Social Welfare Law

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

The hope and the intention is that we can give further assistance to those who are giving advice. One of the analyses we make of this area of law—this goes partly back to the question asked by my noble friend—is that it is not necessarily legal advice that is needed. There may be alternative forms of advice to enable people to manage their way through these difficulties. These problems have been raised with us and we will continue to keep them under review. I take the point that the noble Baroness has made.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Will my noble friend kindly think again about this whole issue because it really is a case of penny wise, pound foolish? The citizens advice bureaux, which deliver help to 2.1 million people a year and are mainly volunteer manned, reckon that for every £1 of government subsidy they save the Exchequer £8 in welfare advice. How can it conceivably make sense, therefore, to go ahead with cutting their subsidy from £27 million this year to £7 million next year?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, perhaps I can answer both that question and the one that the noble Baroness has just posed by saying that the Government recognise the important role played by not-for-profit organisations and citizens advice bureaux. We are working with the sector, and across Government, to ensure that the implementation of government reforms helps to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of advice services available to the public. My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor will by now, I hope, have announced in another place that we will be providing additional funds of about £20 million in this financial year to help achieve this. We will continue discussions with CABs and not-for-profit organisations about future funding.

House of Lords: Reform

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, let me say at once that I acknowledge how complex a task it must have been to put this Bill together. Unlike some, I think that it was brave and constructive to produce it so that we can have something concrete to argue around.

I start with some clarifications. Nothing that I am about to say should be taken as a disparagement of Members in the other place. There has been an undertone of that in some of the contributions. The vast majority of them are decent, intelligent and conscientious Members of Parliament who are trying to do their best for the public realm.

Secondly, although I oppose elections to this House, I accept the need for reforms as many others have done. Many have mentioned the Steel Bill, as do I. Thirdly, we must accept that the onus is on those on my side of the argument—the non-elected side—to justify the non-elected status quo, which is almost unique in the democratic world and against the spirit of the times.

Further—I do not know whether this has been mentioned—we stand in particularly intense conflict of interest on the Bill, because the majority of us will be booted out if it goes through. We have to try extremely hard to be objective and see ourselves as others see us. At times, we can be apt to be a trifle too self-congratulatory.

I want to talk a little about a referendum. Some have mentioned it; I heard the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, praise it yesterday. Partly because of the conflict in which we stand, I believe strongly that this should be put to the people of this country in a referendum, although I am very chary of referenda. Let us not forget that it was in the Labour manifesto that there should be a referendum. Some will say that a referendum is superfluous because all three parties had it in their manifestos at the election that this place should be elected. That is a spurious argument. It was far from being a mainstream issue. Only zealots plough through modern manifestos.

I also note that in the European Union Bill, which my Government are in the process of legislating, they propose referenda for 50-plus Community arrangements. One will require a referendum if there is any change to either the right of election or the right to stand in any European election. How can it conceivably be right for us to impose a referendum under those circumstances while denying a referendum under these much more direct and plangent circumstances?

I do not believe that this is our Parliament. It belongs to the public. We are not just changing this House in the course of the Bill; we are uprooting it. I cannot for the life of me see how my Government, who claim deficiency of democratic authority as the reason for the Bill, can then ignore that democratic requirement. It would surely be aping the deficiency that they level at us to push through reform without it.

I devote the remainder of my time to the potential impact on the quality and character of this House if elections go ahead. First, who will want to stand for elections to this House? Given that it will have seriously inferior powers, what ambitious man or woman wanting a full-time career in politics will make this their first choice? Furthermore, that second-rateness will be wantonly rubbed in their faces if paragraph 111 of the White Paper is followed into legislation. It states that,

“the level of salary for a member of the reformed House of Lords should be lower than that of a member of the House of Commons”.

What on earth can that mean in terms of status or the authority of this place? We will be so inferior that we cannot even get the same rate as the people down the road.

The idea that someone might start here as a means of climbing to the elevated House of Commons is scotched, first, by the 15-year term and, secondly, by a ban on going straight from this place to the other place—there has to be a five-year break. It is not as if we will work less assiduously. The constituencies will consist of about 450,000 and does anyone suggest that that will not yield a massive amount of work? Of course it will. We will have less than half the number in the reformed House to deal with the plethora of legislation and policy than the other place will have. What sense is there in that? There will be less power, less pay, more work and no title. Who really believes that ambitious politicians will come to this place?

[Lord Trefgarne]

Will the noble Lord take a little care in denigrating the potential candidates for an elected Chamber? I am thinking of being one myself and I would have no plans to go on to the House of Commons.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I find it very easy to respond to the noble Lord’s intervention because, in his case, he would certainly be the exception to my rule. I am trying to be sensible and point out some of the realities about the two places.

I end with a few comments on the 20 per cent appointed Members of this House, if that option goes forward. One of the statistics produced by the progenitors of the Bill to beat us with is that on average only 44 per cent of Cross-Benchers bother to turn up to vote. That is precisely because many of them attend debates and Bills which engage their expertise and experience; otherwise, they get on with outside jobs and perform the outside commitments which feed and furnish their virtues of experience and expertise. I do not disparage people who may come here—I am trying to be realistic—but I do not believe that a full-time, paid 20 per cent of Cross-Benchers could do what the present Cross-Benchers do, for the reasons to which I have briefly alluded.

Apart from all that, I suspect that the culture and tenor of this place will be very changed under the new aegis. Partisanship will, inevitably, be in full cry, not least because getting a candidacy under the new aegis will be via an even more narrowly partisan channel than that which applies to MPs now.

Lastly, despite the best intentions of the framers of this draft Bill, I cannot see that it will yield a Chamber as ready, let alone as qualified, to amend government legislation as we are. I have not been able to update the statistics to this moment in time, but when I wrote an article in 2002, I found that in the period since Labour gained office in 1997, there had been more than 1,000 whipped votes in the House of Commons and not a single one went against the Government. In the same period, there were roughly the same number of votes in this place and a quarter of those were lost by the Government. I do not believe that that fantastic independence of mind and voting will survive an elected House. I believe that our native genius is demonstrated in the evolution of our Parliament, in both Houses. Let us continue on that evolutionary path and eschew revolution.

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

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[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.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scott of Foscote]

My Lords, I rise simply to say a word about the possible effect of litigation on the timetable proposed for litigation. The possibility of delay was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Pannick, who has great experience in this field. It is my experience that the prospect of obtaining a favourable end result to the litigation is not the only reason why people commence litigation. Both as a barrister and as a judge, I remember cases in which litigation was commenced not with any realistic prospect of success at the end but simply for the purpose of achieving delay. Where judicial review is concerned, the permission of a judge is required. So the applicant goes in front of the judge and sets out his case, asking for permission to start judicial review. Sometimes a judge will grant him permission when he ought not to have done. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, proposed the likelihood that permission would be refused in the cases of judicial review as a result of this amendment, and I do not dispute that—but there might be a judge who would grant it. If permission is refused, the applicant can then renew his application for permission in front of the court of appeal and try again. Throughout this process, which will take a little time, whatever expedition might be granted by the courts, the pending litigation will deter the Boundary Commission from getting on with its job.

I support the amendment—or at least I think I do; I am listening carefully to the arguments for and against—but I would not wish this House to proceed on the footing that a degree of delay might not be occasioned by litigation of the sort that I have described, which may be vexatious litigation.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Would it be unfair to ask the noble and learned Lord to utilise his vast experience of judging to comment on the point just made by my noble friend Lord Rennard as to whether the definition of a viable constituency would be an issue that delayed a competent lawyer for some considerable time, especially if paid per diem?

[Lord Scott of Foscote]

A competent lawyer will give an opinion on that after he knows the facts. The notion that the constituency proposed is not viable will have to depend on facts, some of which are bound to be much stronger than others. As a general proposition, the question of what a viable constituency is and is not will be a subjective matter and one properly for the Boundary Commission. Whether there was an angle that would allow an attack to be launched would depend on the facts of an individual case and is not something that could be answered in the abstract.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs]

I am bound to say that I am persuaded by my noble friend’s argument. The principle and the arithmetic are obviously right, but the details of how prisoners are to be given the vote—and there will be a lot of details—are a matter that the House will have to deal with. However, that would not affect the principle of including prisoners in the formula that we are talking about.

I have been a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights for some time, and we have been anxious that the Government should adhere to their obligations under the Human Rights Act and under the European convention. We were disappointed—I was certainly disappointed, as was my noble friend Lord Corbett—that the previous Government did not bring this proposal into effect. I hope that this Government will do so. Given that public opinion, spurred on by some of our newspapers, is not sympathetic to this, I very much hope that more voices will be heard to say that this is a good thing and that it is right that people in prison, at least many of them, should have the right to vote and to have a civic responsibility that will help them when they come out. There is an important point of principle here, which has been totally lost in some of the hysteria in the popular press, which is arguing against this, to say nothing of the fine that we would have to pay as a country.

I have two brief final thoughts. I introduced a Private Member’s Bill when I was in the other place to give certain rights to prisoners. My noble friend Lord Soley and I discussed it, and he persuaded me to include in the Bill a proposal to give prisoners the right to vote. It was a 10-Minute Rule Bill and was therefore not going to get much further. It received a lot of publicity, but all that the press were interested in—even in the 1980s; it was a long time ago—was the clause about giving prisoners the right to vote. Nothing else in the Bill did they take notice of. I am bound to say, in all honesty, that the Labour Shadow Cabinet did not support my Bill and said that it was not in favour of it.

I have a final little anecdote, if I may indulge myself—it is getting late. I was in a pub in Battersea just before an election. I was meeting a journalist who wanted to take a photograph. The pub was almost empty because it was mid-morning. A man at the bar came up to me and said, “’Ere, are you Alf Dubs MP?”. I confirmed that I was and he said, “I came out of the Scrubs this morning. You’ve got a good reputation inside”. I thought of all the votes that I was not going to get and I then lost my seat.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I should perhaps say that I am president of the Citizenship Foundation, although I do not speak for it. Surely we could deal with the point raised in this amendment by an amendment to the Bill that says simply that prisoners serving a term of four years or less shall be entitled to vote. That would take care of the point that the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, seeks to address in this amendment. I should be interested to know whether the Minister would be amenable to that being brought forward at the next stage of the Bill.

This is a very important issue. For years we have put off grappling with the question of the prisoner vote. I think we would all say that one of the main badges of citizenship is the right to vote. We in this House all agree that rehabilitation is essential and that we do it rather badly in this country. To that extent—I shall finish on this point—we talk about punishing prisoners by denying them the vote, but I think that we punish ourselves much more by, in effect, outlawing prisoners from normal citizenship and thus, in my view, destroying any real prospect of any effective rehabilitation. Therefore, I hope that something can be done about this and that it can be done in time for it to be part of the Bill.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

I hope the Minister will concede that this is an important point, and perhaps he can truncate this debate by offering to have a cup of tea with his officials and my noble friend. I see that there are problems, but it is clear that the Government will have to respond in some way to the determination of the European Court of Human Rights, which has said, in terms, that the matter cannot be delayed for much longer. Indeed, the Government have said that they will respond. We know that there could be substantial expenditure implications if they do not respond and a multitude of applications. However, I see some problems in practice.

Once upon a time I was a barrister and I did a fair amount of work on the criminal side. All too often one’s clients were of no fixed abode, so how is one going to determine the constituency in which the prisoner votes? That is one obvious problem. Equally, prisoners are more likely to come from socioeconomic groups that might be determined among the population but are not on the electoral register because they are alienated and do not bother to put themselves on the register. Therefore, there are problems in deciding which will be the relevant constituency in this matter.

Legislation

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proposals they have to reduce the volume and complexity of new legislation.

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

My Lords, the Government are committed to simplifying and improving the quality of legislation. We will improve quality by publishing in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny, where possible, and through post-legislative scrutiny. We have established a mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary criminal offences and introduced a one-in, one-out rule for regulations which impose costs on business or civil society.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply, but is he aware that we legislate at between 200 and 400 per cent the rate of any comparable country in Europe? Is he aware that the cumulative effect of making legislation at the rate of between 11,000 and 13,000 pages a year over the past 15 years has been a state of indigestion in this country that some might call citizen constipation, which has parlous consequences? If I cannot ask him for a moratorium for a year on all legislation to allow us to catch up and see to implementation, will he at least consider introducing a provision, as in the Charities Act 2006, requiring a report to Parliament within four to five years of enactment of legislation in order that Parliament can consider its effectiveness and take necessary measures?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I think there is general agreement around the House about the necessity to legislate less, but the problem is—and I have heard this throughout my time around Whitehall and Westminster—that although Oppositions have the absolute determination to legislate less, when they get into government they find that every department has at least two or three, or perhaps even more, good ideas they want to legislate on. Indeed, every Secretary of State who followed my noble friend’s advice would start reading in the gossip columns that he was for the chop, because he was a do-nothing Secretary of State. It is a dilemma, but my noble friend is pointing us in the right direction.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, I do not follow the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. It is difficult to see what would happen if a judge were to be given discretion to impose the loss of the civic right of voting depending on the particular type of crime. One simply asks this question: if, for example, a prisoner were guilty of shoplifting, which would normally have a very short sentence at most, is that crime one that would make him forfeit those civic rights? If there is a form of assault, is that to be one? There would be infinite argument about how the judge should exercise that discretion. Surely it is better to have a blanket bar if there is to be a bar at all.

I have enormous admiration for my noble friend Lord Foulkes. We served for over a decade in the same team in opposition and I had great admiration for his assiduity—fertile in invention was perhaps the way that we always thought of him. However, I thought, with respect to him, that he appeared to be arguing against himself. Having suggested four years in his amendment, for the reason that he gave, he then appeared to be arguing in favour of no bar at all. I will reread what he said but for the life of me I could not see any consistency.

I confess that my predisposition is, in principle, to be in favour of a bar, but I reluctantly accept that those who have committed crimes and therefore forfeit a number of their civic rights should not also forfeit the civic right to have a vote. That puts me not in the liberal club, although perhaps my noble friend Lord Foulkes was trying to follow our party’s new line of trying to attract dissident Liberal Democrats into our fold. I will not follow that line. In spite of my predisposition, I accept the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights. Indeed, it has to be accepted—the sooner the better. The only question that remains is the length of sentence that there should be. There has been far too long a delay, as the noble Lord said.

I, too, have heard, perhaps on the same grapevine, that the Government will shortly make an announcement and that they favour four years, without any discretion for the judge. If that be their response, though, there is surely a case for consistency. If it be the case in respect of a general election, surely the Government should now act in the spirit of what we are told they will be announcing shortly and say that the same principle should apply to those who are currently serving sentences. If they will, and I suspect that there is the will for this in the House and in Parliament as a whole, they can ensure that whatever length of time they choose is in operation by the time of the referendum, whenever that may be held, be that 5 May or some other date.

If only for the reason of consistency—even though, like the great mass of public opinion, I suspect, I am not personally convinced of the case—I accept that we must follow the European Court of Human Rights. Pace the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, we cannot pick and choose the judgments that we follow. In following them, we should endeavour to attain consistency in the various elections that our people will be involved in.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I support the amendment. It is a timid one but it is the only one we have, and I will wholeheartedly support it. There is a paradox, is there not, about one aspect of the punishment of someone who has put themselves outside society being to keep them outside society? Surely the very heart of rehabilitation is to get a prisoner thinking once again that they relate to the society that they have offended against—to bring them back inside the “big society tent”, if you like. It seems to be a self-injury to have the rule at all, although I can perhaps understand how the law is as it is out of respect for public sentiment, however wrong that sentiment may be. With that, I will simply say that I endorse and support what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has said.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene on this. I have two brief points. First, I know that I shall be told that this is a ferociously anti-European thing to say, but it is emphatically not intended to be that. Am I the only person in this House, or indeed in the other House, who always feels slightly uncomfortable when a Government, of whichever party, stand up and say, “This is something we’ve absolutely got to do, whether we like it or not”? There comes a point where you question the extent to which that is compatible with a sovereign Parliament. It is always a bad argument, and I have seen this on a number of other occasions, if an elected Member of the other House has to go back to their constituents and say, “This is something we have no choice whatsoever about; this is a matter that’s been decided somewhere else”. That is a weak argument and I know that my noble friend did not deploy it; he addressed the actual merits of the case. That is just an observation.

Secondly, I am sure that there is an answer to this, but I am simply not versed enough to know it. Given that there are many other countries where I understand there is an unfettered right to vote in general elections, the practicalities of exercising that right in a meaningful way seem very difficult. A normal constituency campaign involves access to constituents and potential constituents if you are a candidate. It involves meetings, if necessary, and canvassing. I am sure that these practical questions have been asked long before I raised them in this debate, but I would like to know what the practical answers are.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, may be jumping the gun. We should give this House a chance to consider this Bill in an intelligent, fair-minded way. I have no doubt that the vast majority of Members of this place will do just that. While I support the Bill generally, I want to hear more debate about the 5 per cent variation either side. I also want to hear more debate about the reduction in the number of MPs, because it strikes me that, in the modern age of communication, the intensity of work that MPs have to undertake is utterly different from what it was even 10 years ago. There is a lot of water to go under the bridge before we finalise the shape of the Bill.

I was nearly provoked by the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, into debating the merits of electoral systems, but that is not what this debate is about. This debate is about the Bill and the referendum. We are going to put this issue to the people of this country, and quite rightly. All of us will say our pieces hither and yon, and the people of this country will decide what they think are the merits of this complex argument.

I shall concentrate on just one aspect of the Bill: the way in which the public are to be prepared for their referendum choice. I plead a special interest in this as founder and president of the Citizenship Foundation. I hope that my remarks are entirely without partisanship. Noble Lords may be forgiven for having missed, in a 301-page Bill, two lowly paragraphs—paragraphs 9 and 10 of Schedule 1—that prescribe just how the British public is to have a good chance of understanding what all this is about and being fired up to get out and vote. I am sure that one thing on which we all agree is that, if we are going to have a referendum, we must make the best of it. We must get the best possible turnout, regardless of which side it takes.

Paragraph 9 of Schedule 1 states that the role of the Electoral Commission will be, first,

“to promote public awareness about the referendum”.

That is an excellent requirement. The commission tells me that it has already decided to put a leaflet through every door in the four countries. Secondly, the Electoral Commission is to have discretion—I wonder whether that should be a requirement—to,

“take whatever steps they think appropriate to provide … information about each of the two voting systems referred to in the referendum question”.

Paragraph 10 of Schedule 1 is headed “Encouraging participation”. I give credit to the Government for including a provision that will require steps on the part of various people to encourage participation. What I question—it is a very open-minded question—is the way in which the obligation to encourage participation is split among four groups: first, the chief counting officer, who is, under the 2000 Act, the chair of the Electoral Commission; secondly, the regional counting officer, who is given an obligation under the Bill to encourage participation; thirdly, all counting officers; and, finally, all registration officers. Does that not make matters more complex than they need to be? Should not there at least be very early collaboration among those four groups to ensure that they do not each reinvent the wheel and to ensure that certain key matters do not fall between two stools and are not left unexplained and unencouraged?

Paragraph 10(5) states:

“The Minister may reimburse any expenditure incurred by an officer for the purposes of”

the encouragement provisions. Can the Minister give the House some indication of just what the Government propose in this regard? Unless an early, solid assurance can be given by him that the expenses incurred for the purposes of encouraging participation will be at least partly met by the Government, that will be a serious inhibition of what should be a highly effective propaganda campaign—if one wants to use that loaded phrase—to get people fired up to go out and express their view with knowledge enough to enable them to reach, each according to his own, a right conclusion.

I refer back to Section 108 of the 2000 Act, which states that the Electoral Commission shall decide which organisation on each side of the divide shall be designated for the purpose of the Act. Only one organisation can be designated. Section 110 of that Act states that each of the designated organisations shall have up to £600,000 to enable them to undertake their roles as organisers of the referendum campaign. There are provisions about free postage, free meeting halls and so on. That figure of £600,000 was established in 2000. Can the Minister assure the House that that figure will be increased, so that the task of the organising designated bodies can be fully and well undertaken? I repeat: to have a referendum with a poor turnout would be the worst of all worlds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McDonagh]

I start by declaring an interest; I have been a professional election organiser since my teens, I was general secretary of the Labour Party and I am still proud to be a grass-roots activist, so I am really passionate about what I do. I also know that many Members of this House, from all political parties, are passionate about working in the community and on elections, so I was excited to see this Bill coming through and to see whether it would meet the new challenges that I feel we face in this century: those of apathy, exclusion and isolation. I not only read the Bill but looked at everyone’s speeches on why they were introducing it. I can only come to a few conclusions.

First, this Bill is actually built on a complete and utter falsehood. We have heard the noble Lord, Lord Maples, articulating it this evening. It is that the Conservatives need more votes to win elections than Labour, because Labour has small seats and the Conservatives have big seats. That is completely untrue. It is true that Labour needs fewer votes than the Conservatives to win an election, but for this reason only: Conservative voters tend to be—not exclusively, but tend to be—older and wealthier and more likely to be managerial, to be homeowners, to be a stable population, to be well educated and to have gone to university. Labour voters are likely to be poorer, to have more problems with literacy or language, to be younger, to be in insecure accommodation, to have to move and to be on minimum-waged jobs. That mobility and all those reasons lead to Labour voters being less likely to vote than Conservative voters, so what happens is that you win Labour seats not proportionately but on fewer votes than in Conservative seats. That is a geodemographic fact.

I will let the House into a secret. It is not a fact just in the UK; it is a fact all around the world that those who are poorer, more mobile and less well educated are less likely to vote than people who are better educated, wealthier, older and more established. This can easily be sorted out. We heard it tonight and we heard the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, agree with it yesterday. I call upon the noble Lord to write to the House and show statistically that the case is that Labour gets elected because it has smaller seats than the Conservatives.

If the whole of the legislation is based on a false premise, another problem with it is that it impacts the whole basis of democracy in the United Kingdom. The basis of our democracy has always been one small and simple rule: that Members of Parliament represent a community of interest. They have always done that. This Bill says, “There is no such thing as community”. This is a very dangerous path to follow. I say to your Lordships: I have always believed in society and I am glad that all parties now believe in it, but I also believe in community and I think that nearly everyone in this House believes in it.

There is one little thing to think about. When walking around this—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Is the noble Baroness aware that, of the factors which the Bill prescribes must be taken into account by a Boundary Commission, the third are,

“local ties that would be broken by changes in constituencies”.

What are local ties if not community?

[Baroness McDonagh]

Exactly—but to create those local ties you have to be able to build from a local government ward and to recognise natural boundaries, county boundaries and other boundaries. That cannot just be put into the Bill without allowing those people whose responsibility it is to be able to draw communities; you are going to break wards.

I was about to explain that when I see noble Lords taking people around the House, or when I hear them at a dinner, it does not take visitors very long to ask them about their title. Every time, somebody has a story about when they went along to Garter and how they got their title. The reason for that is that it is about a community that they believed in. Having listened and looked—and I have seen a few people this evening—I do not believe that this House shares the Bill’s view of community. By the time it comes back for its next stage, I would hope that your Lordships will have been able to talk to your counterparts in the other place and will bring back amendments that recognise clear county boundaries, local government wards and natural boundaries.

We can all see that there are a few anomalies, but they are not there because somebody in the past has had a narrow, sectional interest. Let us take Wales for an example; by the way, Scotland is not a good example because Labour-held Scottish seats are large. In legislation, it says that you cannot reduce the number of seats in Wales to under 35. A previous Government did that because one of the constituencies would have ended up being a quarter of the size of Wales. They thought that was ridiculous; now, who was that Government? Was it Labour? No—it was in a parliamentary Act of 1986 and it was the then Conservative Government who recognised that there were proper boundaries and communities of interest. If a 1980s Conservative Government recognise that, it seems strange that this Government cannot.

It is not only the coalition that gets some of these things wrong. My own party, for example, got the issue of individual registration wrong. The Bill would be a fantastic place to bring it back and ensure that there was household registration. Some 3.5 million people are already under-registered, and now there are cuts of 28 per cent to local government. I hope that the Government will come back and explain—this was not answered properly yesterday—what advice is being given to registration officers about this, when it is now so important.

I was out knocking on doors last week, doing registration. I went to a small home, a lady came to the door and I showed her the names on the register. There were three adults. It looked like a busy household so I said to her, “Is everyone in your household registered? Everyone needs to be registered from the age of 16 and three months upwards”. She looked at the floor. I said, “Look, if they’re not, I’ve got a form here and I’m happy to help register the people who aren’t registered”. She started to give me the names of all the other adults who were not registered. I got up to six additional people. I was getting on with her, so I said, “Why didn’t you put these people’s names down when you sent in the original form?”. She said, “I was ashamed that so many of us had to live in one home”.

That is a problem for many people in our community. There is a need for registration. I do not think that the coalition Government really appreciate how much they are going to alienate people with this legislation. Having said that my own party got this wrong, I ask that the coalition Government to look at this issue again.

I also do not understand—this keeps getting asked, but I do not understand what the answer is—why this has to be done so quickly. No one seems to have answered that although it is such an important issue. I cannot understand why the Government would not want to consult; there are so many people who could bring improvements to the Bill. Apart from anything else, this legislation is actually very badly written. It has to be interpreted by many other people. The Government will have to table a serious number of amendments to the Bill just to make it understandable.

We are so privileged to be here in the home of democracy, when so many people before us fought the fight to get the vote and were able to establish Parliament in such a way that we could be a role model for the rest of the world. I do not know what any of them would think if they were looking at our legislation now. While our ancestors fought for the vote, our fight is against apathy, isolation and exclusion. Does anyone here think the current legislation meets any of those tests? Does anyone think that a young person starting out would feel included by this legislation and that it would speak to them? The legislation seeks to exclude. It divides our nation and damages our society.

I have one other thing to say to the Conservative Party. I have heard many of its statements, and it must be a great disappointment for it not to have been able to get an overall majority at the general election, but the Conservative Party was not robbed. It was not tricked out of its majority. What happened is that the public were fearful to give the Conservative Party a majority because they were worried that it would introduce sectional-interest legislation and that it would seek to divide. This legislation shows them that they were right to be worried.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

Of course it does. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, is probably the best placed of anyone in this House, given his intense interest and commitment to these issues, to know that the Boundary Commission listens to representations and that these are cut to the minimum. The Bill sets it at nought. It merely sets a figure that has to be complied with; no other considerations will count for the boundary commissioners. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, talked about my objections, although I have in fact maintained a series of principles that have had to be abrogated in certain instances in the past. Those principles are set at nought in the Bill. The question of locality becomes of very limited significance indeed and this is one reason I intend to oppose this part of the Bill.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He is saying, as some of his colleagues have said in the past, that the Bill sets out four factors that the Boundary Commission take into account. They include local ties, inconvenience, local government boundaries and special geographical considerations, so I do not understand the point that the noble Lord is making.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

Has the noble Lord not noticed that the tolerance level around the figure of 76,000 is a mere 5 per cent? If the noble Lord cannot see the straitjacket within which the Boundary Commissioners will be operating across the country, he is not showing that degree of insight into local politics and boundary-drawing which I would have expected from him.

Legal Aid and Civil Costs Reform

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I can give some limited encouragement. It is true that the law centre movement and other such bodies, which rely on certain cases of legal aid, will have difficulties with this Statement. I also think that there are likely to be difficulties for the CABs which, as the noble Lord indicates, face the problem of the impact of cuts in local authority funding and the likely loss of legal-aid work in the legal advice that they cover. My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor is fully seized of these problems and is very willing, during the period of consultation, to talk to those bodies and to explore alternative assistance and funding. The noble Lord points to the real impact made by the decisions that we have taken.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords—

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I welcome the reference to promoting alternative dispute resolution to accelerate and simplify the resolution of disputes. Can my noble friend indicate what the criteria are to be where exceptional funding for excluded cases is awarded? In particular, will he recognise that it is an issue not just for the excluded individual but for the courts, because if a case is of a particular complexity it can clog up the courts: a point that was made by a former Lord Chief Justice and a former Master of the Rolls when a previous Conservative Government cut legal aid?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords—

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, first, are the Government aware that the greatest advances in the development of law happen in legal aid cases? By diminishing legal aid, you end up undermining law as a whole. Secondly, family law has already suffered cuts, and we are seeing legal aid deserts in certain parts of the country. Women, for example, are not getting the kind of expert help that they need in cases of domestic violence. Thirdly, if the Ministry of Justice is concerned to look at spending on legal matters, has consideration been given to the money paid to lawyers by government, not as legal aid money but money paid by government departments to lawyers at the market rate, which is often excessive? Perhaps we should do something to drive those costs down instead of limiting access to the law by the poor.

Justice: Magistrates’ and County Courts

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effects on local justice of the closure of magistrates’ and county courts and of holding such courts in multi-use buildings.

[Noble Lords]

Come on!

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

I beg your pardon; I am not playing for time. My Lords, the Government are committed to the principle of local justice. However, our court estate must reflect changes in population, transport and communication links, technology, workload and the needs of today’s communities. These are the factors that will be in mind when judging where to locate courts.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister give a commitment that, in making final decisions on which county and magistrates’ courts will be closed, they will take into account: the fact that local justices and local courts have been the bedrock of criminal justice in this country for many centuries, and successfully so; that the cost and inconvenience to public users of distant courts is considerable, and for the one-third who have to use public transport is unsupportable; that the magistrates’ courts reckon that only a third of the 100-plus magistrates’ courts closures are justifiable: and, finally, that the better alternative would be to revert to using multi-purpose buildings, such as town halls, which would be much cheaper?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, the attraction of multi-purpose buildings has a superficial appeal. The problem is that many of them that might offer that up have no facilities for custody or for victims and witnesses and poor security for professional staff and judges. Therefore, although we will look at the case for that use, the best way is to have modern, purpose-built courts that can dispense justice efficiently. On the first part of my noble friend’s question, yes, we are well aware of the long-standing role of magistrates. Next year will be the 750th anniversary of magistrates in this country.