Report (1st Day)

Part of Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill – in the House of Lords at 3:15 pm on 5 March 2012.

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Photo of Lord Newton of Braintree Lord Newton of Braintree Conservative 3:15, 5 March 2012

My Lords, I apologise for my slowness. I start by saying that I am so far the only person who has spoken who is not a lawyer or bishop. I would claim with the right reverend Prelate to be a humble seeker after truth. I am not sure what I would claim with the lawyers. But I do know that I am racked with guilt about the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, because on the last occasion that he brought this up I indicated that I was not with him. Indeed, last week when he asked me whether I was going to vote on an amendment and I said that I was going to vote with the Government he wisely ignored my advice and voted against it, which is probably what I should have done anyway. However, I find myself now on Report much more inclined to support the noble Lord, both because of what he said today and because-dare I say to my noble friend on the Front Bench; I have already warned him that I may be a bit troublesome today, but he will have expected that-the more that I look at the provisions, the more I doubt that the Government are committed to the principle reflected in the amendment to which most of us would be committed.

I do not doubt that the coalition Government, whom I strongly support in general terms, including the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, are committed to freedom, openness, transparency, justice and fairness. The coalition agreement is littered with the rhetoric of all those things and I think they meant it and still mean it, although I find it difficult to see the connection between some of the proposals in the Bill and those declarations, particularly about freedom and justice. The Minister referred jocularly at Question Time to the Ministry of Justice's motto being, "We're the Ministry of Justice, here to help". Frankly, you might query that when you have looked at the provisions of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, also referred to the Justice Secretary's broad declarations on this. I could make a lot of rather tendentious points particularly in the area of administrative justice, to which we will come later with an amendment on which my name stands, but there are enough questions in all this to make me wonder much more about supporting this amendment, subject to what my noble friend may say.

It appears that the Minister is going to refer, as he did at Question Time, to some of the government amendments that have been put down in the field of clinical negligence in relation to obstetrics cases, and there are one or two other things on which there are some good concessions. I welcome that, but those concessions themselves call into question how far the fairness and justice of these proposals had been thought through when they came forward. We need some more concessions that reflect the full merits of the principle reflected in this amendment and of the rhetoric of the coalition, and I hope that we shall see some move in that direction when my noble friend replies in a few minutes' time.