Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)]

I have to inform the House that if the amendment is agreed, I cannot call Amendment 21B, by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendment and to echo what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said about Amendment 21B. I am conscious that one cannot repeat arguments made in Committee. I, too, remember the remarkable unanimity around the Committee.

I am grateful, as before, to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for the efforts he made to continue the discussion. I am only sorry that I could not attend that meeting, but from what I have heard about it, and from a letter that the Minister wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, which I hope he will forgive me for quoting, I believe that what is at the heart of the Government’s proposal is a fallacy that for years has influenced the consistent failure of the criminal justice system—namely, that policy and operations are one and the same thing, rather than one being the practical deployment of the other. This was brought home to me when a senior official told me that she wished that I would stop talking about strategy. “We don’t need strategy; all we need is strategic direction,” she said. I asked what that meant. “Top down, of course,” she said. That is nonsense. Having something said from the top down does not make it either strategy or strategic direction.