Transfer of Tribunal Functions Order 2008

My Lords, I hope that I can be brief; most of what needs to be said has been said. I thank the Minister for coming to this House, making the concession that we all sought and explaining it in some detail—he took some 14 minutes, on the longer side of speeches for such orders. However, we were all grateful for that because, first, they deserve a good explanation and, secondly, we were grateful for the degree of contrition that the Minister showed on the Government’s behalf for having got things right and, then, having listened to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, and all the others mentioned, coming to some sort of compromise. We are debating the Motion of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig. I shall concentrate on that and the PATs because the rest of the order is not so controversial. In that spirit, like the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester, I declare that I, too, served as a war pensions Minister from 1989 to 1993, under the then Secretary of State for Social Security, my noble friend Lord Newton. I therefore know a little about the PATs and how they worked. My first point is about the lack of consultation, and what I suspect is a lack of consultation within government. We all know that there was consultation, but the noble Lord, Lord Morris, has described how that consultation was possibly ignored. It took the later rows of this summer to sort things out. Back in my day as the war pensions Minister, when it was situated in the Department of Social Security—I imagine the same was true when the noble Lord, Lord Morris, was there—a body known as the Central Advisory Committee on War Pensions met under the chairmanship of the Minister at least twice a year and gave him advice in fairly robust terms on their concerns about the current issues within war pensions. The Minister would listen to all of those and, feeling rather bruised, would probably take them off to the Secretary of State to see how these matters could be sorted out. He knew that he would be back in front of that committee six months later and would have to report on how these matters were going. I ask the Minister what has happened to the central advisory committee. Has it been moved to the Ministry of Defence with the new Veterans’ Affairs Minister? If it has just been wound up, that is rather a retrograde step; I hope that that is not the case. However, if it has been moved, was it consulted on these matters? What did it have to say about that? I take it that the Veterans’ Affairs Minister was consulted, because his response is referred to. What was it asked and what did it say? I hope that the Minister will let us know about that in due course. Secondly, I underline and repeat the principal question of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley. What assurances can the Government give us that there will be no further changes to the new chamber that will cover war pensions, without the approval—preferably affirmative—of both Houses of Parliament? In answering that, will the Minister turn also to how pensions appeal tribunals have worked in the past, and tell us a little about burden of proof and standard of proof. The Minister will remember, possibly far better than I, that in the criminal court guilt must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Within the civil courts, guilt is found on a balance of probabilities. The Minister will remember that war pensions operate on a completely different and lower burden of proof. They just have to show that there is a reasonable doubt that a particular problem was caused by service; as I understand it, that has been the cases since 1919. Can the Government assure us further that that will be preserved, and that we will not see a change to the whole question of burden and standard of proof as applied to war pensions as a result of them moving in to this new set-up, even with the assurances we have been given? Thirdly, there is different treatment between Scotland, and then England and Wales. As the Minister will know, we see the different bodies being transferred to the first-tier appeal tribunal in Schedule 1. Some I have experience of, such as the Special Educational Needs Tribunal, originally set up by the Disability Discrimination Act and the Education Act 1996. On education, Scotland and England can go their separate ways to some extent, because education is a devolved matter. War pensions certainly are not. There is a possibility that in Scottish courts decisions on appeals from the old PATs will vary from appeal decisions in the English courts from the various tribunals here. It does not matter for education because it is a devolved matter, and 100 flowers can blossom—whatever the expression.