My Lords, we have heard a brilliant speech. I associate myself very much with what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said about the absolute necessity for Ministers to be obliged to bear in mind all the time how far their policies and decisions are in line with the law. Like the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I was also a Minister for a long time. During that period, on more than one occasion, I was confronted in a very direct way with challenges to the decisions I had made, particularly about issues around comprehensive schools. What I learnt from that experience was, first, to be very careful and thoughtful about any proposals that my department made in my name. Secondly, I learnt to have great respect for the often painful occurrence of reviewing my decisions in great detail, no doubt to the displeasure of a number of local authorities who did not share my view.
I want to make two other quick points. First, our own great Conservative Party has always been deeply suspicious of statism, unlike many right-wing parties in Europe and elsewhere, and has always had a commitment to the idea that the Government might be wrong and that they should be subject to the rule of law like all other citizens and parties in society. I find it, therefore, all the more puzzling that a party with that record and reputation can put forward this extraordinary Bill. I am here, not having taken part in the earlier stages—I had no intention of taking part—only because, when I read in detail both the Bill and the amendments, I became very troubled indeed.
The second crucial point is that the Conservative Party has always been centrally loyal to the concept of its patriotism to the British tradition and British values. As my noble friend Lord Marks, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, have all said, at the very heart of the best of British values is the concept of accepting the rule of law. It is worth saying that almost no other country in the world—certainly no court, such as the European Court of Human Rights, which is nothing to do with the European Union, as may not be realised; it is to do with the Council of Europe—allows an individual, someone with no standing, no resources and no money to challenge the might of the state itself.
I am very troubled by some of the clauses, which will make it difficult for that same humble individual citizen to stand up to the state because he or she lacks the resources to do so or the ability to pay for brilliant lawyers. That is exactly the opposite of what we thought—what I have always deeply believed—that judicial review was all about. Whatever the process may be called, the truth of the matter is that the public broadly, to put it bluntly, trust the judiciary rather more than Governments, who come and go. Our judiciary has undoubtedly formed itself a substantial reputation.
The noble Lord, Lord Deben, rightly referred to the judicial system in the United States. Many Members of this House will be aware that over the past five or six years, there has been an absolutely steady uniformity of verdicts—five to four, five to four, five to four—on one issue after another, because, like it or not, the judiciary in the United States is politically chosen. That is why you cannot treat it in the fullest sense as independent; it is heavily dependent on who was President at the time that a particular judge was appointed.
Let us take pride in what we have been and what we are: one of the few countries in the world where an individual is treated as having the full right to challenge the Government and other forms of the Executive. Let us recognise that that has been treated in much of the rest of the world—not least on the continent of Europe —as one of the outstanding claims for the United Kingdom to be treated as an exceptional country, one that, ever since the days of Winston Churchill and the Council of Europe, has been persistently followed. It has had a huge influence on, for example, eastern and central Europe who follow us in that concept of the rule of law.
I conclude by saying that it would be an act of absolute tragedy if we were to allow a law to go through that begins to put in doubt that reputation.
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