Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, will recall that these technical amendments mirror ones we tabled in Committee, but which I withdrew at the conclusion of the debate on 13 July. As I previously explained, Clause 103 extends to the Financial Services Authority and the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform the statutory powers in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 for prosecutors to confer immunity from prosecution in respect of defendants who co-operate in the investigation and prosecution of others. The 2005 Act also makes provision for defendants who turn Queen’s evidence to receive a reduction in their sentence in return for their co-operation. These amendments are necessary to reflect the machinery of government changes announced by the Prime Minister in June when the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform was replaced by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, asked why the clause did not adopt the usual approach of referring to the Secretary of State at large rather than single out a particular Secretary of State. In my letter to the noble Lord of 15 July, I explained that the reference to the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform was deliberate. The powers in the 2005 Act are significant and should not be made more widely available than is necessary. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, raised the fact that the power is given to the Secretary of State "acting personally". Perhaps I may stress that there is no intention that the Secretary of State will use these powers himself. Where a Secretary of State is ordinarily granted a power in legislation, unless otherwise specified, that power may be automatically exercised on his behalf by a large number of officials in his department. We want to ensure that these powers can be delegated only by the Secretary of State to no more than two appropriately senior prosecutors within the department. That is why we use the phrase "acting personally" in the clause. Clause 103(4) goes on to provide: ""In exercising the power to designate a prosecutor … the Secretary of State"," may designate only two people; namely, a chief prosecutor and a deputy prosecutor. There are, of course, other Secretaries of State whose departments prosecute criminal cases, but it is in respect only of those especially serious cases prosecuted by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, and by the Financial Services Authority, that we consider an extension of the statutory Queen’s evidence powers can presently be justified. To make that limitation clear we consider it necessary to put it in the Bill. I hope that this further explanation will satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Henley. I beg to move.