Independent Public Advocate

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I thank again the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, for those comments and questions. Again, I think that these are matters for further reflection; it is very important that the noble and learned Lord has put them on the record. The questions of judicial review and how quickly and so forth are for further consideration; it is certainly envisaged that the independent public advocate would be able to act very quickly.

I think, if I may say so, that the Hillsborough situation was, tragically and very regrettably, distorted by a cover-up that defeated even one of the noble and learned Lord’s predecessors, the Lord Chief Justice at the time, Sir Peter Taylor. Any system that you can devise will always have difficulty coping with that kind of situation. But, in terms of speed of process, not repeating the process, having one process and defining the trigger event, those are all very important issues that we need to reflect on further.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement and am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for repeating it. In line with some of the questions that have just been put to him, can I press him slightly further on the phrase used in the Statement, “major disasters”? The Secretary of State would presumably decide on behalf of the Government that such and such an event is considered a major disaster that triggers the independent public advocate. Is that correct? Do the Government have any sense of what a major disaster is going to be defined as being?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I think the statute will have to make an attempt to define what it means by “major disaster”. As presently envisaged, one is thinking of what one can loosely describe as one-off disasters, such as the ones we have been discussing: perhaps the 7/7 bombings, the Paddington train crash of some years ago and those kinds of things. At least so far, government reflection has not extended to things such as the Post Office scandal, which arose over many years, or the contaminated blood scandal, which arose over many years, or the North Staffordshire NHS scandal that eventually came to light, because those were ongoing things going wrong. They were certainly in one sense disastrous, but it was not quite envisaged that they would be a disaster in terms of the statute. However, I say again that the exact scope of this new independent public advocate is a matter for close consideration.