Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I would be the first to say to my noble friend that he is not an ordinary lawyer and nor is his wife—they are both very eminent lawyers. If they say it is a morass of unintelligible law obviously it must be. However, I am not sure it is as unintelligible as he claims. Obviously, we will look at this. As with all law, if consolidation can make matters simpler it is something that can be looked at. If it is a matter for departments—in this case the Home Office—we must look at it. As my noble friend will be aware, finding time for any legislative changes is always difficult.

[Lord Deben]

I hope that my noble friend will accept that it is not just a matter of making the law intelligible for lawyers. The people who suffer—if I may put it like that—under the immigration laws are people who ought to feel, at least as far as they can, that they have been dealt with fairly. We have had examples already this afternoon of situations that are so complex that it would be very hard to explain to one of these people that they have been dealt with fairly. If they leave this country I would be much happier if they said, “Of course, I ought to have got in but actually I was dealt with fairly”, than if they go away feeling, “I really don’t know why the blazes I wasn’t allowed in”. It seems to me hugely important that we get this formulation right.

[Lord Henley]

My noble friend is absolutely correct. It is always difficult to make sure that any law is understandable to the ordinary man or woman in the street or the ordinary man or woman on the Clapham omnibus. It is obviously, as our noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill put it, sometimes difficult to make the law intelligible to even the extraordinary lawyers let alone the ordinary ones. We try to make sure that it is as intelligible as possible but, as I think my noble friend Lord Lester is aware, even with some of the simplest laws one lawyer will take one view and another will take another view. These matters are often argued in the courts at some considerable length. We try to do what we can to make things as simple as possible. I hoped that this would be a very short amendment, and I hope that the reassurance that I offered to my noble kinsman will be sufficient for him to withdraw the amendment.

European Court of Justice: Jurisdiction

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as I think I made clear, I do not want to go through all 133 measures at this stage. The House would not like it at Question Time and it would not be an appropriate use of the limited time I have. We will make appropriate decisions on some of them beforehand if it is appropriate but the larger number is a matter for 2014.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that there is more than one view on this side of the House and that the way in which we should discuss this should be as unemotional and as factual as possible, and that we do not help the argument by bringing what can only be called extreme views into the discussion?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, to put it very simply, I agree with my noble friend that there is more than one view on this side of the House. There is possibly more than one view on the other side of the House and more than one view in all corners of the House. I agree with every aspect of what my noble friend has said.

Identity Documents Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I share the disquiet of many who have already spoken. I urge the Government to think again about this.

[Lord Deben]

Perhaps I might concentrate on why people bought the card in the place. If they bought it, as it seems, for a purpose, and that purpose no longer obtains, there is no doubt that we are taking away something from them. Surely, therefore, the answer is not to recompense them but to enable them to continue for the period of the card’s validity to be able to do what it is they bought the card for in the first place. That is a sensible and proper way of doing it. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay—though I may express myself in less elevated language—I feel that the public have every reason to believe that, if they buy something from the Government for a period of time, they should be able to continue to use it in that way. Whereas recompense is an expensive and untidy way of doing it, I really do not see why they cannot go on using it for the time that they were supposed to use it for.

[Baroness Hamwee]

I must apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for interrupting him. I think that the technical term for what was going on around here is “kerfuffle”.

I will not pretend that I have not been troubled by this issue. I am not persuaded by arguments that members of the public should have read the manifestos, certainly not in the detail that might have been expected, nor that they could have predicted the outcome of the general election. I am being told that everybody should have been reading the manifestos, but we leave it to the press to summarise them. However, the debate in Committee was about fine detail in the manifestos, and I do not think that that should be used as the basis—certainly not the only basis—for the Government’s argument.

My view is that this issue is finely balanced between taxpayers and individual cardholders. It is not the same as a consumer situation where there are two parties, the supplier of goods and the purchaser of goods. There are three parties, and the third party is the taxpayer. I understand the point that this is a comparatively small sum of money, but comparatively small sums have more value than they did a year or two ago.

The point has been made about whether this would be expropriation. That point was not taken up by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. No doubt the Minister will say something about that. I hope, too, that she will say what would be required if the cards were to go on having a use. As I understand it, it would still be necessary to retain the register. Otherwise, the cards are pieces of plastic that do not relate to anything. Quite apart from our objection to the offensiveness of the register, the cost and perhaps the confusion of retaining the register would be issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

The point I was answering before noble Lords intervened was the inference somehow that we are inflicting great hardship on cardholders. We do not believe this to be the case.

We do not believe that the statutory basis of the issue of ID cards creates a contract or anything akin to a contract in relations between the Secretary of State and the cardholder. Remedies that would be available in the courts if the contract were governed by the law of contract or consumer legislation—which I think is the point raised by the noble Lord—is not available for identity cards.

One or two noble Lords have raised the issue of compromise and of whether it would be a good idea to have one. Could we not, for instance, set the cost of this against the cost of the next passport or, indeed, use the lifetime for which the present card was available? There are associated problems. I do not want to detain the House extensively on this, but the fact of the matter is that the two databases—that is to say, the identity register and the passport database—are not the same. They contain different information, issued for different purposes; their legislative frameworks for what you pay are also different. We cannot therefore simply transfer the one across from the other.

That construction of two differently governed databases with different information on them was the construction of the legislation put through by our predecessors. Unfortunately, in addition to that we are going to destroy the database. We would otherwise have the continuing cost of maintaining it. That is why it cannot be regarded as a valid document for its lifetime; there is nothing behind it against which anybody needing to check your identity would validly be able so to do. There is a problem in that it simply is not a useful document any longer.

[Lord Deben]

I understand that there may be technical reasons why my proposal does not work, but surely they do not apply to the question of a passport. If you sent your form in, it would be quite clear from all the other documents that that little card was for the same person who sent in the form. You do not have to look it up on the two databases; you just know that that is one of the cases in which they could have £30 off. I do not see that that costs anything at all.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I am sorry; I thought that the noble Lord was suggesting that this card should be available for use during its previously indicated lifetime. It is of course a separate issue as to whether you could ask for a refund. There are many problems about the refund issue, one of which is that we would have to verify whether the person presenting a card was actually entitled to that refund, which would mean referring to the database. We would have to notify everybody. The costs involved—

Drugs: Classification

Lord Deben Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, we believe that all drugs that are classified on the list are extremely harmful to society; we do not believe that alcohol taken in moderation is harmful to society. Clearly, there is alcohol abuse, but the Government already have a strategy—and we will add to it—on reducing the possibilities of that abuse. This Government are taking measures that are rather more stringent than those of the previous Administration.

[Lord Deben]

Will my noble friend take very great care before she takes seriously the recent report of this independent committee on drugs? Its judgment is based on a methodology that to most of us, when looked at carefully, is shown to be entirely flawed.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, the Government have confidence in the independent advice given by their own statutory commission and we trust that advice. I am inclined to agree with the comments just made by my noble friend.