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Mr. Hoon: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way again. Does he accept that there is nothing in the Bill to prevent any lawyer from the Government legal service--or, indeed, any lawyer from any other position--from applying for the job and being considered alongside others who apply?
Sir Nicholas Lyell: Of course. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that that is a point of any weight, he has not understood my argument. Rather than repeat it, I invite him to read it in Hansard.
The 1,000 members of the Government legal service are attracted by the fascination of the work. The sheer level of legal work likely to be seen by a young man or woman in the service outstrips that which is available to all but a tiny handful of the Bar and solicitors' professions. No lawyer would gainsay that. Those lawyers in their 20s, 30s or even 40s in the Government legal service see matters of a weight and complexity that most private practitioners never see. Lawyers grow up in the service over many years, and build up a body of wisdom.
When lawyers move on to the administration of justice and the courts--about which my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull knows so much because of his previous ministerial position--they know how a court case is run. Over the years, they have discussed the problems with the judges. When they become administrators, they bring with them a great background of real knowledge, just like those in the upper reaches of the health service who do a certain amount of administration.
Of course, sometimes people do not want to do that--they want to do clinical medicine and nothing else. However, it is hugely valuable to the health service when people with real hands-on experience of medicine go into management. That is how the Government legal service should work. There is a genuine danger, which, sadly, the Government are so far failing to recognise, that much of that will be lost or diminished if my sensible--indeed, friendly--suggestions, which I mentioned to the Lord Chancellor in advance of this debate, are simply brushed aside.
There is also a point about agism. I do not think anyone has given much thought to that; I admit that I had not until a week ago. However, the more I thought about the valuable service given by permanent secretaries who have run one, two or three years over their time, the more I thought how stupid and doctrinaire it would be to get rid of them.
That point deserves a sensible and reflective answer from the Minister--at least an answer along the lines, "As a junior Minister I cannot commit the Government here and now, but I will discuss the matter carefully with the Lord Chancellor. I promise that, even if this Bill passes all its stages in the House tonight"--as, I freely admit, I had anticipated--"I will consider the matter carefully before it goes to the other place, and at least seriously consider tabling amendments to meet the serious, sensible and reasoned objections that have been made."
I very much hope that, when the Minister replies to the debate, I will receive a carefully considered and reflective answer to what I believe are genuine points of substance.
Mr. John M. Taylor:
Even as we debate clause stand part, some emphasis should be laid--not least for the record--on the importance of judicial appointments when considering the qualities and qualifications that the permanent secretary to the Lord Chancellor should hold.
As I said earlier, judicial appointments are scarcely a matter for the Executive. When I was a junior Minister in the Lord Chancellor's Department, it was made abundantly clear to me--not in a menacing way, but in an entirely logical way--that my remit was to shadow the Lord Chancellor in all matters in the House of Commons, save judicial appointments. I was excluded from judicial appointments--quite rightly. They are personal to the Lord Chancellor and his immediate advisers.
Judicial appointments do not relate just to the odd judge here or there--they relate to the appointment of the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls, the President of the Family Division, the Vice-Chancellor, the entire High Court bench, the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords, every recorder and deputy recorder in England and Wales, the circuit bench and every magistrate in England and Wales, save in Lancashire.
The appointments are an enormous task, and a gigantic responsibility. Part of our security in the United Kingdom is based on our belief in freedom under the law. The law is very important, and the public's confidence in the law is extremely important. That public confidence begins with the Lord Chancellor's appointments.
Members of the Bar certainly do not regard that assessment of their worth as being administrative. Even now, I suggest that it is right for hon. Members to bear in mind the many roles of the Lord Chancellor. He sits in the other place--in a role equivalent to yours, Mr. Lord--on the Woolsack, he performs a thankless task in making judicial appointments, and he runs what has become a most controversial Department. As many hon. Members have pointed out in this debate, the Lord Chancellor's Department has changed from being a relatively small office with a relatively small range of functions into a very big Department that has in many ways entered the very centre of political argument.
Legal aid has become a much-argued-over benefit. It is part of the welfare system, and has its boundaries. People are disappointed if they do not receive a legal aid grant, and they cannot discern fairness in the system if they see someone else receive one. When I was a junior Minister in the Lord Chancellor's Department, at least half of each Question Time was taken up with often argumentative and frequently aggressive questions on legal aid.
When questions were not on legal aid, they were on the provinces and jurisdictions of magistrates and magistrates courts committees. The magistracy has been in the United Kingdom for 600 years and is independent of the circuit court system. It is the jewel in the crown of the judicial system. Appointments to the magistrates' bench are delicate and crucial. There have been political arguments over the political complexion of magistrates, and questions such as, what does the balance of the magistracy look like? Are there more of these, or more of those? Those matters are worth arguing and debating.
Magistrates are fiercely independent.
Sir Nicholas Lyell:
My hon. Friend is most eloquently making the key point. He has referred to the legal aid system and to the magistracy, and undoubtedly he is about to refer to the court system. If one is to administer those systems, one must understand them. Does he not agree that, without having available a senior person who has been through the mill and understands it, the Department will be diminished?
Mr. Taylor:
I could not agree more with my right hon. and learned Friend, because he has stated the case exactly.
I realise that legal aid is run by a semi-independent agency. Nevertheless, that agency spends taxpayers' money, and it is now spending about £1.5 billion per annum, which is a very serious sum. In many ways, it is to be welcomed that the new Labour Government are developing thoughts that might have existed in a previous Administration--but I will not go over that ground.
The Government are showing some fortitude in dealing with the legal aid system, which must be dealt with. The Comptroller and Auditor General has qualified the
accounts of the Lord Chancellor's Department in the past six years. The Department's accounts have not passed muster, because there has been no evident control over legal aid spending.
I wanted primarily to deal with the permanent secretary's role in judicial appointments, but, in doing so, I have enlarged my case by saying that he holds an important political and mainstream governmental role, with heavy judicial responsibility. Rightly, the qualities of the person to do the job are closely scrutinised. In this debate, I hope that Conservative Members have been trying to scrutinise those qualities closely.
Mr. Burnett:
For the reasons that I have already given on Second Reading, we support the Bill. Nevertheless, I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to the two points that I made in that debate. For his recollection, I will repeat them, but in precis form.
The first point was on the method of selection for the permanent secretary. The second point--for which I quoted from Sir Peter Middleton's recent report on legal aid--was to question whether the Government are minded to concentrate the various judicial functions and the various Departments into one separate, distinct Ministry.
Mr. Hawkins:
I expressed some concerns about the Bill in the Second Reading debate. The longer debate on the Bill continues--both on Second Reading and in Committee--the more my concern increases. I paid generous compliments to the Minister in the earlier debate, but I may have overstated them. He has certainly failed to respond to the very legitimate concerns--particularly on the lack of consultation--raised by my hon. Friends and myself.
As the Minister may recall, I served on the Bar Council for seven years, until 1995, when I became a parliamentary private secretary. For the last three of those years, I was on the council's general management committee, which acts as a type of inner cabinet. In my remarks earlier today, it had certainly not occurred to me--the fact was revealed later, by questioning by Conservative Members--that there had been no consultation on the Bill with any of the legal professional bodies. The Bar Council has not been consulted, the Law Society has not been consulted, and even the civil servants' trade union has not been consulted.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that Ministers have been caught out practising government by press release, by spin doctoring and by anything other than the normal democratic process. I am particularly pleased that Conservative Members have followed up on some of the attacks made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell) on the Government's attempt to push through the Bill without debate.
The manner in which the Bill has been passed will be very much noted among the professional bodies, who will regard it as a straw in the wind, or perhaps even more, showing the extent to which they will have to watch the Government--as Conservative Members intend to watch the Government--every step of the way. Ministers are constantly attempting to evade debate and to move it away from the Chamber and from those of us who have been democratically elected to scrutinise legislation, and to pass on the blind side as many measures as possible.
The Government have clearly been caught out trying to pass this Bill on the blind side, but they have not succeeded--thanks to the vigilance of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire and other hon. Members. The Bill's passage has provided a classic example.
I hope that the Minister will do the House the courtesy of addressing the very serious issues raised by hon. Members in this debate. We still have absolutely no answer to many questions. What about the issue of people who have given long and loyal service in the Lord Chancellor's Department and who will be unable to continue doing so beyond a purely arbitrary age limit? Such a limit is clearly against the public interest, and the House will have to hear the Minister's answer to that question.
My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor)--who served as a Minister in the Lord Chancellor's Department in the previous Government--has raised a much more serious issue, which I will not repeat, and could not deal with half so well. It is absolutely essential that the person who holds the job of permanent secretary should himself have the legal experience necessary to discharge the functions of advising the Lord Chancellor on judicial appointments--of which there are so many, as my hon. Friend said--or, at the very least, have a deputy who has legal qualifications or long experience of service in the Department.
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