UK Parliament / Open data

Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

My Lords, that is perfectly reasonable and I am most grateful to the noble Lord. On burden of proof, the Minister has given a careful answer, which seems to amount—I do not know whether he caught the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen—to the fact that if on appeal you raise an arguable issue, the burden shifts to the regulator to establish his case. That may or may not be the case, but you have to find an arguable issue, otherwise the burden is on the defendant. Again, I would like to read carefully what the Minister has said in order to remind myself of how the criminal law operates in this world. I noticed that the Minister followed closely the criminal law procedures, and we can both discuss it carefully. It may be that, without being as radical as I am thought to be, some solution could be found which would in a mild way ameliorate some of what is going on. I want to say a word to the House about what the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and, to some extent, the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, have said. They seem to think that I am some kind of ideologue who does not like tribunals. I have probably appeared in more tribunals than 80 per cent of the noble Lords now sitting in the Chamber or probably at any other time. I have enormous respect for tribunals and they unquestionably have their place. The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, mentioned the employment tribunals. I did about 100 cases in front of those tribunals and the industrial relations court, and they were brilliant. You could predict what they were going to do and thus give good advice to the client. That led to sensible settlements being made behind the scenes and, almost invariably in my experience, that in turn led to justice. So I have a very high opinion of tribunals in many areas. The noble Baroness mentioned in her speech on 19 March that tribunals are operating in some 15 areas at the moment. She referred to tribunals in relation to the Health and Safety Executive and the Financial Services Authority. I confess that I ought to have known about the tribunals related to the Trading Standards Institute, but I did not. I see the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, indicating that he did not know about them either. If the noble Lord does not know about those tribunals, who does? I also did not know that the Office of the Rail Regulator ran tribunals. Perhaps the Minister would be kind enough to confirm by a nod or otherwise that if I write and ask him to give me a reasonable amount of detail about the 15 tribunals that he relies on, he would do that. I have made the point before that I am not an ideologue about this; it is not in my nature. My point is that we are dealing with specialised tribunals—I have praised the VAT tribunal many times—which operate in areas where there are large sums of money and involve people who are on the whole substantial in business world, can employ good lawyers and can look after themselves. If that was what we were dealing with, I would not be worried by what the Government are setting up. But this will involve far more cases. Statistical figures are bandied around without really thinking about them. The Minister read out a piece which I think may have come from a Macrory report, although I am a bit surprised because Professor Macrory is pretty meticulous. It said that only 1 per cent of magistrates’ court cases relate to regulatory matters. There are roughly 1 million cases in the magistrates’ courts each year, so 1 per cent is 10,000 cases. The Government themselves, whose figures I have pointed out ad nauseam are wrong, say that there are 15,000. I have said that the minimum figure of 36,000, and that figure does not even take into account the cases dealt with by local authorities. I am not asking these questions to waste the time of the House, but because the Government have got this all out of scale. They are introducing a system with figures they have plucked from the air. If 9,000 of those 15,000 cases are going to go administrative penalty, the number of cases that will go before these tribunals will increase enormously unless people are frightened off. I think that in minor cases where an injustice has been done, people will be frightened off. The point made by the Law Lords and the circuit judges sought to deal with highly specialised cases which might tie up the time of a Crown Court or a magistrates’ court. I would not mind if the Government could think of a system whereby genuine, highly specialised cases are hived off to a tribunal. I am not sufficiently familiar with the present tribunals Act to know how much flexibility there is within the court system, but that might be acceptable. These tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of defendants—I am calling them ““defendants”” and I have been criticised for using the criminal language because they are involved in civil cases, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Neill, has pointed out, we are on the cusp between civil and criminal here—have to stir themselves to find the tribunal, to write the right kind of letter and to make the application for the penalty to be suspended. It is tricky stuff. In the magistrates court it is quite straightforward. Once you get to the tribunal it will probably be very helpful, but I am worried about the big picture and the complication of getting there. That is why I am saying, once again, that we should keep much more to the courts. Today, 99 per cent of cases are dealt with by magistrates and probably 85 per cent of those are pleas of guilty. People have accepted and live with the kind of penalty that magistrates give. This is a new ball game as far as penalties are concerned and there is a real danger of unrest. I am sorry to come back to my worries, but noble Lords will see how they tie in with the amendment and why I am probing the whole purpose of the Government. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 72 to 74 not moved.] Clause 54 [Other provision]:
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
700 c833-5 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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