Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an important Bill. The Government deserve credit for seeking to address many of the ways that victims of crimes and public disasters have been let down by the state over the years. I pay tribute to the Victims’ Commissioner, as many others have tonight. The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, deserves credit for the way in which she has campaigned tirelessly on behalf of victims for over a decade.

However, it is disappointing that, in many areas, the Government have not gone as far as they could have done, and should have done, to provide better protection for victims. In his opening remarks, the Minister said that his door was always open, and he has certainly proved that to me personally. I hope that he has taken careful note of the number of speakers who tonight have said that this Bill just does not go far enough.

Why, for example, have the Government not introduced a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation, to ensure that children who have been forced into committing crimes are recognised as victims, not as perpetrators? Why, for example, are victims and survivors of rape who have had the courage to report appalling acts of sexual violence still being denied adequate legislation and guidance to prevent intrusive and inappropriate requests for survivors’ personal records? That forces them often to choose between vitally needed therapy and the pursuit of justice. Furthermore, there is no adequate means of enforcement of the victims’ code.

I want to focus my remarks on Part 2 of the Bill, relating to victims of major incidents. This derives from my two Private Member’s Bills, which endeavoured to set up an independent public advocate to act on behalf of the victims of large-scale public disasters and those bereaved by them. It has been a long journey to get to this stage. I introduced my first Private Member’s Bill nearly a decade ago. Since then, I have campaigned to get it adopted by the Government, as has my colleague and friend in the other place, the right honourable Maria Eagle MP, who has campaigned to get a similar Bill adopted there. The proposal went into the Conservative manifesto in 2017, and into the subsequent Queen’s Speech. And so finally here we are.

Throughout this process, successive Ministers and their officials have been generous with their time in consulting me. I place on record my thanks to all of them, including most recently the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy. I am particularly grateful to the former Prime Minister, the right honourable Theresa May MP, who immediately saw the merits of this proposal when she was Prime Minister and has campaigned for it ever since. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, for her kind remarks about this; she was a very important member of that team that first brought the independent public advocate into seeing a serious possibility of legislation. She also deserves tribute for her part in this long journey to where we are tonight.

The Government have shown themselves willing to listen, and the version of Part 2 that is now before your Lordships’ House is a significant improvement on the original, profoundly flawed draft. However, it still will not deliver what victims of public disasters and those bereaved by such disasters want and need. The extraordinary persistence, dignity and solidarity of the Hillsborough families’ campaign that generated the momentum that led to the development of the concept of the independent public advocate really deserve better.

The challenge—and it is a challenge—is to strike a balance between the impartial discharge of justice and good government on the one hand and protecting the interests and feelings of the bereaved and injured survivors on the other. My Bill sought to establish two fundamental pillars of a new system, based around the institution of an independent public advocate, both of which this Bill fails to deliver.

The first pillar was transparency. Without it, the bereaved will never achieve anything approaching closure, and, without it, it is difficult and often impossible for the public policy lessons to be learned and necessary reforms made. The second pillar—and this is important in everything that we have heard tonight about what the state should be doing better for victims—was ensuring that victims and the bereaved have some agency in the process. No longer must they be left on the sidelines, dealing with unimaginable grief and loss while the state proceeds, apparently on their behalf, but without giving them any agency in the process. The Government’s proposals do not provide any guaranteed mechanism for securing full transparency, such as the Hillsborough independent panel achieved, and they deny victims and the bereaved any effective agency.

The Government’s view appears to be that, as His Majesty’s Government are democratically accountable, they must be able to wield the executive power for which they will be held to account by Parliament and the electorate. This is not an unreasonable approach, but it does not mean that they should deny bereaved families any effective agency at all in these matters, which is the current position, and nor can it justify any failure to maximise transparency. Again, that appears to be the current position of the Government.

As I have suggested before in your Lordship’s House, one way forward might be to specify that the Secretary of State, in proceeding with an independent public advocate, must act with regard to the dues of bereaved families, the benefits of an independent public advocate and/or an inquiry and/or a Hillsborough-type panel, including in relation to cost, timeliness and transparency, and any wider public interest. Crucially, I have suggested that the Secretary of State must—not may—produce a debatable report to Parliament justifying why they have proceeded as they have done and why, if they have not exercised this power, they have not done so, and that this debatable report should be produced as soon as possible after the public disaster. James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool, in his masterful report, to which the Government have only just responded, points out that any delay allows these public organisations to protect themselves, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, has just said, and produce a false narrative. We saw that demonstrated graphically in the case of the Hillsborough disaster.

As the Bill progresses though your Lordships’ House, I will bring forward amendments to try to achieve greater transparency and greater agency for the families. I hope the Government are really listening and will find it in themselves to adopt them—I cannot see any reason why they should not.

Finally, I take this opportunity to urge the Government to reconsider their long-delayed and half-hearted response to Bishop James Jones’s report on the Hillsborough disaster, aptly titled The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power, and to use the legislative opportunity of the Criminal Justice Bill, or indeed this Bill, to introduce a statutory duty of candour for those operating across public services, such as policing, health, social care and housing. By requiring openness and transparency, a statutory duty of candour would assist in creating much-needed cultural change in how state bodies approach inquests and inquiries. It would give confidence to individual members of those organisations who want to assist such inquiries and investigations but may be experiencing quite intolerable pressure, in many circumstances, not to do so. We must see an end to these sorts of evasive and obstructive practices by state bodies following deaths in these circumstances. We have seen, all too often, the damage that this causes, not least following the Hillsborough disaster. A statutory duty of candour would help end this.

The families bereaved at Hillsborough fought a dignified, indomitable campaign for decades to secure truth and justice for those they lost. By ensuring that those similarly bereaved in future never have to endure what they endured, the institution of the independent public advocate will be a legacy for their struggle and for their loved ones. I ask the Government to make it a meaningful legacy and give all the Hillsborough families hope that the Government will be prepared to amend the Bill in the ways I have described.

Public Advocate Bill [HL]

Lord Wills Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th June 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wills]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

As some noble Lords may remember, this is the second time I have moved that this Bill be read a second time. The first was more than seven years ago, when it received wide cross-party support. I then outlined how the Bill, which provides better support for victims and families bereaved in public disasters, had grown out of my experience as a Minister who devised the Hillsborough Independent Panel. This Bill has been on quite a journey since then.

The concept of an independent public advocate to support victims of public disasters and families bereaved in them, which is the heart of the Bill, was adopted by the then Prime Minister, the right honourable Theresa May. I pay tribute to her steadfast and continuing support for this concept. She ensured that it was part of the Conservative Party manifesto in 2017 and in the following Queen’s Speech. Since then, Ministers and a consultation came and went, the years went by and nothing happened. My right honourable friend and colleague in the other place, Maria Eagle, repeatedly and heroically introduced a Private Member’s Bill derived from this one in the other place and still nothing happened, but finally, this year, the Government incorporated some elements of my Bill—this Bill— into the Victims and Prisoners Bill, and I place on record my thanks to everybody in the Government, Ministers and officials, who made this happen. I am grateful for their unfailing courtesy over the past seven years in consulting me about this Bill. However, welcome as the Government’s proposals for an independent public advocate are, they are none the less based on the fundamentally flawed assumption that the system as a whole works generally well on behalf those bereaved by, or otherwise victims of, large-scale public disasters such as Hillsborough, so no radical change is needed, merely some improvements around the edge. That is what their proposals represent in contrast to the proposals in this Bill.

If that is indeed the Government’s assumption, I am afraid it is wrong. The fact that, finally, the families bereaved at Hillsborough have been able to achieve much of what they campaigned for over so many years—decades—should not lead to any complacency about the systems currently in place to respond to such public disasters. When the full record of what happened after the Hillsborough disaster is eventually made public, it will show, I believe, how the successful outcome of the Hillsborough Independent Panel was the result of a whole series of fortunate coincidences. There was nothing inevitable about it. Above all, it was the extraordinary persistence, dignity and solidarity of the Hillsborough families’ campaign that generated the momentum that led to the panel and its achievements. This will not necessarily be replicated in similar situations in the future. The system remains fundamentally broken in the support and agency it offers such families.

Now, the government Bill will make progress. Regretfully, I must assume that mine will not in the same way. As a result, I do not intend to rehearse the detail of my Bill in the way that I did seven years ago. Instead, I want to focus on the crucial elements of this Bill that the Government have omitted from their own and to urge them to think again.

Sadly, we must assume that such tragedies involving large-scale loss of life will recur. My Bill seeks to provide a better way of responding to them and does so on the basis that there is an identifiable pathology in the process that follows pretty much all public disasters. The nature and extent of a public disaster demands a response from government. The same questions are asked: who is to blame? What can be done to prevent it happening again? Finding the answers does not put the bereaved families anywhere near the centre of that process. The state naturally assumes for itself the dispensation of justice and the needs and wishes of victims, including the bereaved, are not always paramount. As the process unfolds, there is an inevitable tendency for those in official positions, with all the resources at their disposal, who fear that they might be blamed in some way for what happened, to close ranks. They often skew the results of any investigation, as they are in a position to do so, often funded by the taxpayer. The report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel graphically illustrated this pathology in action, in the way it exposed the behaviour of the police, but it is not only the police that are susceptible to these sorts of behaviours.

As I said seven years ago,

“the interests of justice and good government would not necessarily be best delivered by removing the state altogether from the process of responding to public disasters”.

That clearly is not the case. I said:

“The challenge, therefore, is to strike a better balance between the impartial discharge of justice and good government and protecting the interests and feelings of the bereaved and injured survivors”.—[Official Report, 29/1/16; col. 1521.]


My Bill seeks to establish three pillars of a new system. The first is transparency. Without it, the bereaved will never achieve anything approaching closure and it is difficult, often impossible, for the public policy lessons to be learned and for necessary reforms to be made. The second pillar is the creation of an institutionalised, independent, adequately resourced advocate for the bereaved. Those bereaved in future public disasters should not have to rely on ad hoc remedies such as those that, in the end, delivered some progress for those bereaved at Hillsborough. Finally, the third pillar is the need to ensure that victims and the bereaved have some agency in the process. No longer must they be left on the sidelines, dealing with grief and loss while the state proceeds, apparently on their behalf but without giving them any agency in the process.

The Government have adopted only one of those three pillars, and that only in part. Their proposals do not provide any guaranteed mechanism for securing full transparency, such as that achieved by the Hillsborough Independent Panel. They deny the victims and the bereaved any effective agency. In giving them power to set up an independent public advocate, the government Bill gives the Secretary of State unfettered discretion about whether to appoint one. It gives them similarly unfettered power to dismiss them. They have unfettered powers over whether to appoint a Hillsborough-type panel to secure transparency. Moreover, it appears that the advocate, in its proposals, may produce a report only if the Secretary of State requests it.

The government proposals mean that the victims and the bereaved are being given no effective agency and that transparency might well be obscured. That is precisely what my Bill seeks to achieve. Now, the government view appears to be that, as the Government are democratically accountable, they must be able to wield the executive power for which they will be held to account by government and the electorate. This is not an unreasonable position at all, but it does not mean, in adopting that position, that they have to deny bereaved families any effective agency at all in these matters, which is the current position; nor can they justify any failure to maximise transparency, which, again, appears to be the current position. My Bill could easily be amended, and the Government could easily adopt it, to deal with these problems with the Government’s proposals.

One way forward, for example, might be to give the Secretary of State a legal power to appoint an independent public advocate and/or a public inquiry, but to specify in a way that would be subject to judicial review that they must do so with regard to the views of the bereaved families. The benefits of an independent public advocate, an inquiry and/or a Hillsborough-type panel include cost, timeliness, transparency and any wider public interests.

The points about cost, timeliness and transparency are crucial. One of the lessons of the Hillsborough public inquiry is what it achieved, even 20-odd years after the event, more swiftly and more cheaply than the two public inquiries that preceded it. It would be a much more effective way of securing public policy goals in my view, which is why my Bill is drafted as it is.

Crucially, the Bill also includes the provision that the Secretary of State must produce a debateable report to Parliament justifying why they have or have not exercised this power. That must be published as soon as possible after the public disaster. Any delay at all will only compound the grief and sense of loss of the bereaved families.

The families bereaved at Hillsborough have fought a dignified and indomitable campaign for decades to secure truth and justice for those who they lost. They were traduced in the popular press, particularly by the Sun newspaper, and by the former Prime Minister who has just resigned from Parliament. They have fought a dignified battle in the face of these terrible unjustified attacks on those who they loved and lost.

Today, I am asking the Government to make their legacy of the independent public advocate a meaningful one, and to give them hope that the Government will be prepared to amend the Bill in the ways that I have described. I hope that the Government give me that reassurance today, so that I do not have to persevere any further with a Bill that has already been waiting seven years to be brought into effect. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It has been a short debate, but I hope it has been another stage in making a profound difference to the lives of those who, in the future, may be involved in public tragedies, which, as the Minister said, are inevitable. I also hope it will make a difference to those who, out of a clear blue sky, find their lives transformed by a terrible public tragedy.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for his powerful expression of the need for transparency and better support for the bereaved. I am grateful, as I always am, for the support of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby, who reminded us all from direct personal experience that these are human beings at the centre of this. We have to remember that it is people such as his friend whom we have to try to support through this process.

I am also grateful to the Minister for his thoughtful, sympathetic approach to the issues raised by the Bill. I am encouraged—I hope I am not being misled—that he talks about focusing on the means rather than the end, on which we are all agreed. I find it most encouraging because it suggests that the Government’s mind is still open on the important points we have discussed. I hope I am not wrong in interpreting his remarks in that way.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I have to say that I give no commitment of any kind. I would not want anyone to read between the lines. All I am saying is that the Government will listen very carefully to the points being made.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister; I would not dream of expecting him to make any commitments today, but I am grateful for his willingness to listen, because it suggests a willingness to accept amendments that go in a slightly different direction. He rightly points out that this is not the time to debate the Victims and Prisoners Bill, but I draw his attention to his remarks about the complexity of the processes in my Bill. I will not die in a ditch over the drafting of my original Bill; I said seven years ago and am happy to repeat now that I am perfectly willing to accept that it is flawed and needs improvement in many detailed ways. It has never been my intention that it should proceed verbatim, as it were.

However, I worry that, underlying his remarks, he may think there is something innovative about a lot of this, as his remarks about the data controller suggested. I therefore draw his attention to the fact that there are two existing, very successful models that my Bill draws on and which are at its heart. I urge the Government to examine them. The first is the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation; if the Government look again at the remit for that institution, it is very analogous to what is envisaged in my Bill. I urge them to think about adopting this proposal in the Victims and Prisoners Bill, in line with that.

The Minister talked about the complexity of the data controller’s role. It is not actually complex at all; it is literally on the model I initially devised for the Hillsborough Independent Panel—my second example—which everybody agrees was a tremendous success. However, its success was not due to the conception; the primary reason for its success was the extraordinary chairmanship of the right reverend Bishop of Liverpool and all its members bringing specific expertise. I also pay tribute to the Home Office official who provided the secretariat for that panel; it was outstanding work that showed just how wonderful our Civil Service can be. At a time when it is regularly traduced as “The Blob” and all the rest of it, one should look at the work of Home Office officials such as them and just be grateful that they work in public service.

There are existing successful models which this institution in my Bill is based on. I hope that, as we move forward in a co-operative, cross-party way—we have done so until now and I very much hope we can continue in that frame of mind—the Government will bear those models in mind. I look forward to exploring all these issues in due course as the Victims and Prisoners Bill comes before your Lordships’ House. In the meantime, I remain very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part and to the Minister, and I ask that your Lordships give this Bill a Second Reading.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Hillsborough: Collapse of Trials

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, as Prime Minister David Cameron said when he made the apology in the other place, the families

“suffered a double injustice: the injustice of the … events”

themselves,

“the failure of the state to protect”

them

“and the indefensible wait to get to the truth;”

and also the offence of

“the denigration of the deceased.”—[Official Report, Commons, 12/9/12; cols. 285-86.]

When I was at the Bar, it was generally regarded as unwise or sometimes improper to comment publicly about your cases. I certainly commend that approach to anybody who says anything about the acts of the Liverpool fans. The Sun itself had to provide a full apology. It well behoves everybody else to read the Bishop Jones inquiry if they want to find out what the truth actually is.

[Lord Wills (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, those of us who have been campaigning in support of the Hillsborough families for many years welcomed the positive and sympathetic response of the Lord Chancellor in the other place, and it has been echoed today by the Minister. Does he agree that it is time to meet the demand of the Hillsborough families—that no one similarly bereaved in a public disaster in the future will have to suffer what they suffered for so long? Does he also agree that the Public Advocate Bill, as first set out in the 2017 Queen’s Speech, will meet that demand by giving the bereaved real agency in the aftermath of such disasters and the ability to set up a Hillsborough-type panel to ensure that the truth is never again covered up?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, the Government fundamentally recognise the importance of placing the bereaved at the heart of any investigation that follows a public disaster. The noble Lord has worked in this area for a number of years and a Bill on this has been proposed. There was a government consultation in 2018, the responses to which were somewhat varied. As the Lord Chancellor confirmed in the other place last week, we will work at pace to ensure that we have a proper, full consultation on this important topic. He also reiterated that we will work on this on a cross-party basis. It is important that the independent public advocate does three things: first, it has to be independent; secondly, it must have the confidence of those who use it; and thirdly, and most importantly, it has to make a practical difference.

Public Advocate Bill [HL]

Lord Wills Excerpts

Friday 29th January 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wills]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, this Bill arises out of my experience as a Minister devising the Hillsborough Independent Panel that was set up by the Government of Gordon Brown towards the end of his premiership. This was a more complicated and difficult process than perhaps the current public record suggests. The problems I encountered during that process made me reflect on the wider implications for public policy in the case of large public disasters such as Hillsborough, and this Bill is the result.

I want to place on record my gratitude to Ministers in the Ministry of Justice, the Justice Secretary, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the other place, Caroline Dinenage, and the Minister of State here, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, for the courtesy and consideration they have given to my representations to them about the Bill. I am also grateful to their officials, who have been generous with their time in discussing details of the Bill with me. Above all, I want to pay tribute again to the families bereaved in the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, who campaigned for so long with such dignity and persistence in the midst of their grief until, at last, they have begun to see the results of their campaign for justice. Without their efforts, the panel would never have been established, and without their efforts, it would never have achieved what it has.

In 2009, I met representatives of those families on several occasions to discuss with them what outcomes might satisfy them. One message that came through over and over again was that they wanted to find a way to prevent other similarly bereaved families suffering and having to endure in the way they had suffered and endured for 20 years. This Bill is designed to do just that.

This is not the time to rehearse the history of those years between the disaster and the setting up of the panel, but that history illustrates the extent to which bereaved families and injured survivors can feel alienated from the official process for responding to such public disasters and how lack of transparency is one of the key reasons for that. It revealed the extent to which the experience and responses of bereaved families and injured survivors can illuminate what happens in such disasters, and why, and reveal flaws in the official response to them. That all this is now in the public domain is a tribute to the outstanding work done by the members of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, so ably and compassionately chaired by the then Bishop of Liverpool, who many noble Lords will remember from his time in your Lordships’ House, with powerful support from Home Office officials. The bereaved families were all well served by their labours. I should also pay tribute to the current Prime Minister and the current Home Secretary who continued to support a panel set up by a previous Labour Government and followed through on its report.

The fact that finally the families bereaved at Hillsborough have been able to achieve much of what they campaigned for should not lead to any complacency about the systems currently in place to respond to such public disasters. When the full record of what happened after the Hillsborough disaster is eventually made public it will show, I believe, how the successful outcome of the Hillsborough Independent Panel was the result of a series of fortunate coincidences. There was nothing inevitable about it. This can be seen from, among other things, the fact that the intense difficulties experienced by those bereaved at Hillsborough have been experienced by those bereaved in other public disasters including, for example, the Lockerbie terrorist atrocity, the sinking of the “Marchioness” in the Thames and the wreck of the “Derbyshire” in the South China Sea. Those bereaved families have not all made the progress the Hillsborough families have eventually been able to make.

Sadly, we must assume that such tragedies involving large-scale loss of life will occur again; they always have, and they always will. So this Bill seeks to provide a better way of responding to them on behalf of the bereaved and the injured survivors. It does so on the basis that there is an identifiable pattern to the process that follows a public disaster such as those I have mentioned. The nature and extent of a public disaster very often demands a response from government. The questions raised are almost always the same: who is to blame and what can be done to stop it happening again? Finding the answers does not put the bereaved families anywhere near the centre of that process. The state naturally assumes for itself the dispensation of justice, and the needs and wishes of victims, including the bereaved, are not paramount. As the process unfolds, there is an inevitable tendency for those in official positions who fear that they might be blamed in some way for what happened to close ranks and skew the results of any investigation, as they are so often in a position to do. The report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel graphically illustrated this in the way that it has exposed the behaviour of the police.

Yet the interests of justice and good government would not necessarily be best delivered by removing the state altogether from the process of responding to public disasters. The challenge, therefore, is to strike a better balance between the impartial discharge of justice and good government and protecting the interests and feelings of the bereaved and injured survivors. The Hillsborough Independent Panel pointed the way towards how that might be done, and the Bill seeks to learn those lessons. The first, in my view, was the benefit of the panel review system, which was able to circumvent the constraints of data protection legislation and so was able to reveal new facts. Then there was the importance of the trust placed in that panel by the bereaved and the confidence that they felt the panel was working in their interests. Next was the importance of the bereaved being able to articulate their views collectively. Importantly, the process revealed the problems caused by the absence of any consistent advocate for the bereaved at the heart of government to overcome any interests working against them. Lastly, I have little doubt that it was the extraordinary persistence and dignity and solidarity of the Hillsborough families’ campaign that generated the momentum that led to the panel and its achievements. This will not necessarily be replicable in similar situations in future.

I draw three conclusions from that. The first is the importance of transparency. Without this, the bereaved will never achieve anything approaching closure, and without it it is difficult, and often impossible, for the public policy lessons to be learnt and necessary reforms made. The second is the creation of an institutionalised, independent and adequately resourced advocate for the bereaved. Those who are bereaved in future public disasters should not have to rely on ad hoc remedies extracted over such a long period, such as those that in the end delivered some progress for those bereaved at Hillsborough. The last is the need, as I said, to organise some collective expression of the views of the bereaved.

Those conclusions underpin the Bill, but in my view they do not suggest replacing the existing system of responding to public disasters, such as the coronial system and public inquiries. They clearly still have a critical role to play, to ensure that any overarching public interest is protected. Rather, the Hillsborough experience suggests augmenting the system to protect better the interests of the bereaved. The Bill proposes the establishment of an independent and adequately resourced advocate for those bereaved in public disasters and injured survivors. The constitutional position for such a public advocate is based on what I believe to be the successful model of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, and would have a similar relationship to central government. The unpredictable and ephemeral nature of the demands on such an advocate would, I think, preclude any permanent establishment. However, to ensure that such an advocate was adequately resourced to deal with whatever demands were placed on them, they would be located within a government department—the Ministry of Justice would appear to be an obvious candidate—with the ability to call on the resources of that department as required.

The Bill stipulates, crucially, that two conditions would need to be satisfied before the advocate was required to act. The first would be that in the advocate’s opinion an event had occurred that had led to a large-scale loss of life and involved serious health and safety issues, a failure of regulation or other events of serious concern. In other words, the advocate would not be required to act in all circumstances where there was a large-scale loss of life. Secondly, to act, the advocate must have been asked to do so by 50% plus one or more of the total of representatives of those deceased due to the event and any injured survivors of it. In effect, the bereaved and any injured survivors would have a veto on the advocate’s role coming into effect.

When those two conditions had been satisfied, the public advocate would be required to act as a representative for the interests of the bereaved and survivors, and act as adviser and guide for them and any other representatives that they might have during any police investigation into the disaster and during the inquest. Following any such police investigation and the inquest, on request by a majority of the legitimate representatives of the victims and in consultation with them, the advocate would set up a panel, consulting the bereaved on its composition, to be in the position of data controller, so replicating the position of the Hillsborough Independent Panel. The panel would review all relevant documentation, which would be made available to them on request from all responsible agencies, and report on it—again, replicating the position of the Hillsborough Independent Panel. In effect, the Bill intends to give the bereaved a veto on the establishment of such a panel and its composition.

The Bill then sets out the conditions that would govern the disclosure of information to an advocate’s panel, and these are based on the safeguards in the Freedom of Information Act. I have incorporated them into the Bill because I believe that the Act is generally regarded as successful legislation, notwithstanding the Government’s current commission looking into reforms to it. Even that commission, which is widely regarded as hostile to the Act, seems, if media reports are to believed, to be considering only relatively minor amendments to it, and therefore it seems sensible to rely on its tried and tested provisions.

Lastly, the Bill contains provisions for the advocate to send to the Lord Chancellor a report on an annual basis summarising its work and the conclusion of support relating to a particular event, and at any other time when it identifies a need so to do, and the Lord Chancellor would lay before Parliament a copy of any reports received from the advocate within 15 days of their receipt. That provision is designed to ensure that Parliament retained oversight of the work of the advocate, and represents a further safeguard of the interests of the bereaved and injured survivors.

Since the Hillsborough disaster there have been significant improvements in the coronial system, set in train 12 years ago by my noble friend Lord Blunkett, and I am very pleased that he is speaking today. He remarked then on the importance of,

“providing a high quality service to the public at large and particularly to the bereaved, recognising their special needs and the input they can make to the death investigation process”.

Moreover, there is now the precedent established by the Hillsborough panel report and the subsequent inquest, which I hope will mean that in future bereaved families will not have to campaign as the Hillsborough families had to do for so long. However, the Bill is still necessary, because it gives the bereaved and injured survivors greater control over the process than they currently have, for all the welcome reforms to the coronial system and all the precedents established by the Hillsborough Independent Panel. Rather than relying on ad hoc responses by government, victims, the bereaved and injured survivors would have a right to support and transparency.

My drafting of the Bill could well be improved, and it certainly makes a number of subjective judgments which may well have to be revisited—for example, the trigger mechanism which enables the public advocate to act, as I recognise that many bereaved and injured survivors might well not want to take part in a continuing process and their feelings must be respected. Another example is the definition of who should qualify as bereaved or a representative of the deceased, which may well also need to be revisited.

However, these are details which the Government, with all the expert resources at their disposal, can easily address and improve. Therefore I hope that today the Minister will feel able at least to express support for the principle that the Bill seeks to establish, of approving support for those bereaved by public disasters and injured survivors and giving greater powers to them. I hope that he can also suggest today a way to make progress on entrenching those principles in public policy. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It has been relatively short, but it could make a profound difference to all those who in the future, out of a clear blue sky, find their lives transformed by a terrible public tragedy.

The noble Lord, Lord McNally—who I regard as my noble friend whatever the technical position is—made a powerful statement from his own experience about why the Bill is needed. I am grateful to him for his words of support, as I am to my noble friend Lord Blunkett, who brings to this a wealth of experience from the heart of Government, as well as personal experience as the MP for many years representing the constituency containing the Hillsborough stadium.

My noble friend Lord Wood, who was working at the heart of the Gordon Brown Government when the Hillsborough Independent Panel was set up, drew attention again to the need for this Bill and gave the telling example of Aberfan, which I remember as a young boy. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Bach, who expressed support from the Front Bench. His idea of putting the independence of the advocate in the Bill is excellent and I should like to adopt it going forward. We will obviously discuss the other issue he raised in due course. So I am grateful for all the support I have received from all noble Lords, who spoke with all their authority and years of experience, and I am glad that the Government have listened to what they had to say.

I also express my gratitude to the Minister for his characteristically thoughtful, sympathetic and thorough approach to all the issues raised by the Bill. Of course, I did not expect him to commit the Government to wholeheartedly adopt the Bill today, but his cautious words pointing towards a possible way forward are perhaps the most that I could have expected. I am grateful for them and I certainly will—with what the noble Lord, Lord McNally, referred to as my terrier-like capacity—pursue him for the meeting that he kindly offered. In due course, I hasten to add.

Of course, I recognise all the improvements that the Minister described. As he said, the situation is significantly different from what it was 20 to 25 years ago. However, there is an issue that I would like to explore with him further, perhaps in Committee, because there is a fundamental distinction between what he has described as the improvements that are taking place and what I think are the improvements the Bill would bring about. It is to do with the independence of the advocate. The changes that he has described are still in the gift of the Government and the institutions of the state. I think it is important because all the experience of disasters that other noble Lords have described more powerfully than I shows how easy it is for the bereaved and the families of injured survivors to feel excluded by the process, no matter how well meaning it is or what is set out in all the guidance, and no matter what the experience and how diligent, thoughtful and empathetic those agents of the state are. Nevertheless, for all the reasons that have been set out today, it is sometimes very easy for families to feel excluded. Having someone who is independently advocating their cause and, crucially, doing so independently of the state and seeking to bring about the transparency that is so important in these cases, is the difference between the position that the noble Lord has set out and the position in the Bill.

I am sure that we will have opportunities to explore this further and I am grateful for the offer of a meeting, which as I say I will take up, so perhaps the issues can be considered further in Committee. In the mean time, while again expressing my gratitude to all noble Lords who have taken part today and to the Minister, I now ask your Lordships’ House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Lord Wills Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, like many others, I have struggled to reach a definitive view on this Bill, not least because of the many moving letters I have received on both sides of the argument, but in the end I decided that I cannot support it. The Bill addresses the nature and value of human life and such profound issues should not be influenced by opinion polls, which are just snapshots of the popular mood where the answer is determined so much by the way the question is asked. They should not be influenced by PR campaigns, and the experience of other countries should not be determinative. The exemplars for the changes proposed in the Bill are small states that are significantly different from this country, although of course there are lessons that might be learnt from them.

As other speakers have said, making the decision on principle is difficult because the issue pits two generally accepted goods against each another: on the one hand, the autonomy and freedom of the individual, and on the other the sanctity of life. How each of us strikes that balance will be influenced by personal circumstances, including our own life and religious faith. I should declare that I lack religious faith but that my decision has been influenced by the death of my mother.

I accept that the Bill strives to strike a balance between these two principles, but I think it gets it wrong because I believe it will start a process in which the safeguards against the taking of life will continue to be eroded and, as a result, greater harm will be done if this Bill becomes law than if it does not. My concern flows from the fact that the two, linked, principles that appear to underpin the Bill—the right to the individual's autonomy over their own life and the right to end intolerable suffering—are not clearly reflected in the drafting. If the guiding principle is one of autonomy, then a time limit transgresses it. If the guiding principle is one of relief from intolerable suffering, why should a time limit be imposed when the longer the suffering, the greater the case for such relief? In those circumstances, if the Bill becomes law and the principles underpinning it become established, I cannot imagine how, over time, legislators will be able politically to resist the claims of those who argue for an extension of the right to an assisted death. I cite the case, for example, of a diagnosis of an invariably fatal illness such as mesothelioma, where the prognosis is clear and involves great suffering for which very little effective palliative care is available but where the progress of the disease may take 18 months.

The difficulties of definition in the drafting of the Bill, about which other speakers have already said a great deal today, could, over time, further encourage the erosion of the safeguards which almost everyone in your Lordships’ House today seems to agree should be there. There may be a case for assisted dying on demand in cases of intolerable and unrelievable suffering, but that is not what we are debating today, and yet that is where we could well end up if this Bill becomes law. And I fear that.

The more the scope for assisted dying is widened, the greater is the potential for abusive pressure on the physically and mentally frail to end their lives. I do not share the idealism of other noble Lords that such pressure will never take place. It will often be subtle and difficult to protect against, and certainly this Bill offers no adequate protections. The more such abuses happen, the more thoroughly our society will be brutalised. The more that the law, which reflects and sets standards for our society, allows that to happen, the more thoroughly our society will be brutalised.

Finally, I want briefly to raise one other subsidiary concern about the Bill and that is the wide and imprecise scope it gives to the state in Clauses 4 and 8. I believe it is wrong that the state should be given such power over the taking of life. In my view, these clauses are unacceptable as they extend executive power into areas where it should have no place. My view that this Bill strikes the balance between competing principles in the wrong place is strengthened by the guidelines issued by the DPP in 2010 which, wisely and compassionately, address the widespread concerns that were raised the last time this issue was debated in your Lordships’ House about the position of loved ones who assist suicide.

By opposing this Bill, I must accept that I am supporting the continuation of suffering in particular cases. But I have, with great difficulty, concluded that to support the Bill would, over time, also result in suffering and abuse and the brutalising of our society. I cannot support it.

Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Bill [HL]

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the Minister on his magisterial introduction to the Bill, which I welcome. I also congratulate the Law Commission on the quality of its work, which laid the foundations for the Bill. I am delighted to see this procedure in place for ensuring that Law Commission reports do not, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, gather dust on the shelves. As a Minister in the previous Government, I was responsible for putting in place this long-overdue reform of process. It is good to see it working so well and to see all the excellent work that is done by the Law Commission, in this area as in many others, being given practical effect in this way.

The Law Commission’s work in this area set out to ensure that the intestacy rules,

“strive to reflect the needs and expectations of modern families”.

Behind that work and behind the Bill lies the imperative of ensuring an equitable distribution of the estate of the deceased. Underpinning that must be the need for such distribution to reflect, as far as possible, the wishes of the deceased. Society must strive to protect the delivery of such wishes—it is a debt that each generation owes its predecessors.

The changing nature of modern families has created a situation where such protections can be illegitimately thwarted. The Bill offers a rare legislative opportunity to mitigate such mischief. That mischief can arise, in particular, in the case of vulnerable, lonely and elderly people, where an enduring or lasting power of attorney has been granted and the attorney abuses their powers to plunder the assets over which they have power. The official line of defence against such abuse is the Office of the Public Guardian but informal lines of defence are also provided by family and friends and by those who might legitimately expect to be beneficiaries of the estate in due course.

However, these defences can be of little value in the cases—which are, sadly, increasingly common—of vulnerable elderly people without close family or friends to monitor their situation. It is impossible to know how prevalent a problem this is because it is, by its nature, often concealed. However, because it is concealed, the Office of the Public Guardian can often do nothing about such abuse. Even when it does come to light, it is often after the death of the person concerned, and the Office of the Public Guardian has no jurisdiction after death.

The mischief can also arise even when no power of attorney has been granted but when there is a fiduciary relationship. The problems here can extend beyond the obvious one where the person drawing up the will becomes a beneficiary of it.

For example—and I set out this example solely to illustrate the nature of the problem—an elderly person, perhaps in a care home, asks for advice on making a will and the care home refers them to a local solicitor. In drawing up the will, the solicitor and the elderly person strike up a close relationship. The solicitor begins to pay regular visits to discuss the will and other matters. The solicitor might, quite properly, point out that they need to charge for the visit, and the elderly person, glad of the company, is glad to agree. However, the elderly person may not be aware that the solicitor is visiting far more often than could be justified professionally and that, instead of charging a normal hourly fee, they might be charging double that and then paying themselves those fees out of the estate that they are administering.

It might be argued—and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, would agree with me on this given what he has just said—that if an elderly person wishes to spend their money on company from a solicitor or anyone else, the state has no right to interfere with that wish. That is an area where the state should not trespass. However, disproportionate charges for that solicitor’s visits and a disproportionate number of visits might, unknown to that elderly person, exhaust the estate and deprive the beneficiaries, who will often be charities, of the legacy that the testator wished them to have. If that had been fully explained to that elderly person, they might well have decided not to have quite so much company from the solicitor.

If the situation is not made clear and there is a breach of fiduciary duty, there appears to be very little remedy in practice. Again, this is by its nature often a concealed mischief and will rarely come to light. In this situation, the beneficiaries of the will, who might be expected to take a close interest in the administration of their future inheritance, are charities and will not necessarily be aware of the will.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority operates, understandably and prudentially enough, on a risk basis. It investigates only after a number of complaints, and the nature of this mischief means that a significant number of complaints are unlikely to emerge. It therefore seems that professionals—this will usually be solicitors but not necessarily exclusively so; it might involve others such as accountants and doctors—can operate to milk the estates of elderly, lonely and vulnerable people with a high probability of impunity.

This risk has been acknowledged by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which has said:

“Theft and serious overcharging by solicitors acting in a representative capacity such as executor of an estate (but also under powers of attorney) continue to pose a high risk. The numbers of reports to the SRA of possible irregularity in probate cases increased from 6 in 2004, to 31 in 2005, 52 in 2006 and 65 in 2007. This problem is particularly insidious because it can take place over many years without detection. Beneficiaries, especially charities, are unaware that their money has been stolen. Sometimes solicitors or their employees take a long-term view by drafting wills to enable them to steal money from estates in later years”.

It is therefore clear that this problem has come across the radar of the SRA. The numbers are not great, but they may be only the tip of an iceberg. The problem is compounded by the fact that, as I understand it, if an estate is of nil value, it does not have to be published. A sufficiently calculating solicitor or other person in a position to do so can then time the plundering of the estate to such an extent that it is exhausted by the time of death. Therefore, there is no public record of the depletion of the estate. In the circumstances that I have described, there will be no close family or friends to be beneficiaries who might question the exhaustion of the estate. The charities, which are often the beneficiaries in these circumstances and which, as I understand it, scrutinise published wills to check out their legacies, will have nothing to scrutinise. Such a lack of transparency fosters a culture of impunity which can only encourage the plundering of estates of the elderly and vulnerable by those who are malignly intentioned and are in a position to do so.

There is clearly a problem here, and the Bill offers a rare legislative opportunity to tackle it, although I fully accept that the main thrust of the Bill is in a completely different area from the one that I have just described. Before the Minister decides to tell me that I may be straying too far off course here, I should say that I have sought advice from the clerks on the amendment that I intend to put down and they have advised me that what I have in mind is admissible.

Of course, no legislation can ever guarantee to remove any mischief completely, but it can often mitigate its incidence and its extent. I believe that greater transparency can do just that in this case. I tell the Minister now that I intend to put down an amendment in Committee to promote such transparency. I am very happy to share this with the Minister and his officials in advance in the hope that all their greater experience, wisdom and judgment can improve my amendment and make faster and securer progress towards tackling a problem that I hope we can all agree should be tackled.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick (CB)]

My Lords, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak during the gap. I do not intend to deal with any of the provisions of the Bill, which have already been very well covered in the debate but want to say something about the procedure that we are following.

I remember the time not so very long ago when the Law Commission would study an area of the law that was badly in need of reform. Very often it would be doing so at the request of the Government. It would then take all the trouble and all the care to produce a report such as the one we have here—I refer not just to the cover but to the contents, some of which I have read—but nothing would happen. The Government may have accepted all the recommendations of a report and thanked the commission warmly for all its hard work, but still nothing would happen. The reason always given was that there simply was not time for a Second Reading in the Chamber.

Therefore, the matters covered by these reports, urgent though they might be, would accumulate from year to year. It became almost a scandal and must have been extremely frustrating for the Law Commission. Then came the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, like a sort of deus ex machina. As Leader of the House, she was determined to do something to speed up the process, which is exactly what she did. I remember well the discussions that we had at that time, and I can say that without her we would not be here today in the middle of this Second Reading debate. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wills, who spoke on this, can confirm that view.

[Lord Wills]

I am sure that this is not courteous but I should like not only to place on record the work done by my noble friend Lady Ashton but to put the history straight. When I came into position in 2007, this was not a work in progress. The person who deserves most credit is no Minister but the then chair of the Law Commission, Sir Terence Etherton—now, I think, at the Court of Appeal. He was indefatigable in badgering me as the responsible Minister and all the officials to make sure that something happened. I am sure that the Ministry of Justice will remember this. As we are paying tribute, I say with all respect to my noble friend Lady Ashton that if there is one person who really deserves the credit it is Sir Terence Etherton. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will agree with me on his central role in this important reform.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord—I can remember Lord Etherton badgering me in exactly the same way—but it was the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, who in the end got it through. It seems to me that we owe a huge debt of gratitude. By “we”, I mean the law and not just us around this Committee.

Perhaps I may couple just one other name: that of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, the Minister in charge of this Bill. I hope that he will not be too surprised by my saying that. As I think I have been involved in all the Law Commission Bills—I was surprised to hear that there were six; can it be as many as that?—I know from my experience that having a Minister who is himself keen on law reform makes all the difference.

Finally, I want to mention Professor Elizabeth Cooke, who has been in charge of work on this Bill from its very inception. In the old days, Acts of Parliament were sometimes named after the person who had drafted them; Lord Tenterden’s Act comes to mind. I would like to think that at some time in the future this Act might become known as Baroness Cooke’s—I say Baroness; she is not a Baroness yet—or Professor Cooke’s Act. This is an admirable report; it is very well set out, very clear and ideally suited for this procedure. I hope that it will find favour with the Committee.

Freedom of Information Act 2000

Lord Wills Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Wills]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, the Government intend to amend the Act to give the Information Commissioner more time to prosecute alleged offences under Section 77 of the Act and introduce a dedicated exemption for prepublication research. Other parts of our response to post-legislative scrutiny will be implemented through secondary legislation codes of practice and guidance.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I very much welcome what the Minister has just said about giving the Information Commissioner new powers but I hope he will recognise that suggestions have been made by other Ministers—not this Minister, whose commitment to freedom of information is exemplary—that they will tighten the Act. I hope this Minister will recognise that tightening the Act in the way that has been suggested will damage transparency. He will recall that the previous Government at one point proposed to increase fees for accessing freedom of information requests and then dropped the proposal when they realised the damage that that would do to transparency. Are the Government now downplaying that risk to transparency, and doing so at a time when the Francis report into Mid Staffordshire shows just how dangerous damaging transparency can be?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, it is true that we are looking at other aspects of the post-legislative scrutiny through secondary legislation. However, I can assure the noble Lord that my commitment, and the Government’s commitment, to transparency and freedom of information, which I see as twin tracks of government policy, remains as steadfast as it has always been. Ideas and information about other aspects of the post-legislative scrutiny fully justified the exercise and I compliment my right honourable friend Sir Alan Beith and his committee for doing an excellent job. It has done much to embed freedom of information in our political culture.

EU: Personal Data

Lord Wills Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I find myself in the happy position of agreeing with much of what the two previous speakers said—even with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, said in the first 10 minutes of his speech. I welcome this debate, whatever its genesis. It shows that the Government are adopting an open approach to what may be a technical measure, and which may excite little attention in the media, despite, I am sure, the best endeavours of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. Nevertheless, it will have significant consequences for the people of this country. The Commission’s proposals have complex ramifications, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has already said. At this point, I want to make only a few general points.

Unusually, I agree with at least the part of the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, that deals with process. He is surely right to say that the complex process of deciding whether to opt into or out of this crucial area of public policy must be as transparent as possible. However, the apology of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, was handsome and should conclude this matter. As I remember only too well, these things happen in government and I am sure that the appropriate lessons will have been learnt by the Government in this case.

Turning to the substantive issues, the proposal for the directive alongside the data protection regulation seems to owe more to an administrative prism in Brussels than to common sense, which suggests a single instrument. Requiring the police and other organisations such as local authorities to follow one set of rules for the law enforcement data that they hold and another for all other data is surely a recipe for confusion and breach. Individuals will be unclear about what rights they have and in what circumstances they might apply.

The directive also appears to be weaker than the regulation in certain key aspects for no apparent reason. For example, why does the directive not include provision for privacy impact assessments, as the regulation does? I understand that British police forces already carry them out, so why can this not be included in the directive? However, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said at some length, the fact that there is clearly room for improvement in the directive surely cannot mean that the UK should have opted out. On the contrary, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has again said—I want only to support what he said—this would only damage British law enforcement. Other European states are going to proceed anyway, whatever we do. If the UK had opted out, that would surely have led to different regimes, and if elements of British data protection were seen to be weaker than the EU regime, it would inhibit data transfers and law enforcement co-operation.

I am not as sanguine as the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, about our ability to negotiate agreement effortlessly with other states on this. A whole succession of bilateral agreements would be complex, protracted and add layers of bureaucracy to law enforcement processes that often, by their very nature, have to be conducted speedily across many borders, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has said. Negotiating such a set of bilateral treaties would surely complicate and damage law enforcement.

Finally, I will briefly take the opportunity to nudge the Minister on another data protection issue—the introduction of the sentencing option of custodial terms for breaches of Section 55 of the Data Protection Act. This has been a long time coming. It was a long time coming under the previous Government and there has still been no real progress. However, surely it is now time to do what the Information Commissioner urged the previous Government and this one to do. This does not depend on the outcome of the Leveson inquiry; its main relevance is to breaches by those other than the media. Fines simply do not deter breaches of Section 55. For example, I understand that the going rate for a Section 55 offence in magistrates’ courts is £130, whereas a claims management company will pay £500 for a lead. Therefore, I hope that, amid all the other questions that he has to deal with in responding to this debate, the Minister might be able to give some words of comfort about the Government’s commitment in this area.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, has made a very persuasive case for those who suffer from mesothelioma. Part of that case is that he believes—and he has much support for this—that there will be sufferers from mesothelioma who will not be able to recover damages unless the amendment that was previously passed remains in the Bill. We have just heard from an expert on personal injury cases—my noble friend Lord Faulks—who has expressed the contrary view. He said that lawyers will be prepared to take these cases because they are not very difficult to prove and that there will be no deficit for potential claimants if the amendment is not restored to the Bill. That leaves those of us who are genuinely interested in knowing the truth about these claims on the horns of a dilemma. Given that there is no claim of financial privilege in relation to this amendment, the answer to that dilemma is extremely important.

Therefore, I, for one—and I am sure that other noble Lords around the House share this view—would be grateful if in replying to this debate or at some point during the debate the Minister could tell us whether the department has made an assessment of this problem. What is the department’s view? Does it accept that cases will not be brought if the amendment is not restored to the Bill? If so, there is a very powerful case for an exception, as otherwise people will be denied justice for an extremely serious illness by reason of what I think the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, called dogmatic consistency. I share his view that dogmatic consistency is not a necessity for any Act of Parliament. Indeed, one has only to examine half a dozen at random to see how little dogmatic consistency there is in Acts of Parliament. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will give us that information during this debate so that we can make an informed judgment in deciding whether to vote and, if so, how.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, the case for this amendment was powerfully made in this House last month and in the other place last week, and I rise now briefly to add another voice in urging Ministers to think again, even at this late stage, and to try to find a constructive solution to this issue.

Before coming to your Lordships’ House, I was an MP in Swindon. Because of that town’s industrial history and particularly because of the large railway works, which employed many thousands of people over many years, this illness was known locally as the Swindon cancer. I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his sterling efforts on behalf of all my former constituents who have suffered from this terrible disease and, I am afraid, will suffer from it in years ahead.

Ministers have claimed that it would be wrong for various reasons—I understand and completely accept what the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has said about this—to make a special case for this one disease. The fact, however, of this disease’s particular virulence, that it is inevitably fatal, that it progresses with terrifying speed, that it is hard even to find palliative care for it once it has taken hold, all argue powerfully for it being just such a special case.

It is unconscionable to force sufferers from this terrible disease, and their families, at a time when every hour is precious to them, to go through the processes required by this Bill to secure the compensation to which they are entitled. Those are fundamental points for me—whether they can secure lawyers and whether success fees are to be secured for the lawyers. Every hour is precious. The people who are diagnosed with this illness have months and sometimes only weeks to live. We should not force them to go through the processes required by this Bill.

As my noble friend Lord Howarth has already said, accepting this amendment would do no damage to the fundamental principles behind the Government’s reforms of the legal aid system. It is the only decent thing to do.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, it is the Opposition’s view that there should be no moneys taken from victims’ damages in these cases. That is the basis of our view. So we speak in favour of the amendment that has been so well moved.

There is a great feeling across this House that we have to protect victims of industrial disease and ensure that they and their families are not victims once again of reforms that are there to deal with dodgy whiplash claims and motor insurance premiums. In another place, as we heard this evening, there was a very powerful and intelligent debate on this subject. Those who often express the view that debates in this Chamber are always of a superior nature to those of another place should read Hansard carefully and look at what took place in that very short hour towards the end of Tuesday last week. It was a very good debate.

Honourable Members on all sides of the Chamber spoke with passion, knowledge and experience about this subject. Not least was Ms Crouch, a former insurance executive, who criticised both her Minister and the Association of British Insurers for their stance on these amendments. Indeed, as I understand it, she has spoken to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, today and has also put out a press release. I am delighted that a number of Members of Parliament on all sides who spoke in that debate are listening to our debate this evening.

I could also mention Mr Andrew Percy who represents Brigg and Goole, which noble Lords will know is famous for its historic shipbuilding past, and Mr Andrew Bingham, the MP for High Peak, an area that also has a high incidence of asbestosis. They spoke against the Minister’s proposals and, to their credit, voted in the Opposition’s Lobby. Their concern was perfectly understandable. Why on earth, with absolutely no savings to the state, are we reducing the amount of money that victims get from those who harm them, while handing that money to lawyers or insurers instead? Those Members on all sides who voted were not persuaded by the stupid assertions—if I may call them that—of the Minister in the other place that industrial disease sufferers should be treated in the same way as an organised gang faking whiplash injuries for payouts or someone lying about a slip or a trip on a pavement crack. Again and again, the other place heard stories of horrific suffering of victims—and the fact that you simply cannot fake cancer of the pleural linings, peritoneum or cardiac sheath.

The history of asbestos-induced diseases—and, indeed, general industrial diseases—is not a proud one for the insurance industry. It knew for decades that asbestos killed before it acted and only then at Parliament’s promptings. Insurers have fought cases—to the death—trying to get out of paying just awards to genuine victims. There is a long history of insurers fighting claims until after the death of the claimant. It is in part thanks to their tireless lobbying that compensation levels in England and Wales are not by any standard generous in cases of this kind. They are forensically calculated to reflect pain, suffering and loss of amenity and costs of past and future losses. They are far less than victims receive in comparable jurisdictions. For example, Mealey’s Litigation Report in 2007 maintained that the average jury award in the United States for mesothelioma was $7.5 million—the average award here is £65,000. Of course, the differences between jury and judge-calculated awards and our judicial systems apply, but there is a huge difference.

No one could argue that the damages victims of this disease receive are very great; they should certainly not be eaten into in the way that this Bill, if allowed, would permit. We start from a low baseline before we even consider docking damages to prevent these claimants coming forwards.

Freedom of Information Act 2000

Lord Wills Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Wills]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, the Government are already amending the Freedom of Information Act through the Protection of Freedoms Bill, including provisions to extend the Act to more than 100 extra bodies and to introduce new rights in relation to data sets. These are part of a much wider set of measures to enhance transparency. The Freedom of Information Act is also currently the subject of post-legislative scrutiny by the Justice Select Committee.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I very much welcome that Answer from the Minister, and that commitment to transparency. He will be aware of a report in the Guardian last month that civil servants are calling for higher fees for users of that Act in order to discourage them from using it. I am sure he will recall that at one point the previous Government also looked at increasing charges for users of the Act, but they dropped that proposal when they realised the damage that it would do to transparency. Will the Minister now rule out increasing charges for users of the Act?