Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Bach, would find it considerably better if they passed fewer Bills, took more time over them and tried to get them right. I will offer some advice to the noble Lord. Many years ago, in the long distant past when I was a Minister in the Department for Social Security, we used to push through an all-singing and dancing social security Bill every year. Politically it was very difficult—legislatively it was equally bad. It did not allow Parliament time to scrutinise these Bills adequately and after a while we found it a great advantage to break these things up and have a number of discrete Bills. That allowed both Houses more time to spend on the process and also allowed them to get it right. It was good for Parliament, it was good for legislation and it was good for the statute book. No one can say that something like this is good for the statute book, particularly when it is the fourth, fifth or sixth—I cannot remember which—criminal justice Bill we have seen in the past four, five or six years. The first question I would like to put to the Minister is how many Bills have there been. Just to get things in perspective, will he remind us how many parts of all of those Bills have never even brought into effect? Here we are labouring away on legislation and half of these Bills, or large hunks of them, are not brought into effect. I would be grateful if the Minister would take advice on that and offer us some help. If the Minister wants a sign of the size of this Bill and the number of subjects it covers, it was brought home to us very firmly by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford; at about the 16 or 17 minutes into his speech he reminded the House that he had not even got beyond Part 2. There were Parts 3 to 9 still to go. He quite rightly left many of those to his noble friends. I will stick to the process of the Bill and would like to make a few points, starting with Part 1 on coroners. Despite the fact that the Minister made his opening speech very well, I will give the figures to underline the weakness of this Falconer method, if we can call it that, of legislative steamrollers. The noble Lord devoted four minutes to Part 1; Part 2 got another four minutes but large parts of Part 2, such as infanticide, were never mentioned. Similarly, I do not think we had anything on child pornography and images of children. Part 3 got two minutes. Part 4 on sentencing got three minutes, I think. Part 5 I do not think was mentioned at all, and neither was Part 6 on legal aid. Criminal memoirs had a minute. We had two minutes on Part 8 on data protection, and again nothing on Part 9. I mention this to remind the Minister that we will have to spend quite a considerable time on the various parts of this Bill as it goes through. He might find—or the business managers might—that they have to look quite hard at what gets squeezed out as the Bill goes through the House. As my noble friend made clear, we broadly support what the Government are doing on Part 1 covering coroners, particularly after we received the letter on Friday that was to ensure that we had seen it in good time for Second Reading—I did not get my copy until Monday—and now that we have heard that Clauses 11 and 12 are to be removed by the Government. Again, to stress how the whole process has gone wrong, it is worth reminding the House, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, did, what has happened in the past. Some very similar provisions to Clauses 11 and 12 were introduced without consultation in the Counter-Terrorism Bill and then, after it had gone through another place, they were withdrawn by the Government. Now, a year or so later, they are brought into this Bill, again by the Government and, again, there has been no consultation. Vast amounts of time have been wasted in another place—it could have debated other clauses, but due to its procedures it did not even manage to do that—because the Government were not prepared to consult on this issue in advance. They insisted on going through with it and then they withdrew it. No doubt the noble Lord will tell us that the Government are a listening Government and that they listened to what we all said, which is why they responded. This is a pretty chaotic way of legislating. If the noble Lord had consulted properly, we might have been in a better position with this Bill. There might not have been the necessity for the Government to withdraw Clauses 11 and 12—quite rightly, we believe—at this late stage after they had been debated to such a considerable extent. Why they withdrew them, I do not know, particularly as they will probably bring them back in another Bill in due course. Perhaps the noble Lord could advise us on whether there were concerns about the timing of the Bill—or was it just because the Government noticed the number of speakers who had put their names down on Friday when the letter came out? Part 2 deals with murder, infanticide, suicide and partial defence to murder. As has been made clear by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, my noble friend Lord Kingsland and many others, this should be part of a much wider reform of the whole offence of murder. Again, the Government should take note of the desirability of consultation on these matters. The House should be reminded of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, said when he commented on the Law Commission’s report on murder. He reminded us that the Government completely ignored the first 64 pages, I think it was, of that report, while admitting that the law was a mess. The noble and learned Lord suggested that the Government should take the whole of Part 2 away, think again and come forward with proper proposals, having taken proper note of what the Law Commission has to say. I do not know whether the Government will take note of what the noble and learned Lord has said or even what the Law Commission said in its report. But I will offer a little bet to the noble and learned Lord that at some stage during the course of this Bill, we will see either this section or another large section mysteriously and rapidly removed by the Government as they try to speed up its passage when they get into problems trying to get it through in good time, bearing in mind the vast range of subjects with which it deals. I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord would want to take up that bet, but if he does not, I will have it with the noble Lord, Lord Bach, instead. But I leave that to him. Part 2 further deals with suicide and assisted dying recommendations. A range of noble Lords remarked that this should be discussed discretely as a separate Bill—if I remember correctly, the Government suggested a Private Member’s Bill—and that is the correct approach. I would go further and agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. This is a matter on which the Government should take the lead. They should offer a Bill on which there should be a free vote, certainly on this side of the House, but also on all other sides of the House. The Government should provide the appropriate time to deal with a matter of this sort. We accept the necessity to include provisions about the images of children, to which my noble friend Lord Kingsland referred. But again we heard nothing from the noble Lord when he opened the Bill as to what these clauses will do. It would be right and proper for him to address that matter when he speaks at the end. I move on to Clause 61, "Hatred against persons on grounds of sexual orientation". This was the amendment moved in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill of last year by my noble friend Lord Waddington, an amendment that was discussed at some length in this House and then voted on on a free vote. My noble friend Lord Kingsland—and I think he got some agreement on this matter from the noble Lord, Lord Neill—suggested that it was unconstitutional, or, if not unconstitutional, jolly nearly unconstitutional, to overturn it sometimes only 11 months after it was passed. It might be that, it might not be that; I accept the advice of my noble friend. To me, it is just plain shoddy. That amendment went through this House, the Government agreed to it purely because they had worries about timing on the whole of that Bill, and they signed up to it. I think it behoves the Government therefore, to stick with that and I hope that the Government will accept that something that has been passed by this House and by another place—that has been agreed to—should stay in this Bill and I again await comments from the noble Lord in due course. I do not want to take up too much time on the next few sections that the noble Lord dealt with, such as Part 3 on criminal evidence, Part 4 on sentencing and the miscellaneous criminal justice provisions in Part 5, but I note everything that has been said. I move on to Part 7 dealing with criminal memoirs. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, welcomed it but thought that it had been sloppily drafted. It was the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, though, who probably got it right when he said he had considerable doubts as to whether it was needed at all. I have to say, and I shall put it to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, that this again is something we see repeatedly from the Government—what one might call legislative grandstanding. There are complaints that something is happening, so the Government feel that they must legislate, whether it is necessary or not. As the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, has told us, there are already adequate remedies in place. So we are doing something that the Government insist is necessary, but we advise is not necessary. Again, I suggest to the noble Lord that he properly takes the advice of his noble friend and quietly withdraws that section of the Bill. It might speed up its passage through this House. I could go on, but I will not, because at this stage all of us would be grateful to hear from the noble Lord the answers to a great many of the questions that have been put to him. I will end again with a plea. He suggested that when we were in government, we produced massive Bills. Well, we actually did learn and realised that smaller, more discrete Bills very often were a more effective way of legislating and produced better law. I do hope the Government can learn that in the short time they have left available to them.