Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, largely because since this House last discussed secure training colleges, two secure training centres have been given notice of closure by the Youth Justice Board. One of those, Hassockfield, was in my constituency. What lessons have the Government learnt from the introduction of secure training centres? My recollection is that I opposed them when we were in opposition when the legislation went through in, I think, 1996. My Government said that they had to carry that through because the contracts had been signed. When Hassockfield opened, I was contacted virtually daily by the police who said, “The children in here are too young. They do not understand what it means to be in a secure establishment. We are being called every day and they’re ending up in police cells”. Indeed, they wrecked the place. So the initial contract, which was given to an American company, then went to Serco. Someone from the Youth Justice Board had to be in there full-time to sort out the regime, and since then Hassockfield and, I understand, the other secure training centres have not taken many children under 15 because the regime in a secure centre, even with what Ofsted says is now very good education, is not suitable for young children.

The other issue is about being near home. There was a tragedy at Hassockfield. I discussed it at great length with a whole range of people, and one of the reasons for that young boy taking his life, although by no means the only one, was his distance from home and his contact with home and his own community.

The Government are taking enormous risks with the safety—and the ability to change and handle their lives—of children in incredibly complex difficulties. In relation both to having one centre in the middle, to which children have to travel a long way, and to the issues of the age group and including girls, the Government need to learn the lessons of their own history in setting up secure training colleges. They should think about this again and look at the language used when the colleges were introduced. It was very similar to the language that Ministers used in this House today and in the Commons last week. If they do so they will recognise that they are making a mistake and that they really do need to rethink this policy.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (LD)]

I will ask the Minister three short questions, but before I do, perhaps I may give a little reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who moved the amendment. He encouraged Members of your Lordships’ House not to vote according to party diktat. As a Liberal Democrat, I can assure him that although we are given advice—sometimes strong advice—we do not deliver party diktat in my party. I am happy to be able to say as a Liberal Democrat that nobody in this party expects us to vote for a proposition to which we conscientiously object. That is why I shall be voting for the noble Lord’s amendment unless we hear a meaningful concession from my noble friend the Minister in the course of the minutes to come.

My three questions are these. First, the Government have said that they do not intend in the foreseeable future to use powers to allow the secure college estate to be used for under-15 year-old boys and girls. What does “the foreseeable future” mean? Does it end at the time of the next general election, thereby meaning that in the unlikely event of a Conservative Government being elected, the foreseeable future will be over and they will immediately decide to allow these facilities to be used for girls and young boys? If the foreseeable future does not end at the time of the forthcoming general election, why are the Government in such a hurry to allow these facilities potentially to be used for girls and young boys?

My second substantive question is about the secure college at Glen Parva itself. My noble friend the Minister and other Ministers have been kind enough to allow Members of your Lordships’ House to attend repeated meetings in which we have pored over the plans of this establishment. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, those plans are entirely unsuitable for girls and young boys. The whole design of the place is founded upon the availability of the land, not upon starting with a designer’s brief to produce a secure college. That being the case, and that being the overwhelming opinion of all experts who have looked at this proposal—other than those who are within, as far as I can see, the Conservative part of this coalition Government—why do the Government not wait to obtain permission to send girls and very young boys to a secure college until there is a plan that has been properly consulted upon on a wider basis and fulfils empirical need?

Thirdly, why do we need this now at all? We know that the Glen Parva secure college will not open until, at the earliest, 2018. I do not think that I can remember a single year in my 30 years in one or other House of Parliament in which there has not been a criminal justice or sentencing Bill—or two, or three. Why can we not wait and have primary legislation based on proper evidence in the next Parliament? I doubt whether anybody from any Front Bench in this House would deny that there will be a criminal justice Bill in the first Queen’s Speech at the end of May. What is the hurry now? It is because of what I suspect will be the answer to those questions that I shall be supporting the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.

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[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, it is a measure of the importance of the matters that we are now debating, and upon which we will have to vote, that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, made special arrangements to fly back this morning from Moscow at 5.45 am, Russian time. I do not know whether the Lord Chancellor has ever been to Moscow, but I suspect that Mr Putin’s views about holding government and other public bodies to account for the lawfulness of their decision-making would be closer to the Lord Chancellor’s than to the noble Lord’s.

After all, Mr Grayling has proclaimed that judicial review is,

“not a promotional tool for countless Left-wing campaigners”,

or, as he put it in the course of the 58 minutes that the House of Commons devoted to debating the amendments passed by your Lordships’ House:

“Judicial review was never intended to be a tool for pressure groups to seek to disrupt perfectly lawful decision making in Government and Parliament, it was never designed to be used as a political campaigning tool, and it was never intended to put the courts above the elected Government in taking decisions over the essential interests of this country”.

He went on to claim that,

“in far too many examples, that is precisely what it has become”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/12/14; col. 70.]

Oddly enough, the Lord Chancellor failed to provide any examples of these malign abuses of the system, the essential interests of the country that he felt were under threat or indeed the identity of the so-called abusers. On Report, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, at least condescended to cite an example. Members may recall shuddering with horror at the revelation that the building of a supermarket in Yorkshire was delayed by all of six months due to an application for judicial review—brought, incidentally, not by a left-wing or other pressure group but by a commercial rival of the developer. I do not blame the Minister at all for relying on this underwhelmingly persuasive case. He was struggling with a grossly inadequate brief—something that I suspect from time to time he has had to deal with over the years, though perhaps in less important contexts.

The Secretary of State for Justice, moreover, whose title looks increasingly like one coined by George Orwell, gives the game away in presuming that, “perfectly lawful decision making” is what is at stake. The implication is clear: what the Government legislate is ipso facto lawful. In the fantasy world in which the courts are besieged by meddlesome litigants pursuing left-wing causes—litigants such as the Countryside Alliance and the Daily Mail—the courts are deemed to be wholly incapable of sorting out the legal wheat from the campaigning chaff. Typically, though, Mr Grayling, in the amendments that he has produced, which were never spelled out or indeed debated in the Commons, ignores the basic requirements, already enshrined in law and practice, that permission from the courts is required both to bring a case to hearing and for third parties to intervene. The Government, themselves a possible defendant in these cases, seek to restrict the exercise of judicial discretion in their own interests, and on the basis of the flimsiest evidence of the abuses that they affect to detect in the working of the system and the decisions of the courts. In the unlikely event of Mr Putin becoming aware of the Government’s approach, he would be lost in admiration.

The Opposition support the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, Motion B1 and Amendment 102B to Clause 64, which would preserve the court’s discretion to grant judicial review where the court considers it in the public interest to do so. I invite my colleagues and others to join the noble Lord in the Content Lobby.

It would be convenient if at this stage I indicated the Opposition’s position in relation to the other amendments. We support the noble Lord’s amendment to Motion C, dealing with Clauses 65 and 66, and his amendment to Motion D, which sets out in Amendments 107A to 107E what purport to be the Government’s concession in relation to the financial position of interveners. I remind the House again that interveners must obtain permission before taking part in any application. The Government’s amendments would oblige the court to order an intervener who has been granted permission to pay costs to any other party in any one or more of four instances. The instances are: under subsection (4A)(a) of Amendment 107B, where they act as a party, although the court already has a discretion in such a case; under subsection (4A)(b), where the intervention has not provided significant assistance taken as a whole, whatever that is supposed to mean; under subsection (4A)(c), where the intervention relates to matters not necessary to resolve the issue—although, again, if they did not, permission would presumably not be granted in the first place; and under subsection (4A)(d), where the intervener has behaved “unreasonably”, whatever that means in a context in which the court already has a discretion.

The potential for mandatory awards of large costs against interveners is self-evident and self-evidently chilling. In addition, I understand that the question of financial resources and the extent of any liability would be left to the Rule Committee to determine, subject only to a negative resolution. In this context, it might be thought that this is a highly debatable procedure for dealing with such an important issue in such an important area.

I do not need to enlarge on the weight of opinion opposed to these measures in the senior judiciary, past and present, or the wide range of opinion, including that of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, not to mention such subversive organisations as Age UK—I declare my interest as honorary president of Newcastle Age UK —Mencap, Mind, the National Autistic Society and many other highly esteemed and reputable organisations in the voluntary sector.

I conclude with a particular appeal to Liberal Democrat Members of this House, several of whom voted for the amendments in your Lordships’ House when we last debated this matter on Report, and several of whom joined some of us—from the Cross Benches and these Benches—in the Division Lobby in the vote just taken. Sadly, very few of their colleagues voted in support of this House’s amendments in the House of Commons. If anything has distinguished the Liberal Democrats—and particularly the former Liberal Party—it has been a sincere attachment to civil liberties and the rule of law. They have been vigilant in questioning, and, from time to time, opposing, policies of different Governments that were perceived to be in conflict with those legitimate concerns. I believe that many are troubled by what this part of the Bill seeks to achieve and by the Government’s amendments. There is nothing, of course, in the coalition agreement that refers to the measures we are now debating. If ever there was a case—with a general election only six months away—for this House to exercise its role in scrutinising and amending important legislation, and in making a judgment on the merits rather than according to political calculation, this is such an example. My appeal to Liberal Democrat Members—

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, and I know that what he is saying is being said in a constructive spirit, but he might like to bear in mind that lectures from the Labour Party on civil liberties are not popular in the Liberal Democrats. He might possibly just leave it to our own consciences to determine how we vote on this matter.

[Lord Beecham]

It is, of course, entirely a matter of conscience for the noble Lord and others, and I would not defend everything that Labour Governments have done in this area either. That is why I referred to the stance that Members of the noble Lord’s party took on proposals made by more than one Government. It is a perfectly fair point.

I hope that, in addition to Members of those Benches, there may be other Members—from the Conservative Benches, perhaps—who will follow the example not only of some Conservative Members of Parliament who voted for this House’s amendments in the Commons, but even, much to my surprise, of the two UKIP MPs. I would not normally be encouraging people to follow where UKIP has led, but in this particular case, they were for once on the side of the angels. I hope, therefore, that this House can support the noble Lord’s amendments and, in so doing, encourage the Government to rethink their direction of travel in this very sensitive area of the rule of law and of the way in which government in this country—not just central government, but local government and other executive agencies—carries out its important responsibilities.

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[Lord Horam]

Indeed, but the point about judicial review is that it is a technical discussion about the process of law-making. Have the Government behaved illegally? Have they consulted properly? That is what judicial review is about. If you want to have an argument about HS2 it should take place in the Chamber quite openly. There are quite clearly profound differences of opinion about the process of HS2 but it is not judicial review that should be encompassing that. There should be an open debate about the merits and demerits of a particular project.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

Is the noble Lord really suggesting that the whole planning appeals procedure should be abandoned for government schemes? That is the clear implication behind what he said. As he said there are—I forget the adjective he used—many abuses anyway of judicial review, would he like to give us perhaps three examples of cases that have been an abuse of the process so we can have an evidence-based discussion.

[Lord Horam]

I am personally aware from my experience in this House and as the former Member of Parliament for Orpington of cases affecting Travellers and the green belt. My constituents were concerned about Travellers camping on green belt land. Ultimately, Bromley Council, which was the council in question—

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I want to challenge the noble Lord. Is he saying in this House that Travellers do not have the right to challenge the Government by judicial review? If so, we might as well throw away all our democratic values.

[Lord Horam]

No. What I am saying is that the judicial reviews raised by Travellers in Bromley were ultimately found to be completely meritless. They were meritless because Bromley Council, which has more Travellers than any other council in the country, had plans on how to deal with Traveller sites. Therefore, it was an argument about the nature of the problem of dealing with Travellers. It was not something that could be dealt with by judicial review. That is my point. The abuse of judicial review arises from the fact that questions of merit are being subject to judicial review simply because lobbyists and others are using judicial review as a route to object to proposals they do not like.

If I can complete the list of examples, it was not only green belt and Travellers—

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[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I had understood the Government’s proposed amendment as conferring power on the rule committee to determine what the rules should be. There is, of course, an ultimate power but I would expect the rules to be fixed by the rule committee, after appropriate consultation and with a fair amount of knowledge of how the whole system works. This kind of amendment would deal with the sort of problem that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I referred to in Committee. The Government’s amendment would be a sensible one to make and the Minister has explained the principle under which it would work. I am perfectly happy to leave that to the rule committee to determine, in the light of its great experience and knowledge of the situation.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My Lords, I have listened, of course with enormous respect, to the noble and learned Lord who has just spoken but I do not agree with him. As my noble friend Lord Marks said a few moments ago, rules already exist to deal with the problems that are legitimately identified. What I want to say, in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and my noble friend Lord Marks, is about who the people are who sometimes contribute to group actions and would be chilled out of them as a result of the proposed changes.

I have to go back to my period as a Member of another place, representing a geographically large but population-small rural Welsh community. From time to time in that community, issues arose relating to judicial review. For example, many people wanted to challenge the closure of small primary schools or the changes made by the Conservative Government of the time to the structure under which primary schools could be governed. There were challenges to new roads and planning decisions, which had been made on faulty procedure by the local authority.

Who are the people who contribute to these group actions? They include people with small businesses who decide that the issue matters more to them than might at first sight be apparent. They do not, however, want to open up their private business to the courts—not because there is anything wrong with their private business, but because they think it might be made public and their neighbours might know that business. Some small farmers are much more affluent than their neighbours know; others quite the opposite. The affluent ones may want to make a disproportionate contribution to a group action, because it matters to them and because their families have been central to the community in which they live for several generations. Elderly people may not want to leave quite as much as their unworthy relatives would like to receive from their estates; they may feel that there are community issues that justify their descendants perhaps paying a small price by a contribution being made to a community group action of judicial review in the public interest.

Those are just three illustrations of the types of people who will feel that they are simply not prepared to give more than a few pounds to a group action, whereas in the past they may have given several thousand. So I agree with the point that has been made eloquently by others. Before we go down this road, we need some indication from the Government—they must have some idea—at least of the proportion of costs that would fall within these provisions. Until we have that, we could not conceivably be responsible in agreeing to a proposal that would have such a serious chilling effect, not only on judicial review but on the spirits of small communities such as the one I represented.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I am a complete outsider on this, but I am now confused. The examples that the noble Lord has given I can recall from my own experience, not of judicial review but of group activities—the community. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, however, said that he would buy 15% to 20%. Now, 15% is six or seven people. That is not a group or a community. Twenty per cent would be five people funding. I am now at a loss. I realise that the Government should put something forward about the level, but I am confused by the idea of lots of people contributing for the community. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, “I could buy 15% or 20%”. That is not a group and it is not a community. That is a small tightly knit group of motivated people. So I am confused about which way we are going on this debate.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has, extremely uncharacteristically, if I may say so, missed the point. I am sure that it is my fault. We are talking about group actions that may involve a significant number of people—hundreds or thousands, maybe—to which a few individuals make a large contribution. They are making that contribution, often anonymously, to ensure that the matter is capable of going to judicial review for the reasons I gave earlier. We are not talking about 20% meaning that there are only five people involved in the action. We are talking about 20% of the funding that is collected, although there may be hundreds of people involved in the action.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton]

My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right. In my experience—which I am sorry to say is rather larger than I would like—of local communities in mid-Wales fighting, for example, wind farms, a lot of households give a few pounds, but a judicial review becomes possible because one or two people who really do wish to remain anonymous give significantly more. Many of these people have been terrified by threats of being sued for costs. So I would implore the Minister to give as much clarity as possible on this point.