Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: NHS Ambulance Services and the NHS Patient Transport Service) Regulations 2023

Debate between Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd and Lord Rooker

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

I thank the Minister very much and welcome the fact that, although this legislation extends to Wales and Scotland, it applies to neither of them. This is a welcome change of mind; I hope that it will be carried through in other pieces of legislation or other instruments contemplated that relate to both education and the NHS.

I want to add one further observation, if I may, in support of what the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, said. We can of course pass instruments of this kind after the Government have gone out to consult, and they can say with some force that they have had some views, but doing it that way diminishes the status of our democracy. This is the place where the debate should take place. On a contentious issue—this is very contentious—we ought to have the argument here so that people know that it is open. I very much hope that a means can be found when we get to the more contentious areas of education and staffing levels in the other aspects of the NHS—perhaps on other matters, too—so that we have a mechanism for a meaningful debate in this Chamber for the strength and the health of our democracy, which is under such pressure from some who think that their voices do not count.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I came in today to break the habit of a lifetime—I have been in the House for more than 20 years, half of them as a Minister—because I proposed to vote against the first two Motions. I was going to support the first two fatal amendments. I felt deprived that I did not have the opportunity to do that—I am still going to make my points, mind you.

These are steps too far. I do not think that we should pussyfoot around. We know that, earlier in the year, the Government rejected the report on the Bill from the Delegated Powers Committee. There are times when this House should not simply fall into line with this Tory Government; this is one of them. I am reminded in some ways that, very sadly, we are missing today the contribution of the late Lord Judge who, earlier this year—on more than one occasion—made it clear from those Benches that we need to use the powers available to this House when we need to be firm. There were a couple of debates on it. In my view, this is such a time.

In answer to the Lib Dem Benches, we know that the health service bosses are not independent—we know that from the pay review bodies—so it is fairly obvious what will happen. I realise about the so-called conventions but they are between Labour and the Conservatives. There is no rule in the Statutory Instruments Act 1946 about not voting against a statutory instrument in either House; it is just the convention that we do not do it. We fear now that, if we do it to them, they will do it to us. In fact, the Tories have done it more to Labour than Labour have to the Tories so I am not going to take any lectures about conventions from this Government, who have breached, systematically ignored and torn up many of the conventions that rule our constitution. I will not rely on the use of fatal amendments by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, either.

One area will suffice as an example: electoral law. I am in favour of ID cards but the identity system was deliberately designed to reduce voting. Rees-Mogg admitted when he was the Leader of the other place that they had got it wrong: they fully intended to get fewer people in polling stations. The Government have neutered the Electoral Commission as the guardian of free and fair elections and, this past month, they changed the finances of elections, all without any consultation and with no Speaker’s Conference whatever. That is part of the constitution and the conventions on the way we do things. We do not have to follow the conventions: if a thing is bad enough, vote against it.

Paragraph 41 of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee report on these regulations—this committee reports to this House, having been set up by the House to look at these issues—says:

“The Department of Health and Social Care’s … consultation document acknowledged that, during past strikes, emergency provision has been delivered through voluntary arrangements”.


So why are we doing this? Why are we picking on ambulance workers? It is not needed. If there were any evidence of flagrant abuse and the voluntary system not working, believe you me, your Lordships would know about it. That is the reality. Therefore, on this one, if anybody called the vote—although it has now been denied—I would be happy to vote against the SI.

I cannot quote much from my experience. When you lose the opportunities of the other place to be in contact with constituents and with people’s daily lives, it is different; it is different when you stop representing people simply because you are in this place. However, I will give one example from my personal experience. Four years ago this month, a few days before Christmas, I was carted really late one Saturday night from Hereford County Hospital, which had spent four years stopping me going over to the dark side, to Worcester Royal, to have my first chemotherapy as an in-patient. The weather was atrocious; the main roads were blocked. The driver of the ambulance said to me, “I’d better warn you now: it might be a bit rough—I’ve got to go down some country lanes”. We passed three upturned cars due to the weather. When I got through it all, I wrote to the chief executive and said, “You’d better put a note on the chitties of those two people who looked after me in that ambulance that night”. It was absolutely horrendous.

I now think that people like that who do this job cannot be trusted to deliver emergency services when there is a dispute—disputes deliberately created by the Government anyway for political reasons. The reality is that I am prepared to vote against this SI, above the others—I am not saying anything about the other two. We have evidence from our own committee that it is not needed, and I have my own bit of personal experience. I thought, “Why pick on the ambulance workers?” If there were an opportunity, I would vote against the SI; I may not have the opportunity, therefore I will obviously support the regret amendment. However, I much regret that I may not be able to vote for the fatal amendment.

Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd and Lord Rooker

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendments 105, 106, 107 and 108 in this group. Indeed, I raised the issue of Clauses 37(7) and 37(8) at Second Reading and made it clear that I, as a non-lawyer, was relying on the Bingham Centre’s rule of law analysis of this part of the Bill. I am going to leave the experts—we have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson—to deal with the legal flaws. I just want to give a couple of examples that Second Reading did not allow because of the time limits.

The first is the culling of sea-birds in the Ribble estuary. The case of RSPB v Secretary of State in 2015 concerned the decision by the Secretary of State to grant permission for a cull of sea-birds. The Court of Appeal ruled that the direction to cull was not consistent with the objectives of managing their population. Under this Bill, the statement of non-compliance would declare such a cull not in compliance with environmental law but it would not stop the cull. What would be the use of such a declaration? A paper remedy is no remedy at all.

A second, more recent example, concerns Manston Airport. Permission to use Manston Airport was given by way of a particular kind of statutory instrument: a development consent order, or DCO. The DCO was contested and the Secretary of State conceded that it had been made unlawfully. The planning court quashed the DCO, meaning that it had no legal effect. Under Clause 37(7), notwithstanding it was unlawful, the DCO would remain valid.

The third example, which I will not go into in detail, concerns the case of Dover District Council v CPRE Kent. This regarded a proposed development in an area of outstanding natural beauty. The Supreme Court quashed the permission. Under Clause 37(7), there would be nothing to prevent it going ahead.

Clause 37(8) also presents problems with the rule of law, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said. A local authority could give a developer the right to clear woodland to build houses. In so doing, the local authority could be breaching environmental law. The developer will have spent money on paperwork and planning. It may become non-compliant at an environmental review but, because the developer has spent money and expects to profit from the development, the development must go ahead. This is absolutely crazy. According to the Bingham Centre, this introduces

“a new ‘polluter doesn’t pay’ principle into environmental law.”

This is a new normal: unlawful actions by a public authority remain valid; it restricts the awards of a remedy by the court; it requires a court to endorse unlawful action if quashing that action would hurt a person who stands to benefit from it. The Minister must have some really good, detailed answers to these points and the others he is going to hear this afternoon—far more satisfactory than what he has managed to conjure up so far on the Bill. He must appreciate that there will be chaos on Report as the Bill gets torn apart.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and speak to the same amendments.

If the Bill is to be effective and to work, there are two main areas that need change. The first is clarity in relation to all the duties imposed because without clear duties, interlocking targets, interim targets and environmental plans, there is no effective concrete law that can be applied.

The second area where it has changed is enforcement. On Monday we had a useful debate on the independence of the OEP. Today, we turn to a second aspect of enforcement: the remedies that must be available if court proceedings are required. I very much hope that the independent strength and force of the OEP, together with clear duties set out in the Bill, will mean that recourse to courts is rarely necessary. However, that may be a pious hope because it is obvious that in this area there are immense conflicts of interest between those looking at the long term and those who seek to protect short-term or other interests. It seems to me, therefore, that an amount of litigation and enforcement action taken through the courts is inevitable.

I believe that view must be shared by the Government because why, otherwise, would they seek to constrain two important aspects of our common-law tradition? The first is to curtail the judicial function and the second is to curtail the discretion of the enforcer. I will deal with each aspect in turn but, unless changes are made to this part of the Bill, I entirely agree with everyone who has spoken about teeth. I will not attempt to describe the kind of teeth required, only to say that they must ensure that the Bill is not a long series of statements but will actually work for future generations.

I will now deal with each amendment in turn. I will deal with them briefly and in the order in which they are set out, not as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, did, but I entirely agree with him that the critical amendment is Amendment 107. Amendment 105 changes the provision in the Bill that seeks to stop proceedings at a particular point in time being brought together. I find this very difficult to fathom. It is a very inefficient way of dealing with things, apart from being unjust. A court always likes to have all the relevant cases in front of it so that it can do justice. I ask the Minister: why do the Government wish to impede justice in this respect?

Amendments 106 and 107 can be taken together because they deal with the consequences of a decision by the court that what has happened has not been lawful. It seems to me very difficult to understand how a Government who believe in the rule of law—and I believe this Government firmly believe in the rule of law—wish to say that there are to be no consequences of a failure to comply with the law. That is very difficult to understand. However, much more serious, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and others have pointed out, is the restriction on remedies. I have no doubt that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and its very able lawyers are well aware that, from time to time, in several cases, judges have to deal with circumstances where the rights of other people are affected or there is a question about good administration. A judge then takes, for example, the prejudice to the rights of certain people on the one hand and balances it against the considerations on the other. That is an ordinary judicial function.

The Bill seeks to take that function away from a judge by imposing a restriction that requires a judge to be satisfied that if one single person would suffer hardship or prejudice to his rights, that means the court cannot do justice. I ask why. To my mind, it is a very undesirable attack on the way in which traditionally in this country we have approached matters of judicial review of government action. Until now, the judges have been trusted. It is a remarkable fact that, although there are complaints from time to time that far too many decisions are overturned on judicial review, the general effect of judicial review and the knowledge of the consequences of the remedies has been to improve good administration. The Government are successful in the overwhelming number—a percentage in the high 90s—of cases. I therefore wonder: what is driving the Government in this case to curtail the doing of justice by judges? It seems to me that there is no reason whatever for it. Surely, they can trust the judges on this aspect.

The last of these amendments is to the provision that seeks to curtail the right of the OEP to bring judicial review. Why take away its discretion? Do the Government not trust it? Surely, with an agency that is independent and to be chaired by a person of the calibre of the chairman designate, it is very difficult to understand why a Government wish to restrict its discretion for the future in bringing cases. They must also appreciate that if a judicial review has brought late, the judge can refuse a remedy. There is the lock of the discretion of the trusted OEP, with judicial discretion as a backstop. Why do the Government need more? We should trust our common-law traditions and leave matters to the discretion of the judiciary and to the discretion of the enforcer.