Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 49C, with which I also wish to speak to Amendments 50A, 51A and 54A, which are related to the other amendments in what I regard as a group. These amendments are designed to preserve some amendments inserted into the Bill by this House on an amendment of mine at Report—an amendment on which I had strong support from various parts of the House, including my noble and learned friends Lord Mackay and Lord Howe of Aberavon, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, who I am delighted to see in his place. My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay is manifestly not in his place, because I am. I do not want to read too much into that; he supported me before and I have not checked what his view would have been on this occasion, though I hope he would have continued to support me. The purpose of my amendments was not to frustrate the Government’s original intention to abolish the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, if that is what they continue to wish to do, but simply to give them scope for greater flexibility if they wanted to do something more creative, on reflection. Let me be quite explicit in respect of the Civil Justice Council, which is named in some of these amendments. I say this particularly to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. I had neither wish nor intention to damage the Civil Justice Council in any way, but I have long thought that there could be scope for some rationalisation between these bodies, and I am encouraged by the fact that the Master of the Rolls appeared to indicate that view in his remarks to the annual conference of the AJTC last week. I shall not rehearse the arguments, as I set them out pretty fully on Report and noble Lords are slightly past wanting to hear them. But I shall make 10 points. First, good administrative justice—a fair system accepted by citizens for resolving disputes between the citizen and the state—is part of the bedrock of a society like ours. The second is that the Ministry of Justice has a sort of responsibility in this area, but its main specific responsibility is simply for that part of it that is covered by the Tribunals Service, not by much other essential machinery. It is not responsible for local authority tribunals, including those very important ones, to many citizens, that deal with education, exclusion and appeal matters and other local authority issues. It has no policy responsibility for ombudsmen, who are a key part of this whole set-up, and it has no policy responsibility for decision making and complaints handling of individual government departments, which is another crucial factor in administrative justice. My next point is that the Council on Tribunals, now the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, is agreed to have played a major part over 50 years in improving a system of administrative justice that was bordering on a disgrace in the middle 1950s. There have been major improvements to which the council, under both titles, has contributed, not least the creation of the new Tribunals Service. I am not sure which point this is—I have 10 in all. My next point is that the creation of the wider remit of the reformed Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council was fully supported less than four years ago by every group in this House, including the then Conservative opposition Front Bench and the then Liberal Democrat Front Bench. So to an extent this is going back to something that was committed to very shortly before the election. There was no manifesto commitment to its abolition and no mandate that can be claimed for its abolition. My next point is that a key ingredient was the need for an independent voice for the interests and needs of the user of administrative justice systems. That cannot and would not be done by the Ministry of Justice—by people whose primary day-to-day accountability is to the Minister, not to the user or the stakeholder. My next point is regarding the Parliamentary Ombudsman, whom people may like or not, but the Ombudsman’s comments on the proposed abolition in relation to the consultation document is worth a guinea per minute and quite short. I am not going to read it all out, but one paragraph of it says that her extensive contact with the Ministry of Justice in its various guises over many years gives her no confidence whatever in the ability of the Ministry to assume the functions of the AJTC. She goes on to say that however well-meaning and diligent individual officials may be, the Ministry simply lacks the institutional history, capability and technical knowledge to do that. I say hear, hear to that. Then there is a devolution angle, which the Minister may not even have thought about. The Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council has a Scottish Committee and has always had one, based in Edinburgh. Since its reincarnation as the AJTC, it also has a Welsh Committee. Both these bodies are valued by the devolved Administrations. Nobody has made any decisions, but the Scottish Administration is looking at the possibility of creating a civil justice council, embracing the work of the Scottish Committee of the AJTC. Northern Ireland, which at present has nothing much at all in this field, is also looking at a model of that kind. From what I was told on Thursday, Wales, too, is looking at a council that would take on the work of the Welsh Committee. Would it not be ridiculous if, as a result of this, England—which started all this—became the only part of the United Kingdom without a body to provide what has been provided in England by the council and tribunals of the AJTC for more than 50 years in respect of oversight and a voice for administrative justice? I think it would be almost unbelievable. Finally, not everybody will know—I hope the Minister does, certainly his departmental colleague, Mr Djanogly, does—that the Public Administration Select Committee in another place is conducting an inquiry into this abolition proposal. Having attended the hearing yesterday, I make the following points. First, the Ministry, according to the Minister in the other place, Mr Djanogly, as I heard him, intends to take in all the AJTC staff alongside building some modest increase in its own previously non-existent capability even to offer policy advice in this area. I must say that casts huge doubt on the savings figures we have been given, and it was clear yesterday that nobody knows what those figures are. Secondly, it appears to be accepted by everyone that the MoJ cannot replace much of the work that the AJTC does, especially on the user front and in creating effective stakeholder relationships on a wide scale, as represented by the conference that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, attended and spoke at with great distinction last week. I do not believe the MoJ can do that. I do not know what the report will say, of course, because it has not yet been written, but from what I heard yesterday, I think it is highly likely that the Public Administration Select Committee will say that the Government need to look again at this. If they do, that means that an important committee in another place will in effect be saying that another place itself needs the opportunity for further reflection on this proposal. I suggest that your Lordships should give it that opportunity and I intend, subject only to the miracle of the Minister saying something that I do not expect him to say, to seek the opinion of the House.