Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Deben

Monday 27th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, many cases have been put before us in these debates in which we have argued the facts. We have disagreed about whether particular measures will have this or that effect. This is not the same kind of discussion. I can see that we could have quite a lengthy discussion about the access to our courts of foreign nationals and the cost to the nation of that.

However, that is not what I want to argue here. I want to argue something that is more serious because it is not a matter of opinion but of behaviour. If a responsible Minister has made an undertaking about a law and that has been accepted by the House, if that undertaking is to be changed, it must be changed in front of the House in circumstances in which the House can make a decision. I am a bit tired of the constant statement by Ministers that there is the affirmative resolution procedure, as if that made any real difference. We all know perfectly well that the system that we have means that there is very little effective parliamentary control over legislation that is passed by those techniques.

If Parliament has been assured by a Secretary of State that a particular situation pertains, it is morally unacceptable that some other Secretary of State can reverse that without Parliament being able to argue the case. I say that as somebody who may not have gone all the way along with some of the arguments about access to justice for people wherever they come from and the rest. I certainly have some concerns—I think many Members of the House have concerns—about the way that our system has been used in the past. I certainly have a real concern about the exclusion of children; I agree with the noble Lord opposite on that. However, that is not the issue for the House today. That is why I am very sorry that we are debating it so late, at a point when the Opposition have decided that it is perfectly possible to send all their people home. Some people might ask why people thought that they would have an early night when matters of real importance—this amendment and the previous one—were being discussed. I think that many will ask that question.

The Government and the Minister need to stand up and explain to the House how it is possible, in a democratic society, for a Secretary of State to give an undertaking to the House as to what a Bill means and for that then to be changed without an opportunity for debate in the House. That is a really serious issue and not one of an ordinary kind. Although we will not vote on this, because one can see the nature of it, I hope that the Minister will take back to his colleagues that this is not a debate of the same kind that we have had up to now. It is a serious issue because people must trust the words of Ministers when they speak officially. I was a Minister for 16 years and I do not think that I can remember a moment when I would have reversed the public statement of a predecessor without giving an opportunity for that debate to take place publicly and clearly. On this occasion, the House has every reason to say that this is not good enough.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

My Lords, in 1949, when the Legal Aid and Advice Act was brought in, the state of affairs in this country was radically different for the ordinary man and woman in the street from what it is now. I speak in terms of legal services and the availability of the same. In 1949, after the Legal Aid and Advice Act was passed and the scheme introduced, 95% of all law firms in the United Kingdom undertook legal aid. I can assure your Lordships that every single one of those firms would have done a great deal of pro bono work in the communities that they served. Indeed, not to have done so would have been a deathblow to their local reputation and workflow.

In the interim, everything has changed in that regard. Today, the number of firms doing substantial amounts of pro bono work and which are therefore available to the bemused citizen has, I am afraid, shrunk to a very small number. Indeed, the irony is that the bigger and richer the law firm, the less pro bono work it does. I speak as president of the Solicitors Pro Bono Group, or LawWorks as it is commonly known. In the mean time, the volume of legislation that we pass in this place has rocketed. Indeed, it is ironic that LASPO, the Act that underpins these amendments—I am speaking particularly to Amendment 176—is 302 pages long, is complex beyond measure and has rather more pagination than the entire statutes of 1906, which I had cause to look at the other day. Our output is something in the order of 13,000 to 15,000 pages of statute law a year, with only 2,000 or 3,000 pages of repeals. The problem for the ordinary citizen in terms of the law, access to the law and getting help and assistance when they desperately need it has never been remotely as great. Indeed, it is one factor in this strange mood that prevails in our country today—a mood of disillusionment and mistrust.

The amendment is absolutely essential. Make no mistake, judicial review is more and more important in the world that we inhabit, precisely because of the astonishing complexity and volume of the law with which we are surrounded and the need, therefore, to enable citizens and organisations to have access to the courts for judicial review when it is needed. One might think that JR cases are rocketing, but according to the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights in April this year on the implications for access to justice of the Government’s proposals to reform judicial review, that is not the case. That may be surprising, but I suspect it has as much to do with the lack of pro bono availability —although there are some wonderful exceptions—and the legal aid position as is. The proposal in Amendment 176 to prevent a future Lord Chancellor from imposing further eligibility criteria or restricting the scope of legal aid without coming back to Parliament must be right. I hope that the Minister, for whom I have great respect, will see the importance of this.

Access to justice is surely the ultimate hallmark of a democratic society that is working. We as a Parliament do not walk our own talk unless, as well as passing these tidal waves of legislation, we make available to the citizen the means of accessing that legislation when needed. Otherwise, frankly, we are hypocrites and aiding and abetting a society in which money wealth is ever more dominant. Where justice is concerned, that must surely be wholly unacceptable.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Deben

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an employer. I make the point that these discussions are much better done on the relevance of the facts and the nature of the argument. I really could not listen to the comments about Mr Beecroft without suggesting that the idea that we should discuss this as if it were “Beecroft-lite”—I think that was the phrase—rather than as a proposition to be properly discussed for its nature is rather a sad thing. If people are talking about “Beecroft-lite”, I must not be moving in the right circles; I have heard no one use such a phrase.

The real issue is: do we have the right balance at the moment? Is it sensible or not to allow employers, in circumstances where this seems to be a better answer, to offer, not impose, an arrangement that includes a payment of this sum? It seems a perfectly reasonable suggestion, and we should not be arguing about it because someone we do not like did not suggest it but suggested something else, and now a Government we do not like are actually bringing forward something different and it might be rather close to that. Frankly, that is not a very good argument. We have to have an argument about the facts; and the facts seem to be that this is a moderate change that would in many circumstances be very convenient for both workers and employers.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I hesitate to intervene, but I read Amendment 20G as having a different impact from the one that its mover has suggested. It may be that my legal wits are failing me, but surely new Section 111A(2), which it intends to amend, merely defines what the pre-termination negotiations are in subsection 12(1). It states that,

“‘pre-determination negotiations’ means any offer made or discussions held … with a view to”,

there being agreement between the employer and the employee. I do not see where the amendment comes into that. It is irrelevant in terms of who may assist the employee in arriving at that agreement, be it a trade union official, a workplace representative or a legal representative. The way that the amendment has been moved is not consistent with its potential impact on the clause concerned.

Financial Services Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Deben

Monday 12th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I support the sentiment of the noble Lord’s amendment. He is absolutely correct in diagnosing the woeful inadequacy of education for ordinary pupils as being a source of trouble now and the problem is getting worse. I should declare an interest as the founder and now president of the Citizenship Foundation. We work with over half the state primary and secondary schools providing citizenship education, including a very big vein of financial education which was for many years supported by Deutsche Bank. I wonder whether this amendment attacks the issue in quite the right way in that it seeks to insert, as a matter of primary law, financial literacy into the core education curriculum. That has been hugely debated for the past year or more and I am not even sure that Mr Gove has not already come out with his latest proclamation on what shall be the core curriculum in the future.

The noble Lord, Lord Flight, is absolutely right in the broad thrust of what he says. As with my complaint about the failure of governments of all persuasions to provide adequate implementation resources for legislation such as that we are putting through in this Bill, so too governments of all persuasions fail consistently to give our young people the chance to be citizens with sufficient knowledge and confidence to deal with the complicated world they are supposed to be citizens of.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I would like to support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. This may not be the right amendment but I hope the Minister will accept its thrust. It seems to me very curious how the education curriculum excludes for many schools and scholars two issues which may be of most importance to them in future life. One is financial literacy, which should be taught to boys and girls, and the other is proper cooking, which should also be taught to boys and girls. The obesity problem which we have today is very much affected by the fact that we do not seem to be able to produce at home the food which enables us to have a proper balance. The financial problems we have today seem to be very much affected by the fact that we do not seem to be able to produce in the average family the ability to make the sort of decisions which necessitates a basic understanding of the way in which finance works.

I hope the Government will not just brush this amendment aside on the basis that it does not quite work. I think it probably does not quite work but I hope the Government will take it seriously as one of those things that we really have got to stop hiding from. If young people do not learn how to balance their budgets and do not understand the basics of finance, it will not be surprising that financially illiterate people will make choices they should not make. The fault is not theirs. It is the fault of an education system which has decided that these necessary tools of life can be left on one side. I hope that the Government will take seriously the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Flight.