Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Newton of Braintree

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, it is probably my turn, if my noble former constituent will allow me. I have been stimulated, not for the first time and I hope not for the last, by some of the speeches in this debate. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, reminded me of how grateful I was that, in 18 years as a Minister, nobody ever sent me anywhere near the Home Office. I do not know whether or not I would have withstood it, but I am glad that I did not have to be tested.

Secondly, the speech of my noble friend Lord Carlile was absolutely spot on. I have not had the same experience as he has of being pressurised by the Whips: they have given up on me. I am glad to support him, because we need some signs of movement in the speech that will be made at the end of this debate. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that I would much prefer it if this amendment were treated as putting down a marker to see what response we get and that we should judge things in the light of what may happen later on with the Bill as well as what is said tonight. In that respect, I have a lot of sympathy with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said. But we need something less than irritated intransigence, as my noble friend Lord Carlile put it, from the Ministry of Justice in the way that it responds to the concerns in the Committee. We should make that very clear tonight. In other words, if we do not get some sense of willingness to move then we should return to this on Report. Meanwhile, I look forward very much to a constructive response from my noble friend.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I—

Citizens Advice Bureaux

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Newton of Braintree

Thursday 8th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, the noble Lord has confirmed the view I have always held that in every Chief Secretary there is a warm-hearted person trying to get out. It has come out this afternoon in a debate in which I judge the noble Lord has done the House a service, and I congratulate him on that.

I have never seen a speakers list that is a better list for the Whips’ Offices, particularly for the Conservative Whips’ Office, of the usual suspects—that is excluding the right reverend Prelate, of course—so there is some interest in this. I have a little history on this, so I can hardly avoid being a usual suspect. I go back a long way. In the early 1960s, as a rookie in the Conservative research department, I worked with the late Lord Barber to produce a pamphlet on consumer protection that drew attention to the parlous state of citizens advice bureaux and the desirability from the point of view of the Government of encouraging and fostering them. Happily, that has happened, and the movement has grown significantly in the intervening period.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Does my noble friend Lord Newton remember—I nearly said “the late lamented”—Mr Vaughan, who I seem to remember attempted, as a Conservative Minister, to make massive cuts in the CAB and lost the argument and his position as a result?

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

I have some recollection of that, but I do not want to go into other people’s grief on this occasion. However, I am pleased to take the intervention from my former constituent, my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury.

I was involved with that pamphlet, and later, as a junior DHSS Minister, I remember a lot of contact with CABs. I used to go back to the department and say, “Why are our leaflets so much worse than theirs?”. Our explanatory leaflets were not good, but we got better at them. Of course, I had a lot of contact with local CABs in Braintree and Witham.

The noble Lord made one of the key points, which is that CABs were the big society in action before the phrase was ever invented. We need to bear that in mind in talking about CABs tonight. The fact is that if citizens advice bureaux did not exist, the Government would have to invent them against the background we have at the moment. In my judgment, at present that need is not diminishing but growing. I do not dispute the need for difficult decisions about public expenditure or the fact that they are going to cause pain to some degree for everybody because of the situation we are in, and I am not seeking to debate the priorities, although I have doubts in one or two areas. That is not today’s subject. The fact is that a lot of relatively poor, relatively vulnerable people will be and are being affected by these changes. They are affected by changes in the Welfare Reform Bill, the Localism Act and, not least, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which we are about to go into detail on.

I am not going to go on much longer, but I have one letter from the Cambridge CAB, which is a page and a half long. I will quote three or four sentences. Sentence one:

“We have already had to withdraw desperately needed specialist help to people with mental health problems because of the loss of County funding”.

Sentence two:

“As you know, many CABx are already in the situation where they cannot afford to keep going”.

The last two sentences:

“You have probably seen much evidence from Citizens Advice and individual CABx about our role as Legal Aid advisers. The proposed scrapping of most of the Legal Aid budget next year will result in the loss of most of our specialist debt, benefit and housing advisers”.

Those words would be echoed by a lot of others, including law centres such as the Mary Ward Legal Centre in Camden.

I ask my noble friend not to give us all the answers this afternoon, but to take account of the fact that there is real concern here, real need, and to respond in as constructive a way as possible.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Newton of Braintree

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I am going quietly on Amendment 54, but not on Amendment 53. I will go more loudly, but briefly, on this. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on her success. I thank the Government for giving her that success, even though she is showing some signs of looking the gift horse in the mouth. I have one very small point that is not about appeals, but about suicides. I declare an interest as the chair of a mental health trust.

One of the problems with the coronial system has been the great inconsistency between the verdicts of coroners, some of whom, it is alleged—I am not an expert on this but I have been to a number of meetings with people who have studied it very carefully—prefer to find suicides as accidental deaths to spare the families. I cannot vouch for that, but that is what is reported by reputable researchers. The Department of Health is devising a suicide prevention strategy. I do not see how such a strategy can be devised, let alone measured, unless there is consistency in coronial verdicts around the country. One thing that is required from a chief coroner’s office is the need to ensure consistency. I should be grateful for an assurance that part of the role envisaged will be to seek to bring about greater consistency in the practice of coronial courts around the country. I believe that I see the noble Baroness nodding her head at that proposition.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, with reluctance I want to speak against the proposition of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. Before I do so, I reiterate all that my noble friend Lady Miller and others have said in this mini-debate about the worth of the efforts of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and indeed about how exemplary the combination of her efforts and those of others in this House as well as in outside bodies has been in bringing about the change in government policy that we have heard about today. That really is democracy in action.

However, there is one practical issue here that may not be sufficiently understood. I speak as one who at the start of his legal career was a coroner’s officer and indeed, on occasion, sat as a deputy coroner. The change we are making in creating the chief coroner post is, I believe, fundamental, and I think that it will have more ramifications than many realise. There is positive merit in waiting to see how it pans out over the next few years. Surely we do not want to rush into the creation of a new appeals mechanism without having the benefit of the experience of that changed situation. For that reason, if no other, I think that the position to which we have come—that is, acceptance of the chief coroner but at this stage not approval of a brand new appeals mechanism, especially in view of the fact that coroners’ juries find as to fact—may be the right one for the time being.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Newton of Braintree

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I shall not detain you long. I cannot resist—given that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, was in reminiscing mood—recollecting that my Welsh father was personally appointed by Aneurin Bevan to be responsible for the inauguration of the health service in what was then the county of West Suffolk. My infancy was taken up with traipsing around hospitals and surgeries in his wake. I am as totally committed to the National Health Service as any man or woman on earth. Indeed, one of my daughters was admitted last night as an emergency patient to an NHS hospital.

Perhaps I may echo the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, because I think that he spoke from great experience and with great wisdom. I am sorry that that flies in the face of what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said, in what was one of the most radical charm offensives towards these Benches in the history of charm offensives. However, as others have said, the notion of incorporating resolutions of party political conferences into legislation is a short road to legislative anarchy. I want to make two points in relation to that.

First, I absolutely concede that an upfront statement of principles makes legislation more comprehensible and more friendly to the layperson. I do not deny that for a second, and that very much draws me to such a statement. But then one comes to the hard, unaccommodating realities of construing statutes. We already have here a Bill of 445 pages, with at least that number of pages to come in secondary legislation, with—as I counted the other night—DHS documentation in support of the Bill in excess of 1,000 pages. I put it to the noble Baroness that principles, however well drafted, may give even more room for manoeuvre and obfuscation to my profession. There is room enough already in this Bill.

If noble Lords do not know what I am talking about, I offer an example. There is no reference in the amendment as drafted to an absolutely fundamental principle of this Bill, which is the subject of an amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, and myself—namely equality of clinical treatment and care for NHS patients with private patients. That is but one example of an omission in the present statement of principles. I am sure that many Lords in other parts of the House could say, “What about this?” or “What about that?”. We could argue until the cows come home. All the while, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, reminded us, we have that historic, catholic and satisfactory statement in the 1946 Act of what it is all about. Therefore, I add my voice, with a degree of reluctance, to the voices of those who feel that the amendment, although good in intention, might not achieve its purpose but sow inadvertent mischief.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I begin a very brief set of remarks by apologising to the House, and especially to my noble friend Lady Williams and to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, for not having been here at the beginning of the debate. The reason is perhaps apposite and might help to calm down the noble Lord, Lord Peston; I was at an NHS clinic in Braintree at lunchtime.

On the basis of this debate and looking at the amendment, I am with my noble friend Lord Mawhinney and a number of other noble Lords who have no objection to a preamble or general statement of principle. I will come back to that in a minute. However, if we need one, this amendment is not it, as the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said. There is a case for the Government looking at a possible preamble or broad statement of principle, partly because, in my judgment at least, the views that the noble Lords, Lord Peston and Lord Owen, expressed—which would lead me, if I believed that they were true, to refuse to support the Bill—have raised fears and concerns among a significant number of members of the public. If we can reassure them by a preamble or statement of principle at a proper time, we should do it.

My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern did us a service by going back to the founding statement in the 1946 Act. I say to the Labour Front Bench that it may need a bit of tweaking—I have not studied it in the way that my noble and learned friend has—but going back to the statement of principles on which the NHS was founded would give people that reassurance. For me as a Conservative, and no doubt for the Liberal Democrats as well, it would do a real service by assuring people that we are not about destroying the NHS but about making it better and more fully equipped to fulfil its initial objectives. I hope that my noble friend will look at what my noble and learned friend suggested.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Newton of Braintree

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

—and for recovering ground that I may have lost yesterday.

Somewhat to my surprise, I find myself a little more distant than I usually am from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and it is on her speech that I should like to concentrate. I have not yet fully digested the speech of my noble friend Lord Cormack but I am certainly not distancing myself from it until I have had a chance to think about what he said.

My comments, which I hope the Front Bench will not find unhelpful, are based on three points. First, the noble Baroness asked why you should need 14 days rather than five. I accept that either figure is a bit arbitrary but, given some of the things that have happened since—actually, my Front Bench may not welcome this—it might have been worth taking more than five days to complete the coalition agreement. Am I allowed to say that?

Secondly, the British electorate may like quick, seamless, one-day change, with the pantechnicons arriving at the back, or successively at the front, but I think they are going to have to get used to something else. When I started in the Conservative research department in 1960, we carried out what was called “cohort polling” —it was very expensive and we probably could not do it now—whereby we went back to the same people at intervals. It has been clear for 50 years that the old-style “I am red”, “I am blue” and “I am yellow” syndrome is breaking down. We saw the final conclusion of that at the last election. I do not boast about this, but people did not want anyone to win; they wanted to make us work together. I do not say that will always happen, but it will happen more frequently and the British public will have to get used to it.

My last point on the noble Baroness’s speech—I hope she does not think that I am being too unfriendly—is that the markets will have to get used to it as well, just as they get used to it in Germany. In most European countries, an election is followed by a prolonged period of negotiation—at the worst, horse-trading—before a Government emerge. In many cases it takes far longer than 14 days. I do not see them collapsing in a heap as a result.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I hate to interrupt because I agree with so much of what my noble friend has said. He speaks of other countries where 14 days has been exceeded; I believe Belgium is into its 11th month, is it not?

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

That may be a bit excessive, but then Belgium has some rather unique problems—which, so far, have not happened here—in terms of racial, linguistic and ethnic division. I take my noble friend’s point and I hope that he will take mine that most European countries do not expect to have the pantechnicons arriving on election day or the day afterwards. They have got used to it; why cannot we?