King’s Speech

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, to the old adage that talk is cheap we might add the observation that legislation need not be much more expensive. Yet in both cases there may be inflationary claims or counterproductive outcomes that undermine liberty, equality and harmony in any society. As a close observer of our justice and home affairs over 28 years, I do not instinctively scoff at an apparently light legislative programme. I should add that I had the privilege of knowing and being advised and encouraged by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, over that time; he was a great constitutionalist and a kind man, and I send my condolences to his wife and daughters.

I congratulate both today’s maiden speakers. To the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, who has been left such large boots to fill, I say that I know that he will do it with enormous distinction.

There have been too many bad laws in this area over many years. Even finely crafted statutes are no substitute for the public investment that our crumbling justice system so desperately needs, or the moral leadership once provided by some of the greatest senior politicians of yesteryear from both sides of both Houses. Like other noble Lords, I shall of course engage with yet more sentencing, criminal justice and investigatory powers Bills as they come, and I shall seek to work with noble Lords across your Lordships’ House to strengthen protections in the Victims and Prisoners Bill. It is particularly good, with that in mind, to see the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, in her new and reinstated role. In remembering that the European convention has done more for victims’ rights in our system than any other single instrument, we should seek to remove the current disapplication of the Human Rights Act from that draft measure. I look forward to continuing positive dialogue with the new Lord Chancellor, who has been a relative breath of fresh air to his department.

I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for devoting my remaining minutes to things not explicitly included in His Majesty’s gracious Speech. If a week is a long time in politics, the last month or so has felt at times interminable. In 1960, the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan made his famous Cape Town speech, using the “wind of change” metaphor for both acceptance of decolonisation and disapproval of apartheid in South Africa. How sad that the present Home Secretary should use her recent party conference speech to turn his words of hope into pure populist fear of what she described as the “hurricane” of immigration to come, compared with the “mere gust” that brought her own parents to the United Kingdom.

The subsequent month has been a hellish eternity, I have no doubt, for the families of victims of Hamas butchery and hostage taking, and the besieged and bombarded civilian population of Gaza. No British politician, still less a Home Secretary, can unilaterally ease that distress, which inevitably extends to so many people in our own communities. However, they can at times make things worse—worse by collectively branding 100,000 mostly peaceful people as “hate marchers” in the context of a depressing rise in often non-protest related incidents of hate crime.

They can make things worse by repeatedly and performatively trying to influence or instruct a police service which, in this country at least, is supposed to be independent of government. Surely it is better to appeal to all those understandably moved by events overseas to show their aspirations for peace with calm and sensitive restraint in both conduct and tone—and better to let the Metropolitan Commissioner demonstrate the judiciousness that he has overnight, in watching the intelligence but seeking to allow safe outlets for collective expression, while keeping the King’s peace.

In dark times, they can make things worse by their language around homelessness. Big people and big leaders seek to build big tents, not ban them. That includes the flimsy makeshift shelters used by some of our homeless people—including, to our shame at this time of year, too many military veterans, in the middle of a cost of living and mental health crisis.

Once more, the Home Secretary’s campaigning language is lamentable. The only thing worse than a privileged person branding homelessness a “lifestyle choice” from the comfort of their warm home or office is throwing in yet more anti-immigrant rhetoric for extra spice and blaming the destitute for

“crime, drug taking, and squalor”.

So, how disappointing to read this morning’s reports of a continued push for more criminalisation to replace the Vagrancy Act 1824, which your Lordships voted to repeal so resoundingly and which must go in substance, not just form, before its fast-approaching 200-year anniversary.

Just as the Lord Chancellor’s oath, as we heard from the noble and learned Lord, is to respect the rule of law, defend judicial independence and provide adequate court resources, perhaps Home Secretaries could learn from the doctors and swear to “First do no harm”.