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Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, of course there is great concern about the situation in Afghanistan and, as the noble Lord said, there is to be a Statement
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Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: I am sorry, my Lords, in NATO. They are full members of NATO already. We welcome that, and I understand that they play a constructive role in NATO—in fact, much more so than people had presumed they would when they first joined.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, we are talking about the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It seems to me that we are going rather wide of that purpose by talking, first, about eastern Europe and, in Azerbaijan, about Asia. In talking about Israel, we are referring to the Middle East. Is it not the case that NATO is proceeding rather wider than was intended in the first place and, far from helping to promote peace, may be helping future wars?
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I should make it absolutely clear that, when NATO talks about the prospect of enlargement, it discusses that with prospective member states within Europe. It does not look to enlarge beyond the Euro-Atlantic area. The central and eastern European countries are within Europe; Azerbaijan is within Europe. As I mentioned to the noble Lord earlier, there are no plans for Israel to join NATO.
Criminal Justice
3.11pm
Lord Goodhart asked Her Majesty’s Government:
Whether they will transfer responsibility for criminal justice from the Home Office to the Department for Constitutional Affairs, so as to create a department for justice.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal): My Lords, no.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, over recent weeks the Home Office has shown that it is totally incapable of handling the multifarious responsibilities that it now has, and it is plain that those responsibilities should be reduced. In particular, would it not be both logical and sensible to transfer responsibilities for the criminal justice system to the Department for Constitutional Affairs, leaving the Home Office with the police, the prisons and immigration? As criminal and civil justice overlap in many respects and are administered in the same courts by the same judges, should they not be under one department, a department for justice?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I can reassure the noble Lord that the Home Office is capable of managing its current portfolio, and noble Lords know that we are undertaking a review. However, let me remind the House that at the moment the criminal justice system is managed on a tripartite basis between
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Lord Tebbit: My Lords, can the noble Baroness tell us when the Government first became aware that the Home Office was not fit for purpose?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, the noble Lord will know that that is not what my right honourable friend the Home Secretary said about the Home Office. He said that one part—the processes related to the IND—was not fit for purpose, but it does not apply to the Home Office as a whole. I am sure that the noble Lord knows that perfectly well.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, two and a half years spent in the Home Office 30 years ago convinced me that it was wholly irrational, if not worse, to split responsibility for criminal law from responsibility for civil law between different government departments. Can the Minister tell the House which other country in Europe or the Commonwealth has adopted that solution? What is the principal justification for splitting responsibility between not two but three departments instead of having a department for justice, as is the case in almost the whole of the rest of the civilised world?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I should perhaps remind the noble Lord that no other democracy has a House of Lords, yet we still manage perfectly well. It is not irrational. The noble Lord will be very familiar with the report by Lord Justice Auld, who advocated bringing together the three parts of the criminal justice system. That is what we have done with the National Criminal Justice Board, where the component parts work very well in unison. The board has a meeting every month, and all parties are able to come to consensual agreement on how best to manage criminal justice—and that has inured to the advantage of our country.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts: My Lords, could the noble Baroness confirm to the House—
Lord Woolf: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. Does the Minister feel that it would be an improvement to have the department that is primarily responsible for the independence of the judiciary—namely, that which continues to be led by the Lord Chancellor—also responsible for prosecutions?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, we certainly do not feel that that is necessary. The noble and learned Lord will know that the prosecution department is currently brilliantly headed by my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General. It is a situation with which we are absolutely content. Working in unison, however, has been greatly beneficial, and we intend to continue along that line.
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Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts: My Lords, can the Minister confirm that her department has produced more than 40 pieces of law and order legislation since 1997? That is one for every 80 days since taking office. When will the department start to get right what it is supposed to be doing?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will agree that each of those pieces of legislation was necessary. The measures in the anti-social behaviour legislation and the work that we have done with the Criminal Justice Act have all proven necessary. I do not know whether noble Lords opposite think that perhaps we should rescind those measures.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: My Lords, if a Conservative Government legislated to effect what is proposed in the Question and they had their way on the constitutional issue in relation to Scottish MPs, Scottish MPs could not vote on the changes proposed. Perhaps my noble friend can help me: could I, as a Scottish Peer, vote?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, that is a matter for Members opposite. I notice that a number of them are shaking their head, so I can only take it that they would deny my noble friend that opportunity.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, further to the Minister’s answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, does she agree that it would be wise for the Home Office, if it is to retain these responsibilities, to make much more effort to implement the laws that exist? At the same time, would she not concede that the record of this Government in creating new criminal offences since they came to power has been unique and, in many ways, counterproductive?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I regret to tell the noble Lord that I cannot agree with him: it has been neither unique nor counterproductive. I assure him that every effort will be made to ensure that the implementation of legislation is rigorously pursued.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, is it not the case that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was introduced into this House as a Peer of the United Kingdom? He might be a Scot, but he is a Peer of the United Kingdom.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I absolutely agree, but I think that the import of my noble friend’s question was that noble Lords opposite, as a result of their new policy—I appreciate that these policies come thick and fast—would deny my noble friend.
Lord Armstrong of Ilminster: My Lords, is the Minister aware that, following the example of the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, four years as an official in the Home Office—two of them as Permanent Secretary—lead me to admire the content of her first Answer as much as I admire the brevity of it?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I am grateful.
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Business
3.20 pm
Lord Grocott: My Lords, with permission, a Statement will be repeated this afternoon. The subject is the position of British Forces in Afghanistan. It will be repeated by my noble friend Lord Drayson, and we shall take it at a convenient time after 6.45 pm.
Information Committee
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Lord Kalms be appointed a member of the Select Committee in the place of the Lord Chadlington.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Wireless Telegraphy Bill [HL]
Read a third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Bassam of Brighton.)
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, I do not think we should agree to this Motion without further discussion. Given the history of the Bill, which was massively amended in another place, and the raft of amendments which the Government have tabled to the Bill as introduced into this House, I do not think we should accept this Motion without once again asking whether we really need this Bill.
The question was asked several times at Second Reading on 13 June, but—and I say this in all kindness—in his winding-up speech the Minister failed to convince many of your Lordships of the case he was seeking to make. For instance, the noble Lord, Lord Garden, asked,
When the Minister came to answer that question, the first thing he stressed—and I think it is important to notice what he gave the most importance to—was that it would help,
- “to create a regulatory environment—the culture to which the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, referred”.—[Official Report, 13/6/06; col. 188.]
My noble friend, of course, was referring to the culture in Whitehall departments, which the Minister acknowledged seemed to be reluctant to engage in deregulation. But if departments are unwilling to deregulate—if the culture does indeed need to be changed—surely to goodness it is the job of the Ministers who head the departments to make sure that change is achieved.
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What is there in this Bill that is supposed, miraculously, to convert officials to embrace the spirit of deregulation? Yes, it provides some new definitions, for example, of the burdens that can be removed or reduced by order. So one goes on to ask, as several noble Lords did on Second Reading, including the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, why cannot the 2001 Act be amended,
The noble Lord got no answer either, except that the Minister riposted by inviting him to use the Committee stage to “have a go”, as he put it, at drafting amendments that simplified things. It may be that the noble Lord’s amendments, of which there are many, would do that.
We now have this raft of new amendments, tabled by the Government in this House. For instance, Clause 3 contains the power to implement Law Commission reports by order, to which the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, said at col. 186 he remained “wedded”. He remained wedded in the letter he wrote to us, which I shall refer to in a moment. But we now see, looking at the Marshalled List, that Clause 3 is to be removed.
The criteria written into the Bill to govern the use of the veto by committees of either House are to be removed. These are changes which I am sure the House will welcome, but why were those criteria in the Bill in the first place? Is this not evidence, if evidence were needed, that the Government are simply making up this Bill as they go along?
When this Bill started its life in another place, it contained powers to legislate by order that were so sweeping and all-embracing that it attracted the sobriquet the “Abolition of Parliament” Bill. Mercifully, most of those powers were withdrawn in that House, so it was a radically different and far more modest measure that came to this House. But here we go again: the Marshalled List contains upward of 30 government amendments and proposals for the removal of two entire clauses. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was kind enough to send a number of us a letter which covered the points that had been raised at Second Reading. It is no fewer than nine foolscap pages long, plus an annexe—let me say at once that I make no criticism of that: anything the Government can do to explain what they are trying to achieve must be an advantage. However, in the letter, the Minister once again tried to spell out why we needed the Bill rather than a much shorter measure amending the 2001 Act. He argued that the differences between the order-making powers in the Bill and in the 2001 Act,
But I am driven to ask, if the Government had not originally attempted to introduce their far more drastic order-making power and to legislate by what was called the “Abolition of Parliament Act”, whether they would not then have preferred to make the amendments in the form of a much shorter, simpler Bill, amending the 2001 Act. Would that not, even now, be a better course?
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Here we are, into July, with a very heavy legislative programme before us. Would it really not be wiser to recognise that this Bill, which in its present form still needs further to be amended, as witness the number of amendments on the Marshalled List, should be withdrawn before we waste any more time on it? Ministers could then really work out what they want to achieve and come back to the House in October with a simple amending Bill. I would hazard a guess that this might gain parliamentary approval quite quickly. Most of us are agreed on what needs to be done to speed up the process of deregulation. That would be a very much better way of doing it than starting to wade through this Committee now.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend Lord Jenkin, because I have an extraordinarily strong feeling, which I expressed at Second Reading but which needs to be expressed again, that giving any power to Ministers ever to amend primary legislation must be a bad thing, even if it is for anodyne and sensible purposes such as making regulation better. It is incredibly dangerous to give any Ministers that power. Let us reasonably assume that, on this issue, this Government are completely and utterly virgin pure, that they are a Government who, we know, are driven solely by the best of motives, that they are a Government who never put a foot wrong and never would dream of amending a Bill badly if they had the power. Let us for the sake of argument make that assumption. I do not trust any other Government, ever, to have that power, be they led by the right honourable Member for Witney, be they led by some as yet unborn child. I do not trust any Government, except possibly this one, to behave like that. So we have to be extremely careful about ever giving Ministers this power.
Is it not obvious beyond peradventure that over-regulation arises from regulation, and regulation arises from the powers given to Ministers in primary legislation, so that over-regulation can and should be cured by re-regulation? In other words, let us say that fishing for snails in the River Wey is regulated, deriving the ministerial power of regulation from some agricultural Act. Going back to the agricultural Act containing the power for the Minister to make an order, the Minister sees that the order is wrong and changes the regulation. Surely, this matter is being looked at in an intellectually sloppy way. We say “over-regulation” and immediately we rush to the statute book. Over-regulation can and should be cured by proper attention to detail and making sure that regulations which have arisen out of primary legislation are properly drafted and enforced. So do we actually need the Bill? That is the point that I hope my noble friend Lord Jenkin is making.
3.30 pm
Lord Desai: My Lords, I am not sure under what rubric we are having a Second Reading debate all over again. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, who introduced this device, said that we had far too much work to do and that if only we did not have this Bill we could get on with it. If he had not raised his objection, we could
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Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I agreed with much that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said, particularly on why the Government have not simply amended the Regulatory Reform Act 2001. It is to deal with that issue that I gave notice of my intention of objecting to Clause 1 stand part, so that we can get a proper explanation from the Government of why that was not done. However, this House did not oppose this Bill at Second Reading or vote on any amendment that it should be delayed for six months. In the circumstances, it seems wholly illogical to object to this Bill going into Committee.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, I do not see that anybody has really answered my question; I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, will answer it. What on earth is the point of us expending further time on a Bill that has no obvious purpose? My noble friend Lord Jenkin put his points marvellously well and very clearly, as he always does. Of course, my noble friend Lord Onslow then hammered the nail home with his characteristic force.
I do not want to spend time on this, but I want to make one point. I regard this Bill with some welcome because it is a classic example of, and illustrates with unusual clarity, what is meant by the phrase, “Satan rebuking sin”. In the spectacle of Satan rebuking sin there is an element of hypocrisy. I wonder whether there is not an element of hypocrisy in the Government going ahead with this Bill. What puzzles me is that it may give this licence—these new powers—to Secretaries of State, but I wonder what form of conversion Secretaries of State, who all their lives have been soaked in the tradition of regulation, will need to undergo to be suddenly minded to withdraw them, repeal them, change them, weaken them and amend them.
I do not want to say any more, but I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, will bear in mind that today he represents Satan. I am sure that he will do so with some skill.
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