Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woolf]

My Lords, as always the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has made a good point. But the fact of the matter is this: is the procedure set out in this Bill the appropriate way of dealing with the minor amendments to which he has referred? He has taken as an example the body which, ironically, was designed to achieve the independence of the judiciary from the Executive by ensuring that the way in which judges are appointed is separated from the Executive. What the Bill will do is say that if we want to amend or abolish that body, we will go through a two-stage process. First, we will move it to another schedule, and possibly discuss that in this House. We will then go through another process to achieve the desired amendment. If it is wrong in principle, as I submit it is, to treat a body of this sort by placing it in Schedule 7, then the fact that one day some minor amendment might need to be made to that body does not justify the treatment being proposed. The Judicial Appointments Commission justifies proper consideration because even minor amendments can affect such a body in ways that caused this House to look so carefully, in the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, at how in the future we would appoint our judges.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I hope the Committee will forgive me for not being present throughout the debate on this first amendment but I have been at a Select Committee.

I rise for two reasons: first, respectfully to agree with everything that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has said; and, secondly, to point out four particular examples in Schedule 7 which are subject to the power to add to other schedules. I cannot see how the examples I am going to give could be added to other schedules. First, where would the Royal Botanic Gardens go to? Secondly, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service had a very unhappy gestation but has now become relatively effective; to interfere with it would be a disaster for children in this country. I know something about the third example, the Family Procedure Rule Committee, because I used to be its chairman. Where do you put that? My last example is the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. The Committee will remember the Chinese cockle pickers and why we established the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. How on earth can it be added to another schedule?

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I rise, first, because I want to get a word in edgeways as a non-lawyer; and, secondly, because it seems appropriate that I should follow part of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said—prefacing it by declaring a now historic interest as the person who chaired the Council on Tribunals and its successor body, the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, for no fewer than 10 years from 1999 until last year. My name is not attached to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and I shall speak to the AJTC later, but I appreciate and agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has said.

As I was not able to be here for Second Reading, I shall not make the Second Reading speech I might have made, deeply unhelpful as the Government would have regarded it. However, I wish to make three points. First, I welcome, as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the spirit in which my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach has responded to the criticisms at Second Reading. Whether or not it goes far enough we shall discover in the course of our debates, but it has been a remarkable exercise in rewriting the Bill as it goes along. It must have taken him quite a lot of work to persuade his colleagues to make such changes. I congratulate him and I do not want to make his life any more difficult.

Secondly, albeit as a non-lawyer and without going over all the speeches, I could not find a word uttered by the original proponent, the noble Lord, Lord Lester, or his seconder, as it were, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with which I disagree, and there are probably quite a few noble Lords on this side of the Committee who share that view.

Thirdly, I say to my noble friend—as I am happy to call him—Lord Phillips, a former constituent, and to the Minister that I spent five years as Leader of the House of Commons—I was more or less in charge of the Government’s programme in those days—listening to Ministers trying to say that you did not need to put stuff in a Bill because it was implicit and impaling themselves on a ludicrous argument that something that did not make any difference was worth dying in a ditch over. I hope the Minister is not going to do it again.