European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Warner and Lord Mackay of Clashfern

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

The noble Baroness’s amendment is very flexible. It refers to a period of at least three months. There is nothing in the amendment to stop the Government serving their own interests by being more forthcoming more frequently. I am sure that the noble Baroness would not mind having reports made on a more frequent basis.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that the Government share the sentiments expressed from the Front Bench opposite—indeed, from both Front Benches opposite. The proposal would be entirely in the interests of the smooth development of policy in this difficult area, which I am sure we all understand is extremely difficult. The more help the Government can get, the better, and I think that they are sufficiently humble to know that.

If there were any slackness on the part of the Government, we would have plenty of means in this Parliament for getting them to respond, but I do not agree with putting that into an Act of Parliament, and the reason for that is simple. If something is put into a general Act of Parliament, the idea is that the courts are the enforcers, but one thing that the courts cannot do, in view of the Bill of Rights, is to interfere in proceedings in Parliament. Therefore, this is useless as a formal amendment, but the spirit of it is first-class. I feel almost certain that my noble and learned friend will be able to accept that, because the Minister in the Commons said just as much in a passage that I may refer to later.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Warner and Lord Mackay of Clashfern

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I too support Amendments 14 and 28A, but I want to speak mainly in support of Amendment 9 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I do so from the background of having been the architect of youth offending teams and as a former chairman of the Youth Justice Board. One of the most depressing things about the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, is that we continue to find that the same number of children, if not more, who have been looked after and have left care are in the criminal justice system. My responsibilities as chairman of the Youth Justice Board related to the under-18s. If noble Lords go to Feltham, as I did recently, or look at young offender institutions for 18 to 21 year-olds, they will still see very disproportionately represented young people who have been in care. It is worth giving this special consideration, without distorting and overcomplicating Clause 1 too much; the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in Amendment 9.

These children are a special case. Many of us have tried to ensure that they get a better deal so that they do not go into the criminal justice system. Progress has been made among the under-18s in diverting them away from it, but there is still a long way to go. That is particularly the case among young people who have been in care and then are taken into custody. It is the case that when they leave custody, a depressing number of these young people quickly get on to the escalator of reoffending and they are back where they started. Many of the sentences are short. I should say that I am not advocating longer sentences for people in these circumstances, but they are usually not long enough to enable those running the custodial institution to change the behaviour of these young people and provide them with support. Typically, when they come out of custody, whether they are under 18 years of age or aged 18 to 21, for many there is no one in their lives to support them, they have accommodation problems and they do not have any employment. They then go back into the kind of environment which led them to get into the criminal justice system in the first place. Many of them offend outside the area where they were in care, so we have some problems about whether those local authorities always pick up the background of these children.

It is very difficult in today’s world for a youth offending team working with a young offender in one area to get the host local authority, if I might put it that way, to take responsibility for that young person who had been in their care. We have to look very seriously at Amendment 9 from the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. It gives focus to the importance of trying to do our best to stop these young people who have been in care, or who have left care, going through the revolving door of the criminal justice system—particularly those who end up in custody and then fail again when they leave custody.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, first, I very much support the amendments that wish to provide legal assistance to children who are in need. It is extremely important that they should have such help. I suggest for consideration setting up an advice centre because the problems that unaccompanied minors who come from abroad face include the intricate law in relation to immigration. If you go to a high street solicitor, it is difficult to get the kind of advice that you might wish for in that situation. It would be important to have a small team of specialists set up by the Government, or by anyone whom the Government could persuade to set it up, which would be available to provide that kind of help to children in that situation. That would be children who are in care or unaccompanied minors who come into our system otherwise than by the ordinary ways of care. It may be a good idea to bolster this type of amendment with a suggestion as to how it might be carried out efficiently and at reasonable cost.

My second point is in relation to Amendment 9. I understand the problem broadly in terms of the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and other reports—for example, the chief officers’ consideration of it. To ask people to do this is a great aim, in a sense, but I feel that if we are to do this we should offer them some assistance on how they go about it. Is the main way of approaching it to try to prevent the children in care committing criminal offences, small or large, or is it saying that if the children commit small offences we should persuade the police to do nothing about it? In other words, we should not commit these people to the organisation that deals with complaints generally. As has been said, ordinary children may find themselves in a disciplinary situation in their own families which does not involve the police and it may be that something of that kind is required. I am not at all certain how this problem can be dealt with but I am very much aware of it, and of the point of view that it should be dealt with. I would like to give more help to the people who we are asking to deal with it in how they go about it.

Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Warner and Lord Mackay of Clashfern

Monday 14th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I rise again as the keeper of the Dilnot tablets on the subject of deferred payments. If we had intended that access to a deferred payment scheme was to be limited to people with assets of less than £23,000, we would have said so in our report. That was not what we intended. I commend the report to the noble Lord, and I hope the House will forgive me if I just cite a few bits of it.

I refer the noble Lord to page 41 of our report. We said:

“Evidence submitted to the Commission suggests that the availability and use of deferred payment schemes is patchy”,

and we went on to explain that. The government consultation document suggests that it will continue to be pretty patchy as well because very few people are likely to come forward for this. We said—and this was a recommendation:

“At a minimum, the Commission recommends an extension to the current deferred payment scheme so that it is a full, universal offer across the country.”

That is what we said.

The Government have given the impression in various interviews—I have gone head to head with government spokesmen about this on a number of programmes—that they were going to support an extended deferred payment scheme and that it would be pretty much similar across the country. If you had a deferred payment scheme in Cumberland, it would look remarkably like a deferred payment scheme in Cornwall. It seems that we are getting into a position where none of this will be the case. It is pretty rough on the public if the Government and their spokesmen are giving the impression that they are implementing the Dilnot recommendations on deferred payment schemes when they are palpably not doing so under the present set of proposals as I understand them.

It is not too late for the sinner to repent—the consultation period is open until later this month. However, it is necessary to revisit this in terms of what government policy is on this particular issue, both in terms of access to a deferred payment scheme and on the issue of a model scheme. The two go hand in hand. It is no good having a model scheme if it is a model scheme for a handful of cases in different parts of the country. We need a model scheme that is actually available so that people who want to cope with the issue of how they fund their care can access a deferred payment scheme. It is always a risk when you are on a committee such as the Dilnot committee that, quietly and unobtrusively, the bureaucracies will nibble away at well intentioned recommendations. Some of us have had this experience ourselves, and some of us have done a bit of nibbling as well from time to time as civil servants, so we recognise nibbling when it is going on. We are in that position here.

It is down to the Minister to start some discussions about this issue, not to leave things to the marketplace, and not to give the public impression that there is going to be a widely available deferred payments scheme when, in fact, it is going to be available only to a fairly limited number of people.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

I do not understand why it is necessary to have any kind of limit in relation to this matter so long as there is sufficient security to allow the deferred payment to be feasible from the point of view of the Government. The proposition that the deferred payment scheme should be limited by the amount of assets a person has strikes me as rather unnecessary. So far as a model scheme is concerned, I would have thought that there is a lot to be said for having a form of document which is universal. There would of course be the possibility of different particular provisions relating to particular cases, but the central core of a deferred payment agreement could be put in a form of universal application.

Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Warner and Lord Mackay of Clashfern

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner (Lab)]

My Lords, as the chairman of the All-Party Group on Humanism, I am not sure that I should actually be following the previous speakers. However, Amendment 5 in this group is in my name and I want to be nice to the Minister instead of telling him off. The Minister has listened to the concerns that we expressed in Committee about applying the requirement to pursue the obligation on local authorities in Clause 1 to the Secretary of State in his actions, particularly regulations and guidance, to promote well-being.

I congratulate the Minister on listening to those concerns and tabling government Amendment 138, which effectively meets the concerns that we have. I suspect that my co-signatories, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, would say that the Minister’s amendment may not be quite as elegant as ours, but we are not going to have a competition about aesthetics; he has met the point and I thank him very much for what he has done.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

I warmly support that. I am happy with the parliamentary counsel’s draft, which is what the Government are going to move, and we have to understand that some lawyers are better than others at making drafts.

So far as the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is concerned, I hope that the Government will pay considerable attention to what has been said about it.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Warner and Lord Mackay of Clashfern

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I hesitate to intervene but it is a Motion of Regret, and one element of the regret the House would express would be regret for the position the noble Earl has been put in. Much of our debate so far on this Bill has been on the basis of how it would work in practice and how things would happen on the ground. I suspect there is a lot of information about how things would work in practice in the risk register. My concern is that the noble Earl is being put in a very difficult position and at risk of misleading the House—I am not saying he has; I am not saying he has not—as he has been put in a position where, because he is unable to use that information, he may be forced to hedge his bets to reassure the House on some of the practical issues. I hope that is not the case and he has not been put in that position, but we need to be sure and I hope he can give us some reassurances.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, the decision of the commissioner is certainly well argued, but under the existing system it is subject to appeal to the tribunal and the Department of Health intends to exercise the right to appeal. In that situation, in my submission, the Minister is entitled to give this House the best information he has. There is no question of failure to release this report in any way leading to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, misleading this House. I do not believe that is at all likely.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, developed a cogent argument, but the question he raises in relation to what is to happen here today is a different question from that which arises on the appeal. Unfortunately, although it is a different question, it is very closely related because, if the document is to be released now, the question of an appeal to the tribunal is evacuated because the document will already have become public, which is the issue in the appeal. Therefore, I believe that my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby has suggested the best way out of this business: the Government and the other parties to the appeal should do what they can to have the appeal expedited. I do not believe that the tribunal is in any worse position than a court of law in getting on with the job quickly and that is the best course because if the tribunal endorsed the commissioner’s decision then that solves the matter.