Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I am the 24th speaker in the batting order, so it is hardly surprising that some of the points one wishes to make have already been enunciated. Your Lordships may be pleased to hear that I want to be relatively brief and, by taking less than eight minutes, possibly return some of the time that one or two errant noble Lords have taken. One of the main topics to which I wanted to speak was the failure to deal with the law on murder, following the noble Lords, Lord Kingsland and Lord Thomas of Gresford, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. I also deplore the inadequate and almost laughable manner in which provocation has been dealt with. I supported the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, some 11 months ago on his free speech clause, and I support his view now. The provision is in Section 29JA of the Public Order Act 1986 and in my view it should remain there. I will just say something about the manner of seeking to repeal it. On assisted suicide, I approve of the new crime clearly created by the Bill, but I cannot see how it would be right simultaneously to legalise the planning of a trip to Switzerland for a would-be suicide. They are diametrically opposed and we reduce Parliament to a laughing stock, if that is not an extravagant phrase to use at the moment, by having conflicting provisions in the legislation. My final point would have been on the secret inquests provision. I had strong views in hostility to any such proposal and I asked myself when the Government first decided that there was a lack of parliamentary support for those provisions. I have been reading about a lack of it for many weeks now. One suddenly has thrust upon one on Friday the new Section 2 and the procedure under the Inquiries Act 2005, which raises a host of new issues. I want to concentrate for a couple of minutes—three minutes of your Lordships’ time—on what the Bill has thrown up in relation to the manner of legislating. That is a theme that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, first ventilated and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, had wise things to say on that theme. The following points seem to be illustrated: first, we have a repeal of a controversial provision adopted about 11 months ago. Whether it is technically unconstitutional to set about repeating it, there seems to be no new evidence of any relevance whatever in relation to it; what seems to matter is just how we feel about the section and then there are attempts to review what was said in Parliament, keeping the door open and so on, which I have found unconvincing and unsatisfactory to set about that instantaneous repeal. Secondly, I address the mixture in one Bill of so many different and conflicting topics, which are incompatible and make it hard to deal with on Second Reading. I do not know what we will do when we get to Committee—it will have to be long. A Bill like this that makes proposals covering large areas of human conduct, from murder to suicide and many other topics, could do with prior consideration by a Joint Committee of both Houses. I served once on such a committee. They are excellent, because they can marshal the evidence relevant to the various provisions. It would have to have to have been given a decent lease of time to make a report. But the most serious issue, which affects not just this Bill but two or three others of which I am conscious, is that we are supposed to be a reviewing Chamber. We are supposed to be reviewing something that has been considered properly in another place. There have now been many occasions—I cannot purport a list and have not done the research necessary for one. I recall from the top of my mind the then Legal Services Bill, where a large block of sections were brought into the Bill in your Lordships’ House which had not been considered in the other House at all. It has happened to some extent in the political parties and funding Bill that has just been considered in Grand Committee in the Moses Room, again under the noble Lord, Lord Bach. Here we are having to consider provisions that have not been properly dealt with. We have thrust upon us suddenly as from Friday a new statute to look at—the Inquiries Act 2005. As I said, the most important point in all this is that the Lords is not truly a reviewing Chamber, because it is asked to undertake the initial task of looking at the legislation. That is wrong: on some other occasion we need to look at it and see where things have got to in the relationship between the two Houses.