Deregulation Bill

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I will briefly add to what the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has said. In the original draft Bill that the Joint Committee scrutinised, the Ministry of Justice was the only government department that brought forward proposals of which none had been formally consulted on—not one. Although we are debating Clause 61, Clauses 62, 63, 64 and 65 are all MoJ clauses and none of them has ever been consulted on formally. This is a Christmas tree Bill with 100 different subjects—we could not look at everything, and looked at stuff on the basis of evidence. It was unique in the sense that we had one department that brought forward a range of proposals that it had not consulted on. In a way, this is given away in Clause 61 itself. Line 5 refers to,

“an annual report on standards of decision-making”.

That is the giveaway really. I have to say that the Government’s response was a bit unsatisfactory.

We need to have this short debate, however few minutes it lasts, because, to the best of my knowledge, this is where the defects arise because there is so much going on and this Bill is now much more massive than it was. I have no complaint about that; I am just stating a fact. As parliamentarians, we need further and better particulars. We did not get many to start with, which is why we did not deal with a lot of the Bill. We also had little time to do our job because we were constrained by having to report back to Parliament by 16 December.

The Ministry of Justice appears to be a bit flaky on the administration of justice in a way. That is how I would sum it up, not just on this issue but on others as well, although I am not going to go down the route of listing things. Cost was used as an argument on this, but we never had any costs or alternatives, even though, given the number of changes in the benefit system, that would have seemed a good idea.

As far as I am aware, in the representations we had from the authors of these reports they did not say that it would be a good idea if they did not have to do them. I have not checked all the evidence on the issue I raised last week, but the fact is that the Ministers have been more up-to-date than us. I thought it was worth raising that issue in this Committee, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, if only for flagging this up for Report.

There is an issue here. There were one or two issues on which the Joint Committee did not spend a lot of time, but expressed a bit of concern. Last week the debate on marine accidents showed that as well. It was not a massive issue in the committee, but as time has gone on, it seems as though the importance of the legislation is crucial; obviously I agree with deregulation. The Bill is therefore an opportunity that we should not miss. However, in this case the Government will have to come forward on Report with a much better argument for keeping Clause 61 than they have given so far.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I promise that I will be very brief. I was thinking of Lord Newton of Braintree when the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, moved this amendment—I am sorry that there is only one Conservative in the Room. As Members will know, Lord Newton was chair of the Council on Tribunals, and later chair of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council. He argued very strongly against the government proposal to abolish the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council. I only wish he was alive today, and I hope he is looking down at us. I am sure that he would have been delighted by the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, moved this amendment. I am sure that I am not alone in this House in missing him. When I was chair of ACAS I worked very closely with the then senior chairman—as they were called in those days—of the Employment Tribunals Service, my noble friend Lord Noon. He was part of the administrative tribunals system, and I also met Lord Newton on a number of occasions when he was performing the duties of the senior president.

This is part of the chipping away of tribunals. It may not seem very much on its own, but it is part of squeezing the tribunals together—which had totally different functions and history—cutting them back and now not even allowing transparency of decision-making. Also, as a former member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, I believe that this fails the test of transparency and openness. It is extremely worrying that we have these kinds of developments. It may seem a very small part of a very large Bill, but I hope very much that the Government will reconsider this in the name of transparency and good decision-making.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and my noble friends Lord Rooker and Lady Donaghy have carefully outlined why this clause should not stand part of the Bill, and I very much support the points they have made. I pay tribute in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, who made an excellent contribution with some excellent points. All I will say to the noble Lord is, if we do not get the answer he wants today, I hope he will come back to this on Report. If he presses it to a vote, he will find plenty of support on our side of the House and, I am sure, on the Cross Benches as well. This is a very bad clause.

I very much agree with the comments my noble friend Lady Donaghy made about Lord Newton, who would certainly have been on his feet in this Committee and in the Chamber, opposing this, as he did the many other things the present Government brought in regarding welfare.

To remove the duty from the Senior President of Tribunals to produce an annual report on the standard of decision-making by the DWP on appeals to the First-tier Tribunal is a matter of much regret. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, will tell the Grand Committee—as his friend in the other place, Mr Vara, told my right honourable friend Mr Stephen Timms, as was outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey—that it is all to do with the high cost of producing the report and that the development of alternative methods means that getting feedback in is much easier now and it is all going to be fine. I am sure we are going to be told that the introduction of summary reasons for decisions in employment support allowance cases means that judges can explain why a decision has been overturned on appeal and provide feedback to the department in an effective way, and that this is not necessary.

I was going to ask the noble and learned Lord about costs but the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, jumped in and put down a very good Parliamentary Question. I think that the issue of costs has now been shot down completely. We are talking about a very small sum.

My noble friend Lord Rooker also mentioned what went on at the DWP Committee. I saw the comments by His Honour Judge Martin in his evidence to the committee. He pointed out the problems and errors that are repeated year after year, with no sign that anyone in the department takes any notice of feedback from tribunals, and that concerns are just not dealt with.

I think the real reason for the clause is that the report has become an embarrassment for the Government. They want to sweep it away—as my noble friend Lady Donaghy said, this is not transparent—so that the annual assessment is not there and they do not have to look at it or address it. That is a really bad thing to do and they need to come back on that.

If the issue is the £20,000 cost of the report, did the Government look at any other ways that this could be done? Does it have to be a glossy report? Can it not be, as the noble Lord suggested, a more regular communication—a letter, perhaps—where the tribunal could highlight the problems it has seen coming forward? It could be every three months or six months. It could be made public. If the Senior President of Tribunals sees problems, there must be a way for him to communicate that to the department and not just leave it to people who will look at judgments and make a decision. That seems a wholly ineffective way of doing that. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord could reflect on that before we come back.

This is a bad clause. Obviously, it cannot be voted on today. I hope that if we do not get an answer today, the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, will come back to this on Report. As I said, he will have our support.