New Clause 7
Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [Lords]
1:45 pm
Simon Hughes (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Attorney General, Constitutional Affairs; North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
That is a less sympathetic response than I would have hoped for. The Minister is right and, of course, there is a Civil Rules Procedure Committee and a Courts Rules Committee. However, we are just about to deal with the rules of the county court. The Bill is amending the way in which our courts act. We have just dealt with a part headed “Enforcement of judgments and orders”. The new clause is entirely in line with those issues: it concerns enforcement of judgments. Elsewhere, the Bill deals with both the legislation and regulation of courts. The Minister and her colleagues have spatchcocked into the Bill a measure that we will come to later, related to works of art, which appears to be entirely unrelated to anything else in the Bill. It is certainly far less connected with these matters than the new clause.
The Government are used to accommodating something that is appropriately linked to a Bill. I ask the Minister to think again about the new clause. If I may say so, her reaction was an instinctive procedural reaction as to why another route is better. Here is a legislative opportunity to do something that we could do easily. I am not aware that there has been any great objection anywhere in the profession or, indeed, in the judiciary, to the measure. It seems to be an opportunity for a Labour Government to implement a bit of social justice. The Minister keeps telling us how committed she is to social justice. I hope that this is an opportunity for her to confirm her commitment to that ideal and to say that this measure is a way of ensuring that we have fewer people out on the streets as a result of some failure of the system than we would otherwise have. I hope that she might reconsider.