Arbitration Bill [HL]

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Second reading committee
Tuesday 19th December 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, introduced the Bill by saying “Everyone in the Room knows more about this than me”. There is an exception—I suspect that I know less about it than any other noble Lord here.

I am the only speaker in this debate who is not a lawyer. However, I have employed a lot of lawyers in my time and my business experience in employing them was in trying to avoid litigation or arbitration. I was very much of the view that it was not a route that would be beneficial to the businesses which I was involved with, but it was very welcome that that resource was there. Litigating or arbitration within England and Wales was trusted by all international parties with which I was dealing. There was never any question about the jurisdiction in which any future disputes would be agreed and it was always an easy thing to agree with international colleagues.

My noble friend Lord Hacking gave us a tour de force on the historical context. He took us all the way back to 1698 and talked about his early days in this House. I have been around here quite a long time too and remember very well Maurice Peston, Peter Fraser and a number of the other noble Lords to whom he referred when the 1996 Bill was being considered, although I do not go back as far as 1979.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, opened by congratulating the Government on the Bill, as I think everyone did. However, it is fair to say that all noble Lords, while congratulating the Government, raised particular issues. The noble and learned Lord referred to anti-discrimination procedures, the Equality Act and the appointment of arbitrators. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, spoke in a wider context, if I can put it like that, about how English and Welsh arbitration fits within an international framework. I have been on the edges of those types of procedure and they have been wholly unsatisfactory, from my point of view. There is an international frame- work for dealing with matters when they cross boundaries and, when there are disputes about jurisdiction, it can be an extremely lengthy and expensive procedure in which to be involved. When there are these jurisdiction issues, I would be interested to know whether the Bill may, for example, go some way to resolving them, because I understand that they can be difficult.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, asked a particular question about the Scottish position on arbitration. Again, I will listen to the Minister’s response on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, raised Nigeria v P&ID Ltd. This case was referred to in the Explanatory Notes and I had a look at that judgment. It seemed that the concern raised within it by Mr Justice Knowles was whether going through the arbitration process itself can be used as a way of money laundering. That is a concern. The noble Lord asked a number of questions of the Minister on whether, in that set of circumstances with those particular concerns raised, the Bill will go any way to addressing those concerns or whether it is such a particular set of circumstances that it is not appropriate for this Bill. I thought that was an interesting question.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, essentially raised the same point about making sure, to quote his words, that London arbitration is seen as fair, honest and clean. If it is anything less than that, it will undermine its competitiveness and its standing in the world.

We then had the two speakers in the gap, the noble and learned Lords, Lord Hoffmann and Lord Mance. They both spoke with huge amounts of expertise and raised their own particular technical points, which I am sure the Minister will answer fully. The noble Lord, Lord Beith, concluded that he agreed that this is an important and well-prepared Bill—a model, to use his word, of how Bills should be handled in this House.

The Labour Party obviously supports this Bill. The only point I have for the Minister is that none of the measures introduced in the Bill can be easily measured. Will there be any sort of assessment, in a year or two’s time, of whether the changes introduced are working satisfactorily and whether this may need to be returned to in the next few years? Whether the changes are actually having any impact would not seem to be easily measured but, other than that, we support the Bill.