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Mr. Straw: The right hon. and learned Gentleman should read the details of what the royal commission said. It did not make the issue of reputation or livelihood a fundamental point of principle. Paragraph 18 of the relevant chapter refers to the issue of principle and proposes that reputation should be included, but the report continues:
- We see merit in the legislation specifically referring to the various matters (including potential loss of reputation) which the bench should take into account.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell) responds, let me ask him not to be tempted to stray too wide of the mark again, and to confine his remarks to the allocation of time motion.
Sir Nicholas Lyell: It must be abundantly clear to you and to the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that this is a central point at issue, and that time is required to tease it out.
I have read the commission's report. With all respect to the Home Secretary, I think that when the commission says it sees merit in loss of reputation being taken into account it is using measured language--as Lord Bingham did when he said that he was not entirely enamoured of the conditional clauses in the first Bill. He said that the widest possible discretion should be given. I have tabled amendments to that effect, as have my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) and my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins). We need time to discuss those amendments, and to tease out the issues. We have also tabled amendments on other important matters.
If a person is to be tried not in the Crown court but in the magistrates court, it is essential for that trial to be as well conducted and as properly prepared as a trial in the Crown court now is.
I have great respect for magistrates, but those of us who have practised--I sit currently as a recorder and have practised as a member of the Bar in the magistrates courts and Crown courts--all know that, by and large, cases are not as carefully prepared when they come before the magistrates courts. Amendments have been tabled that we need to discuss this evening to provide that the same type of disclosure and legal representation by counsel and solicitor should be available in the magistrates court as in the Crown court.
Mr. Hogg: My right hon. and learned Friend raises precisely the point that I was going to make. It is important, if these serious trials are to take place in front of the magistrate, that there be full discovery and full pre-trial disclosure of the evidence--as there is before the Crown court--if the defendant is to get a proper trial.
Sir Nicholas Lyell: My right hon. and learned Friend emphasises that important point. It takes time to bring that out.
The Home Secretary, inadvertently no doubt, misled not only the House, but the Prime Minister. On 5 July, when the Prime Minister was asked in Prime Minister's questions if he would drop the Bill--which I would advise him to do; the wise thing is to pass the matter to Lord Justice Auld--he gave three reasons for continuing with the Bill. He prayed in aid the support of the former Lord Chief Justice and was thus led into error by the Home Secretary in exactly the same way.
The Prime Minister prayed in aid the Runciman royal commission, notwithstanding that, by that time, Professor Zander, a member of the royal commission and no doubt as fully familiar with its provisions and as fully able to interpret them as the Home Secretary, regarded the Bill to be fundamentally against what the Runciman royal commission had been prepared to recommend.
The Prime Minister made a third point that we need time to be able to tease out. He talked about the saving of money. We need time to draw to the attention of the House and of the country that that notion is bogus, or is based on something that the Government would not be prepared to avow. We need time to highlight that, in accordance with the Home Secretary's answers through the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), who was on the Front Bench a moment ago, £84 million of the £120 million of supposed savings comes from shorter prison sentences. We need
time to dwell on the fact that it is to be supposed that regular thieves who transgress time and again, who are currently given sentences averaging 11 months' imprisonment in the Crown court--which is, of course, supervised by the Court of Appeal--would, in order to save money, get an average sentence of 3.6 months in the magistrates court. We need time to wonder whether that is not absurd and whether that does not run counter to practically everything for which the Home Secretary professes to stand.Therefore, there are fundamental flaws in the Bill. If we do not have a reasonable number of hours to debate them, this proposal, which is of deep importance to every citizen and which is designed to take away a right that has stood for hundreds of years, should be voted down. I remind the House that that right was supported passionately by the Home Secretary as little as three years ago and by the present Attorney-General at the same date; they have now changed their minds for reasons that become more byzantine and intertwined by the minute.
Mr. Garnier: Just to add to the catalogue of supporters of the principle, the Prime Minister himself, as shadow Home Secretary, was a supporter of the jury system.
Sir Nicholas Lyell: I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend. With the time and opportunity for reflection which opposition gives--I hope that that chance will soon be given again to the Prime Minister--he thought more wisely than he does today. We need a chance to think wisely about the Bill. The guillotine in wrong in principle. Eight hours would be reasonable time for debate. It should be granted now.
7.34 pm
Mr. Humfrey Malins (Woking): I begin by declaring an interest, as always in these matters. I am a practising lawyer. I am a recorder of the Crown court and, I think uniquely in the House in living memory, I am also an acting metropolitan stipendiary magistrate. I think that I have presided over and taken part in more trials than any hon. Member in living memory. I apologise for appearing bumptious, but I speak from a nuts-and-bolts position.
Over the past three years, I have had rather a lot of respect for the Home Secretary, principally because I have found him to be a Minister who treats the House of Commons seriously, who comes to the House to talk to us, who is always ready to listen and, if not to accept, certainly to take on board ideas. That respect, I am afraid, has been heavily dented because, in the past fortnight, two guillotine motions have been put before us that are absolutely shoddy. The Home Secretary should be ashamed to be associated with them.
Indeed, such is my regard for the Home Secretary that I believe that, in this case, he was not the originator of the idea and probably had to be heavily persuaded to speak in its favour. He is a man who has hitherto encouraged open and full debate about important issues, but today that is not going to happen.
I, my hon. Friends, many Labour Members and many people out there listening to the debate will be furious that our time to debate some very important issues has been viciously curtailed by the Government. Was it ever necessary to guillotine the debate? I asked the Home Secretary that in an intervention.
The amendments for debate tonight are in four groups. My amendments have been listed in each of those groups. Mine is the lead amendment in three out of four of those groups. May I modestly say that I have never filibustered in the House or in Committee? Well, perhaps I have in Committee, but never in the House. The Home Secretary was good enough to acknowledge that he did not see any thought of a filibuster from me.
Let us look at the history of the Bill. It had its Second Reading on 7 March and went into Committee on 23 May. Was there a problem in Committee? There was not. The Committee spent a total of only some eight and a half hours debating the Bill. There were reasoned contributions from my hon. Friends, many of whom are here, so there was nothing during the Committee stage that suggested that Conservative Members were going to cause any difficulty. Now, for some reason, the Bill is brought before us, a matter of hours before the summer recess starts, with a guillotine motion that requires us, in effect, to debate every amendment and Third Reading inside two hours. It simply will not do.
We know why the Home Secretary has brought the guillotine motion forward--it is because he cannot control those on his own side of the House. It is nothing to do with what would be said by those on the Conservative Benches. Those of my right hon. and hon. Friends who would have contributed to the debates on the amendments would have made fairly brief, thoughtful, important points. They would have followed what they did in Committee, and the same goes for the representative of the Liberal Democrats, but the Government found today that they could not control their own Back Benchers, who were themselves determined to talk at great length.
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