Queen’s Speech

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

I am very sorry to hear of the woes of the LTA and Sport England. I confess that I was a little disappointed not to hear from Her Majesty congratulations to the Welsh national rugby team on winning the triple crown and the grand slam and good wishes on going to Australia shortly, where no doubt the reputation of British sport will be restored.

In the field of law reform, I very much welcome the Defamation Bill, to which the noble Lord, Lord McNally, referred. The Bill is based on the tireless and persistent work of my noble friend Lord Lester, and I hope that it will dispel the chilling effect on freedom of speech of an overworked and out of date branch of the law. I hope that it will also end libel tourism, whereby our courts are used to determine disputes about the reputations of people of whom nobody has ever heard. People come here from abroad to litigate on these matters.

There is one Bill that I look forward to with some interest. The gracious Speech stated that legislation would be introduced to strengthen oversight “of” the security services. I wondered whether it was a typo and the Bill would set out to strengthen oversight “by” the security services; the wording seemed curious.

I will look with considerable care at any provisions that are designed to extend closed proceedings to civil cases by the use of special advocates. The vast majority of the special advocates who currently appear in criminal immigration cases are wholly against such an extension, and no satisfactory solution has yet been devised or put forward in this sensitive area. In civil cases it is not acceptable that a judge who decides a case between parties—very often a claimant is suing a government department—should be shown secret information that is never disclosed to the claimant and which he cannot answer in any way. It is quite wrong that a judge should have such information on which to base his judgment. It is not like a criminal case, where the jury makes the decision; in a civil case it is the judge. That is a very important distinction and I shall pursue that Bill with considerable interest.

It would be too much to expect that the Home Office would be without another of those heavy Bills that we are accustomed to wading through. I suppose that it must employ the Bill teams that it has accumulated over many years. The Crime and Courts Bill is a standard model. The National Crime Agency is proposed as an overarching agency to encompass the various agencies that already exist. We might hear something in the Bill about architecture; perhaps that phrase will come to us in due course. The Serious Organised Crime Agency has just reached its sixth birthday; it is only an infant. It merged the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the National High Tech Crime Unit, the investigative and intelligence sections of HM Revenue and Customs on serious drug trafficking, and the Immigration Service’s responsibility for organised immigration crime. The Assets Recovery Agency, too, was made part of SOCA in 2008. The Serious Fraud Office escaped the overarching conglomeration, and it seems that it will escape again. We shall want to know: did SOCA fail? If so, why? What does the new overarching agency, which takes in all these bodies and has cross-government contacts, promise—except more employment?

No doubt somebody—if not the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, then another noble Lord—will put forward an amendment with an overarching mission statement that crime is bad and should be prevented, and I look forward to discussing the independence of the director-general and wading through the mire of functions and priorities, arguing about relationships with independent police forces, establishing frameworks and the hierarchies that we so love and that will tell us who is boss. We have the entirety of Schedule 3 to play with on this issue. I remember a World War II poster that some other noble Lords may recall: “Was Your Journey Really Necessary?”. It went along with “Careless Talk Costs Lives”, with a spook lurking behind every hedge. Is it necessary to introduce a National Crime Agency only six years after SOCA was brought into being?

The changes to bring county courts into a single county court and establish a single family court are, on the face of it, acceptable, but there is really only one test: does it improve or hinder access to justice? The whole point about county courts is that they were established in every county so that people could go to them and use them; similarly with family courts. A quick remedy can be obtained from a magistrates’ court in a family matter, which may take much longer in the Courts Service.

As for diversity in the judiciary, there is always concern. The test must still be simply one of merit in appointing judges. The diversity which arrived at the Bar in the 1970s is working its way through to the Bench in all areas and that concern, I hope, will become something of the past.

As for televising court proceedings, it so happens that last week I was lying on my back in the dentist’s as he was poised with his drill and I had all sorts of things in my mouth. He told me that he had to go to court as a witness in a case. He had never been to court and he was extremely apprehensive. I thought: “Apprehensive? My God, at least they are not going to drill into the nerve in your teeth to extract evidence from you!”. However, that just shows how little even the educated public understand about the way the courts system works. I welcome a limited introduction of television into courts. Like your Lordships’ proceedings, I think they will be viewed in the early hours of the morning by anoraks or people who cannot sleep, because the arguments in the Court of Appeal are not really much of an entertainment.

The gracious Speech was criticised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, as being the thinnest of Queen’s Speeches and wholly irrelevant to people’s lives. There was nothing on growth or jobs, he said. Well, just look at the number of Bills that are there. The Government should be focused now on competent administration and on bedding down the changes that have already been made in the fields of education, welfare, health, legal services and the rest. These decisions have been made; now is the time to make the decisions work, by proper administrative action.