Census (Return Particulars and Removal of Penalties) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 18th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I see many people are leaving. This is not riveting stuff so I do not recommend that your Lordships all stay.

In Committee in June I moved an amendment to the Bill that is rather difficult to follow unless you have the original 1920 Act before you, and I shall not bother the House with it. In summary, it required that there be an express provision in the Bill that if you elected not to answer questions to do with sexual orientation or gender, you would suffer no penalty. My amendment wanted to make it express that that would be no offence. We had a very interesting argument, to which I listened. I was told that the Commons had rejected such an amendment when it was considering the same provision in relation to religion in 2000, and that it would certainly complicate proceedings if the problem were dealt with in one way in relation to religion but differently in relation to sexual orientation and so on. I understood. Actually, there should have been a Bill covering the whole proceedings.

Then I was told that it might put us in England and Wales out of step with Scotland, then I understood that it worked perfectly well and then I was told that I was wrong as a matter of law. I did not agree that I was wrong as a matter of law, but the Minister had rather a powerful weapon up his sleeve: he asked me in a conversation after the Committee had concluded its discussions whether I would have a word with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. Everyone in this House knows that the noble and learned Lord is the oracle. When the noble Lord, Lord Young, suggested I speak to him, I thought, “Well, that’s the oracle”. What the noble Lord did not know, and there is no reason he should, is that the noble and learned Lord is also the Lord Chancellor who appointed me as a judge, so this was a real double whammy.

So of course I spoke to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. We had a conversation and we did not agree. I saw the force of what he was saying and he understood the point I was making, but our discussion revealed that we are doing a bit of a Don Quixote and tilting at windmills. Who will read the Census (Return Particulars and Removal of Penalties) Bill? No one. The form will simply arrive in your letterbox. What seemed to me—and, if I may say so, to him and, when we spoke to the Minister, to the Minister—to matter was that the form should be clear and unequivocal so that the individual citizen reading it should understand what it meant.

That is the purpose of this amendment: to forget, if I may say so, about esoteric points of law and concentrate on the practicalities. The amendment I have now tabled would deal with the front page of the census form so that it stated in terms that you would not commit any offence if you did not answer any of the questions. Within the census form itself, there would be a headline saying “Voluntary” and an explanation that the question was voluntary. I respectfully suggest that this would be a practical way of dealing with a rather refined legal problem, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to speak at this point because I want to leave another question with the Minister and give him time to respond.

I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, for his amendment and his explanation. I remain puzzled by the Government’s view on this, because I have now had the chance to consider their letter of 31 May. It seems to say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, “Yes, you’re probably right, but as we didn’t do it properly in 2000, it might prejudice that, so we should remain consistently with a less-than-perfect form of words”.

There are two aspects to this, as I think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said. One is the legal aspect and whether it is absolutely clear in law that “no penalty” means “not criminal”; I will leave the two noble and learned Lords to adjudicate on that. The other aspect, which was just touched on, is whether it will be clear enough to all respondents that, unlike the rest of the form, they do not need to answer these questions. We non-lawyers want absolute clarity on this second point, to ensure that no one should feel compelled to answer these questions, nor to expect to have to answer on behalf of those for whom they are completing the form. They should not even be nudged to ask someone for the answer to these questions. We would want to see some real guarantees on that not to support these amendments.

I turn now to another matter regarding voluntary and compulsory questions: military service. I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for his letter of 10 June, a copy of which he has placed in the Library, in response to my concern that, for whatever reason, somebody may not want to disclose their history of service in the Armed Forces to other members of the household. I am probably not alone in wondering about this. Indeed, only 88% of veterans and their families thought this question was “publicly acceptable”, which is interesting. One-fifth had doubts about whether it was publicly acceptable, which I think is significant. In Northern Ireland, the question was found only “generally acceptable” and the Minister’s letter says that,

“some veterans may be unwilling to disclose this information”.

The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency thought:

“This could be mitigated by providing assurances about privacy and through additional guidance”,


although it said it would look carefully at the 2019 census rehearsal before making a final recommendation for the 2021 census.

Obviously, members of households can request their own individual census form if there is information they do not want to disclose to the person completing the census on behalf of the household. However, by opting out of the household, one might be looked at slightly askance and it could raise questions as to why one is doing that. This is as true for the gender and sexual orientation questions as for the military service one I have in mind. I do not wish to pursue this separate issue now, but I ask the Minister, who I hope will be able to reassure us that, in all the guidance and testing, the sensitivities about military service, as well as those related to the areas that are the subject of this Bill, will be borne in mind.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, it is plain in the fundamental Act that you can be punished by a fine only if you fail to answer a question which you are required to answer, or if you give false information in answering such a question. Therefore, if the question is not compulsory, there can be no penalty.

I do not want to discuss further the fine detail of the legal side of this. I leave it on the basis that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and I agree that what the people getting the form need to know is that the questions addressed by the Bill are voluntary. We want people to understand that, and know that there can therefore be no penalty, or anything else in the way of harm, if they do not answer them. That is the principal point and a matter the Government can undertake in the light of the Office for National Statistics having a point in this—it has to be satisfied with the poll.