Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, on getting a concession from the Government and understand the point he made with his Motion, which I understand he will not move. I am pleased that it has been accommodated.

The noble Lord, Lord German, explained his amendment extremely well; it provides a backstop for the taxpayer to stop people going into legal limbo, being a burden on the taxpayer indefinitely and getting into the grey area which so many in this situation are in right now. As he said, it is totally in line with the Government’s expectations of the Bill, so if the noble Lord chooses to press his Motion F1 then we will support it.

My noble friend Lord Cashman summed up the support for Motion G1, in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton. If he chooses to move it, we will support him. As my noble friend said, it reinforces the principle of protection for LGBT people. In the words of the noble and learned Lord, Schedule 1 should not provide a veneer of respectability to certain countries that are currently on it, so we would support him.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, as I indicated earlier, I ask the Government to consider leaving to Parliament the final decision on any regulations reintroducing retrospectivity. That said, for the reasons I gave earlier, I beg leave to withdraw Motion B1.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by reminding the House that I sit as a magistrate in youth and family courts and, as such, send youths to secure accommodation for welfare reasons and as a result of offences they may have been convicted of in the youth court. To make it clear, the Labour Party supports Amendment 90A, which the noble Lord, Lord German, has just spoken to. My Amendments 90B to 90F look at a different aspect of secure accommodation.

The amendments in my name seek to address national shortage in secure accommodation by placing a duty on local authorities to assess the local need and create a strategy to deal with that need. In Committee, Peers from across the House highlighted the significant lack of secure beds in certain areas that leaves children being dispersed across the country, sent to unsuitable establishments or unnecessarily remanded in custody. The Government responded by saying that they are taking steps to support local authorities to maintain existing capacity and to expand welfare provision in secure children’s homes.

There are currently no secure children’s homes in London, with London children being placed in justice and welfare placements in secure accommodation an average 124 miles from home. This is disruptive for the children, their families and the services supporting them. There are other significant geographical gaps across the country. Currently there are only 15 secure children’s homes in England and Wales. This amendment places a statutory duty—a requirement—on relevant local authorities to address this issue.

Following the Government’s response to the amendment in Committee, the Mayor of London’s office stated that the reality of the £259 million referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, is that it will take some time to translate this into available secure beds. This is especially true given that there is no indication of how that funding will be apportioned across the country to address the geographical gaps to which I have referred. There is also no commitment to ensuring that both welfare and justice placements are provided for within this funding. This is also a gap in the answer given by the noble Lord. Therefore, the additional funding does not remove the need for relevant local authorities to assess the need for secure accommodation and to develop a strategy for any shortfall.

In conclusion, I will repeat a statement given by Lord Justice Baker. This is the ruling on an appeal brought in July 2021 by Just for Kids Law against Waltham Forest Borough Council which successfully argued that the failure by local authorities in London to provide appropriate alternative accommodation for children was unlawful. He said:

“The absence of sufficient resources in such cases means that local authorities are frequently prevented from complying with their statutory obligations to meet the welfare needs of a cohort of vulnerable young people who are at the greatest risk of harm. The provision of such resources is, of course, expensive but the long-term costs of failing to make provision are invariably much greater. This is a problem which needs urgent attention by those responsible for the provision of resources in this area.”


If the noble Lord, Lord German, chooses to put his amendment to a vote, we shall support it. Nevertheless, I have raised other issues which I hope the Minister will respond to in his reply to this group of amendments.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, the aim of this exercise is to ensure that children who enter custody leave it better educated, better able to become part of normal working society and better able to function in a family environment. When Charlie Taylor produced his advice, which has already been mentioned, on the education of children in custody, his aims were exactly those: to ensure that the quality of education in custodial institutions, which currently is extremely variable, from the excellent to the terrible, should reach a good standard, comparable with that provided by decent schools around the country.

There is an issue about numbers. I would not like it to be taken that every local authority will be required to provide an educational provision for those children who come from that local authority. I know that is not what the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, with all his knowledge of this issue, is aiming at. There are well under 1,000 children in custody—significantly fewer than there used to be—which, after all, is the roll of a typical London comprehensive school as we speak. It would not be in the public interest to have a large number of academies for children in custody around the country because it would not be possible to supply the quality of education. However, as Charlie Taylor emphasised, we need the balance between having good schools or academies—whatever one calls them—for children in custody and local authority provision of the kind envisioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, which ensures that they are kept in touch with their communities and their families and where they will probably go back to live after they leave custody.

It seems to me that, if all that is right, it is beyond argument that local authorities should be able to participate in this process without hindrance and establish educational institutions for those in custody, and that there should be as few obstacles in their way as possible. Once that is achieved, they will have to compete with everyone else who is in the area—that is perfectly sensible—but it would be wrong, for policy reasons that are, in my view, poorly conceived, to obstruct a legitimate role for local authorities.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the points that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, just made. I also think that Mr McAra should be very grateful to my noble friend Lord Brooke for raising the points about the lack of a formal record of the cost of the incidents. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that it seems very unlikely that anyone would get a caution for this sort of offence. Even if it got to court, there would be an obligation on the sentencing court to consider compensation, because one has to consider this whenever one sentences an individual. Nevertheless, my noble friend has raised an interesting question and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I hope I can be forgiven for intervening slightly out of order. I have been thinking as I listen to this debate about the very troubling case which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, raised, but I am not sure that what he is looking for is germane to this clause. However, there is an issue of general principle about unrecovered, uninsured losses arising from a serious crime of violence which does not cause considerable personal injury.

If there is an injury that would attract damages of £1,000 or more, some ancillary costs are payable under the criminal injuries compensation scheme. This raises in my mind that perhaps the Government should look at something like the Pool Re reinsurance scheme, which applies to claims which are uninsured as a result of terrorism events. The underinsured or uninsured person can go to this entity, which has been set up jointly by the public and private sectors, and recover the cost of damages for what has occurred outside the insurance scheme. I suggest to the Minister, who is an extremely experienced lawyer, that perhaps the Government should look at the criminal injuries compensation scheme and the Pool Re scheme and try to produce something which would deal with quite a significant number of cases which probably do not involve a massive amount of money, but in which people who are not very well resourced suffer a great deal, and disproportionately, as a result of the kind of offence that the noble Lord described.

Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration etc.) (Amendment) Regulations 2015

Debate between Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Monday 7th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on moving this Regret Motion. I sit as a magistrate in London in the family courts, the youth courts and adult criminal courts and I frequently hear cases where the defendant or applicant is a litigant in person. From the court’s perspective, some litigants in person represent themselves very well. They understand the advice that they receive from the clerks and manage both the legal process and the practical aspects of navigating the court system through to a conclusion that they believe is satisfactory. However, some—I would say many—litigants in person have difficulty understanding the guidance that they are given when in court. They struggle with the whole procedure and, at the end, do not feel that they have been treated justly by the system that they have grappled with.

I want to tell noble Lords an anecdote from about a year ago. It concerns a woman who turned up in court charged with fraud against her employer. She was a litigant in person. She came into court and was correctly identified. The clerk then asked her whether she was guilty or not guilty. Her reply was, “I am guilty but I want to plead not guilty”. When asked to explain herself, she did indeed have a rationale for saying that. She was imminently due to have a medical operation. If she had pleaded guilty she would lose her employment and not be able to have the operation, so she was going to delay the finding of guilt until a trial.

It could be argued that the defendant had told us that she was guilty and that she was planning to commit a further fraud on her employer. But as a court we were limited in the advice that we could give to her other than to advise her of the benefits of a guilty plea. We had 30 other cases to deal with that day. We filled in the necessary forms and the matter was indeed put off for trial. If that lady had had some robust defence advice, she may have decided to plead guilty as she had indeed told us she was guilty. But her right to plead not guilty trumped everything else, resulting in the additional cost of the trial.

The overwhelming point that I want to make is that we see many vulnerable people in courts—people who are not able to represent themselves. There is a concern. The Magistrates’ Association, together with other interested bodies, has tried to judge whether the justice system is functioning properly with this increase in litigants in person. I draw the House’s attention to a survey of magistrates published on 13 January this year. Views were taken before costs came in in February 2014 and again in November 2014 after the increase in litigants in person. The survey shows a noticeable increase in the dissatisfaction expressed by magistrates because they felt that the system was not being as just as it should be.

I understand that there are a lot of surveys, but the current chair of the Magistrates’ Association, Richard Monkhouse, was a statistician in a former life and this is a robust piece of work. I have looked at it myself and I have a scientific background. I hope that the Government will look at these figures carefully because they raise a worrying growth in uncertainty and dissatisfaction with the increase in the number of litigants in person.

A wider point should be made. Other aspects of the legal and court system also feed into the general sense of dissatisfaction and the feeling that the court system as a whole is not properly offering justice to people. We have heard from my noble friend about the imposition of the criminal courts charge. In the family courts, we have had cuts to legal aid and an increase in the costs of drug and alcohol testing, which reduces access to fairness for people. We have had the increase in tribunal fees and cuts to CABs. These are off-topic for the purposes of this debate, but they add to the sense of many vulnerable people feeling that the court system as a whole is not open to them as it should be.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, who brings a rich vein of evidence from his experience as a lay magistrate to your Lordships’ deliberations. I declare the interests of having been a barrister practising criminal law for 45 years and having spent 28 years, until I retired from these roles at the end of last year, as a part-time judge at various levels and, particularly for this debate, as a former president of the Howard League for Penal Reform.

In a few moments, I shall talk about prison law specifically, but I wanted to address some issues about the generality of this debate, if I may. I agree with the broad thrust of what has been said about the effect of the regulations. However, I want to commend the Lord Chancellor for his willingness to engage with the legal profession, both the Bar and the solicitors, during recent weeks and months. This has been appreciated. Other things could be done than cutting criminal legal aid in the way which has been described.