Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, as other noble Lords have said, the Bill has been much improved. I pay particular thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, for working over six years with me and my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, in widening the pardons and the disregards for historical homosexual offences, including in the Armed Forces. It is truly historic when a state apologises for what it has done and reaches back over 500 years. It is the end of a six-year campaign that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has been an active part of. I cannot thank her and the Bill team enough, and indeed colleagues and the team in the Armed Forces. I also put on record our thanks to Professor Paul Johnson, the country’s leading expert on this. Finally, it might have been a six-year campaign, but some of us have campaigned for more than 33 years, not for ourselves but so that injustices can at last be put right.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I will try not to repeat too much of what my noble friend Lord Paddick said. He pointed out—it is not a new point—that this has been a long and difficult Bill. I am bound to say that we must all hope that such a mammoth Bill, with such a wide range of diverse topics shoehorned into a single piece of legislation, will never be put before Parliament again. It has taken too many days, with too little time for the content involved and too much pressure, not just on MPs and Peers but on parliamentary staff, officials and those many organisations that seek to brief us about legislation. For us here, there have been too many early starts and too many late nights. It has been a very difficult experience.

None the less, I completely agree that the House has done its job well. We are very grateful to the ministerial team and their officials. On justice issues, I am, of course, particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, for the care, courtesy, approachability and engagement, not to say humour, that he has shown in our discussions. We have had some significant successes, from our point of view, on breastfeeding voyeurism and common assault in the context of domestic abuse. We have had some limited progress—my goodness, it is limited—on IPPs. That is clearly not the end of the story.

On Home Office issues, we are grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, for her care and the comprehensively courteous way she has dealt with the House, although I am bound to say that I share my noble friend Lord Paddick’s view that we have felt that she has not been able, on behalf of the Government, to make the concessions she perhaps might have liked to have made in some areas.

These Ministers illustrate the pressure there has been on all of us. In this context, I mention the tireless and efficient work of my noble friend Lord Paddick, who has borne the brunt of days and weeks of debate over many hours and days of sitting, and there have been many more days of preparation.

Before the Bill finally passes, we on these Benches regard it as largely profoundly regressive. On human rights issues, the House must expect Liberal Democrats and others in the Opposition to continue robustly to defend individual liberty in a way that we do not believe the Bill does. On justice, we will keep the pressure up for a humane sentencing system dedicated to rehabilitation and reform, combined with increasing use of community sentences. We will continue to work on women’s justice, where it seems that we are accepting very slow progress when we should be looking for dramatic improvement.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I realise that I ought to be gracious, but I have hated almost every minute we spent on this Bill over the days, weeks and months. I deeply regret that it will pass. I wish it had not been presented in the first place and I wish we had not been forced to let it through, but it has been historic. One of the things that has been historic is the united opposition to some of its worst parts. That is something the House can be proud of. I look forward to many more days, weeks and months of arguing with the noble Baroness and the noble Lord on the Benches opposite.