Transfer of Tribunal Functions Order 2008

My Lords, in intervening in this short debate I declare the interest already implied by the Minister; namely, that I am chair of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, which, in its former guise as the Council on Tribunals, was involved with the oversight of tribunals for some 50 years. The Minister has also referred—and I thank him for that—to the fact that in my capacity as chair of that council I am a member of the Tribunal Procedure Committee. In that context, I wish to pay tribute to the huge amount of work put into the procedure committee by one of our members, Bronwyn McKenna. The Minister has explained the orders, and I have neither the wish nor the intention to ask him a lot of technical questions, difficult or otherwise. My purpose is simply to express the hope that the House will support these orders that enable a further significant step to be taken in the modernisation and reform of the tribunal system, which is due to be taken on 3 November. It will not escape the attention of the House that 3 November is barely 10 days from today, so it might be thought that Ministers have been operating a bit close to the wire. Indeed, they have. The reasons for that have become clear in the speeches already made in the debate. I do not want to enter into further argument on the matters that have been raised by the noble and gallant Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, and which are in the minds of others, I simply wish to say that it is a matter of considerable relief to me and to many others that in recent times there has been a spirit of seeking agreement, which appears now to have been achieved. That provides a way forward, and, as a result, we have avoided actually hitting the wire and not being able to proceed on 3 November. My contribution is concerned with the broader merits of the programme of change that this is part of. If anyone doubts the worthwhile nature of that overall, I commend paragraph 7, headed ““Policy background””, of the explanatory notes circulated with the orders. I shall not quote, repeat or elaborate on it, but it brings out the extent to which tribunals—not only in disputes between the citizen and the state but also in some other important field such as employment rights—are a major part of our justice system which have long been under recognised and given insufficient attention. Over many years they grew piecemeal and they often remained administered by the departments whose decisions were being appealed against. That is something that troubled me well over 25 years ago now when I was a social security Minister. That is now being addressed as a result of Sir Andrew Leggatt’s report, together with the fact that too many tribunals were answerable to the departments that took the decision in the first place and the absence of a proper structure and career path, whether for judiciary or staff. So the provision is very welcome and worth while. The Minister started with Sir Andrew Leggatt and his report. In a sense, this goes one step back to a previous Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who recognised the problem and the need and asked Andrew Leggatt to prepare his report. It is to the credit of three successive Lords Chancellor—the noble and learned Lords, Lord Irvine and Lord Falconer, and now Jack Straw—and a number of junior Ministers, not least the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, that this work has been carried steadily forward over six years to bring us to where we are now, with a further step being taken in a significant improvement to our justice system. Many people have worked very hard to get us to this stage, not least Lord Justice Carnwath, the Senior President of Tribunals. I simply say that it is pleasing to see those efforts rewarded by what I hope will be the further step agreed by the House today.