Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
10:45 am
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Justice & Lord Chancellor, Ministry of Justice; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
I too welcome you to the Chair of this Committee, Sir Nicholas, along with your co-Chairman, Mr. O’Hara. I have worked with both of you in the Chair and know that you will keep excellent order and maintain a high level of scrutiny.
There has been a lot of talk, on Second Reading and today, about the number of criminal justice and immigration Bills that we have dealt with. It has been my sad misfortune, over 10 years, to have participated in most of them. I feel that I might have heard every possible argument on criminal justice that it is possible to adduce. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough said that Government legislation is all useless and incompetent. It is not all useless and incompetent; it is just mostly useless and incompetent. Our job is to identify and promote those parts that are not useless and incompetent and to remove some of the surplus to another place.
I am grateful to the Minister and his team, who I also welcome to the Committee, for having listened to what I said about the programme motion on Second Reading, and for arranging an alternative to be agreed by the House.
I, too, am new to the procedure of Public Bill Committees taking evidence and I echo some of what the hon. and learned Gentleman said. If Public Bill Committees taking evidence is to mean anything, it is important, first, that we hear from the people who have something that it is important that we hear and, secondly, that we have the opportunity to deliberate on that information to see whether it has relevance for what we do later.
I must say to the Government that it would have been far better had we not started any of the deliberative sittings until after Prorogation. We were quite clear that we would have evidence sessions before that. Given the unique timing of having Prorogation in the middle, it would have been better to have the opportunity of carefully considering the evidence over that period, which fortuitously we have in the middle, and of starting the line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill afterwards. If the evidence sessions are to work, who the Committee hears cannot be in the hands of the Government. I know that there have been talks between the hon. Members for Tooting and for Ruislip-Northwood. The hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood was kind enough to speak to me in the Tea Room yesterday and to give me the benefit of some of his thoughts.
We need a more formal arrangement outside of the Committee, which would enable us to discuss which witnesses it would be appropriate to call, and to take that advice from a wider section of the Committee. When we take evidence, the Committee does not act as a hierarchy but as a Select Committee. Therefore it would be open for all hon. Members to suggest who might usefully give evidence. That structure is not in place at the moment and as a result, although I have no doubt as to the value of the evidence that we will hear, there are certainly people whom my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge and I could suggest as useful witnesses. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough has already suggested people from the judiciary whom it would be useful to hear from, but there is a wider spectrum of people who will be affected by the Bill and whom we should consider.
Perhaps, Sir Nicholas, we can find a way to examine the witnesses whom the Committee is to call and to take a view on whom we would like to hear from. If the consequence of that is that we have more evidence-taking sessions before Prorogation, and the line-by-line scrutiny takes place after Prorogation, to me that is no bad thing.
There are very important matters for consideration. I am going to forswear any pudding metaphors, but the Bill covers a wide range of issues. There is no—I think the current term is “narrative”—that links many of those issues, and it is therefore important to give each and every part of the Bill our careful scrutiny.
There are large parts of the legislation with which I broadly agree, in principle if not in detail. There are some areas where I will strenuously disagree with the Minister, but that is something that the Committee will examine over the weeks to come and I personally look forward to it.