Baroness Hamwee
Main Page: Baroness Hamwee (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I speak today, but not because this Bill needs more advocates. My noble friend—and friend—Lady Kramer has explained the need for this Bill very clearly. I have to apologise to her as I do not think I have prepared to cover the issues that she thought I might cover. If anything does need covering, we can talk about it outside the Chamber, although I do not think it does. We have also had an indication from the Government, and those two factors should be enough. I speak today not just because of the importance of the issue of practical legal assistance for the families of missing people. That is something which impresses itself on everyone who learns of the problems, although it has to be said that few people know of the problems unless through personal experience or personal contacts they are brought up against them.
For me, this is also a matter of local loyalty. I was a councillor in 1986 when Suzy Lamplugh went missing and among the residents of my ward were her parents, Diana and Paul Lamplugh. I was a councillor when Janet Newman and Mary Asprey set up the National Missing Persons Helpline and in the area where Missing People, the successor organisation, has its offices. I am also a member of the all-party group to which my noble friend referred and took a small part in the work which has, among other pieces of work, led to this Bill.
One of the things which impressed me during that work was the evidence of Peter Lawrence, who has already been referred to, and I hope I do not get him wrong in saying what I am going to say. Mr Lawrence is a solicitor. Solicitors—and I am one—are well used to dealing with bureaucracy in the worst sense: the tram-lined thinking of banks, insurers and so on. However, Mr Lawrence was clearly more or less defeated—I hope that is not the wrong way of putting it—in trying to deal with his daughter’s practical affairs. The evidence that we heard was about the need for guardianship, to which my noble friend has referred. That is not in the Bill, which is a pity, but like her I do not want to delay what is in the Bill.
According to the all-party group report,
“it can be difficult for families to find knowledgeable, professional advice. Missing People told the Inquiry of how it is approached by families for information on presumption of death as there is no other source of help or clear information”.
I was struck during that work by a comment from the then chief executive of Missing People. He said that,
“we have ended up being the organisation that people turn to; that doesn’t mean we are any clearer than the families we talk to”.
Along with my noble friend, I want to pay tribute to Missing People. Its work is effective, imaginative and energetic. Perhaps most importantly, it is clearly trusted by the families who are affected and by all the other organisations that work in the area or that have any connection with the issues with which we are dealing today and with other issues related to missing people.
As I have said, the issue of people who have gone missing is high-profile in my local area. Perhaps it is less so elsewhere unless there is a particular instance but, as we have heard, the numbers are staggering, which means thousands of individual anxieties, heartbreaks and—what we are dealing with here today—frustrations. It seems that the Bill will almost achieve the impossible and come close to proving a negative, certainly more so than the rebuttable common law presumption. As I read the Bill, the court may well take on more of an investigative role than we are used to our courts dealing with in England and Wales, and it is right that it will be the High Court that will deal with these applications.
I used the term “frustrations”, but there must be something much closer to panic when a family suddenly loses its main wage earner. It occurs to me that by the provisions of the Bill we may find that there is scope for the prospect of an insurance payout, to take one example, being accessed and used as security for a short-term loan. I am very aware of the different attitude of banks many years ago. On the occasion of a family bereavement, the bank manager, whose name we knew, was prepared to be imaginative, co-operative and helpful very quickly, which is what families need when income is suddenly cut off. I hope that addressing these frustrations will prompt the institutions themselves —the banks, insurers and so on—to look imaginatively at how they deal with these issues.
I warned the Minister of two questions that I would raise today. The first relates to guidance which the Government indicated, in their response to the Justice Select Committee report, would be published. At paragraph 4, the response says that the Ministry of Justice,
“accepts the Committee’s recommendation. Straightforward, short and accessible guidance on procedures available under the present law will be published on the new single government website … later this year”.
That was last year, in 2012. However, I went on to the website to see if I could find that guidance and could not do so. It may be that there is guidance elsewhere and it may be that there are other places where it will helpfully be found but I should be grateful if the Government could give me any news on that.
Secondly, has guidance been produced on the operation of the Coroners Act, as it was hoped would be published last summer? Again, I have not been able to find it, and refer to the Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s report, which says:
“The Department acknowledges the limitations identified by the Committee but considers that where section 15 of the Coroners Act 1988 (or its successor provisions under section 1 of the Coroners Act 2009 when they are brought into force) applies it can provide a useful means to deal with the affairs of the missing person. The Department is working with the Missing Persons Bureau to finalise the guidance on section 15 and hopes that it will be published this summer”.
I hope that the Minister can give your Lordships some news of that.
Finally—and I apologise for not giving the Minister warning of this, but it is a less technical question—I realised last night that it will be possible for what will be Section 15 of the Act to come into force before Section 1. What will be Section 17 includes the power to amend the period of seven years to which Section 1 refers. Can the Minister share with your Lordships the Government’s intentions or ideas about this? It may be that this is thought to be a useful backstop in case experience shows that the period should be changed, but considering the order in which things might happen prompted me to ask whether the Minister is aware of any intention to make any change quickly.
I have a fairly obvious final question. Can the Minister share with your Lordships any information about when the Bill generally will come into effect in the sense of being completely operative? We all know that there will be regulations to be dealt with—we will not see Royal Assent one day and full operation the next—but I hope that we will hear some news today of the hopes, which we all share, of seeing the provisions of this Bill in full operation very soon indeed.