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Mr. John M. Taylor: My right hon. Friend prefaced his remarks by saying, with false modesty, that he is not a lawyer. He is of course one of the Opposition's sharpest minds and best speakers. He singled out the Lord Chancellor's Department as having a special role, and I endorse that point. The Lord Chancellor is the President of the Supreme Court and the most senior judge in England. That distinguishes his Department from others.
Mr. Forth: I hope that my hon. Friend will catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so that he can elaborate on his inside knowledge of the Lord Chancellor's Department. We will want to take his words into account when we decide how to vote on the Bill.
Mr. Ruffley: Clearly, some offices of state require a specialist knowledge for the discharge of their functions. For example, the Home Secretary requires a knowledge of the law and we have seen a long succession of Home Secretaries who have been lawyers of one type or another. That is because solicitors and barristers understand the nature of the work of a Home Secretary. Is not what is true of the Home Office also true of the Lord Chancellor's Department?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I regularly remind the House that interventions should be brief. That rule is particularly apposite in the case of hon. Members who are seeking to catch my eye. I am sure that they would not wish to run the risk of repeating themselves.
Mr. Forth: My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) is right. Do we want to lump the Lord Chancellor's Department in with the department for youth, sport and ballet dancing, or whatever it is called these days? There is no need for restrictions on appointments in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, but we are all agreed--unless the Parliamentary Secretary dissents--that the Lord Chancellor's Department has special characteristics that justify the
restrictions originally placed on the qualifications of the permanent secretary. The Parliamentary Secretary has given no reasons for departing from those restrictions and the hon. Gentleman must satisfy us on that point before the Bill goes much further.
My main point, which I cannot state strongly enough, is about agism. I have long felt that it is pernicious, unnecessary and unfair for arbitrary and mandatory rules to be placed on retirement age. That is even more true of the insupportable mandatory retirement age of 60 for the civil service. I have had the honour and the privilege of working closely with senior civil servants, which has been one of the greatest and most pleasing experiences of my life. I was always shocked and disappointed when, at the age of 60, civil servants at the peak of their powers were forced into arbitrary retirement by a rule that was devised long ago in completely different circumstances.
Now we have the Parliamentary Secretary saying, with almost a straight face, that he will remove the welcome latitude that has hitherto been available to the Lord Chancellor's Department for the sake of blind uniformity with the wrong-headed rules applied to the rest of the civil service. This should be an opportunity to follow the good example of the Lord Chancellor's Department and change the rules for the rest of the civil service. We should abolish arbitrary, uniform and mandatory retirement ages, certainly for the civil service and preferably for everyone else. As a small first step, we should retain the existing flexibility in the Lord Chancellor's Department, and use it as a basis for changing the rules for the rest of the civil service.
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield):
When I first found out that the Bill was being brought before the House, my concern was that we had had no notice. I appreciate the need for urgency, which was mentioned by the Parliamentary Secretary, but the Bill involves a substantial change to an important appointment which has been notified in only one press notice from the Lord Chancellor's Department dated 29 October 1997--the same day that the Bill was published. My inquiries into the Bill's background, beyond what is covered by the press release from the Department, show that no consultation has taken place with any of the legal bodies, such as the Law Society, or with the union for senior civil servants. In effect, the Bill has no history, and no ministerial statement preceded it. Those facts raise concerns about the motives behind the Bill.
This afternoon, it has become clear that the reasons behind the Bill stem from the need of the Lord Chancellor's Department to find a replacement for the present permanent secretary, who intends to retire. That is not a good reason to change an established practice.
I shall now turn to the history of the role that the permanent secretary has played. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) noted, apparently no one was present on the Labour Benches when the Supreme Court Act 1981 was discussed by the House. If the then Opposition had bothered to be present, they would have learnt that the post of permanent secretary was treated together with judicial posts under the Act. I quote from the Supreme Court Act 1981.
I am mindful of everything that the Minister has said, but a detailed explanation is required as to why an accepted practice which was not opposed by Labour in 1981--indeed, no Labour Member was present when it was accepted--is to be arbitrarily overturned. The measure has not been introduced in the House of Lords, as one might have expected--if only because the political and legal head of the Department concerned is the Lord Chancellor. One might say that it is the Lord Chancellor's cookie and we should have liked to hear his explanations at the outset.
The Minister has said that he wishes all the Bill's stages taken in the House to be taken in one go. Subsequently, it will go to the Lords for formal rubber stamping. I do not share that view and I would like to explain why. First, I wish to refer to the nature of the office. A great deal has been said by my hon. Friends on the subject, but it bears repeating. [Laughter.] One of the reasons why it bears repeating is that, effectively, we are having a dialogue with the Minister only. It is a pernicious development when it is assumed that a Bill can be rubber-stamped by this House without a proper debate.
Sir Nicholas Lyell:
Those Labour Members who are laughing will need some points repeated, because they were not in the Chamber when they were originally made. They only came into the Chamber after my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) pointed out that not a soul was on the Government Back Benches except one hon. Lady substituting as a Parliamentary Private Secretary. I think she was not present in a Back-Bench role--perhaps she
Mr. Grieve:
I agree entirely, and that is why this is a proper subject for a full debate.
I have sympathy with the difficulty which the Minister says the Department faces. From 1885--when a permanent secretary was first appointed--until today, the scope of the Lord Chancellor's Department has changed beyond all recognition. It is an important Department of State and, in addition, a major spending Department. I am mindful of that, and of the fact that it has spawned a substantial bureaucracy. The Department has many employees and has an exceptionally important function in reconciling the administration of justice with the conduct of the Government, in a way that is peculiar to this country. The Department is particularly important to the way in which we conduct our business in this country.
I realise that there are potential difficulties in finding administrators who may be able to deal with the scope of the administrative operation of the Department. But one must reflect that, as the Department has grown in past years, there has not been much difficulty in recruiting permanent secretaries of the highest calibre to discharge their office, as the Minister has acknowledged. What has not been fully explored is the role of the permanent secretary in his quasi-judicial function. That is why he is listed along with all the other quasi-judicial functions in the 1981 Act.
The permanent secretary is the most important adviser to the Lord Chancellor on a number of matters, including appointments and the way in which the judiciary might better be able to function. It is of the utmost importance that, in carrying out this role, he should be able to advise the Lord Chancellor fully on a range of matters and to have good connections and contacts with all parts of the legal profession.
In my experience, previous permanent secretaries have involved themselves in the professional life of the Bar or the Law Society. I am well aware from my early days at the Bar that--either in office or retirement--a number of permanent secretaries took the closest possible interest in the way in which the profession operated, which clearly enabled them to have an enormous amount of input into the problems of the administration of justice in this country. It is proposed in the Bill that, in future, that involvement will not be a requirement. I am anxious that, in those circumstances, the Lord Chancellor will not receive the best advice for the discharge of his judicial functions.
Comments have been made to the effect that the legal profession is wishing to feather its own nest and keep its monopolies. But if I can give an analogy, it would be thought odd if the job of principal medical adviser to the Government went to someone who was not a doctor, on the basis that his functions were mainly administrative and that he could receive input from others. In such circumstances, he might just as well be an administrator as someone grounded in medical science. If that were the case, there would be an outcry and public disquiet on the subject.
"A person shall not be qualified for appointment to any office in the Supreme Court listed in column 1 of any Part of Schedule 2 unless he is a person of any description specified in relation to that office in column 2 of that Part."
At the top of the column, we have the permanent secretary to the Lord Chancellor and Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, and there is a requirement that the permanent secretary should have a 10-year general qualification in the law. It will be noted that that is similar to all the other major offices which are there listed, including the Official Solicitor, the Queen's Coroner and Attorney and Master of the Crown Office and Registrar of Criminal Appeals, the Registrar of Civil Appeals and the district judge of the principal registry of the family division. I take that back--he needs only five years' qualification within the relevant profession. A substantial number of persons and offices are listed which require a lesser period of legal general qualification.
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