Lord Thomas of Gresford: The offence of the four lawmakers who were expelled without legal process from LegCo—two barristers, an accountant and a medical consultant—was that they had allegedly supported requests to the US to impose sanctions on China for its interference in Hong Kong. What about this country? The United Kingdom signed the bilateral joint declaration, which by Article 3 guarantees the rights and...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, on his excellent maiden speech. He referred to many sports in Dirleton, and I was hoping that he might mention the excellent North Berwick Rowing Club. I think he should have a word with his noble friend— I refer to the noble Earl, Lord Courtown—or with my noble friend Lord Paddick, who spoke third in the debate. I...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, at the beginning of October, Mark Drakeford, the Welsh First Minister, and Vaughan Gething, the Health Minister, expressed their concerns to Boris Johnson over his failure to introduce travel restrictions from high-transmission areas in England to low-risk areas in Wales. Those of us living in Wales had, for many weeks, not been permitted to leave our immediate home area without a...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: I am conscious of the fact that we are dealing with a major sector, if not the major sector, of British industry. These draft regulations amend regulations made last year which amended the 2011 regulations, which brought into domestic law the requirements of a European directive. There must be someone whose bread and butter is procurement in the Ministry of Defence and who might follow it...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: Is the Minister aware that hundreds of applications for habeas corpus have been lodged in the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir over a 15-month period, arising out of the arbitrary detention without trial of thousands of people —including, as we have heard, political and community leaders—under the public safety Act? The court rules specify a 14-day time limit from lodging an application to...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, it is always a delight to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who always helps us with his wisdom and experience. I join him in commending this understandable attempt by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, to strengthen the scrutiny of any regulations made by the Minister under the proposed Bill, whether in the exercise of Henry VIII powers or otherwise. While I entirely...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, the House of Lords is coming to a watershed. When we threw out the statutory instrument in relation to tax credits in 2015, the reaction of the Government was to wheel in the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to set up a review. His report advised that the House of Commons should be given the power to overrule this House should it ever have the temerity to do the same thing again. Since...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: In the Attorney-General’s review, published in November 2018, there was a section on disclosure pre-charge. Chapter 5 stated: “The evidence given by almost all stakeholders to the Review is that early and meaningful engagement between the prosecution team and the defence is crucial to improve the disclosure process.” It went on: “This is not a new idea … but the recent increases in...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: The Service Prosecuting Authority is an independent organisation which receives its funding, in the region of £5 million annually, as part of the defence budget. Will the Minister assure the House that the Service Prosecuting Authority will remain fully manned and funded, in order to preserve its essential role in the pursuit of justice in the military?
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, since I am speaking from Hayman House, my home in Gresford, it would be churlish of me not to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and congratulate her on her excellent maiden speech. On 2 October 2019 the Brexit Secretary, Stephen Barclay, told the EU Committee of this House that Northern Ireland businesses would have to complete export declarations for goods moving from...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: Can the Minister assure the House that guidance will include the need for all discussions, telephone calls, emails, Facebook or WhatsApp messages and other modern means of communication to be properly recorded, so that the court can be assured that issues of finance and children have been fully explored and fairly agreed, and not imposed by a dominant partner—or, worse, by a trained and...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, I must declare an interest, in that my grandfather was from Llanfihangel-yng-Ngwynfa in the deepest rural part of Montgomeryshire. The boundary commissioners proposed in 2016 to link north Montgomeryshire with South Clwyd. I suspect that that proposal may be once more on the table following this Bill—it looks all right on a map. Earlier this year, when I was recuperating from...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, I was unable to take part in the Second Reading or the Committee stage of the Bill, but I have read Hansard in full. The importance of the issue raised by this amendment is such that I had to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, in this debate. What struck me was that the Minister’s reply in Committee was a stout defence of the status quo as regards the...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, I am the son of a policeman and spent my first five years living in a police station in Llangollen. The November 2018 guidelines for an unlawful act of manslaughter were arrived at after four years of consideration and consultation with 45 bodies, including the council of Her Majesty’s judges, the criminal Bar, the Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association, the Ministry of Justice,...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, crystallised the focus of the Bill as the protection of the public, and I think that is generally understood. Terrorism is a cancer in our society. The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, is to be congratulated on the clear way in which he opened the debate; he said that it was ever-evolving. The question is whether it can be cured by more of the...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: The Statement rightly claims that the first duty of any Government is to protect their people. There are two competing views as to how people should be protected. There are those who believe that warehousing offenders for as long as possible is a sure way of protecting the public, at the price of destroying the span of their lives on this planet. The alternative view is that the time and...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, these powers under Chapter 2 of Part 2 of the Bill make a declaration that exceptional market conditions which trigger financial assistance of a varying kind are to be exercised by the English Minister by way of regulations made under the negative procedure. That means that they will escape extensive parliamentary scrutiny, as we are well aware. The sort of market conditions that...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord told the Scottish Public Law Group in Edinburgh in June 2018: “If the rule of law is disrespected, and falls into disrepute, elected governments will not be able to govern effectively—any government is simply shooting itself in the foot if it undermines the rule of law.” The contingent powers in this Bill to change the Northern Ireland protocol...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: First, the need for corroboration in rape cases was abolished; secondly, sentences were increased to a five-year minimum guideline; and then inquiries into the complainant’s character were forbidden. Then the defendant was barred from cross-examining in person, and video links kept the complainant out of the witness box. Recently, there was an exhortation that complainants are, prima facie,...
Lord Thomas of Gresford: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, who has drawn upon her extensive experience in the juvenile courts to speak up for those who have turned their lives around. I fully support these two orders, but I cannot give the Government any credit for bringing them forward. My noble friend Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames has pointed out that the Government are simply...
