Brexit: Other Policy Areas

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, the Secretary of State has acknowledged that the Government do not have what they call the “bandwidth” to deal with social care alongside Brexit. The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has described social care in England as adrift on a “sea of inertia”. Is it not time that the Government did something to put an end to this inertia? I am afraid that the Minister’s response on social care was a bit dismissive in this context.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I genuinely regret it if I sounded dismissive. I have sat through many exchanges on social care and the undertakings given to produce it by a given date. I understand the disappointment of noble Lords that that date has not been arrived at. There was an exchange with my noble friend relatively recently. I understand the urgency. We will produce the social care Green Paper as soon as we possibly can.

Social Housing

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow and welcome my noble friend, whose inspiring maiden speech, rooted in her lived experience, showed how much she will bring to our deliberations.

I strongly support this Motion, in particular with regard to homelessness. The National Audit Office drew attention to the,

“unquantified cost of homelessness to wider public services”,

including health. Unquantifiable is the cost to the physical and mental health of homeless people themselves, and to their lives, with ONS statistics showing a 24% increase in the number of deaths of homeless people over five years. For the growing number of female rough sleepers, some of whom have fled domestic violence, these health problems are often aggravated by sexual harassment.

The other week, the Nottingham Post headlined the health costs of homelessness in the city. It quoted Suzey Joseph, an outreach nurse employed by Framework, a local homelessness charity, who said:

“They get infections, organ failure and get sicker and sicker until they die on the streets”.


I met Suzey recently and was impressed by how she is helping homeless people to get the healthcare they need. Will the Minister undertake to look at this initiative as a possible model to promote through the Government’s rough sleeping strategy?

The causes of homelessness are of course multiple, and it has suited Ministers to hide behind the mantra of complexity when challenged on the role played by their own policies. But complexity does not absolve them of responsibility. Like my noble friend Lady Warwick, I am particularly concerned about the impact of social security cuts and restrictions, including the cap, the two-child limit, the housing and other benefits freeze, punitive sanctions, universal credit and devolution to local authorities of responsibility for emergency assistance—at least 28 have abolished their schemes and almost all the rest have cut back drastically.

The evidence from organisations on the ground, research and the NAO all points to,

“the impact of welfare reform on homelessness”,

to quote the Public Accounts Committee. The PAC thus recommended that DWP write to it,

“to set out what work it has undertaken to identify any elements of welfare reform that are having an impact on homelessness and what steps it has taken to mitigate them”.

The report back—a full half page—is totally unilluminating and says nothing about mitigation.

In December, the Secretary of State for HCLG denied that the rise in rough sleeping is a political failure linked to government policies but, a week later, he acknowledged that there may be a link to social security cuts and that we,

“need to ask ourselves some very hard questions”,

as to why there are so many more people on the streets.

What progress have Ministers made in coming up with answers, over a year since the PAC asked them to investigate the link between homelessness and so-called welfare reform? As social security cuts push more and more people further and further below the poverty line, they are undermining the Government’s own rough sleeping strategy and thereby contributing to the rising death toll on our streets.

Legislation: Gendered Pronouns

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

So far as drafting legislation is concerned, I hope I can assure noble Lords that parliamentary draftsmen will use the correct grammar whenever it is possible. The main purpose of drafting legislation is that it should be clear, but I agree that, wherever practicable, we should also use conventional language as long as we do not upset people’s sensitivities.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, my former students would tell you that I care greatly about grammar, but will the Minister explain why using “they” would be a step too far?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The suggestion from my noble friend was that it should be used in all cases. I have conceded that we should use it in some cases, and I cited an example from the Terrorism Act, where we do indeed use the word they in the singular:

“It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that they had a reasonable excuse for their action”.


But to insist that it should be used in every case would be to deprive parliamentary draftsmen—parliamentary drafters—of the flexibility they need.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, the Bill raises fundamental questions about not just the Brexit process and accountability to Parliament but also, as the right reverend Prelate reminded us in an inspiring speech, our vision of a good society post Brexit. In the Article 50 debate, I spoke about the sense of loss felt by me and by many who wrote to me as we are stripped of our European citizenship and the fundamental rights it affords us. Membership of social Europe has contributed to many of the social and other rights we enjoy today. With regard to the current Bill, fears have been expressed by those speaking on behalf of, among others, women, children, disabled people, LGBT people and workers, and also about environmental protections. How far we are able to allay those fears by strengthening the protection provided for equality and human rights has to be a litmus test of the effectiveness of our scrutiny of the Bill.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission and others have proposed various ways of providing such protection, including the introduction of a constitutional right to equality; the implementation of a socioeconomic duty, contained in the Equality Act 2010; a means of keeping pace with wider European equality and human rights law; and inclusion in the Bill of a clause embodying the principle of non-regression of equality rights, as recommended by the Women and Equalities Committee, among others. On this last matter, the government amendment in the Commons does not go nearly far enough. It does not actually protect equality rights and it applies only to secondary legislation, despite the Minister’s commitment to the Commons that it would apply to primary legislation also. Can the Minister explain why the Government have reneged on that commitment?

The other main means open to us is to retain the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, the key piece of EU law expressly not brought over, contravening the Bill’s “general rule”,

“that ‘the same rules and laws will apply after exit as the day before’”.

I have read the debates in the Commons and, unlike the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, I have yet to find a convincing argument to justify its exclusion. We are told that it is unnecessary because it adds nothing new. It will not affect substantive rights, the Leader of the House assured us. But in fact it includes certain rights and principles not covered elsewhere in our legislation, referred to in the Commons as a third category of rights, such as the right to dignity and a number of important children’s rights, including the fundamental duty to give primary consideration to children’s best interests. Can the Minister say how this duty will be protected in the absence of the charter or the incorporation of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child into UK law?

The Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law warns:

“We will lose fundamental rights protection in certain areas”.


It points out, as did Lady Hermon in the Commons, that, without the charter, the obligation in the Good Friday agreement to an equivalence of human rights protection in Northern Ireland and the Republic is undermined. Can the Minister explain how that equivalence will now be maintained?

Even if, for the sake of argument, it were unnecessary, as the Government claim, what would be lost by now responding to the wide range of organisations, led by the statutory body with the responsibility for promoting equality and human rights, calling for its inclusion? Like the Constitution Committee, I do not understand why an exception should then be made to the general principle of legal continuity. Of course redundant rights specifically connected to EU membership could subsequently be removed, so that is no real argument. As it is, the Government’s position will be seen a symbol of the weakness of their commitment to human rights, despite protestations to the contrary.

The other argument, that to include the charter would sow confusion and legal uncertainty, is contradicted by the legal opinion obtained by the EHRC; by experts on European law, including the group convened by the Bingham centre and the UCL Constitution Unit; and by the appendix to the JCHR’s commentary on the right-by-right analysis, referred to earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. They argue the exact opposite: that its exclusion is a recipe for legal uncertainty. Surely the Government’s aim, as set out in the rather unconvincing right-by-right analysis,

“to maximise certainty and minimise complexity”,

is better met by having all these rights codified transparently in one place.

The Government repeatedly fall back on the protection provided by the Human Rights Act to counter calls for the charter’s inclusion. But given their earlier desire to repeal the Act, forgive me if I do not take much comfort from a commitment to it that is limited to the lifetime of the present Parliament. Wherever we stand on our exit from the EU, I hope that we can be united in our commitment to a society built on principles of equality and human rights, and therefore ensure the retention of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights as both a symbol and a cornerstone of that commitment.