Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Monday 8th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, noble Lords who were in the House during the second day of Report will have heard the case presented by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, in support of their amendments. Both were intended to remove a potential barrier to judges sitting in the Court of Session or the Northern Ireland High Court, from sitting as chairs in the Competition Appeal Tribunal. As I told the House at the time, I shared those concerns. I have met with the noble and learned Lords and I believe that the amendment before us today will address the issues they raised. I am pleased that we have been able to make progress on this matter.

First, as a consequence of the proposed government amendment, the Judicial Appointments Commission will no longer be required to recommend the appointment of judges as CAT chairs to the Lord Chancellor. Instead, the Lord Justice of England and Wales, the Lord President of the Court of Session and the Lord Chief Justice for Northern Ireland may nominate any suitably qualified individual who is already a judge sitting in the relevant court to be deployed as a CAT chair. This includes the Court of Session and the High Court in Northern Ireland. We are also providing that nominations in England and Wales may be from any division of the High Court, rather than restricted to the Chancery Division as at present. This will ensure that CAT chairs are drawn from the widest possible pool of expertise.

Moving to a nomination process will also address concerns that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, spoke about in relation to the limited appointment terms currently applying to CAT chairs. Currently, chair appointments are restricted to a maximum of eight years. As a consequence, experienced judicial officeholders are required to stand down regardless of their age and whether they wish to continue to serve. This requirement results in loss of expertise from the tribunal.

As part of the move to a nomination process, we will no longer impose such a limit on judicial officeholders who are nominated. Instead, judges will be eligible to be deployed to sit as CAT chairs until they retire or resign from their existing judicial office; if at any time they cease to sit in their judicial office, they would also cease to be a CAT chairman.

I should make clear that the changes I have set out here will apply only to those who are full-time salaried judicial officeholders. Fee-paid CAT chairmen—private practitioners who want to hold a part-time judicial office for the first time, or to add another part-time judicial office to their portfolio—will continue to be recruited through the Judicial Appointment Commission selection process and be subject to an eight-year term of appointment. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that this is an appropriate amendment, ensuring as it does that judges from all the UK’s jurisdictions are able to be deployed to sit in the CAT.

Before I sit down, I would like to convey my warmest thanks to my noble friend Lady Jolly who has provided me with such valuable support and assistance, and of course to the Bill team drawn from several departments, a great example of joined-up government. It has been a very great pleasure to steer this, my first Bill through your Lordships’ House and to engage with noble Lords on every side so very constructively. I beg to move.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for bringing forward these amendments. As she explained, the initiative was taken initially by me and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, at the request of the Lord President in Scotland and the Lord Justice of England and Wales. Their concern about the need for these amendments was, to some extent, due to the extended jurisdiction of the Competition Appeal Tribunal, which is the result of other provisions in the Bill.

As it is, the amendment that has been proposed today addresses all the concerns of all three senior judicial officers. I express on behalf of myself and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, our gratitude to the Minister and her Bill team for meeting us and checking whether the amendment would meet with our approval. We were happy to say that it did. This is a good example of the way that the House works to solve a technical, but not unimportant, problem. It says a great deal for the Government that they were prepared to accept this suggestion.

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead]

My Lords, I will reply to that very briefly. I thought that I made it clear that the amendment is really provoked by the expanding jurisdiction in Schedule 8. The present position copes satisfactorily—it is not the ideal situation—but the expanded jurisdiction will greatly increase the workload of the tribunal and its visibility, because it is going to deal with private litigation as well as the regulatory authorities. It is that particular feature that is concerning the Lord Chief Justice and, I dare say, his equivalents north of the border and in Northern Ireland. I do not want to criticise anybody on the tribunal at the present time; I am trying to look forward to the expanded jurisdiction and see that it is served as well as possible.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I am grateful to the distinguished noble and learned Lords, Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, for joining our debate and for their amendments, which are intended to address an anomaly in the appointment of Competition Appeal Tribunal chairs. I recognise their concerns and agree that this difference has existed for far too long.

As noble Lords will know, the CAT has a UK-wide jurisdiction and, as a result of the Bill, we expect the CAT to become the venue of choice for competition cases. As the noble and learned Lord explained, it will be busier. The CAT hears appeals against decisions by the regulators and competition authorities in cases arising in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I agree with the noble and learned Lord that the current process for appointing CAT chairs effectively acts as a barrier to judges sitting in the Court of Session in Scotland or the Northern Ireland High Court.

The Judicial Appointments Commission was created in order to remove the scope for any perceived political interference. As part of its responsibilities, judges who are appointed to the Chancery Division of the High Court are also assessed for appointment as a chair of the CAT. However, the Scottish and Northern Irish equivalents of the Judicial Appointments Commission do not have a remit to make recommendations for appointments of CAT chairmen. This means that the only way judges in either the Court of Session or the Northern Ireland High Court can sit as chairmen in the CAT is to seek appointment via an application to the JAC.

I agree with the noble and learned Lords that this cannot be right, nor can it be what was intended when the Judicial Appointments Commission was created. It seems needlessly bureaucratic, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said. This is an issue on which we share common ground and I would welcome the opportunity to discuss it in more detail with the noble and learned Lords to see what progress we can make at Third Reading, including, if appropriate, tidying up any slip. I hope that what I have said reassures the noble and learned Lords and I therefore ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Hope of Craighead]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for her encouraging and constructive reply. I am quite sure that in discussion we will be able to find some satisfactory solution. There are two solutions on the table and I think that, with the assistance of the Bill team, we can probably work out a satisfactory answer. I look forward very much to achieving that before Third Reading. For the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Monday 10th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 56, which is tabled in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, who regrets that he cannot be in place. I have put my name to the amendment. I should make it clear that the matter with which it deals was drawn to our attention by the Law Society of Scotland. Just to set the background, it raises a short point in relation to Clause 28, the discrimination clause, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, referred. That clause requires the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice with a view to ensuring that landlords or agents do not breach the provisions of the Equality Act 2010 so far as it is related to race when performing the obligations imposed on them by Chapter 1 of Part 3.

Clause 28(3) provides that:

“Before issuing the code (or a revised code) the Secretary of State must consult … the Commission for Equality and Human Rights … the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland”.

This amendment adds the Scottish Human Rights Commission to that list.

The reasoning behind the proposal can be put very shortly. It is that while Chapter 1, with which the code will be concerned, can be said to fall under the broad heading of immigration, which is a reserved matter for the Home Office, it also involves the devolved area of tenancies in relation to both social housing and private lettings between landlord and tenant. This is a sensitive area where the Article 8 right to family life and to respect for the person’s home is involved. It could also be argued that there is an Article 1, Protocol 1, right with regard to the landlord since he is having to take decisions about his own property.

The reference in Clause 28(3)(c) to,

“such persons representing the interests of landlords and tenants as the Secretary of State considers appropriate”,

suggests that there is room for adding something to the two particular bodies which are mentioned in the list set out in the clause. But it is suggested that, in order to complete the protection for the tenant’s rights under a devolved system, the inclusion of the Scottish Human Rights Commission would be appropriate. In a sense, it is a precautionary proposal because one has to be careful with regard both to the devolved system and to the risk of entrenching on the human rights of either party, which could give rise to very unfortunate consequences. The safer course, I respectfully suggest, is to include the Scottish Human Rights Commission so that it can offer its advice on the drafting of the code.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that prior engagements meant that I missed part of the Second Reading debate and could not speak then on this important Bill, which I support. I start by thanking my noble friend the Minister for the briefing he kindly provided on the residential tenancy provisions. I thank noble Lords opposite for initiating a debate on Clause 15, as it gives me the opportunity to probe the Government’s intentions and the “workability” of the provisions, to quote the noble Baroness.

I come at the subject as a business person, although I should declare an interest as the part-owner of a son’s flat which is currently let while he works out of London. We are asking the landlord community, nearly 2 million of us, to be part of the enforcement service for immigration. This is a new burden, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, has said. I understand that, for 62% of landlords, the required documentation is already available to satisfy the provisions. But that leaves a lot of people burdened for the first time, and required to keep copies and records that they do not have to worry about at present. I suspect that many will not know about the new rules and that they risk a civil penalty—£1,000 for the first offence, £3,000 thereafter— if they let to somebody whose papers are not in order.

I have a fear that the immigration authorities, in order to hit targets, could turn their attention to the easy task of cracking down on landlords who make a mistake, rather than the labyrinthine task of fighting illegal immigrants through the courts. Can my noble friend give landlords, especially small landlords who do not use expensive letting agencies, some comfort on these issues?

This is an important Bill, as I have said, and it is clearly essential that the new provisions are communicated really well. I have two thoughts on this and would be glad to hear the Minister’s reactions before we accept the provisions on landlords in Clause 15 and subsequent clauses. One is to use the web properly. We should place on gov.uk, in one user-friendly place, all the new rules for landlords, wherever they are set out, including the new online checking resource that is planned; briefing on the new biometric residence permits, which will ease landlords’ task of identification; the contact details for the phone inquiry line; and the 48-hour e-mail immigration checking service, which I agree will need to be adequately staffed, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, has said.

A different version could also be provided for tenants, including, perhaps—having listened to earlier debates—students, from whom I believe the paperwork requirements may be relatively light. It would be good for all of those people to know what the rules are and be able to check them in a simple place on the web. With modern techniques, prospective tenants could easily translate this briefing using an online app, obviating the need for expensive advice and lawyers.

Secondly, we should ask the landlords’ associations to prepare model clauses on the new immigration controls to be added to their standard shorthold lease. This would make it less likely that the new requirements were overlooked and the tenant would have to make an undertaking, which would be helpful, for example, in avoiding illegal sub-letting.

Finally, I would like to understand the Government’s intentions on timing, a point which links to Amendment 51 on a possible pilot. I believe that the Government plan to trial the new arrangements in a specific area or areas, which is an excellent idea that I would like to see applied to more areas of regulation. However, what would the timetable look like, and will the Government, as suggested by the noble Lords opposite, feel able to feed back to this House what they have learnt before the new system goes nationwide?

As a supporter of the Bill I am very keen that it should work well and not lead to an adverse reaction by small landlords or a reduction in available accommodation because people do not want to risk a fine or the hassle involved in the new scheme. The money-laundering laws were no doubt good in intent, but the repetitive bureaucracy they have introduced into every aspect of asset purchase certainly comes at a cost which affects UK productivity. I am keen to know whether we have learnt from this experience in establishing this important new regime for landlords.