a very important one. My amendment makes it very clear that it may be the only organisation mentioned in the Bill, but I assure the Committee that it is the only organisation where a great deal of work was done to get its A status accreditation with the UN. That A status accreditation is very important for the status of the organisation.

The letter from BIS is very welcome and very timely. I urge the Minister to consider accepting the amendment, although it concerns the exception that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred to. Indeed, it is almost the kind of declaration that I want: that we are determined to declare beyond peradventure that this important international body, with its A status in the UN, is not part of this domestic legislation. That would most certainly remove any unintended consequences. I fully accept from conversations with my noble friend that these are unintended consequences, but those who are involved in this area believe that it is a real threat and could cause real damage, and I believe that my amendment is a very simple, quick, clean way of handling the situation. I beg to move.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I have put my name to this amendment for the obvious reasons outlined by the noble Lord, Lord McNally. I very gently say to the noble Lord that it was my Government who set up the EHRC. In fact, the threats to it have come from his Government from time to time, the first time being in 2010. The review of the EHRC as an A status body is next year. The noble Lord is completely right to say that its inclusion in the list of regulators which have to have regard to economic growth in their regulatory functions would jeopardise its independence. There is no doubt about that.

The United Nations International Coordinating Committee, which is responsible for the accreditation of human rights bodies, wrote to the Minister for Equalities. It said that independence from government is an essential element of an NHRI—a national human rights institution. In considering whether an NHRI is independent, the ICC looked at all the ways in which the NHRI is subject to control or direction. The Bill may not intend to affect the independence of the EHRC but attaching an additional duty which could be seen as competing with or limiting its existing duties or core functions would have a direct effect on its decision-making. Being subject to ministerial direction and the possibility of legal challenge to its work could have a detrimental effect on its ability to make decisions in relation to upholding human rights. These clauses, combined with the existing connections and accountabilities to the British Government, would raise questions about the compliance of the EHRC with the Paris principles. That is absolutely right.

I shall add only one other matter to this debate. There is another reason why you would not want to have the EHRC included in this list, which is not just to do with its international status as a unique body. Part of its reason for existence is to make businesses behave better and make people behave better towards each other. That is good for business and you would not want to jeopardise that.

I am pleased to support the amendment. I realise that the Government have a dilemma. Do they include the amendment in the Bill and therefore mention the body or do something in another way? Whatever they do, they need to remove the EHRC from that list.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, when I first stood up today, I realised that I should have apologised to the Committee. I unintentionally misled the Committee the other day when I said that industry interests had not lobbied on the question of liqueur chocolates. I apologise because, on checking back, I discovered that there had indeed been some conversations in that regard. I trust that that corrects the record.

I am impressed by the youth of my noble friend Lord McNally and the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. I first met my noble friend Lord Deben in the winter of 1959-60 when we were undergraduates. The noble Lord is a mere stripling compared with my noble friend Lord Deben and me.

The issue at stake is simply whether one need include this body in an exceptional way in the Bill or whether this can be dealt with under secondary legislation. The noble Lord will be well aware that listing inclusions and exemptions in a Bill is not generally regarded as appropriate because primary legislation would then need to be amended each time a regulatory function were changed or created.

No specific regulatory functions of any other named body are listed in the Bill and the Government’s argument is that it is not necessary to do so in relation to the regulatory functions of the EHRC. The regulatory functions to which the growth duty is to apply will be set out in secondary legislation subject to the affirmative procedure to enable proper parliamentary scrutiny. Before any secondary legislation is made bringing the non-economic regulatory functions into the scope of the growth duty, the Minister must consult any person exercising functions to be specified in the order and such other persons whom the Minister considers appropriate. This consultation should provide enough opportunity for scrutiny, making it unnecessary to include this in the Bill. Naming a particular regulator or function in the Bill would also not allow the necessary flexibility for any new functions to be included.

I have some experience and some past expertise on the operations of international organisations. I know the speed at which they move, and I do not think that the delay between the passage of this Bill and the passage of the secondary legislation would jeopardise the position of the EHRC. I assure my noble friend Lord McNally and the noble Baroness that it is absolutely the Government’s intention that this will not be included in the Bill. I hope that that assurance is sufficient to reassure my noble friend and on that basis I hope that he will withdraw the amendment.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, at this stage, I certainly will withdraw the amendment. I fear sometimes that my noble friend, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, takes responsibility for so long that the iron enters his soul. The truth is that on the international stage, people do not read the fine print. The rumours get about and a status can be undermined. I will discuss with my co-sponsor and will consult with the commission and others in your Lordships’ House who are not here today who have this concern. Although I will withdraw the amendment now, unless I get some good advice to the contrary this amendment will come back on Report with a great deal of support on the Floor of the House.

I say to the noble Baroness that I fully acknowledge the origins of the commission. I hope that when the history of events around 2010 comes to be written, my role in the commission’s survival will not be considered ignoble. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 93 withdrawn.

Social Mobility

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McFall. I shall take up two points that he made that are important to the character of this debate. He talked about the inequalities that have grown over the past few decades. It is important that we see that this has been under the stewardship of both parties—indeed, all three parties. He also made the point that not all public money has been well spent. That also colours the debate.

I probably belong to what I would describe as the guilty generation. My father never earned more than £1,000 a year in the whole of his working life. I was born on an ICI estate, but I went to grammar school on a Lancashire county scholarship and to university on a similar scholarship with a grant. I was never quite aware of how universities were funded in those days, but it certainly meant that my social mobility was on the back of a very generous state. In those days, of course, the early 1960s, I represented only 6% of my generation. I have never accepted that more means worse as far as university education is concerned, and have welcomed the expansion over recent years.

If I look back at the real advantages that I had, I see that I had aspirational parents; I had a home with books; I had a secure family background; and I lived in a stable community—not a particularly wealthy community, but one with values. I want to share two things that stick in my mind from my experience over the past few years as a Minister. One was a visit to a school in Leicester. I was walking around and talking to the deputy headmaster. I asked him, “Any problems here?” and he said, “Yes, that big estate over there is mainly white working class. In that estate now, we have the third generation of welfare dependency”. The other was a visit to a young offender institute. I was walking around with one of the people in charge, and we crossed a yard and saw about a dozen young, mainly black, youths, He just nodded across and said, “Most of those can’t read or write. Their contact with our educational system has been but passing for the whole of their lives”.

Those two stories encapsulate the problem for people of my generation and that of the noble Lord, Lord McFall. I came into politics with certainties. We were going to implement the Beveridge report, provide a welfare state that would deal with poverty and we would have comprehensive education that would be not bog-standard but a gateway for social mobility. We need to accept that some of the aspirations of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s have not come about. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord McFall, we have found mounting inequalities over the past three decades. What is more, we have found them being embedded in our society. I received a very good brief from Oxfam. It quotes Sir Peter Lampl of the Sutton Trust, who said recently:

“Social mobility in Britain is much lower than in other advanced countries and is declining—those from less privileged backgrounds are more likely to continue facing disadvantage into adulthood, and the affluent continue to benefit disproportionately from educational opportunities”.

I do not think that there is some magic solution to this. Perhaps we will get a fourth way or a fifth way later—I do not know. Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith may not be everybody’s cup of tea politically but there is no doubt that, in trying to deal with welfare dependency and educational failure, they are addressing the right problems. In that respect, there needs to be a certain humility across the political divide in meeting those problems.

I believe that what the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, said was right: we have got to go upstream to the very young as a first step. I look forward, certainly with humility on my side, to the contributions that will follow.

The Future of the Civil Service

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I echo the tribute paid by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy.

In 2010 I returned to Whitehall as the Minister of State for Justice after a gap of some 31 years, having served as a special adviser to the late Lord Callaghan in the Foreign Office and Number 10 from 1974 to 1979. I am often asked what my impressions were of working again with our Civil Service after that 30-year-plus gap.

I was impressed by the high quality of bright young people who still join our Civil Service motivated by a desire to serve the public good. What is more, in the intervening 30 years, our Civil Service has achieved a diversity in race, gender and social background that, although still a work in progress, outstrips anything seen in the upper reaches of the judiciary, for example. I found a service that, far from being resistant to change, was eager to embrace new methods of working and new technologies.

However, we are moving to a relationship where the public sector acts more and more as a commissioner of services, with the private sector as a supplier. To make that work, we need to equip our Civil Service with the skills for that task. That will mean the Civil Service embracing greater transparency, underpinned by freedom of information. It is increasingly going to need the skill sets to manage contracts with the private sector in a way that gives the taxpayer high performance and value for money. It will need a capacity to procure and manage highly complex information-technology programmes.

We will recruit and retain the civil servants for those tasks only if Ministers are willing to defend public servants from the mythologies, prejudices and dogmas of left and right. One of the great reforms of 19th-century liberalism, as was referred to, was the implementing of the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms that cemented into our governance the concept of a Civil Service that is politically neutral and selected on merit. In the search for efficiency and technical competence, we must not lose either the ethos of public service or the political neutrality and selection on merit that have served us so well in the past and are still qualities to be valued in a Civil Service for the 21st century.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not entirely sure what the position on this is, but I suspect that there is a formal position and an informal one. Parliamentary committees inquire into a great many aspects of government, and that is welcome and will no doubt continue. I think that where a good case for a parliamentary inquiry is made, the Government will not obstruct it.

[Lord McNally]

I think that the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, may have been on to something. This House can set up its own committee if the Government were so stubborn as to try to stop any other route. This House can do it and may have to.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are not opposed to intelligent inquiry by Parliament. One of the many things that has changed over the past 40 years is the relationship between Parliament and civil servants. Parliamentary inquiries by my honourable friend Bernard Jenkin’s committee, Margaret Hodge’s committee and others are a regular part of life in a way that they were not 40 years ago. That is a desirable development. We are now having to think about how we rewrite the Osmotherly rules to fit in with this new development.

I have heard a diversity of views in this debate about how far civil servants and senior officials should be directly answerable to Parliament for the major projects that they have been leading. That is another area that is worth examining. After all, we are light years away from the Crichel Down affair, when a Minister resigned over a failure in his department about which he knew little. We would not want go back to that. This is another area where the relationship among Ministers, senior officials and Parliament has evolved, and it will no doubt need to evolve further.

Big Society

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord for the courtesy of those last remarks. Indeed, if I am to sit down at the right time, I will not be able to cover all the points that were made. However, I will write to all noble Lords if I do not manage to cover all the specific points. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for introducing this debate. As he knows, my first job in politics was working for his late father, who I am sure would have been proud to see the noble Lord introduce this debate. I am also grateful that we have had the experience of a number of magistrates, including the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, my noble friends Lady Miller and Lady Seccombe, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark.

One of the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, was the poor administration of the court system. We are looking at that in terms of introducing new technologies as well as perhaps also bringing forth legislation at some stage to improve court management. I agree with him that courts should retain the personal touch; I take that point. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and a number of other noble Lords referred to community sentencing. He is right that I want us to explore more community sentencing. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, reminded us, if such sentences are to carry public respect they will have to be tough and effective.

Noble Lords referred to diversity. At the Ministry of Justice I am the Minister with responsibility for encouraging diversity. It has to be said that one of the encouraging things about the magistracy is that it is a whole lot more diverse than other parts of the judiciary. Other than make that point, I shall say no more. A number of good suggestions were made this evening. I will not make the usual point that times are hard and question whether we can afford to advertise on buses. However, I will take back the suggestions made by the noble Lords, Lord Ponsonby and Lord Kennedy, and others about how we encourage technology.

I hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, and my noble friend Lord Phillips said about court closures. There is a whole variety of reasons why we have moved to court closures, including the inadequacy of some of the older courts and the increased use of technology. We will explore that, and I think it will be a factor in making the courts more accessible.

On recruitment and retention, I know that my honourable friend Jonathan Djanogly and my right honourable friend Nick Herbert in the other place are in close and regular contact with the Magistrates’ Association. Indeed, Nick Herbert is addressing the Magistrates’ Association conference on 8 December. However, I take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has made. I will go back to the department to see how much outreach we are making. It is extremely important that we encourage as many people as possible to come forward in terms of encouraging diversity.

I was fascinated by the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, about the court chaplaincy service. In the big society, the churches, the religions and the faiths have a big part to play. They already have a structure of which we should make use. Two of the most fruitful visits I have made were to Norwich and St Albans, where the cathedrals are used not just as faith centres but as community centres. What the noble Lord described about the chaplaincy service seems to be an inspirational example of how this could happen.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, made two points. The first was his memories of the local magistracy. My colleagues back at the MoJ are aware that I frequently refer to Tommy Croft and Billy Quinn, although they are not names that have run down history. I was born on an ICI estate and Billy Quinn and Tommy Croft were two local magistrates. They both worked in the local ICI plant but, my God, they knew the community and their community knew them, which is always an interesting aspect of the magistracy. On Dr Jane Donoghue, I have not had the benefit of that study but I will certainly follow up on that. From what the noble Lord had to say, there are some interesting points about training and engagement.

We welcome the research referred to by my noble friend Lord Dholakia in his intervention. I think that it will help to inform our thinking on the future of the magistracy, particularly in relation to plans for developing neighbourhood justice. I certainly hope that when the report is ready, we will have a dialogue on it. I would welcome that.

It has been pointed out a number of times that this year is the 650th anniversary of the magistracy. I was pleased to be at the John Harris Memorial Lecture given by the Lord Chief Justice on this. As someone who is a kind of fake historian, I liked the idea of the concept of the King’s peace being set in statute in 1361 and the novel proposition that decent members of the community, not themselves lawyers, should be vested with the power to administer justice. That is one of the things which has been of lasting value to the magistracy. It comes from local communities and its strength lies in the fact that it is still the bedrock of our judicial system. My noble friend Lord Phillips referred to the mock trial competition. It is true that we have had to reduce our support for that. We still give it money and of course we also provide the court and staff for the competition, so we have not abandoned it entirely.

As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, intimated, the problem with these dinner time debates is that to do justice to those who have contributed, the Minister should really be given half an hour to speak, but I will cover some of the issues in writing. What I would say, however, is that my gut instinct, going back to Tommy Croft and Billy Quinn, is that as long as I am a Minister, I will take the role of the magistracy as the bedrock of our criminal justice system. Some of the ideas put forward in the debate tonight will be taken back and studied very carefully. What I want to say as well is that although we are looking at other proposals such as neighbourhood justice and restorative justice, they will be seen as complementary to and in no way undermining the magistracy. I look forward to a dialogue with the magistracy and I will study the suggestions that have been made in this debate, not least those on how we achieve greater outreach so as to increase diversity. Again, I thank sincerely the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for promoting a debate which has been extremely worth while.