Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 30th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall combine my remarks on Amendment 102 with those on Amendments 103, 105 and 106.

Amendments 102, 103 and 105 seek to remove an unfair and irrational restriction on the role of the independent public advocate. I spoke in Committee at some length about how my original conception of this position in my Private Member’s Bill was driven by the pressing need for greater support and agency for those have been failed by the state and by public authorities in major incidents. Those who can avail themselves of the services of the advocate must include those for whom harm continues after a major incident, even though the major incident occurred before the passage of the Act.

Can there really be any serious justification for excluding, for example, the victims of contaminated blood transfusions and the postmasters whose lives were wrecked and continue to be wrecked by the Horizon scandal—people still struggling with the consequences of those failures by the state and by public authorities, even though the failures occurred before now?

I would be grateful if, in his response, the Minister would address this question directly: what justification is there to restrict the role of the advocate to exclude those such as the victims of contaminated blood transfusions? These amendments would rectify this specific problem in the current draft of the Bill.

In asking the Minister to respond to that question, I should perhaps have preceded my remarks by thanking him for the great generosity of time that he has given me, with his officials—to whom I am also extremely grateful—in discussing all the elements of this part of the Bill. He has gone over and above the call of duty. That I am one of many speakers thanking him for that shows the extent of this House’s debt to him and his officials in the progress of the Bill.

Amendment 106 is a relatively minor amendment but, after two Private Member’s Bills, it occurred to me that we perhaps should be more careful about how we define those who might benefit from the services of the of an independent public advocate. What constitutes a “close family member” in the modern world? Fifty or 100 years ago, the answer would have been common sense, but it is not any more. Living arrangements and relationships are much more various than they ever used to be. “Close” and “family” are, in effects, often disputable terms, and the current draft of the Bill is perhaps purposefully vague. For example, who will decide whether a parent estranged from their partner and who is no longer responsible for the upbringing of a child victim counts as a close family member? What happens if the person in question disputes any exclusion from the services of the advocate? If we at all can, we should try to head off such arguments beforehand, because they would only compound the grief and trauma suffered by many in the aftermath of a major incident.

This amendment seeks to avoid that, although it is, in essence, probing. If the Government have a better formulation, I would be happy to consider it, but it seeks to do so by introducing the specific definitions that have been derived from the intestacy provisions.

Amendment 106A tries to ensure that the post is implemented with proper timeliness. In Committee, I pointed out that it has been nearly seven years since the creation of an independent public advocate featured in the 2017 Queen’s Speech. The amendment seeks to remove any further possibility that the Government will unnecessarily delay the implementation of this post. In his response in Committee, the Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, rightly pointed out the need to observe due process in public appointments, so the amendment has been tweaked to take better account of that than my previous one.

In doing so, I had regard to the Governance Code on Public Appointments. Among other things, the code says that appointments should be completed

“within three months of a competition closing”.

In 2019, the Commissioner for Public Appointments found that the Ministry of Justice, where ministerial responsibility for the independent public advocate will reside, completed only 18% of appointments within that three-month target. Only the Home Office and BEIS had worse figures. To show that these figures are achievable, that compares to 100% of appointments by His Majesty’s Treasury and 76.7% by NHSI. Of course, the Ministry of Justice’s performance might have been transformed in the last five years but, in any event, the six-month period stipulated in this amendment should be ample time for the department to appoint the first independent public advocate, if it fulfils its duties in the way that the Commissioner for Public Appointments expects. If the Minister disagrees, I would be grateful if he could explain in detail why. This amendment is simply a lever to ensure compliance with the code of governance.

I now turn briefly to Amendment 110ZA. I spoke to this in Committee; I have tabled it again because, as it stands, the Bill still appears to permit the Secretary of State to appoint the independent public advocate but deprive them of the means to exercise their functions. I cannot believe that that is what the Government intend, but in any event this amendment will prevent any such travestying of the position.

Finally in this group, I come to Amendment 119AA; this amendment is intended to replace Amendment 108 in the Marshalled List. I spoke at some length in Committee, again, about the need to provide for some version of the Hillsborough Independent Panel to be accommodated in this Bill. This amendment attempts to do just that. I do not intend to rehearse again all of the arguments I made in Committee, but I remind the Minister of the advantages of such a provision, in terms of saving the taxpayer potentially hundreds of millions of pounds over the lifetime of a Parliament, and helping victims and the bereaved towards a more timely closure of their grief and trauma. The prolonged processes embedded, for example, in public inquiries only increase their suffering. I should be grateful if the Minister could indicate in his response whether the Government truly understand the crucial imperative of timeliness in fact-finding after a major incident, and how important that is for victims and the bereaved. How can it be acceptable to make them wait year after year, sometimes decade after decade, to find out what happened to their loved ones, and to understand why they have suffered such loss? Such delays only compound grief and trauma. I beg to move.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I return to speak very briefly to Amendment 109B, to deal with the position of Wales. In Committee, I introduced an amendment to require the Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor, when appointing an independent advocate, to secure the consent of the Welsh Ministers. This is an area where it is common ground that there is devolution. I am grateful to say that the Government have agreed that there should be consultation, but they refuse to agree consent.

I put this down initially because one of the ways to make a union strong is to have a proper dialogue. Now, there are some areas where consultation has to be required by statute. Normally, one would expect that in areas where there is an overlap in competence, there would be consultation, but it is right we put a statutory duty in to that effect. However, it seems to me wholly extraordinary—and I am pretty certain it has nothing to do with the Ministry of Justice— that they refuse to agree to the consent of the Welsh Ministers.

Now, noble Lords will all know that, when looking for a lawyer, there is normally quite a good choice. In my experience, having been involved on a number of occasions, you can normally have a discussion about A or B, and you agree on C. It seems to me totally extraordinary, if we are to live in a union that works, that the Government in Westminster have to say, “No, those people in Cardiff just have to be consulted; we don’t have to get their consent”. Is this any way to run a union? The answer is obviously not, and I am sure that this does not come from the Ministry of Justice—in this Bill, the Lord Chancellor and the Minister have been most sensible in what they have put forward. But I deplore that bit of the Government that simply cannot understand that going through the courtesy of discussing things and obtaining consent is the better way to run a union.