Queen’s Speech

Lord Clinton-Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

The criticisms that I make of the Home Office are but mild by comparison with what we have just heard.

I believe that this Queen’s Speech is dreary and largely irrelevant to the needs of this nation. It fails to focus on real public concerns. Public works, increased economic growth and youth unemployment are but three of the issues that are highly relevant at this time. I have attended many Queen’s Speeches, but I cannot recall one that had so many deficiencies.

Tonight, I propose to concentrate on home affairs and law and justice. As far as home affairs are concerned, I will make several criticisms of the Home Office, but I say at once that we are delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Henley, who is a friend of many of us, in his place. The Home Office is often regarded as the ministry of the non-living. Whether that description is well merited is by the way. Mistakes can all too readily prove irrecoverable. That is not necessarily the fault of the Secretary of State, but it is the Secretary of State who carries the can. Of course the Home Office is too large and delegation often occurs, often with fatal, or near fatal, results, and it is the Secretary of State who is held responsible.

Prison policy is a good example of this deficiency. For the most part, prisoners can be obdurately unyielding. My experience as a defence solicitor is that frequently prison guards and prisoners do not begin to comprehend the other’s problems. Admittedly, I go back a long way, but I doubt whether there has been much change. I realise that work is often undertaken in uncongenial circumstances, leading inevitably to an inbuilt resistance to change, but there have been some shining examples to the contrary. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is one of them. He made every effort to detect and tackle mistakes during his tenure of office.

Terrorism, frequently having an international dimension, clearly falls within the Secretary of State’s responsibility. Terrorism can often be accompanied by a messianic ideology. The Secretary of State has to reconcile effective defensive measures with democratic standards, and that is by no means easy, as the Secretary of State has clearly demonstrated, but surely some humility is called for rather than something we hear too often: an irritatingly abrasive mood of “I know best”. I am only too well aware that the Secretary of State has numerous other responsibilities. Is it not time therefore for this vast ministry to be split up, for a ministerial inquiry to be established and for this to be effected immediately?

As far as law and justice are concerned, this House—

[Lord Henley]

It might be helpful if I get to my feet and interrupt the noble Lord to remind him that his party split up the Home Office. Prisons and criminal justice have gone to the Ministry of Justice. We are a much smaller department than we ever were.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

That may be but it is still too large. I do not know whether the noble Lord had any responsibility for that—

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I could not have had any responsibility for it because it was done by the previous Government. I think the noble Lord will remember that I was not a Minister in the previous Government; they were a Labour Government.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

That may be but I still regard the Home Office as much too large.

Although the House devoted a great deal of its time in the previous Session of this Parliament to examining a Bill that got scant attention in the House of Commons, I fear that the system will prove to be far more expensive than our present one in the long term; and that the changes envisaged by the Government will prove to be divisive and largely ineffective. They will also have a deleterious effect on people seeking to undertake civil cases.

In my day—I speak of a very long time ago—criminal cases seldom lasted beyond around three months. Nowadays it is common practice for serious criminal cases to last for a year or more. How, then, can we revert to a more acceptable time limit without adversely affecting justice and the civil components of legal aid? Even though this is a desirable goal, I wonder how much time the Government have devoted to resolving this vast problem. I will readily give way to the noble Lord, who is intent on intervening in my speech at all times.

We have spent much time in the Lords trying to resolve some of the more serious dilemmas on the civil side. Defeats were inflicted on the Government but they remained resolute to be irresolute. Justice will undoubtedly have suffered as a result. I fear that I will be disappointed in my quest for the Government to conduct a further inquiry into this matter. However, an inquiry is called for and ought to begin immediately.