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Lord Ackner moved, as an amendment to Amendment No. 6, Amendment No. 7:
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor for tabling his amendments following his acceptance in principle of Amendment No. 2 moved on Report by the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, in regard to setting up the council.
I think that my amendments can with confidence be described as exceedingly modest. They are designed to do merely one thing; namely, to emphasise the stature of this council. Before I justify very shortly each of the amendments, I remind your Lordships first that my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf, who is not here but who has written to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, myself and others supporting my amendments, said on Second Reading that the council was a central plank to his recommendations. Perhaps I may also put on record again the short excerpt from a speech he gave recently at the memorial lecture for Mr. Sargant, which was devoted almost entirely to the council and was in these terms:
Turning to the specific amendments, Amendment No. 7 does no more than stress what is the essential function of the council; that is, to monitor the impact of the proposed changes. Hence, those words are added to proposed subsection (3)(a). Amendment No. 8 provides that the proposals for research should be capable of being initiated by the council and I have returned to the words of the amendment agreed by your Lordships in principle on Report, taking out the word "making" and replacing it by "commissioning". It therefore reads, "commissioning proposals for research", which was the original proposal. That emphasises that this is not purely a consultative body.
Amendments Nos. 9 and 10 should be taken together. They deal with the question of payment. The provision, as it stands, reads:
The function of the new council is to make sure that the root and branch alterations proposed by my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf, and accepted in principle by everybody, go through properly. In place of the limitation to making payment of out-of-pocket and travelling expenses, I have inserted:
Finally, we have the addition in Amendment No. 11 that,
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, I briefly "croak" my support for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, in these amendments. When the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was speaking in the earlier parts of the Bill, he said that he would keep an open mind with regard to the civil justice council. It is with pleasure that we on these Benches note that he has kept an open mind and has given the council a statutory form. Nevertheless, the three matters referred to in the amendments are of importance.
It is of vital importance that the reforms put in place by the Bill are properly monitored and not simply reviewed; that is to say, that those members of the civil justice council who come from various parts representing various interests should be able to express what is happening on the ground as the reforms are put into place and the new rules come into effect so that any review of those rules can be informed and cogently commented upon.
The later amendments deal with remuneration. It may well be that, in relation to the first three categories of membership of the council--that is, the judiciary, members of the legal profession and civil servants from the Lord Chancellor's Department--service upon the council may be seen to be a legitimate form of career development. But that cannot be said for the other three categories who represent consumer interests and so forth. They are people who would be giving of their time without any possibility that their careers may be affected one way or the other. Such people should be properly remunerated for the job which they undertake.
Finally, with regard to the third aspect of the matter, the annual report, it is right that Parliament should be kept informed of the effectiveness of the Civil Justice Council. One would not wish it to become simply a body talking to itself. If it is to be effective, it must not only carry out its functions but make sure that that work is fully understood and accepted by Parliament. Therefore, I support the amendments.
Line 14, at end insert ("and in particular monitoring the impact of proposed changes.").
"When I set out on the inquiry which resulted in the report, I was very conscious that since 1885 there had already been over 60 reports, each urging reform of the civil justice system, yet the situation on which I had to report was one which many commentators described as being in crisis. Why should this be so? It is not because of any callous disregard of their responsibilities by those in charge of the system; it is my belief part of the cause is the
16 Dec 1996 : Column 1280absence of a broadly based body which has the clear responsibility of monitoring the justice system as a whole and identifying the areas which are in need of reform".
He was referring to the council. Before turning to the amendments I refer to what the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, said in the debate on Report. He said:
"I agree with the criticism offered by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, in Committee of the proposition that what is required is no more than a consultative body or machinery. What is necessary is to have a high-powered body representative of all the relevant interests which monitors the effectiveness of the new rules in practice and measures their success against the objectives which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, defined in his two reports and which have commanded general acceptance".--[Official Report, 9/12/96; col. 875.]
"The Lord Chancellor may reimburse the members of the Council their travelling and out-of-pocket expenses".
That is an indication of Treasury parsimony on the very face of the Bill. It downgrades the stature of the committee. I have looked up the many pages devoted in the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 to the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Standards, a committee charged with far less responsibility than this committee. It has made reports from time to time, the majority of which have not found support from my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor.
"Such remuneration and such travelling and other allowances as he [the Lord Chancellor] may, with the consent of the Treasury, determine".
It provides a discretion to my noble and learned friend and he has to obtain the concurrence of the Treasury. It imposes no obligation at all except the need to consider the merits of any specific expense. Those are the words which adorn the Lord Chancellor's advisory committee under the Act to which I have just referred. That Act and the schedules go into detail with pensions, compensation and other matters. The amendment merely gives a wider discretion to the Lord Chancellor than he proposed.
"The Council shall submit to the Lord Chancellor an annual report on the discharge of its functions",
and,
"The Lord Chancellor shall lay the Council's annual report before each House of Parliament".
Again, that is one of the obligations of the Lord Chancellor's advisory committee to which I have just referred. It is only right that, with the obligation cast upon this committee to monitor, the public should see what are the results of that monitoring; what is going right and what is going wrong. All I seek to do, therefore, is to enhance the stature of the committee and make sure that it performs the vital task which my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf suggested it must be there to do. I beg to move.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Hacking: My Lords, in supporting my noble and learned friend in moving Amendment No. 6, I desire to make two observations. At Report I spoke of how flattered I was that the noble Lord who speaks from the Opposition Front Bench adopted in its entirety the amendment that I had tabled in Committee. That flattery goes further, because the noble and learned Lord has picked up not only the principle but the functions of my amendment and has tabled and now moved it in your Lordships' House.
My second observation goes to the quality of the noble and learned Lord's amendment. Over the years I have moved many amendments in your Lordships' House. If I may lay modesty aside, I have learnt to draft with precision, simplicity and clarity. But it has never been my experience that the text in that regard of my amendments has actually been improved by Her Majesty's Government when they have on the rare occasion accepted my amendments in principle. So often the clear has become obscure and the simple complex. It was therefore with delight that I read the amendment tabled by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. It was not only precise, simple and clear, but in terms of looking at the whole scope of the function of the proposed Civil Justice Council, he has taken matters a great deal further forward.
That does not mean to say that there is not some room for improvement. I am attracted by Amendment No. 8 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas. I am attracted, too, by Amendment No. 11. I am not sure whether it is necessary to go to Amendment No. 12. However, if it is necessary to do so, I shall certainly support that. I observe that Amendment No. 7 rather clutters the text. I know the original source of that amendment. It comes from the amendment I tabled in Committee! But it seems to me that the wording of the main draft of my noble and learned friend,
- "keeping the civil justice system under review",
I do not desire to make any observations about the Treasury issues--my noble friend Lord Renton will make some observations about those--which come out in Amendments Nos. 9 and 10.
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