Government of Wales Bill

rose to move, as an amendment to the Motion, leave out from ““House”” to end and insert ““do insist on its Amendments 17, 21 and 22””. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the charm and diplomacy of the Minister is greatly appreciated; but, I fear, as far as I am concerned, to no avail. I do not find his reassurances sufficiently reassuring. It may be intended that the clause should deal with technical points; but the consequence for the private individual of dealing with those technical points continues to worry the Opposition. Our constitution abhors retrospection. When a citizen’s private rights are breached and he is damaged as a result, he is invariably entitled to redress. Retrospective powers enable the Government to abandon that principle. That is why we challenged Clause 94(4) on Committee and Report. At Third Reading we offered the Government an olive branch. We suggested that retrospective powers would be acceptable as long as such powers were not exercised, "““to the detriment of those who have either benefited from or acted in reliance upon the state of the law before the retrospective Order is made””.—[Official Report, 13/7/06; col. 840.]" To this proposal we have received an ominously evasive response—first from Ministers in this House and then from the honourable Member Mr Ainger in another place, who said: "““There could be public interest considerations in favour of making retrospective provision. It is not right that the Government should be prevented from taking the public interest into account in making legislation””.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/7/07; cols. 218-19.]" I cannot decide whether that is a profoundly ingenuous or profoundly disingenuous remark. In either case, such a proposition should never be allowed to justify retrospection. Of course the public interest should play a part in deciding what the law should be in the future; but it has no part to play in determining the application of existing private rights. That kind of thinking engendered the Acts of indemnity so beloved of Tudor and Stuart monarchs. Mr Ainger claimed that there remained the protections of the Human Rights Act and of our own parliamentary procedures. However, in continental jurisprudence, the rule against retrospection is much less well-entrenched than in our own common law. Despite the Human Rights Act, for example, the Government were perfectly happy to claim the other day that the Compensation Bill conformed with the convention even though it contained a clause that is plainly retrospective. That is an example of the Human Rights Act undermining the traditional protections of common law. As to the protection of Parliament, at least the Burma Oil legislation in 1965 had to go through the full legislative procedures of both Houses. In this case, there would be a single vote on an unamendable draft order after derisory debate. From the evasiveness of the Government responses, I can only conclude that they do indeed intend on occasions to alter existing private rights retrospectively and in circumstances where those who lose out as a result will suffer. I remain astonished that they should subscribe to something so meretricious. I beg to move. Moved, as an amendment to the Motion, leave out from ““House”” to end and insert ““do insist on its Amendments 17, 21 and 22””.—(Lord Kingsland.)