It is curious that a Government who did not think that they needed a Bill to dismantle criminal legal aid or to privatise the probation service should decide that they do need one to encourage courts to report wasted costs orders to the Bar Standards Board. It is also curious that a Lord Chancellor who is reluctant to debate the restriction of access to justice, or risks to public safety, can find plenty of parliamentary time in which to discuss age limits for jurors.
The Government have a curious sense of priorities; but the clue is in the phrase “find time”. We heard earlier that the Lord Chancellor was the only Cabinet Minister to volunteer to conjure up a Bill to fill the yawning void that is the last 15 months of the current Parliament—a carry-over Bill intended to mark time while the coalition parties manufacture disagreements to keep their own core voters happy. His reward—and I am pleased to see him in his place—was to miss the Cabinet’s day out in Aberdeen. There is no justice for the Justice Secretary.
However, I do not want to denigrate the Bill; I merely wish to set it in context. Although there are parts of it that we strongly oppose, much of it is unobjectionable, and some of it is even laudable. It makes sensible administrative changes, and introduces new offences that clarify or reinforce important parts of the law such as contempt, or address failings in the Government’s own legislation or practice. We are not going to find reasons to oppose such measures and, on balance, we will not oppose the Bill tonight, in the hope that improvements can be made before Third Reading.
I can do nothing but praise the quality of the debate today. We are fortunate to have heard from some of the most experienced and thoughtful Members on both sides, and I hope that the Minister will take on board their observations not only when he responds to the debate tonight but when he reviews the Bill in Committee. We have heard former Justice Ministers, including
the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) and the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), and from Select Committee Chairs including my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). We have also heard from eminent practitioners such as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) and the hon. Members for Dewsbury (Simon Reevell) and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill).
I hope, however, that none of those Members will be offended if I say that the most perceptive comments often came from those who show a lay interest in these matters. The hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) talked about exercising caution over the use of cautions and about education on the secure estate, and I agreed with much that my neighbour, the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), said in her tour d’horizon of the Bill. I was slightly confused, however, by the contributions of the hon. Members for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Shipley (Philip Davies). Both seemed to love the Bill, but one of them thought it was about restorative justice and reducing the prison population by 30,000 while the other thought it was about punishment and increasing the prison population by that number.