Lord Neill of Bladen: My name is also on this amendment and it is correct that its language was my suggestion. I communicated it to colleagues in this House some time before Christmas. I was a party to the recommendation of the Joint Committee, which used different language. It recommended that the appointment of the chairman should be made, "after full consultation with the Lord Chief Justice". I shall come in a...
Lord Neill of Bladen: I spoke on Second Reading about this Bill and should perhaps declare my interest as a practising barrister, former member of the Bar Council and once chairman of the Bar. It seems that there is no argument of substance between the two sides today, because the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, was good enough to write to me saying there was no need to be concerned about the public...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I declare my interest. I am a practising member of the Bar; for some years I was on the Bar Council and I was once chairman of the Bar. I was also a member of the Joint Committee of both Houses which considered this Bill. It was a very interesting process. There are two things to be said about it. On the first point, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, was a little inaccurate when...
Lord Neill of Bladen: I hope that the Government will consider favourably the idea underlying this. I can see that there is a problem with the exact language adopted. It appears to refer to cases where a Minister of the Crown considers that a rule is causing a burden and so on. Ministerial indolence will be a complete answer to that. Ministers form no view whatever. So, as drafted, the provision allows for a very...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, at this hour I can be brief and summarise my points. This has been an absolutely excellent debate. It has been particularly moving to hear from those who have first-hand experience of the issue, with their hand on the fingers of those who are about to die. I have looked at the effects of the Bill, of which I shall speak about four or five. The first is the effect on the...
Lord Neill of Bladen: asked Her Majesty's Government: What plans they have to encourage the establishment and continuing viability of village shops run by volunteers, bearing in mind that many commercially based shops have closed in recent years.
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I declare an interest as one of many thousands of farmers who remain unpaid. For me, the two most startling points in the Statement were the late discovery that the level of chaos in the RPA was such that not until 14 March did it reveal to the Government that it could not comply with the promise, made on many occasions, that the bulk of the payments would be through by the end of...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, will the Minister give way?
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I speak in this debate for reasons similar to those of my noble friend Lord May of Oxford. I have past experience of fund-raising, essentially in three areas: the first was for a hospice; the second was for a learned legal institute that could not keep going without charitable donations; and most important, in my experience, on behalf of the University of Oxford. We embarked on...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I am a member of the Select Committee and of Sub-Committee E, which looks at quite a lot of the incoming legally focused drafts coming from the Commission, sometimes draft directives or framework decisions and at other times the early stages of Green Papers, so I have seen a little of this. I, too, pay tribute to our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, for his work and for the...
Lord Neill of Bladen: Does the noble Lord really believe that the information will be kept secure? We live in a world of leaked information. The most recent and glaring example which comes to mind is that of the opinion of the Attorney-General on the legality of the Iraq War, published in the national press within a matter of a year or so. If there is sufficient public interest in the contents of the register, it...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I begin with an apology. Regrettably, I had duties to perform in a court of law and could not be here at the start. To some extent, I had the compensation of having heard the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, on the "Today" programme, so I got some of the highlights from him then—and, of course, we have debated this matter before. The other thing to say at the outset is to declare my total...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords—
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, is the Minister aware of the fact that part of the technique with these telephone calls is to withhold the source? If you dial 1471 immediately after you have had such a call, you will find that the number has been withheld or is unavailable. I had a call from a lady on Friday who said that her name was Anastasia. I naturally refrained from asking whether she could throw light on a...
Lord Neill of Bladen: The language in the proposed amendment is "unreasonably caused", which I think would involve a scrutiny into the basis on which the order was originally sought and made. I wonder whether there are any considerations to which the noble and learned Lord would like to refer that might make it difficult to investigate the unreasonableness of the initial order? We are not talking about whether...
Lord Neill of Bladen: On Second Reading I gave the example of an order that deprived someone of their right to work: he had only one place where he could work; he was ordered not to go to work; and his passport was removed by another part of the order. In ordinary parlance the ordinary man would say that he had been deprived of his liberty substantially: he cannot carry out his work and he is really a captive....
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, it is an extraordinary feature of what is happening here today that we are having a Second Reading of a government Bill that, tomorrow morning, will be radically altered by a series of government amendments. The terms of those are unknown to me; I have had some indication by listening to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. We are having a Second Reading on something that...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, can the Minister comment on the mismatch in intelligence? The assassins, as he rightly described them, must have been aware that a bus containing 49 unarmed men would be going along a particular road at a particular time. The regrettable fact seems to be that on the other side—our side—there was no intelligence whatever of the likelihood or possibility of such an attack. It is...
Lord Neill of Bladen: Before the noble Baroness sits down, will she address this point? As I understood her argument, the Children's Commissioner would, in any event, have in mind and be aware of the convention and the rights of children. If that is the case, it totally destroys any argument against including on the face of the Bill, in a most prominent position—Clause 2—this reference to the rights of...
Lord Neill of Bladen: My Lords, I begin with an apology that I have already addressed to the Lord Chancellor. Unfortunately I had to be in court this afternoon and I missed the first six speeches. I hope nevertheless that your lordships will hear me. I want to confine myself to one topic—the case or absence of a case for the creation of a new Supreme Court and the eviction of the Law Lords from the House of...
