Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Debate between Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Baroness Noakes

Committee stage
Tuesday 7th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, we should get this into perspective. I say to my noble friend Lord Deben and indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Hain, that this Bill is handling one particular aspect: fundamentally, boycotts and divestment decisions. There is a whole range of law in the Procurement Act, which we passed last year, which sets out the UK’s version of the procurement rules we used to take from the EU—they have been modernised for our own purposes, but they are still hugely complicated.

For a very long time, the Government’s own procurement advice to public bodies was that:

“Public procurement should never be used as a tool to boycott tenders from suppliers based in other countries, except where formal legal sanctions, embargoes and restrictions have been put in place by the UK Government”.


In many ways, this Bill provides a more liberal approach to that blanket proposition, which was in a government procurement policy note and which has been governing procurement for a long time. We need to see this Bill in context and in the light of the rather narrow area it is trying to deal with.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Hain, I think this is a rather good Bill, although I agree respectfully with him that these amendments, particularly those on international law, merit careful consideration by the Minister and the Government. I say that essentially for three reasons, and I can be brief.

First, the general approach in this country is that public bodies do not have their own interpretation of international law. It is the Government who assess international law obligations, because they are binding on the United Kingdom as a state.

That leads me to the second point, which might in part answer that made by my noble friend Lord Deben. The effect of the Bill as drafted is to introduce, by the back door, potentially vast swathes of international law into our domestic legislation. As I never tire of saying in this House, we have a dualist system: international law is not part of domestic law unless and until it is incorporated. So the answer to my noble friend’s point may well be this: if somebody were to say in a domestic court that a public authority was in breach of “the law” because it had not complied with some international law obligation that was not part of our domestic law, the public body’s obvious retort would be to say that it is not subject to that obligation.

The third point is a practical rather than legal one. My concern is that, in the real world, if the Bill is left as drafted it will in practice drive a coach and horses through what it really seeks to achieve, because the courts will be clogged up with arguments, even if they are entirely unmeritorious, as to the scope of international law. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, about Richard Hermer KC’s opinion: it is something of a curate’s egg, and I will perhaps come back to that in a later group. But I agree that, on this point, he is absolutely right to sound a note of warning and to highlight that the Bill as drafted risks undermining the Government’s ambitions for it.

I gently invite my noble friend the Minister to reconsider the Government’s approach to this international law question, which we can perhaps come back to at a future opportunity.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Baroness Noakes

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 78DA, moved by my noble friend Lady Noakes, is in regard to the maximum penalty for the sexual penetration of a corpse. I first place on record my shock and horror at David Fuller’s horrifying offending; my thoughts are with the victims and their families. I assure the House that the Government are committed to looking in detail at what happened in this appalling circumstance to ensure that it simply never happens again.

As we have heard, just this afternoon Mr Fuller has been sentenced to a whole-life term of imprisonment. An investigation into other aspects of his offending is ongoing. The House will understand why I will not comment on the sentence passed in this case, but I thank all those in the police, the CPS and the wider criminal justice system for bringing him to justice.

The Government have announced an inquiry into the events that occurred in hospitals in Tunbridge Wells. This will help us understand how the offences took place without detection in the trust, identify any areas where early action by the trust was necessary and consider wider national issues, including for the NHS as a whole. The Government have already made good progress in establishing the independent inquiry. I understand from colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care that the inquiry’s chair, Sir Jonathan Michael, has developed draft terms of reference already and will engage with the families on them in the new year before they are published.

As well as that inquiry, I assure the House that the Ministry of Justice is reviewing the existing penalties available for the offence of sexual penetration of a corpse. The statutory maximum penalty for that offence is, as my noble friend indicated, two years’ imprisonment.

I reassure your Lordships, however, that that is the statutory maximum penalty for one offence. Where the offence is sentenced alongside other offences, each offence will be sentenced individually. The overall sentence passed will therefore reflect the totality of the offending behaviour.

I also pay tribute to my noble friend’s work in supporting the inclusion of this offence when it was debated during the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. It was created primarily to deal with a different circumstance—different circumstances were in mind at the time. The focus was on the situation where a murderer abuses the corpse of their victim after death, and it was therefore perhaps thought likely that those sentenced for this offence would, for the most part, be sentenced at the same time for another offence, such as murder—which of course carries a mandatory penalty of life imprisonment. As we have seen in the Fuller case, that is sometimes the case but may not always be so.

It is therefore right that, in view of this depraved—which is not a word I use often, but I think is appropriate in this context—and horrifying offending where we have seen an individual commit this offence independently of other offending in relation to that victim, we review the current statutory maximum penalty for the Section 70 offence. It may also be that this review, and the public inquiry into the offending in hospitals in Kent, will highlight other issues that need to be considered relating to the existing offences that deal with sexual abuse of corpses.

To be clear, I am not saying—I cannot this afternoon —that the Government will adopt the specific approach taken in this amendment, but neither do I rule out future changes to the maximum penalty. Rather, we are reviewing the maximum penalty in its context, and speaking with DHSC officials to ensure that learning from the inquiry into events in hospitals can be taken into account into our review of the penalty. That is the best way to reach a considered conclusion about how to amend Section 70 appropriately.

As to timing, the inquiry into the events at hospitals in Kent is due to publish interim findings in the new year, with the full report at a later stage. I will write to my noble friend, and place a copy in the Library, with any further information on the inquiry’s timescales as soon as that is available. Our review of the available maximum penalties is likely to follow a similar timescale, to ensure that findings from the inquiry can be taken into account in our conclusions. It is therefore important that we await the findings of the inquiry before amending the current legislation. I listened carefully to how my noble friend opened this short debate, and I therefore ask her formally to withdraw this amendment.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a short but important debate, and it will be particularly important for the families of those who died who were abused by that man. Clearly, they have suffered hugely. My noble friend is right to point out that I made clear that this was a probing amendment and therefore have no intention of pressing the amendment. My main purpose was to ensure that the Government are set upon dealing with this issue properly, and I was much reassured by what I heard from my noble friend. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.