House of Lords: Reform

Lord McNally Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I had a boyhood dream that one day I would stand at a Dispatch Box as a government Minister facing Members of a hostile House and, an hour later, purely on the basis of my oratory and eloquence, I would have turned them round on to my side. I heard a voice say. “Dream on”. However, I shall have a go and, as your Lordships have been so disciplined, I see that I do not have only an hour but two-and-a-half hours to convince you. I can get my speaking notes out now. Some of us have dinner appointments so I will not use all of that time.

I congratulate my noble friend Lord Strasburger on his travels. He should not worry about the teasing of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that, since he entered the House, he has travelled a short distance in his opinions about its reform. Some noble Lords on that side have travelled miles and miles and miles.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, now claims to know what I am thinking about him even without my saying a word. I hope he will be really insulted by that thought. However, even he confessed that he had once been in favour of reform, that he had come into the House and now was no longer in favour of reform. I think the technical term for that is “the foreman’s job at last” syndrome.

One thought about “Apocalypse Now” prompted me to share with you a short quote from a book that was given to me by the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, who I do not think is in his seat. His grandfather was the leader of the “last-ditchers”, who tried to stop the 1911 Act. There are two quotes that are worth reading:

“And what was the final decision of the Constitutional High Court of Appeal, or rather of that proportion of its members who dared to deliver the verdict? The numbers were read out, but those who knew Willoughby and saw him as he entered the Chamber had no need to lengthen their suspense. All was settled and over. By seventeen votes the Parliament Bill had been accepted, and was now the law of the land”.

It was his thoughts about that that were more interesting:

“From the night of the 10th August 1911, when a great principle was sacrificed to expediency; when the right course was departed from for fear of the consequences, the Conservative Party received a shock from which it has never really recovered”.

I am merely pointing out that those speeches we have heard today that predict only the most terrible consequences for radical reform can be very, very wrong indeed. As historians such as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, continue to point out, the following century for the Conservative Party was one mainly spent in government. I also find it extraordinary to hear suggestions from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others that the Deputy Prime Minister has been somehow high-handed in his approach to this legislation. No senior politician has given Parliament more chance to consider these measures, has shown more flexibility or offered more opportunity for genuine reflection.

I am not sure which parts of his own White Paper the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, tore up during that extraordinary speech. However, he says with pride that they never produced a draft Bill. So you never did—shame on you that you did not.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am grateful for him raising this issue again. The purpose of producing a White Paper is to allow for debate and discussion and that is what we did. The Government would have done better to have had a widespread public consultation and debate before producing a draft Bill.

[Lord McNally]

This again from a Minister who produced a White Paper that produced no such debate. They sat on reform for a decade. When we talk about consistency, I was on the Cook-Maclennan committee prior to the 1997 election, where my party and the Labour Party both committed themselves to a raft of constitutional reform, including reform of the House of Lords. My party has been consistent for the last 14 years on our proposals. The Labour Party has performed somersault after somersault after somersault and there is no way they can get out of it—that is the record.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

I remember well the noble Lord, Lord McNally, standing as leader of his party in your Lordships’ House and stating categorically that an elected second Chamber would never threaten the primacy of the House of Commons. At that point he was leader of the Liberal Democrats. How does he tie that in with the speech made by his noble friend Lord Ashdown, who said that this Chamber—if reformed in the way that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, is advocating—would and should be able to challenge the Commons on issues such as going to war and finance?

[Lord McNally]

Is the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, in his place? No, he is not. When I was on the Cunningham committee, there was great bemusement because I said, as I still believe, that the House of Lords has the right to say no. That is an essential part of the relationship between the two Houses. I honestly wish to God that this House had voted on the Iraq war and that Ministers had read this House’s debate on the matter, but we will not go down that road, not because I do not believe it but because, even among the red herrings that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, usually streaks across this debate, I am not going to pursue that one.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord McNally]

You will get your full two hours if you carry on like this. [Laughter.]

[Lord Grocott]

I knew that in the first five minutes of his speech the Minister would be Mr Nice. He has now turned inevitably to the Mr Nasty phase. He needs to explain to the House that if the new, elected second Chamber were to have essentially the same powers and functions as the present one, as his own White Paper and draft Bill say, how on earth could this Chamber veto absolutely crucial matters that would be determined by the primary House?

[Lord McNally]

I never said that this Chamber should have a right of veto; I said it had a right to say no. There is a difference. Usually in this House somebody is allowed to develop an argument, and I will cover the whole question that was raised. I am not trying to be nasty to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I am very affectionate towards him. There were a number of thoughts that passed through during the speeches. I liked the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, of a House of grandparents appointed through patronage. I think that is one to reflect on. I liked another one by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who said,

“we must avoid what de Tocqueville called a ‘perpetual utterance of self-applause’”.—[Official Report, 21/6/11; col. 1194.]

We did not entirely manage that over the last two days.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

While my noble friend is very entertaining, does he plan to answer some of the serious questions that have been put in this debate?

[Lord McNally]

You have to be patient. You are behaving as you used to do in the House of Commons. That is why wind-up speeches in the House of Commons take so long. This has been a long debate. I am not going to answer every question in 100 speeches, partly because, as I have already pointed out, this is the start of a process of consideration. I think many of the questions that were raised quite rightly should be addressed by the committee to be chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and I will make further points on that. However, I must remind this House—this unelected House—that all three parties fought the last election advocating direct elections as part of their plan for reform of the House of Lords. Those policies presumably went through a decision-making process in all three parties. I wonder how many of the speeches made from the Labour Benches would go down at a Labour Party conference, or how some of the speeches made from my own Benches would go down at a Liberal Democrat conference.

My party leader and my party took a great deal of criticism when they appeared to go back on a manifesto commitment concerning tuition fees. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made great hay of that during his contribution. However, this is a threefold commitment that the government proposals reflect. As far as I am aware, no one has put proposals to continue with an unelected House before a party conference or put them into an election manifesto. As the noble Lord, Lord True, suggested—

[Lord Cormack]

I am most grateful to my noble friend, but what does he say to the statement made earlier today that no party won the general election and that the one that came closest to doing so—the Conservatives—had the most lukewarm sentence in its manifesto?

[Lord McNally]

All three parties had it in. I have to say that that is a kind of car salesman’s excuse. Let me make it clear that I am not anticipating changing many minds during this speech. However, I am also very well aware—more than this House seems to be aware—that this is not a perfect reflection of opinion in the country. That should be the warning to this House.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords—

[Lord McNally]

No, not again, Brucie.

[Lord Davies of Coity]

My Lords—

[Lord McNally]

No, I am not taking any more interventions.

Much has been made in this debate of the recommendation in paragraph 61 of the Cunningham committee report, which says:

“Our conclusions apply only to present circumstances. If the Lords acquired an electoral mandate, then in our view their role as the revising chamber, and their relationship with the Commons, would inevitably be called in to question, codified or not. Given the weight of evidence on this point, should any firm proposals come forward to change the composition of the House of Lords, the conventions between the Houses would have to be examined again. What would, could or should be done about this is outside our remit”.

As a member of the Cunningham committee, I was happy to sign that paragraph. The conventions between the two Houses were examined on a regular basis throughout the 20th century and to say that they will be re-examined is no more than a statement of the obvious. What is equally obvious is that how they should be examined and with what outcome was outside the remit of the Cunningham committee. The idea that the Cunningham committee is somehow holy writ and that the conventions and relations between the two Houses would fall like a portcullis at the time of the passing of the Bill is simply absurd.

What is clear is that the relationship between the two Houses has always evolved and will continue to evolve in the future, particularly over the transitional period. The fact remains that the relationship between the Houses is underpinned by the Parliament Acts and the conventions. The House of Commons remains the primary Chamber; nothing in this draft Bill changes that. Nor are we suggesting any short, sharp shock in these proposals; rather, there is what old Fabians will recognise as “the inevitability of gradualness”.

I am interested in the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Wills, Lord Davies, Lord Brooke, Lord Kakkar, and others, about whether codification is necessary. I hope that the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, will look at that issue and take evidence. But there will be a lengthy transitional period of two Parliaments, which will allow transfer of knowledge. Noble Lords would not be prevented from standing for election or being considered for appointment to the reformed House.

[Lord Wills]

As the noble Lord mentioned my name, I would be grateful if I could intervene. I want to be clear on this point on codification. Am I right in thinking that the Government are not ruling out such codification?

[Lord McNally]

We are sending the matter to a committee that will take wide evidence. I hear my noble friend saying that we are ruling it out, which is not an entirely helpful intervention at this stage of the evening, but I do not think that you can set up a commission under a chairman of the independence and distinction of the noble Lord, Lord Richard—and I am delighted that he was willing to take this chairmanship—and then tell him in advance what he can look at. I will go no further. I am sorry. I see the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, who always tries to give a spurious kind of veneer of intellectual credibility to—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

Is there anybody I have not insulted yet? Please form an orderly queue. In among the insults, there are some facts. One fact is that it was at times a bit like sitting in the North Korean Parliament. I have often wondered what that was like. Speaker after speaker even had to make the kind of praise that Kim Il-sung had every so often—in this case, it was of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd.

[Baroness Boothroyd]

I wonder whether the Deputy Leader would allow me to bring some semblance of order into this very interesting debate. Perhaps he would answer a serious question which I put yesterday. I am still waiting for an answer and I am sure that we would all be interested in it. In what way would the nation benefit and parliamentary proceedings be enhanced by the abolition of this House of experts and experience, and its replacement by a senate of paid politicians? I am sure that if we came back to answering questions which were being put in the debate, we would all be much happier.

[Lord McNally]

Of course we would. First, there are no proposals to abolish this House. Secondly, the difference between what I am putting before the House for debate and consideration is that this has gone before the electorate in manifestos, while what my noble friend Lord Steel is proposing is an escape hatch. It would mean that we would go to the electorate next time and say, “By the way, that elected House that we promised you is not going to be delivered. We have fixed it so that we are now going to have a wholly appointed House for as long as anybody can see”. I do not think that is a particularly democratic way and that is the difference between what you are proposing and what I am proposing.

[Baroness Boothroyd]

This Government have done so many U-turns, they could do another one.

[Lord McNally]

A most unusual intervention from a Cross-Bencher—you are lucky that we do not have a Speaker. I did at one stage support the Steel Bill. I wanted it because it was the best on offer after the Straw-Hunt proposals were put on ice. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, knows full well that she could have had the Steel Bill in its entirety in the previous Parliament and that we constantly promised her our votes for it. Yet again, we are dealing with things where the Labour Party, with 13 years to do something about them, did precisely nothing.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I will skip to my own defence because ultimately, while I agree that it was too late and regret that we did not take it earlier, we did take up most elements of the Steel Bill in the CRaG Bill. In the wash-up, however, those were taken out by the Conservative Opposition of the time.

[Lord McNally]

More mea culpas. The fact is, as well, that one of the benefits for those who like some aspects of the Steel Bill is that the proposals of that Bill are all now in the draft Bill before the House: a statutory Appointments Commission; ending by-elections for hereditary Peers; permanent leave of absence and dealing with those convicted of serious criminal offences. In addition, noble Lords will be considering next Monday the recommendations of the Procedure Committee to provide for permanent voluntary retirement.

However, the proposals in the Bill of my noble friend Lord Steel are in the context of a wholly appointed House, whereas the Government are committed to a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber as set out in the draft Bill. It is unrealistic to believe that any proposal for incremental reform of this House, such as the provisions in my noble friend’s Bill, could be sped through this House without controversy, even with the support of the Government. Moreover, it would be completely unnecessary to do this when the Government have published detailed, comprehensive proposals for full reform.

I turn to the Joint Committee. As I have said before, I have tremendous respect for its chairman. I hope that he will keep an open agenda in terms of the evidence that he takes. The committee that the Deputy Prime Minister chaired tried to bring forward proposals and had a certain degree of consensus. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, will agree that we worked on and looked at the case for reform based on our manifesto commitments and that the case for reform should be by election. We are setting up the Joint Committee with 13 Members from this House, including a Bishop and a Cross-Bencher. The House agreed a Motion on 7 June that the Joint Committee should report by the end of February 2012.

Giving a target date to a Joint Committee is normal practice. If the committee needs more time, Motions can be put to both Houses to extend the date; but it should not be seen—as some Members, with nods and winks, have suggested—that the committee will have a licence to promote open-ended delay. Reform of this House is an issue that will be debated long and hard both inside and outside the Joint Committee over the coming months. The Government look forward to those discussions. We will listen to the arguments and adapt our proposals. However, we intend to introduce a Bill so that the first elections to this House can take place in 2015.

I end on a personal note. I have given way to no one in my affection and respect for this House—what it does and what it stands for. I greatly regret not grasping the opportunity for reform offered by the Wakeham committee, on which point the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, was absolutely right. If we had, we would be further down the road to a lasting reform than we are today. If we miss the opportunity presented by this Bill and procedure, a House that has won much respect—not least in its willingness to defend civil liberties and human rights and to stand up to the over-mighty power of the Executive—will lose respect as it looks increasingly out of kilter with the spirit of the age.

The proposals that we have made give this House and the other place the opportunity to carry through a reform as significant as the one passed by the Liberal Government a century ago. This is no time for noble Lords to join the last ditchers. There are those who say that, at a time of economic crisis—the worst in 80 years—this is not a time to divert our attention from the central challenges of our day. I would rather invoke the spirit of the last great coalition Government, which launched the Beveridge plan, the Butler Education Act and won a world war. Government is not a one-trick pony. The battle to right the economy is no reason to delay a much needed and long-overdue reform of this House.

On accountability, I am interested in the suggestion that it might be two terms of perhaps seven years. I do not know. Again, I invite the noble Lord, Lord Richard, to look at that. The 15-year term has some weaknesses in democratic accountability that have been pointed out. However, it takes the breath away when speaker after speaker, all of whom have been sent here for life, start lecturing us about the dangers of somebody being sent here for a limited 15-year term. As the Prime Minister made clear in the other place, the Government’s actions to date in producing this draft Bill have been based on trying to work for consensus. The Government are ready to listen; we are prepared to adapt; but we are also determined to act. The Bill, when introduced, like any other piece of government legislation, will be scrutinised, carried through, debated, discussed and passed in the same way.

I have been asked about the Parliament Act. I do not think that you start a piece of legislation by brandishing the Parliament Act, but, especially after some of the passionate debates in favour of the supremacy—the primacy—of the other place, I ask Members of this House, “If the clear and settled view of the other place is for reform, are you going to veto it?”. I think that we should be told.

Other noble Lords raised a number of detailed questions. The Government have set out their views on these issues in the draft Bill and the White Paper. I am sure that the Joint Committee will consider all these issues in very careful detail. My suggestion is that Hansard for the two days of this debate, the Wakeham report, the Cunningham report, the Jack Straw White Paper and the White Paper accompanying this Bill be the Joint Committee’s summer reading. We should now all wish it well and let it get on with that work.

Motion agreed.

Justice: North Liverpool Community Justice Centre

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Liverpool]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for the future of the Community Justice Centre in Liverpool and for the creation of other centres.

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

My Lords, we are considering the options for taking forward community justice and evaluating the effectiveness of the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre as part of that. We will consider the results of this evaluation once it has been completed later in the summer.

[The Lord Bishop of Liverpool]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that very encouraging response. Is he aware that the time taken from first hearing to sentencing is, on average, 26 days at the justice centre, which compares with the national average of 174 days? Can he assure the House that the evaluation will be independent and will look at the benefits, both social and economic, for the whole of the criminal justice system?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I think that I can give the right reverend Prelate that assurance. We are trying to learn all the lessons from the justice centre, which is a unique and innovative court model employing problem solving, partnership working, community involvement and a single-judge approach to tackling reoffending and improving community confidence in the justice system. We will seek in the study to learn lessons across the board which we can take into the wider criminal justice system.

[Lord Corbett of Castle Vale]

My Lords, can the Minister be clearer about the assurance that he has just given to the right reverend Prelate? What will be the independent component of this investigation? Will he name the people, or the areas from which they are likely to come? It would be quite improper to leave this to the Ministry of Justice to do it itself.

[Lord McNally]

I am not sure whether it would be improper for the Ministry of Justice to do it itself. The Ministry of Justice is very able to carry out this kind of assessment. When the assessment is completed and we draw our conclusions from it, it will be fully published and open to debate and question in Parliament.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, in assessing the effectiveness of the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre, will the Minister pay particular tribute to His Honour Judge David Fletcher, who has shown formidable and robust leadership as the single judge administering this system? Inasmuch as the Minister has already referred to the reduction in the time between arrest and sentencing, will he also say a word about the role of restorative justice in repairing the wrong done to victims, in which this court has shown such leadership?

[Lord McNally]

Indeed, Judge Fletcher describes his approach as gripping—meaning that he is able, through this system, to deal holistically with the problems. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, is right about restorative justice, which is not unique to the Liverpool experiment. Much of the evidence that we have received shows that there is benefit both to the victim, who gets some closure in the trauma they have gone through, and to the defendant, who receives a form of punishment that points in the direction of rehabilitation as well. I also have to say that in the experiments we are conducting, we have to look at the cost of the facilities as well as the various benefits they bring.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I am delighted to hear about the robust appraisal of the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool said, the speed with which cases are handled is phenomenal, as is the high rate of guilty pleas. Another important consideration is the need to have a member of the judiciary at the heart of a deprived community, with all the strength that that person brings. Could that be part of the appraisal, please?

[Lord McNally]

It certainly is part of the appraisal. One factor that has played very heavily is the fact that the centre is in a deprived community and has a permanent judge of very high rank who is able to hear a wide range of cases. These factors come into effect, but we also have to weigh other factors. The study so far does not show a great impact on reoffending rates, but that has to be a factor. The overall cost of the facility also has to be taken into account in present circumstances. However, we are looking across the board and later in the summer we will be able to draw lessons from the study.

[Lord Woolf]

My Lords, does the Minister appreciate that this initiative followed one that happened in the United States? There, it has been an immense success. I disclose an interest not only because of my chairmanship of the Prison Reform Trust but because I was responsible for recommending to Ministers in the previous Administration that they should look at what was happening in the States and introduce this experiment here. They did so and were very impressed. The experiment provides a solution where other systems do not. Above all, it can tackle repeated offending, which is so important.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, most certainly this followed a similar experiment in the United States, although I think that I am right in saying that the experiment was not repeated across the United States. It is one of a number of pilots initiated by the previous Administration. We are trying to draw the best lessons that we can from these pilots, including lessons about reoffending and cost effectiveness. That is partly why we are conducting the review and trying to learn lessons from other pilots that are being conducted in other parts of the country.

[Baroness Scotland of Asthal]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the Minister who laid the foundation stone of the centre. Will the noble Lord take into account the cost savings that are generated by virtue of the fact that the centre produces faster results than elsewhere? The right reverend Prelate mentioned 26 days and the 82 per cent guilty rate. Will the department take into account also the experiment in Salford, which took the results of the centre and spread them more widely?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I will gently say, beware those who have laid foundation stones, either real or metaphorical, when you judge the efficiency and effectiveness of any project.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord McNally]

I hear the growl of approval; I presume it is from all the foundation stone layers in this House. I assure the noble and learned Baroness that the study will look in the round at the effectiveness of the centre. When that is done, we will report to Parliament.

Justice: Reform of Punishment, Rehabilitation, Sentencing and Legal Aid

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I would like to repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Justice following his Written Ministerial Statement laid in the other place earlier today:

“Last autumn, the Government launched two consultations on far reaching plans to reform punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders, and legal aid in England and Wales respectively. Today, I have laid before Parliament the Government’s responses to these consultations. I am also introducing the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill to give effect to those measures we are taking forward that require primary legislation.

Protecting the public from crime and punishing law-breakers are the most fundamental responsibilities of the state towards its citizens. But the sad truth is that—after 13 years of government, over 20 criminal justice Bills, more than 3,000 new criminal offences and an explosion in the prison population—Labour left the system in crisis. Most of our prisoners spend their time behind bars idling in their cells with ready access to drugs. A bigger scandal still is our reoffending rates, which are straightforwardly dreadful. Within a year of leaving jail, half of offenders will have been reconvicted of further offences. The same people cycle round the system endlessly, committing more crimes against more victims. The best way to reduce crime is to reduce reoffending, and that remains the central feature of our programme of radical reforms.

Prisons must be places of both punishment and reform. Today, I can confirm that we plan to deliver a full working week across the prison estate. We will legislate to extend powers to use money earned by prisoners to support victims. We have never proposed that community sentences should replace prison sentences, but we will introduce tougher, properly enforced community punishments where offenders work longer hours, unpaid, at least four days a week.

Drug abuse lies behind much, if not most, criminality in this country. It is not acceptable that drugs are readily available in prison. We are taking forward plans to reduce addiction across the prison estate, improving security and introducing drug-free wings in jails.

We must tackle other root causes of criminality, particularly alcohol addiction, mental illness and lack of skills. But we will ensure that we put taxpayers’ money only into those rehabilitation programmes that actually work.

Public confidence in the criminal justice system is unacceptably low. That is why we want to take forward plans for a new offence with a mandatory minimum prison sentence of six months for adults who use a knife to threaten and endanger. We will also consult on proposals to criminalise squatting, and will bring forward legislation to clarify the law on self-defence. In addition, I can confirm our intention to improve the use of remand and reduce the number of foreign national prisoners in our jails.

Discounts for early guilty pleas have been part of the criminal justice system for decades, and for good reason. Personally, I was particularly impressed by the representations of the senior judiciary and other criminal justice experts who said that increasing the maximum discount on offer for an early guilty plea at the earliest possible stage might result in the sentence served being too short in some serious cases. I considered addressing that problem by introducing greater judicial discretion, but we could not make that work. We have therefore decided to retain the present system.

The consultation also produced strong opposition to the indeterminate sentencing framework. This was introduced by the previous Government and sold as a way of protecting the public from a small number of the most dangerous offenders, but it has never worked as Parliament intended. It has created a flawed system where thousands of offenders have already served their normal sentence or tariff but no one can predict when or if they might ever be released. That is why, as the Prime Minister confirmed earlier today, we are reviewing indeterminate sentences of imprisonment for public protection, with a view to replacing them with a more sensible, tough system of long determinate sentences. This will see judges handing down life sentences in a greater number of very serious cases, including mandatory life sentences for the most serious repeat offenders. Serious sexual and violent offenders will spend at least two-thirds of their sentence in prison rather than being released halfway through. We intend to return to the best aspects of the system before IPPs were introduced.

I turn to legal aid reform. We have much the most expensive system in the world, except for Northern Ireland, costing £39 per head of population compared with £8 per head in New Zealand, a country with a broadly similar legal system. The previous Government consulted on this subject more than 30 times since 2006 and still left us with the mess that we now have to tackle. In some cases, the system encourages people to bring issues before courts where other solutions might be better. In others, it enables people to pursue litigation that they would not contemplate were they paying for it from their own pockets.

Following careful consideration of more than 5,000 responses, I am bringing forward proposals which I believe will ensure access to public funding in those cases that most require it, encourage early resolution of disputes instead of unnecessary conflict and ensure much better value for money for the taxpayer.

I can announce that we will retain legal aid in cases where people’s life or liberty is at stake, where they are at risk of serious physical harm or immediate loss of their home, or where their children may be taken into care. In response to consultation, this will include strengthened provision for victims of domestic violence and for children at risk of abuse or abduction and the retention of legal aid for special educational needs cases.

Legal aid will no longer be routinely available for most private family law cases, clinical negligence, employment, immigration, some debt and housing issues, some education cases and welfare benefits. It will also no longer be available for squatters resisting eviction.

We have also decided not to abolish the current capital disregards for pensioners and for equity in the main home in assessing an applicant’s eligibility for legal aid. We will not introduce a £100 contribution from capital for those assessed as having £1,000 of disposable capital.

What all this amounts to is a balanced and sensible package of reforms of the kind that the Government were determined to achieve when we published our proposals. Our plans mean a return to common sense in the justice system. On legal aid, the overall effect will be to achieve significant savings while protecting fundamental rights of access to justice; on sentencing, we will deliver punishment, protection and a renewed focus on breaking the cycle of crime and reoffending”.

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his response. I will try to deal with the issues that he raised. I suppose that the first point to make is that moral outrage butters no parsnips. The issue that the Ministry of Justice was faced with, as were the Government, was that we were spending beyond our means. We had to accept, as part of the spending review necessary to repair this country’s economy, a cut. I hear a groan from across the Floor, but it is no use opposition Members pretending that if they had won the election they would not have had to come into office to face some of the realities that we have faced, including having to make cuts in some areas. We can all enjoy being in office in good times; it is in difficult times that the necessary and hard decisions have to be made in government. We were faced with cutting our expenditure from £10 billion to £8 billion. Noble Lords opposite will know very well that this department really only has four big tickets; it spends on prisons, on probation, on legal aid and on staff and court services. Each of those has had to take some very difficult hits.

To take the points made, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor made clear, the decision on the 50 per cent discount change was as a result of consultation and discussion within government—something that is very common in coming to a final decision. As was indicated, there was quite a weight of opinion from the judiciary, as the Lord Chancellor made very clear in his Statement, that this was a bridge too far as far as discounts were concerned, despite some attractive possible savings and some impact. It is the truth that early pleas have a beneficial effect on victims, and some victims are spared the trauma of going through a trial. But the weight of advice was that such a discount offered to certain offenders would be unacceptable to the public and judiciary. We listened and we changed the proposal that was in the Green Paper. That is what Green Papers are for; I am old enough to remember Harold Wilson introducing Green Papers to allow a period of more flexible discussion than White Papers provided.

On changing the name of the Bill to include punishment of offenders, it is partly a presentational matter, but one that I do not think we should ignore. I am very eager that we win the discussion in this country about prison reform and rehabilitation of offenders, but we will not win that debate if the public at large believe that the proposals that we are putting forward leave out punishment of offenders and concern for victims. Therefore, presentationally, the added words will reassure the public. While a large amount of the Green Paper’s and the Bill’s thrust is to examine ways in which to get into that cycle of reoffending, both to save the cost of reoffending and save the trauma of what reoffending does to future victims, we need public opinion to help and support us in that task. In that, we have to reassure the public that we do not forget the element of punishment in the approach to crime.

Our remand proposals remain in place and will be taken forward. The policy is to restrict the availability of custodial remand in cases where it is apparent that there is no real prospect of the defendant being sentenced to imprisonment if convicted.

The IPP was a product of the consultation. Just as a lot of the feedback on the Green Paper was against the 50 per cent discount, a lot of the evidence from the judiciary was that IPPs do not work, build up problems and leave doubt and uncertainty in the system. We have listened, we are going to consult and we will bring forward proposals by the autumn to replace the present regime.

The noble Lord mentioned the fact that the Prison Service and the probation service are going to be put under pressure by these cuts and by further demands being made on them. I think that that is true. The whole thrust of the strategy in the Green Paper and now in this legislation is to try to get more for less. There are some indications that we are not being over-optimistic in that. We are challenging both the Prison Service and the probation service to look at their own efficiencies in the way that they carry out their roles. We have a wide range of proposals right through the criminal justice system to bring in both the private and voluntary sectors to participate in payment-by-results pilots to see if there are alternative ways of delivering the service of both custody and post-custody treatment. This will also be part of a more general approach to treat people more holistically while they are in custody and post custody.

I understand what the noble Lord said about social welfare. It is an extremely sensitive subject. Again, I have answered questions before on this: you cannot have a system that is supposed to be targeted at the most disadvantaged in our society, cut the budget to that programme and not by implication cause problems for those who are so disadvantaged. The Government are not abolishing funding for social welfare law. About £50 million will be spent in this area. Not all social welfare law cases will be outside scope, but neither are they all of equal importance. We are trying to ensure that where we retain the social welfare programme, we will keep to areas where there is a real problem in debt, housing and community care and subject them to analysis. In developing our proposals we have taken into account the importance of the issues at stake, the individual’s ability to present their own case, including their vulnerability, the availability of alternative sources of funding and the availability of alternative routes to the resolving of this issue.

We must face up to tough choices and focus resources on those who need them most—the serious cases where legal advice and representation are justified. We are maintaining funding for mediation services and trying to ensure that funding is directed at the most vulnerable. We are also looking at whether we can help by offering advice in those cases. The noble Lord rightly declared that that was important in this area. This is not an easy case to make in the context of legal aid but we have to face up to economic reality, as I suspect noble Lords opposite would have to do if they were standing at this Dispatch Box. I certainly have no problem in arguing the moral case: we have made the tough decisions that one needs to make in government and in doing so we have tried to keep faith with the most vulnerable in our society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, today we have committed to a review of indeterminate sentencing, which we hope will be concluded by the autumn. We will then bring forward proposals on what happens next. On the question of what we are doing with the people who are already on IPPs, each individual prisoner will continue to be assessed on a case-by-case basis by the Parole Board. The review will look at all the ways in which these assessments operate, to ensure that the real work is done to reform offenders when they are in prison. When my noble friend sees the full proposals, I think that he will also see that we are taking a lot more care to try to address the rehabilitation of these long-term offenders while they are in prison.

I take my noble friend’s point about judges’ discretion. The longer I have been in this job, the more convinced I have been that we should rely on the discretion of a well informed judge, rather than on Parliament second-guessing the judiciary at long distance by too-restrictive legislation. We will see how this unfolds, because one idea that is certainly being brought forward is the use of mandatory life sentences for serious repeat offenders. I have to point out that this Bill will go through both Houses and I am quite sure that I will hear more of the argument that my noble friend deployed when the Bill comes before this House later in the year.

On clinical negligence, legal aid is currently available to those who have suffered negligent medical treatment and qualify financially to seek damages against any type of public or private medical practitioner. While these claims are for money compensation, we consider that they often raise serious issues, especially where the damages are required to meet future needs, and some litigants will be vulnerable because of disabilities resulting from the negligent treatment. However, although the issues raised are likely to be very important, we consider that there is a viable source of alternative funding to legal aid in conditional fee arrangements, which are more readily available in such cases than they are for other claims. We therefore consider that legal aid is not justified in these cases and that our limited funding would be better targeted on other priority areas.

I take the point that my noble friend makes about solicitors. One of the good things about them is that they are increasingly branching out into offering mediation services—something that we very much support.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the review of indeterminate sentences, which were introduced by the previous Administration in 2003 for the protection of the public. Given that the opposition to IPPs is so strong on all sides, including—if I understood the noble Lord correctly—among the judges, I, like the noble Lord, Lord Bach, wonder why a review is necessary. Why can we not simply repeal the relevant section in the 2003 Act and leave it at that?

Secondly, as the noble Lord knows, I do not like mandatory sentences for the use of knives to threaten or endanger. Is there any evidence at all that the sentences currently being imposed by the judges in those cases are too low? If not, why do we need a mandatory sentence?

Thirdly and lastly, the most noticeable absence from the Statement is anything about Schedule 21, which imposes on judges a rigid framework in murder cases. There was a great deal of opposition to that, too, and yet there is nothing about it at all in the Statement. Once again, why do we not leave it to the judges who handle these cases to impose the appropriate sentence, advised as they are by the Sentencing Council, which was created for that very purpose?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, even as I was saying the words about the decision on mandatory sentencing, I had the noble and learned Lord very much in mind. I know his views on the matter. We will have to see how the matter goes through. I know that there are conflicting opinions on it. As I have said, my inclination is for a lot more judge power to be employed, rather than finding the prison population surging not because of a surge in crime but because changes have snared people who might not otherwise have been sent to prison.

On Schedule 21, we want a simpler and more transparent sentencing framework that is also more coherent. We consulted on a proposal to reform Schedule 21—as a possible simplification of the sentencing framework, rather than a measure to change sentencing practice—which sets out the starting point for determining the minimum terms to be served by an offender receiving a mandatory life sentence for murder. There was some support for revisiting the drafting of those provisions, but others took the view that the courts have already interpreted them in a consistent and flexible way. We have therefore concluded that reform is unnecessary at present.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, under civil legal aid, how many of the estimated 700,000 cases for which entitlement would have been lost under the original proposals will now be retained? What is the estimated cost of those changes to restore legal aid and advice that would otherwise have been removed? Secondly, is it correct that 90 per cent of the 5,000 responses disagreed with the proposals for legal aid?

[Lord McNally]

I am not sure what the statistics are on the responses. If you are about to cut a budget and you ask for opinions, I would guess that you are more likely to get more people objecting to the cuts than you are people in favour. That does not take away the validity. We had a large number of responses, and a large number pointed out various impacts, such as the point made by my noble friend Lord Thomas: sometimes solicitors on legal aid give early advice that saves problems further down the line. It is a difficult balance.

I have never tried to mislead the House by denying that, in part, the things that we have done have been for cost reasons, because of the constraints. That means that some decisions have been hard. The estimate is that we will reduce cases by about half a million—about 600,000 cases will be removed from scope. On the social welfare end, it is an extremely severe cut. Part of our debate will be about our arguments that, in this area, there has been too much publicly funded litigation and that there is much more scope for mediation and non-legal advice. That will be tested as the Bill goes through the other place and through this place when it arrives.

[Lord Mayhew of Twysden]

My Lords, the Statement refers with approval to some judicial consultation that has already taken place. Can my noble friend tell us whether judicial consultation has yet extended to the plan for a mandatory sentence for knife crime? If so, can he tell us the character of the judicial response?

[Lord McNally]

I know that my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor has very regular meetings with the Lord Chief Justice and other senior members of the judiciary. However, those meetings are private and he certainly has not made me aware of whether he has discussed any aspect of these proposals with the Lord Chief Justice or the judiciary. If he has, I shall respond in writing to my noble and learned friend. I am not aware of a formal consultation but, if one has taken place, I shall make him aware of it.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

When mediation fails, as it sometimes can—and there is plenty of room for obstruction as far as that is concerned—does the noble Lord envisage that a remedy will be available for a person who is prejudiced by that sort of position?

[Lord McNally]

If you were pushing towards mediation but, as the noble Lord says, somebody refused to take up the mediation or tried to sabotage it, that would cause problems. I suspect that that would not be sufficient to enable the injured party to get legal aid if he had been outside its scope. However, again, I shall get clarification on that and, if I am wrong, I shall write to the noble Lord.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

In any event?

[Lord McNally]

In any event. However, my feeling is that, save in exceptional circumstances, mediation would be the end of the road unless people found a means of financing their litigation other than with legal aid.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I declare an interest as someone who has been in the solicitors’ branch of the profession for over 50 years and I admit to having had a passion for legal aid for the whole of that time. Does my noble friend not agree that legal aid has been the one thing that has allowed a citizen to get some sort of equality before the law and that the severe cuts to the scheme announced today, although long foreshadowed, will inevitably strike at the heart of access to justice?

Does my noble friend also agree that one reason why this country is more dependent on legal aid than perhaps any other on this earth is that we legislate at a greater rate than any democracy that I have yet been able to discover? I have done some research on this. The torrent of law that we pour forth from this Parliament is of itself a great creator of legal need among the whole of society, including poor people no less than rich. Is it not a sort of organised hypocrisy for us to go on doing as we do and, at the same time, to cut the citizen’s access to desperately needed advice and assistance?

Lastly, and practically, will my noble friend please have particular regard to the needs of the citizens advice bureaux, of which there are over 1,000 in this country? The bulk of their effort is voluntary. To sustain them with government assistance will yield a better return on scarce money than perhaps anything else.

[Lord McNally]

The wider point that my noble friend makes about the amount of legislation is probably for another debate. We are not abolishing legal aid, but we are making cuts on the civil legal aid side. We will abolish the Legal Services Commission and vest responsibility for the administration of legal aid with the Lord Chancellor. We will, as I said, implement reforms to the scope of civil legal aid services, enable the courts in ancillary relief cases to make interim lump sum payments against a party with means to pay other parties’ costs and facilitate the creation of a supplementary legal aid scheme by enabling a percentage of a litigant’s damages to be paid back into the legal aid fund to support the funding of future cases. We will implement Lord Justice Jackson’s reforms to the costs of civil litigation, abolish the recoverability of success fees and after-the-event insurance premiums from the losing party and amend the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 to cap payments made to acquitted defendants from central funds. We are reforming legal aid, we are targeting legal aid, but we are not abolishing legal aid, because I share my noble friend’s concerns about its importance in our system and in the citizen’s access to justice.

Electoral Registration Data Schemes Order 2011

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Lord McNally]

That the draft Order and Regulations laid before the House on 26 April be approved. 20th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 7 June.

Motions agreed.

Representation of the People (Electoral Registration Data Schemes) Regulations 2011

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Grand Committee

Moved By

[Lord McNally]

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Representation of the People (Electoral Registration Data Schemes) Regulations 2011.

Relevant document: 20th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

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

My Lords, the order and regulations will together provide the legal basis for the electoral registration data-matching trial that my honourable friend the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform announced in another place on 15 September 2010. These instruments will enable the sharing and matching of specified data between local authority electoral registration officers and public authorities that also hold certain kinds of specified data.

It might assist the Committee if, before going into greater depth about what the instruments will do, I were to supply some context and background to the order and regulations. The view that there is a need for change in our arrangements for electoral registration is, I know, widely shared. It is important that the register is as accurate and as complete as possible. We need to make sure that the system is not vulnerable to fraud, while ensuring at the same time that people are not prevented from registering to vote because the system is too difficult to use or because they are not aware of their rights.

In 2014, the Government plan to introduce individual electoral registration in place of the outdated system of household registration. Alongside that, however, we believe that there are other tools that we may be able to use to tackle under-registration and to ensure that people have every opportunity to register. Data matching is one of them.

Data matching involves comparing the electoral register against other public databases in order to identify people who are currently missing from the register. They can then be contacted by electoral registration officials and offered the opportunity to register if they are eligible to vote. We envisage that through data matching we will also be able to take steps to identify and remove any individuals who are on the register but are not entitled to be.

We believe that data matching has the potential to reduce the incidence of under-registration among specific groups in our society, but we do not yet know enough. We also believe that data matching has the potential to tackle inaccuracy in our electoral registers, but, again, we do not yet know enough. We need to test the effectiveness of data matching in this context and see what kinds of data are most useful in improving the accuracy and completeness of the register. We therefore plan to trial data matching over the next few months in a range of electoral registration areas in England, Wales and Scotland. The instruments before the Committee today will enable that to happen. The results of the trial will be evaluated with the assistance of the Electoral Commission and will help the Government to decide whether to seek to legislate to extend data matching permanently across all local authorities.

The order will enable specified data-holding public authorities, including the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue and Customs and the Department for Education, to provide electoral registration officers with the data necessary for their planned data-matching schemes. The 22 local authorities planning to take part in the trial are listed in the schedule to the order and we are grateful to them and to the data-holding authorities that will be participating for the work that they are doing.

Members of the Committee may have noticed that there are in fact 23 local authorities in the schedule. This is because Cardiff has unfortunately had to withdraw since the order was laid. I am, however, very happy to confirm that Peterborough, which withdrew prior to the order being debated in another place, has since been able to resolve its problems and will after all be taking part. Cardiff’s withdrawal does not affect the validity of the order, because being included in the schedule does not compel an area to take part. Nor will it affect the validity of the eventual results of the pilot schemes. Even if another one or two of the pilot schemes were to run into unforeseen practical difficulties of the kind recently encountered by Peterborough and Cardiff, there will still be enough of them for the results to be useful.

The order stipulates that before any data can be transferred a written agreement must be in place between the electoral registration officer and the data-holding authority, setting out the requirements as to the processing, transfer, storage, destruction and security of the data concerned. It also sets 1 March 2012 as the date by which each of the schemes must have been evaluated.

For the information of the Committee, let me say that 1 March 2012—not the end of December 2011, as mentioned in the draft agreement attached to the Explanatory Memorandum—will now be the date by which all data created for the purposes of the pilot schemes must be destroyed, except of course where data have been added to the electoral register in the mean time. Since that version of the draft agreement was prepared, the Electoral Commission has told us that it would assist its evaluation of the pilot schemes if the data were still to be available, should the commission need to see it. We agree with the commission, so the final version of the agreement will reflect this change of date.

The regulations complement the order by enabling registration officers to supply a copy of their full register, or an extract from it, to another person for it to be compared with the information that is to be provided under a data-matching scheme. The regulations also provide that a person to whom the copy of the register is passed may not do anything with it for any other purpose or without the registration officer’s consent. This means that registration officers will not be given data relating to everyone in their area. They will receive only targeted information about particular individuals, thus ensuring that unnecessary personal data are not transferred to registration officers and that the data that they receive are provided to them for a reason.

Data-matching schemes may lead to greater accuracy and improved levels of registration in some electoral registration areas and among some groups within the next few months. If so, the schemes may be the key to greater accuracy and improved levels of registration on a much larger scale within the next few years. However, we need to know for certain and we need to be able to produce the evidence. That is why it is so important to put these trials in hand. The order and regulations will enable us to do that and I commend them to the Committee.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I declare that I am an electoral commissioner, having joined the commission on 1 October last year. I fully support the thrust of the commission’s views on these important statutory instruments.

I am sure that all noble Lords want completeness and accuracy of electoral registers. We want confidence in our democracy and our electoral system. We want confidence that you will be able to vote if you want to and if you are eligible. We want confidence in those who have been elected to serve at all levels of government.

It is important that clear and reliable evidence on data matching is produced and that the evidence is robustly assessed. It is particularly important that this assessment is done carefully and represents fully what can be achieved, not least because data matching is envisaged as the primary method of ensuring the continued completeness of individual registration in 2014-15. I should welcome a response from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on that specific point and on the commission’s concern that the timing of the schemes will coincide with the annual canvass of electors. It is important that there is clarity about the design of the data-matching schemes, so that the impact and any follow-up activity can be demonstrated beyond what the annual canvass activity would normally achieve.

Can the noble Lord give any further information on the agreement to process the data? It is particularly important that personal data are handled carefully and are protected. The commission has specifically recommended that the approach to the delivery of each pilot area should also form part of any written agreement, so that the commission can fully evaluate each scheme.

Finally, the noble Lord will be aware that the commission is required to produce an evaluation report on the operation of the scheme by 1 March 2012. To achieve this, it will be important that EROs are able to provide the commission at agreed intervals during the schemes’ operation with the information needed. Clarity about the design and delivery of each scheme will ensure that the commission is able to undertake its statutory evaluation effectively and that the results can inform future policy development on electoral registration. I am of course happy for the noble Lord to write to me to clarify a number of these points.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, in discussions on electoral registration, nothing causes the heart to sink so much as the sight in the Room of the previous Minister, a member of the Electoral Commission and the guru in my own party on these matters. That will in part explain why, in making this response, I now have enough notes to take us safely to six o’clock. I hope that the officials will take careful note if I manage to miss a number of the questions that were asked; I will ensure that I follow them up in writing.

Perhaps the innocent observer will have missed the fact that all contributions welcomed these statutory instruments. I am extremely grateful for the agreement. I share with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, a lifelong belief that using your vote as a citizen is one of your most important duties and responsibilities. It is perhaps a sad fact that I was brought up in a household in a constituency that had a 15,000 Conservative majority, yet at every election my mother and father would go out resolutely to vote Labour. Indeed, in those days when having a car to deliver you to the polling station was something of a luxury, my mother used to take special pride in going there in a Conservative car to vote Labour.

I am grateful for the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. I am pleased to see him on the Electoral Commission. When it was first established, the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, I and others who had worked for political parties on all Benches argued strongly that in order to make it effective the Electoral Commission should contain people with direct experience of party-political organisation. His service on the commission, given his experience, is a plus, the change being carried through by the previous Government.

The exercise of the pilot and the annual register will be kept separate, so that it will be possible to make a comparison. It is our aim that electoral registration officers should provide information at intervals, so that pilots, and the format and frequency of the reports to the Cabinet Office and the Electoral Commission, will be agreed. There will therefore be regular reports. We have asked each pilot to pay particular attention to that point. Since development work began, we have emphasised the importance of the pilots doing everything that they can to distinguish the impact of data matching and related follow-up activities from the usual impact of the annual canvass. I doubt whether that will be perfect, but it will certainly be attempted.

The Cabinet Office and the electoral administrators already have well developed proposals to evaluate the impact of the pilots and we will continue to work together on them as they develop. With the assistance of the Electoral Commission, we will continue to offer help and guidance on appropriate approaches that we consider will be most likely to produce useful evidence. Therefore, I hope that we are keeping in close contact with the Electoral Commission and the electoral registration officers.

It is always difficult to respond to complaints about either speed or slowness, both of which the noble Lord, Lord Wills, managed to make in a speech that he said was intended to be supportive. We will do our best to make these things work effectively and, as I said, most of the participating organisations will do likewise.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, asked how the participating authorities were selected. All local authorities across England and Wales were invited to apply to take part in the data-matching pilots. There will be no data-matching pilots in Northern Ireland, which already has individual registration. The individual electoral registration system was introduced in Northern Ireland under the provisions of the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act 2002. The Act replaced household registration with individual registration, whereby each eligible elector is required to complete their own electoral registration form.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and others made a point with which I sympathise. I am, as I think was the noble Lord, Lord Wills, the Minister responsible for data protection and, when these proposals first landed on my desk from the Cabinet Office, alarm bells rang. I do not feel comfortable about government departments sharing data in a way that could have an impact on civil liberties unless provisions are put in place and I am happy to assure the Committee that we have taken the necessary steps to make sure that those protections are in place. We will follow the Government’s Information Assurance Standard 6 produced by the Communications-Electronics Security Group, the Government’s central information assurance experts. This standard governs the use, storage, transfer and destruction of data. We have consulted over our specific plans with the CESG and those responsible in the Cabinet Office for information security, as well as participating departments. Under Article 4 of the statutory instrument, all participants, including electoral registration officers, must sign agreements to comply with the standards. The Cabinet Office is also providing information assurance training.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, asked whether there will be a two-way flow of information. The answer is no. Departments will not receive information. This will be a one-way process. However, as I said, I think that when government departments, for the most honourable and meritorious reasons, start sharing information, there is a need for those concerned with data protection to be on their guard. I see in his place my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford. I usually refer to him by saying, “An old Liberal once told me”, but I think that in this case I can identify him—to be distinguished, of course, from the young Liberals. My noble friend once memorably said to me that there should be a limit on how much information the state holds on an individual in a free society. I think that that is true and I constantly worry about the capacity of new technologies to cross-reference information in a way that could undermine civil liberties. In this case, I can say that we are taking the necessary steps to ensure that this information is used specifically, in a one-way direction and with the necessary protections in place.

The noble Lord, Lord Jones, properly reminded us that, as in Northern Ireland, much of the exercise was to ensure that the system was fraud-free, secret and clean, and that the integrity of the ballot box was protected. I hope that successive Governments will make clear their intention in that respect. Indeed, people have recently been sent to prison for electoral fraud, and rightly so. Anyone contemplating electoral fraud should be well aware that we would use all possible means to ensure that they were prosecuted for it. Cardiff pulled out too late for us to make changes to the order and to find another Welsh example. As a strong supporter of devolution, I am always grateful that the specific matters concerning the responsibilities of Welsh Ministers are nothing to do with me.

Not surprisingly, today’s Guardian article was drawn to my attention. It is not possible to indicate with precision the registration rate in the UK because the size of the eligible population is not known, but the Electoral Commission will soon be conducting research into electoral registration levels in a project funded by the Cabinet Office. The study will check a statistically significant sample of electoral registers at local authority level against the people actually living at these addresses. The work will involve some 5,000 interviews in some 50 local authority areas across Britain.

I have noticed in debating previous Bills that a kind of victim culture has been growing up in the Labour Party that somehow the Government are wickedly keeping 3.5 million—“implied Labour”—voters off the register. No one is being kept off the electoral register. I have always been slightly suspicious of these figures and doubt whether at any time in human history there has been a 100 per cent completed electoral register. Indeed, I am old enough to remember when the register used to be updated twice a year and Harold Wilson used carefully to calculate the dates of elections so that the new register could be used, as the old ones became quickly out of date. Trying to put an electoral register together—

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. As he seemed to miss my comment, I want to stress that I am very supportive of him and these measures. However, is he aware that for all practical purposes, large parts of the country achieve 100 per cent registration and that their registers are comprehensive and accurate? It is not therefore some distant objective that we will never achieve, because some parts of the country are already achieving it. I accept that the Government are trying to reach that objective and I do not think that there is anything wilful about this. However, does the Minister accept that the task is to get all parts of the country up to that standard?

[Lord McNally]

Yes. However, I refer to one of the points that my noble friend Lord Tyler made in the most enjoyable exchange that he had with the noble Lord, Lord Wills. The trouble with my noble friend Lord Tyler is that not only does he know the facts but he knows the dates as well; he is a difficult man to grapple with. He made the point that voter registration is not only a mechanical issue but a political one. We all have to get out and knock on doors and convince people. I freely accept that in some areas it is more difficult to obtain registration.

I make no apologies for pushing ahead with individual registration because, although there may be problems initially in the transition—and we are trying to put in place measures that will mitigate some of the problems—we are convinced that individual registration is a way to both avoid fraud and encourage individual participation in our democratic process.

[Lord Jones]

I am grateful that the Minister is grappling. First, can a Minister direct the electoral registration officer? Secondly, was he confirming that the city of Cardiff has pulled out of the pilot? If he was, I should tell him that I did not know and that I have relied on the documents that he presented to your Lordships saying that it was part of the scheme. He may wish to answer those two questions.

[Lord McNally]

I shall write to the noble Lord on his first question. As I understand it, Cardiff withdrew but, again, I shall write to clarify the situation.

[Lord Jones]

The Minister will concede that we needed to be told in proceedings that the schedule was inaccurate.

[Lord McNally]

I will check, but I think that I said that in my opening remarks.

[Lord Jones]

I am grateful to the Minister.

[Lord McNally]

This has been a useful and question-filled debate, although we will have to wait for Hansard to find out whether it has been fact-filled. It is important that we have respect for the electoral register and for our democratic process. On balance, I have always been in favour of the stubby pencil inside a voting booth as a sign of the citizen’s commitment to making democracy work. These days, if you ever go checking numbers outside a polling station, it is sad to see elderly people struggling to make it to exercise that right and young people walking past. It is part of our task as politicians to reverse that process. We have to make democracy work and I hope that these instruments will make some contribution towards that. I sincerely thank all those who have contributed to a very well informed debate.

Motion agreed.

Electoral Registration Data Schemes Order 2011

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Grand Committee

Moved By

[Lord McNally]

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Electoral Registration Data Schemes Order 2011.

Relevant document: 20th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

Motion agreed.

Crime: Homeowners’ Liability

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will review the rules on homeowners’ liability in the event of injury to intruders on private domestic property.

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

My Lords, the Government believe that the civil law provides effective protection to property owners and other victims of crime against possible claims for damages by those engaged in unlawful activity. We have no plans to review the law in this area.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Can he reconcile the contradictory advice given to homeowners, particularly in rural areas? In some areas, they are advised to lock up their lawnmowers and be very careful about their sheds, whereas in Surrey and Kent the police advise people that, whatever happens, they must not put any wire mesh on their garden sheds in case it injures a burglar.

[Lord McNally]

I saw the report of that advice. All I can say is that it is an example of overcompensation. Certainly, putting wire mesh on a shed is not disproportionate. The law warns against disproportionate protection measures. The property owner has protection in law to protect their property proportionately.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

Does the Minister see any reason to vary Section 329 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which provided that civil proceedings brought by a burglar could be brought only with the permission of the court? It is a defence for the householder to say that he believed that the claimant was about to commit an offence or that he was defending himself. Does the Minister see any reason to change that position?

[Lord McNally]

No, my Lords. I believe that the party opposite can take credit for the Criminal Justice Act 2003 because, as my noble friend said, it included a test to make it more difficult for a person who has been convicted of an imprisonable offence to make a civil claim for damages unless what they had encountered was grossly disproportionate to the circumstances. It is interesting to note that, since the introduction of Section 329, we are not aware of any claims by criminals for trespass to the person succeeding.

[Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate]

Does the Minister agree that the starting point in dealing with burglars injured during the commission of an offence is that they are the author of their own misfortune?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

Yes, and this is a good opportunity to emphasise from this Dispatch Box wise guidance that was given by the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2005, who is now my noble friend Lord Macdonald of River Glaven. He said:

“The law is on the side of householders … It is only in the most extreme circumstances that householders are prosecuted for violence against burglars”.

He goes on to say that householders,

“are entitled to use violence to protect themselves”,

and that,

“Indeed we routinely refuse to prosecute those reacting in the heat of the moment to finding intruders within their homes”.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

Is my noble friend aware that some of the more ridiculous cases are stimulated by claims management companies and that there are recommendations about their activities in Lord Justice Jackson's report? Will he update the House as to where we are on the possible implementation of those proposals?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, my department will respond to Lord Justice Jackson's report shortly, but anyone who thinks that they can get a no-win no-fee prosecution on this basis will end up with no fee.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, is not the absurdity of the advice given by the police as outlined by my noble friend Lady Gardner a very good example of why we need elected police commissioners to reconnect with the public they are supposed to serve?

[Lord McNally]

What a good question. While a Bill is before the House, that can be used in evidence. As I said at the beginning, this is a report of advice given by the Surrey police which, on reflection, they would probably think is not proportionate. In a case in Florida recently someone wired up their window frames to the electricity mains and electrocuted a burglar. That is disproportionate. Wire mesh on the windows is not.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am not surprised that the Minister did not answer the noble Lord’s question, because he gave the game away. He suggested that elected party political police commissioners will interfere in the day-to-day operations of the police force. That is why that Bill has to be defeated.

[Lord McNally]

I will not be drawn into this. My noble friend was suggesting that a little common sense in these matters would be beneficial to the police and the public in general.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

Does my noble friend recall that the Criminal Justice Bill 2003 was amended by your Lordships' House twice as often as any other Bill in the Government’s programme that year?

[Lord McNally]

I was not aware of that but I have never been, certainly in the last 10 years, averse to sensible amendments being carried in this House.

Crime: Rape

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their policy on sentencing for the offence of rape.

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

My Lords, the Government believe that rape is a very serious offence, with dreadful consequences for the victim. The seriousness with which the offence is viewed by the Government, Parliament, the courts and society at large is reflected by the fact that the maximum penalty is a life sentence and that the average determinate custodial sentence imposed is eight years.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. However, does he agree that the careless and damaging remarks made last week by his right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor have undermined the confidence that victims have in the criminal justice system? The views expressed seemed hopelessly out of touch and out of date, and have offended many people, including victims of sexual violence. Will the Minister confirm that there will be no downgrading in the priority given to prosecuting those who have committed offences of sexual violence; and that the Government will not reduce the number of specialist rape prosecutors —now around 840 in number—employed by the Crown Prosecution Service over the comprehensive spending review period?

[Lord McNally]

I do not know who is damaging confidence most, if damage has been done. It certainly was not anything that my right honourable friend said. Anybody who analysed what he said would accept that. I was caught by a paragraph in the Stern review, which said:

“We need to look at rape victims as people who have been harmed, whom society has a positive responsibility to help and to protect, aside from the operations of criminal law. Whether the rape is reported or not, whether the case goes forward or not, whether there is a conviction or not, victims still have a right to services that will help them to recover and rebuild their lives”.

That is the policy of Her Majesty’s Government and we will stick to it.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that it was extremely regrettable that the leader of the Labour Party chose to jump on a populist bandwagon the other day in an effort to undermine a Secretary of State who is pursuing some of the more progressive and enlightened policies of this coalition Government?

[Lord McNally]

I am very grateful for those comments. The Labour Benches and the Labour leader must make their own minds up whether that intervention was opportune. All I know is that this Government and this Secretary of State have put rape support centres on a secure financial footing for the first time, with £10.5 million of grant funding allocated to existing centres across the country over the next three years. Up to £600,000 is also being provided to develop four new rape support centres. We have run a grant-funding programme to award the voluntary community and social enterprise sector up to £30 million in grant funding over three years. We have guaranteed funding of up to £2 million a year for the next three years to fund specialist support for adult victims of human trafficking. We have provided Victim Support with £114 million in grants spreading over the next three years. That is the action that this Government have taken on rape: standing by women, supporting them and giving them the support they need. Everybody realises it is an extremely traumatic experience.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, would it not be quite wrong for the Government to duck legislating in the area of rape, given the problem we had this last week? In particular, the argument over whether men should have anonymity in rape cases remains outstanding, as does the question of whether women who make false allegations should enjoy the anonymity that they currently enjoy.

[Lord McNally]

I know that the noble Lord has raised these matters on a number of occasions. The Government’s sentencing and legal aid Bill will shortly come before the House—or, rather, before Parliament, as it will go to the Commons first—and it will give us a chance to consider again the issues that he has raised consistently. However, his assertion that there are large numbers of false claims for rape is not, as far as I am concerned, borne out by research.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

My Lords, leaving aside what the Lord Chancellor may have said, does the noble Lord agree that sentencing in rape cases, as indeed in all cases, is a matter for the judges? Subject to the maximum sentence for any given crime, which in the case of rape is, as the noble Lord has pointed out, life imprisonment, it is for the judges to decide where the particular case fits, subject of course to the guidance of the Sentencing Council.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, perhaps this is an opportune time to say from the Dispatch Box that this is certainly a case where Parliament should trust the judges, and so should society at large. Only the judge hears the full case, the full information and the full background and is able to make a proper judgment as to the required punishment. Nobody should be in doubt that the judiciary, the Government and society at large treat rape very seriously and the perpetrators will be punished appropriately.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, are the Government considering reclassifying consensual sex by two people under the age of 16, given that that appears to be very different from rape? Only 5 per cent of victims feel able to report rape and, for two-thirds of victims, rape by a partner or ex-partner involves violence to the point of choking or strangulation.

[Lord McNally]

The case that the noble Baroness brings up is one that is best left to the good judgment—and it is the good judgment—of the authorities involved in those cases. It is extremely difficult to make broad-brush assumptions. I note what she says and, for our review of sentencing, I will take back the particular point that she has raised.

[Baroness Gale]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Gale]

My Lords, all incidents of rape are serious and to indicate otherwise sends the wrong message to victims of rape. Will the Minister give an undertaking to ensure that there is a public awareness campaign about the laws on rape and consent so that we make it absolutely clear that non-consensual sex is a serious offence? I believe that this would clear up any misunderstandings that have happened over the past week.

[Lord McNally]

I do not think that there are misunderstandings from over the past week. There has been no doubt that this Government take rape very seriously, and the Secretary of State takes rape very seriously. The amount of money, even at a time of difficulty in overall spending, has been maintained and the number of rape advice centres has been extended. However, I agree with the noble Baroness that it is time to publicise the seriousness of rape, and I think that that could be started in the schools and by looking at some of the worrying things in advertising, in pop music and in some of the newspapers, which have been so quick in their editorial pages to condemn my right honourable friend. Some of those should look at where they put the position of women in society and whether they encourage young men to give women the respect that they should have. That might be a start.

Courts: Super-injunctions

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, and with his consent, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.

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

My Lords, the Government recognise the importance of finding the right balance between individual rights to privacy on the one hand and the right to freedom of expression and transparency of official information on the other. The Government will await the report of the Master of the Rolls’ Committee on the use of super-injunctions before deciding on next steps.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford]

I thank my noble friend for his reply. Does he accept that every taxpayer has a direct public interest in the events leading up to the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland? So how can it be right for a super-injunction to hide the alleged relationship between Sir Fred Goodwin and a senior colleague? If true, it would be a serious breach of corporate governance and not even the Financial Services Authority would be allowed to know about it.

[Lord McNally]

I do not think that it is proper for me from this Dispatch Box to comment on individual cases, some of which are before the courts.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I agree with that and the extent to which one should not use privilege to go against the terms of court orders. To what extent are the Government considering how much the hearings in which super-injunctions or indeed any privacy injunctions are granted are open to the press? One of the problems is that people do not know what the process is. The press are reliable when directed not to disclose what goes on in criminal trials. Why can they not be present when secrecy injunctions or super-injunctions are granted?

[Lord McNally]

That is an extremely interesting question, one I hope that the Master of the Rolls has been considering and one to which he will give the answer tomorrow—I think.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

Would the noble Lord accept that, of course, the judges take the public interest into account at the moment when deciding whether to grant a super-injunction? Would he also accept, as has been said so often, that the public interest in this connection is not to be equated with what may be of interest to the public?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

That goes to the nub of it. Quite clearly, what is of interest to the public can include areas which intrude into private life. Again, we are looking carefully at these matters. The fact that there is so much public discussion and debate means that it has been sensible to get the Master of the Rolls to look at these issues. When we have the full knowledge of his deliberations, we will make statements on steps forward.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

Will my noble friend be good enough to tell us how many super-injunctions have been issued and are extant? Hugh Tomlinson QC, the leader in privacy law, tells me that the Ministry of Justice has no idea. Perhaps the Minister would send a runner down to the Royal Courts of Justice and find out exactly how many there are. The Times says 30; other newspapers say 800.

[Lord McNally]

I have to confess that the Ministry of Justice does not have a figure on the number of super-injunctions. I understand that the Ministry of Justice statistician, a post I was not aware of—

[Lord Bach]

The chief statistician.

[Lord McNally]

The noble Lord, Lord Bach, has more experience on this. The chief statistician is looking into the matter. We hope to be able to give those figures shortly.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, is not a right to a private life and respect for privacy an essential, indeed defining, characteristic of a free society? Of course, there must always be an over-ride where there is a connection between private behaviour and the fulfilment of public responsibilities, including voting and speaking in Parliament. In that connection, is it not intolerable that important sections of the media, in pursuit of a commercial agenda in competition for getting more titillating material to increase their sales, think nothing quite regularly of bribing informants, of surreptitious surveillance and photography, of tapping telephones and of using the methods normally associated with the activities of a secret police in a totalitarian society? Is this not a national disgrace and should not Parliament and the Government face up to their responsibilities and legislate on the issue?

[Lord McNally]

I think I was with the noble Lord right to the last bend, there. Of course, in a free society we have to recognise those rights that he has just recognised, but also in a free society we recognise the need for a robust and free press. The noble Lord laid down a catalogue of sins, which throws a challenge to our press. I know that noble Lords on all sides of the House want to defend a free press, but the press has a duty to put its own house in order to see whether some of the faults that the noble Lord outlined should not be more robustly dealt with by the self-regulation that the press claims to be so proud of.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that Section 12 of the Human Rights Act strikes a balance between free speech and privacy—

European Convention on Human Rights

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Lords Chamber

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

I love following the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, because he always finishes as if he has made the final case for the prosecution in some case where the poor mutt in the dock has to stand up and say, “I did it; I did it”.

It is always a little daunting for a non-lawyer—like the noble Lord, Lord Wills, I am a non-lawyer—to reply to a debate opened by one former Lord Chancellor and closed by another former Lord Chancellor, and with half the contributions coming from QCs. Our learned friends were truly out in force. That is partly a tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, and the standing that he still holds in the legal profession and more widely. I was delighted when I saw his name down for this debate, because I knew that it would attract speakers of quality and knowledge about the issue. When opening the Second Reading of the Human Rights Bill, he said:

“People will be able to argue for their rights and claim their remedies under the convention in any court or tribunal in the United Kingdom”.

That is in no doubt and it is the major success of the Act. He also said that he hoped that:

“A culture of awareness of human rights will develop”.—[Official Report, 3/11/97; col. 1228.]

That has not happened sufficiently so far.

I would recommend reading the part of the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, before he reached his grand peroration. There he set out in a list, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, our human rights and how the Human Rights Act protects the rights of individuals. Of course the media are always going to find cases whereby the seemingly most undeserving rascal is given protection. However, in some ways, that in itself is what makes us a civilised society—we give guarantees in those cases, not always just to the saintly and the deserving.

I welcome the contributions of all speakers today and I think that they will help those who take the trouble to read the debate. I hope that our distinguished commission will take the Hansard report of this debate as useful evidence, because there have been many contributions which deserve recognition.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, rightly paid tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, over the birth of the Human Rights Act. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, in his turn, was generous in his tribute to the consistency of my party on these matters. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhill, among others, valuably pointed out to us the history of the Conservative Party with regard to the European Convention on Human Rights. I recently attended a dinner at Gray’s Inn, at which Sir David Maxwell Fyfe’s daughter was present. A treasure trove of long letters had been found that Sir David had written from Strasbourg about the creation of the Human Rights Act in the days before the internet and before it was so easy to make telephone calls. It was very moving to have his family there and to hear about his commitment and about how Churchill pushed and guided him on these issues. Therefore, I hope that, when we debate this matter, we remember the various contributions that the parties have made.

In answer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, I have never said that the Human Rights Act is some precious vase that should be kept on a high shelf and never be looked at. Indeed, I think that the greatest damage that could have been done to it would have been to allow the various criticisms of and attacks on the Human Rights Act and the convention to remain unchallenged and unexamined. Therefore, we have taken it down from the shelf and have put it in good hands to be examined. I hope that this debate serves as an illustration of the kind of informed discussion that we want on how the Act works and how it impinges on our system of justice.

A number of issues have been raised and I shall try to deal with them. Prisoner voting was referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, and the noble Lords, Lord Prescott, Lord Faulks, Lord Goodhart and Lord Ramsbotham. The old ministerial fallback position of “We are considering the position” is as far as I can go on that, but I am not sure that it is a particularly edifying exercise. The other night, I watched an excellent documentary on BBC Four about the abolition of the death penalty in this country. In a way, I came to the same conclusion that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, came to about the passage of the Human Rights Act. I doubt whether this Parliament would abolish the death penalty in the way that Parliament did in the 1960s. However, that does not mean that in my opinion Parliament has not improved over the past 40 years or so in terms of its courage in addressing some of these issues.

I liked the statistic that at the recent general election in Ireland every prisoner had the right to vote but only 0.5 per cent exercised it. On the sex offenders register, my ministerial fallback position is that we are looking at the implications of the judgment. However, I also note that it has been applied in Scotland for the past year. Before I leave the subject of prisoner voting, and before people get ready to castigate this weak, flaccid and vacillating Government, I look at the Lord Chancellor who sat on the judgment for six years and did nothing.

The debate on press complaints was useful. The contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Prescott and Lord Black, showed the two sides of the debate that is to be had. The Press Complaints Commission has a job to do in convincing the public that it can be the robust, independent regulator that it was agreed it should be when the special arrangements were made at the passing of the Act. The implications of Section 12 were drawn to my attention. Section 12 asks courts to give proper regard to public interest, and I think that the question of whether that needs sharpening and defining will bear investigation.

I am not supposed to tell your Lordships that the Master of the Rolls is going to deliver his report tomorrow. Government secrets are not what they used to be so I shall be very surprised if he does not deliver it tomorrow, as the Daily Telegraph has already said that he will be doing so. More seriously, I hope that we will be able to look at what he says about procedure with a view to making it more effective—a point emphasised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer—as well as looking at the procedure for super-injunctions. The noble and learned Lord pointed out that super-injunctions can be issued in secret without the press being able to make their case, and I suspect that the Master of the Rolls will be looking at that, and properly so. However, let us wait to see his recommendations. They will certainly be treated extremely seriously.

The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and I have discussed the Northern Ireland Bill of Rights before. It was a commitment in the Good Friday agreement. However, I think that successive Governments have said—as has been said about so many things in relation to Northern Ireland—that, when we can get agreement in Belfast, there will be no problem on that issue.

On the specific question of the sex offenders ruling, further to the Home Secretary’s Statement in the House of Commons on 16 February, the Government will shortly bring forward proposals to implement the ruling of the Supreme Court. However, a robust review, led by police and involving all relevant agencies, will be carried out so that a full picture of the risks to the public can be considered. Sex offenders who continue to pose a risk will remain on the register, and will do so for life if necessary.

I turn to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Prescott and Lord Black. The noble Lord, Lord Black, said that the law was reasonably easy to apply to the print media but very difficult to apply to the new technologies. This matter is also being tackled by the Joint Committee on the Defamation Bill. Some of the recent publicity about super-injunctions illustrated that it is difficult to track down messages on the new technologies. I am beginning to sound like a judge now, aren’t I? As I even have to ask my son James to send texts for me, you will know why I struggle with these things. But new technologies make it difficult to make the law applicable. We are consulting widely on that and I hope that we will have some agreements, certainly about the internet—guarantees that prevent some of the abuses that have arisen in terms of libel law and freedom of speech in that regard.

I was interested in the interventions of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, and the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson. I will not presume to make judgments on the matter any more than the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine. The noble Lord’s warning was about whether it was worth making the court rulings as subjective as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, seemed to suggest, so that we lost the powerful leverage that the court’s judgments have on human rights across Europe as a whole. That debate will go on. The noble Lord says that you cannot pick and choose; the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, says “Persuasive, but not binding”. Our Supreme Court has said that, to get things right, it will follow Strasbourg decisions as it generally does, unless the effect could be inconsistent with a fundamental substantive or procedural aspect of our law.

I will just check quickly through my notes whether I have missed any points that noble Lords made. On the list of good things, I had not realised the real benefit of the Human Rights Act as it applied to courts martial, as spoken about by my noble friend Lord Thomas. He also made interesting comments about Hong Kong.

In reference to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, perhaps it needs saying that respect for the rule of law includes total respect for the independence of the judiciary. Occasionally individual Ministers—it has happened in other Governments as well—get tetchy about what judges do, but we should not get too excited that that is somehow an assault on the judiciary. Until 12 months ago I did not regularly mix with the higher ranks of the judiciary, but since then I have had some experience of them. They are fairly tough old characters, so I think that they can stand the occasional word of criticism—as politicians occasionally get words of criticism from the Bench. It is a good and healthy dynamic tension.

I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, spoke, because it was important that the debate had the case for the prosecution, as it were. Has the Act been trivialised? Has there been too much acquiescence by our courts—a kind of mission creep? He made the case for a proper examination of the Act, and that is what we intend to do in bringing forward the commission to look at it.

The noble Lord, Lord Wills, made a point about human rights protecting the unpopular and the minority. That is the essence of a civilised society, as I said before.

By the way, I have just remembered the bit of technology I had forgotten: Twitter. Twittering is hard to track down. The other day I was at a meeting of senior high-tech advisers, and I kept talking about biscuits. Nobody said anything until, in the end, one of them said, “What was that about biscuits?”, and I said, “Where they store all this information”. He said, “Those are cookies”, and then all the experts confessed that they had not interrupted because they thought that the Minister must know about some new technology that they were not aware of.

I am always petrified because the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, finishes his speeches with a pointed finger and a question to the Minister, but this time it is easy. I will report back to the Lord Chancellor about the piece of European skulduggery that he outlined in terms of financing. Of one thing we are certain. Ken Clarke went recently to a meeting of the Council of Europe’s body in Izmir in Turkey and outlined our ambitions for reform, and the response was extremely encouraging. We will make a really determined effort during our presidency to press the case for reform, advised by our commission.

Let me end as I began. We are deeply in debt to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine—first, for the Act; and secondly, for inspiring the debate. It has set the parameters of how we will look at the issues, safe in the knowledge that this country had an amazing role in creating the European Convention on Human Rights. We will go forward in the 21st century as firmly committed to that as the generation who, as was rightly said, experienced personally, at first hand, what happens when the state gets out of control—when it does not have checks and balances, and when there are no human rights.