My Lords, I speak on behalf of my noble friend Lady Lister, who had to go to catch her train because of the postponements, and also on my own behalf.
We wanted to raise a point on government Amendment 56, which, as the Minister said, requires guidance for the police on unauthorised encampments to be laid before Parliament. This is of course welcome, but my noble friend says that she wanted to return to the current draft guidance statement that the police, alongside other public bodies,
“should not gold-plate human rights and equalities legislation”
when considering welfare issues.
When she pressed the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on this in Committee and asked her what it meant—because, on the face of it, it appears to be an invitation to put human rights and equalities considerations to
one side—I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said that the phrase was “novel” to her and she wrote to my noble friend Lady Lister about it.
In her letter, she explained that this phrase had been used in government guidance on unauthorised encampments since March 2015. But, when my noble friend Lady Lister followed the link in the letter to this guidance, it turned out to be called:
“A summary of available powers”—
which we do not think quite amounts to statutory guidance, and therefore perhaps was not subject to consultation at the time. Certainly, members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights were not aware of it, because they wrote a very forceful letter to the Minister on 17 November in which they
“strongly advise that the Government reviews the language and tone of its draft guidance with respect to its human rights obligations. Human rights are a minimum standard, which apply to all people equally. We do not and cannot ‘gold-plate’ human rights.”
Likewise, the British Association of Social Workers has written:
“We do not accept that this”—
gold-plating—
“is reasonable guidance. The wording is of no assistance to social workers or other professionals.”
It sees it as a
“disturbing attempt to water down fundamental human rights in relation to Romani and Traveller people”.
In her letter, the Minister wrote of the
“necessary balancing of the interests and rights of both Travellers and settled residents”.
But we ask her—or the appropriate ministerial colleagues —to look again at this wording in the light of the JCHR’s and the British Association of Social Workers’ responses. It would appear that they were not consulted when the “gold-plating” phrase was originally used in 2015 and I ask now whether anyone was consulted.
Also, does the 2015 document constitute statutory guidance as such? If the answer is no in either case, that strengthens the case for reconsidering the use of the term. As the body established by Parliament to provide an oversight of human rights issues makes clear, human rights
“must not be side-lined or undermined for administrative convenience”.
Will the Minister therefore give an undertaking to look again at this, ask the relevant Minister to do so, and report back to us before the Bill completes its passage through this House?
8.30 pm
I would like to add that I do feel very uneasy about the use of the term “gold-plating” in statutory guidance about how to enforce law, especially human rights law. The term “gold-plating” does not exist in law and there are no provisions for discretion in the Human Rights Act. The purpose of guidance is to give clarity, and I am afraid that a loose term such as this, giving rise to harmful concepts about different tiers of compliance, undermines clarity. I ask again: what consultation was carried out on this draft guidance? I hope, as it is still a draft, that the Government can get rid of this legal illiteracy.