Queen’s Speech

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, the gracious Speech programme contains a sackful of measures on criminal justice and justice matters generally. I start by simply making the point that we can legislate until the cows come home but, in almost every part of the judicial system, it is resources that are causing more problems than any lack of legislation: resources for the courts, the Crown Prosecution Service, access to justice, prisons and early intervention through services provided by local authorities. Unless we address that, we will not make the kind of improvements we need in the system.

I turn to the issue of royal commissions, as discussed by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and several others. It is not a bad idea to have a royal commission—it would be perhaps a less good idea to have an unroyal commission, which would seem rather strange—if it is set up in the proper way, rather than to have half-baked, ill-thought-out policies, hastily implemented. But it depends who is on the commission, how much independence it has, how much expertise it has access to and whether anything is done with its recommendations once they have been made.

I worry that the commission on constitutional matters does not look to be off to a good start and may have its origins in partisan resentments about the proper role of the courts in interpreting the law, ministerial resentment at any challenge to the Executive by Parliament and a dismissive attitude towards constitutional conventions. In his very powerful speech, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, analysed this problem and referred to the Prorogation issue. The Prorogation case was, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, pointed out, decided on quite narrow facts, but what lay beneath it was the recognition that in modern times Parliament is no longer simply convened when the Crown runs out of money. That was the basis on which there was a prerogative power: Parliament could be called on when needed and got rid of once there was enough money to manage without it. Parliament is now assumed to have a continuous existence, interrupted only by agreed short breaks for elections, conferences and holidays, and not summoned or dismissed to suit the political convenience of the Executive.

The commission suggested in the Queen’s Speech has a very wide agenda, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, pointed out, and I will not go through the list. I will, however, note the things that are not on the list. There is nothing on it about the electoral system. My party got 11.6% of the vote in the general election, which should have produced 70 seats or more in the House of Commons; the Labour Party got 500,000 votes in Scotland and only one seat there. The system we are landed with is absurd, but it is not there. Nor is there anything there about the governance of England, which has become increasingly paradoxical in the system we have developed. The Government say in the briefing that accompanied the Queen’s Speech:

“Careful consideration is needed on the composition and focus of the Commission.”


You can say that again. Whether any such careful consideration will lead to the kind of royal commission that would command wide confidence and lead to a sensible reassessment of constitution issues, I am distinctly doubtful. An exercise such as this needs to be broad based.

The royal commission on the justice system looks to have had a slightly more promising start, although not much has been said about what it will cover. Everybody who has spoken about it today has referred to the wide range of matters that it needs to cover and I have seen newspaper suggestions that things such as the relationship between the Crown Prosecution Service and the police might be covered, and that we might move towards a Scottish, procurator fiscal-type system. Clearly, this is an open goal into which all sorts of ideas about the justice system might be kicked. Clearly, the Government do not anticipate this royal commission looking at the crisis caused by overcrowded prisons, or, elsewhere in the Queen’s Speech, the potential to create the sentence inflation that will make that overcrowding worse and commit resources on a massive scale—resources that need to be used in other areas of the criminal justice system to prevent crime.

I conclude with two separate, specific questions. First, what has happened to the Courts and Tribunals (Online Procedure) Bill? It was supposed to be integral to the modernisation of the court system and went through all its stages in this House in 2017, following the Queen’s Speech, yet has still not materialised and is not in this Queen’s Speech.

My second question is about the espionage legislation. Will the Intelligence and Security Committee be set up in time to study the Bill and advise both Houses, with informed consideration, on the value of the proposals and whether they are sound? Speaking as a former member of the committee, that is essential, but past experience suggests to me that the Bill may be introduced long before the committee is set up.