Legal Systems: Rule of Law

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lady Prashar, I feel that I am gate-crashing a debate for which I am very much not qualified to take part. It reminds me of a defence debate in which it was calculated that 36 stars had taken part, so others felt somehow excluded. Rather than the picnic referred to by my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, however, I regard this turnout as a tribute both to the importance of the subject and to the admiration and respect with which my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf is held in this House. I join those who have congratulated him on and thanked him for this debate.

I propose to base my remarks purely on the contribution that the observance of the rule of law has made to the international standing of the United Kingdom. However, I fully agree with those who have expressed their concern about the creeping erosion of judicial independence and discretion.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, I have to declare an interest as I was a member of the Select Committee on Soft Power and the UK’s Influence, which has already been referred to. I am not going to repeat that judgment but merely want to say that one of the most powerful pieces of evidence we heard was from the high commissioner of Mozambique, who described why Mozambique had applied to join the Commonwealth. Top of the list was the rule of law. This supports absolutely what my noble and learned friend Lord Judge said.

I want to talk about just two aspects. I was very interested in what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, said about his experience with Kosovo. Today’s Armed Forces are in a very difficult position. The law of armed conflict and the Geneva Convention were drawn up to apply to combat in a place of war between armed forces representing nations, and not for what is currently happening, which is referred to as “war among the people”. That is confusing because if a soldier breaches the law, he should, quite rightly, be arraigned under the law.

I well remember spending a considerable amount of time while on operations—for example, in Northern Ireland—on making absolutely certain that every single member of my battalion understood the rule of law. Not only was it explained to him but afterwards he carried it—in the form of a little yellow card— in his pocket to make certain that he would always know it. That applied on the streets of Northern Ireland, where we were working with the police; it does not apply so much in some of the situations with which soldiers are currently faced. However, it is absolutely certain that if any member of the Armed Forces does breach the law, they risk undermining the reputation of the United Kingdom. That happened in the disgraceful affair in Iraq, which has been discoloured by the finding that so many of the witnesses were corrupted, as it were, into giving evidence and demanding compensation, and, of course, in the recent sentencing of a Marine sergeant for murder.

It is essential that our Armed Forces should be aware that there is all the difference in the world—as Sir Michael Howard, the distinguished historian, pointed out—between the Roman words bellum, which is the legal use of force between nations, which is one description of war, and guerra, which is the illegal use of force in a nation. To declare war on terror and on drugs, which are neither bellum nor guerra, is confusing to the Armed Forces, which have to exercise the rule of law.

The second area to which I shall refer is the criminal justice system. As we all know, this system consists of the police, the courts, prisons and probation—but it is a system, as a whole. My noble and learned friend Lord Woolf referred to the legal element of the system. I just want to say that I am very concerned that, as the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and my noble and learned friend Lord Brown have said, it is quite wrong if the Government are seen to be breaking the law as regards the criminal justice system. Noble Lords have mentioned the deliberate problem around voting rights for prisoners. I would add to that the disgraceful procrastination over the numbers of prisoners who are held on indefinite sentences for public protection, a subject which has been raised many times.

I am also extremely alarmed that in the current Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, which is coming towards us, there is a defiance of a Supreme Court ruling on the allowance of the use of force on children to instil good order and discipline. It is worrying because, instead of the Lord Chancellor seeming to resist any failure to observe the rule of law, the breaches of the rule of law seem to be coming from the man who is responsible for the rule of law. Not only does it send the wrong message about the United Kingdom’s observation of the rule of law; it sends exactly the wrong message to those who are imprisoned because they themselves have failed to observe the law.