UK Parliament / Open data

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, has introduced this group of amendments with her customary fluency and passion, and she has been joined by other speakers who have made the case well. As has been pointed out, this measure risks damage to the UK's reputation for justice to those people who have suffered damage to their human rights caused by companies based in the United Kingdom. I am sure that none of us wishes to see that happen. We have support from all around the House, and we are grateful to those who have joined in on these amendments. The settled view of your Lordships' House is clearly that there is a real danger that, if this Bill goes through in its present form, the changes that it makes to the way in which international human rights cases are to operate, combined with the restricted damages that the Rome II regulations impose on the level of damages that can be awarded to claimants, will make it impossible for such cases to be mounted in the UK in future. As the House has heard, several very important independent charities have been lobbying hard on this issue. Several meetings have been held with the Minister and correspondence has been exchanged. We hoped that an accommodation could be reached, and we went to see him yesterday in the hope that that might be possible. He e-mailed us today to say that he could not accept our amendments. It is clear to me that while on the one hand the Government do not want to be responsible for preventing these cases continuing in future, they have not so far been convinced that it is highly probable that they will occur in future. Why is that? The arithmetic, as has been said, is very clear. We seem to be in a situation where the department's overriding concern that the architecture of the Bill should be retained is working here against good legislation. What other arguments can there possibly be? We have heard from those directly involved in these cases and we know what the figures are. It is clear that the facts outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, and my noble friend Lord Brennan that the Government are wrong. I hope that when the time comes the noble Baroness will test the opinion of the House, and we will be supporting her in the Lobby.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
736 c1311-2 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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