Assisted Suicide

Baroness Boothroyd Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boothroyd (CB)]

My Lords, the campaign to reform the law relating to assisted suicide is supported by people from all walks of life and is, I hope, approaching a humane and sensible conclusion. The current Act has become a blunt instrument. It adds cruelly to the suffering of people who want to die with dignity and makes a mockery of a key principle of English justice, which requires the punishment to reflect the crime as specified by statute.

As it is, we are in such a muddle that the Act’s failure to meet today’s circumstances has to be buttressed by guidelines laid down by the Director of Public Prosecutions for fear of it causing greater controversy. We have abrogated our responsibility as a sovereign Parliament to an employee of the Crown. We should not tolerate this farming out of Parliament’s duty any longer, however hard the Supreme Court tries to rectify matters. That is Parliament’s job and the current law should be repealed to make way for a better one. It was meant to be a deterrent when desperate people who tried and failed to take their own lives were themselves liable to long terms of imprisonment.

I was struck by a report at the weekend about the trauma following the assisted death of a man suffering from the degenerative disorder Huntington’s disease that was slowing killing him, as it had some of his relatives. Responding to his pleas, his mother helped him die painlessly. She was tried at the Old Bailey and paid costs of £20,000. Instead of going to prison for 14 years, she was given a year’s conditional discharge and praised for her courage. Even so, the judge warned that others charged with the same offence could not expect such leniency. That cannot be right.

Few people have the means to end their days in a Swiss clinic where suicides are a paying proposition. Of course there must be robust and foolproof safeguards in this country for those who are terminally ill and wish to die with dignity. This is a moral issue whose time has come and Parliament should resolve it. I commend the Bill of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, for the debate that is long overdue and I hope the Government will provide the time needed for thorough and detailed scrutiny.

Power of Attorney

Baroness Boothroyd Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boothroyd (CB)]

My Lords, this is the document to register power of attorney: it is 12 pages chock-full of questions, cautions and warnings. It is the most verbose document that I have had to deal with either for myself or for those I have represented in over 30 years in public life. Of course there must be safeguards in all this. A doctor has certified in this document that I am capable of making decisions—I have all my marbles. Why then do I have to name from two to five people to be told that I am registering power of attorney so that they can object to it? Why? Can this bundle of red tape and jargon not be withdrawn, consolidated in a new draft and put in the Library so that I and people such as the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, who said it all, and lots of other people who might want to see this—solicitors and what have you—can inject some common sense into it?

[Lord McNally]

The last thing that I said to my officials was, “You realise I’m going to be addressing an informed and vested audience?”. I will make sure that the Hansard of these exchanges is taken as part of the public consultation, which I emphasise ends on 26 November. The reason for the consultation is very much to do with the noble Baroness’s point: there were, and continue to be, complaints about how complex this matter is. We hope that the outcome of the consultation will be a much simpler process which people can use.

Defamation Bill

Baroness Boothroyd Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords—

[Baroness Boothroyd]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Boothroyd!

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

I am so sorry.

[Baroness Boothroyd]

Not at all. The noble Lord has the Floor.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords—

[Baroness Boothroyd]

My Lords—

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords, I was going to say “Mr Speaker”, but I will not. I do not intend to follow entirely all the points made by my noble friend Lord Lester, but I agree with him that this does not entirely give effect to the Leveson report, and nor could it, given the confines of the Defamation Bill. The amendments do not deal with the complaints process or, more to the point, the way in which any complaints process is periodically verified. On the other side, it does not set down a legal duty on the Government to protect the freedom of the press.

The questions are whether the amendment can be seen as a building block in implementing Leveson—a kind of stalking horse, although perhaps we have enough stalking horses flocking around just at this moment—and whether it deals with some of the evils or disadvantages, one in particular, that Lord Justice Leveson exposed. My noble friend Lord Lester obviously prefers the solution of his own Private Member’s Bill. I do not entirely disagree. I think it would be an excellent Bill. I just think that the chances of it being passed are practically zero, so I do not regard it as a realistic option. If we reject this proposal, I do not think that the Government are going suddenly to fall over and say, “Well, Lord Lester, you can go ahead now with your Private Member’s Bill and we will put all our effort behind it”. I just do not think that that is realistic. The answer is that this Bill gives many of the advantages that we want.

One of the long-standing complaints about dealings with the press is that a serious complaint to the editor fails, as it often does, and then the only option is legal action. But most of us would take the view that a libel would have to be absolutely fundamental to persuade us to take legal action. The outcome is far too uncertain and the cost is only too certain. That is why legal action is all too often seen as a remedy open only to the rich.

Lord Justice Leveson considered this question and set out quite clearly his view at paragraph 66 of the summary. He said that there was a “need for incentives” to persuade publishers to join the new procedure but that, in addition, there was a need for,

“the equally important imperative of providing an improved route to justice for individuals”.

That had led him,

“to recommend the provision of an arbitration service that is recognised and could be taken into account by the courts as an essential component of the system, not (as suggested by Lord Black) simply something that could be added at a later date”.

He said that it was “an essential component”. That is precisely what it is.

Also, the amendment clearly puts the intention into practice. I do not intend to go into all the detail of it, some of which can doubtless be improved, including by meeting some of the points about drafting made by my noble friend. We can come to those. The important thing is that the principle has been recognised, and the amendment gives us the opportunity to vote on this matter and serve notice on the Government that this is one of the areas where we want progress.

There are two other reasons in favour of the amendment. First, the Leveson report was published at the end of November. Since then, we have waited and waited for action, but, instead, some newspapers, sensing a weakness of intent, have continued to attack Leveson in the most lurid and extreme manner, and often quite inaccurately. Perhaps I may quote from this morning’s Sun editorial, commenting on the Chris Huhne case. It states:

“Those urging a Leveson law to muzzle the Press should reflect hard on yesterday’s … events”,

and adds, “No wonder” the Deputy Prime Minister,

“backs a law to silence newspapers”.

The Sun goes on to say that,

“in the post-Leveson climate, many at Westminster want papers stopped from investigating scandals like this”.

One wonders who these “many” people are. Frankly, I do not know of any people who want to muzzle the press and prevent the exposure of scandals. While I think it is the biggest nonsense to propose that that is the case, I also think that people want some redress when they are the victims of injustice. That is what the public actually want.

I very much hope that by passing the amendment, which would set up an arbitration service, as proposed by Leveson, it would at once establish the truth of Leveson—that it is to the benefit of the public, and as the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, has said, to the benefit of the press. Indeed, the amendment is quite obviously to the benefit of the press. In other words, it inserts truth for the kind of smears that we have been all too used to over the past months.

The second reason why I support the amendment is because the present way of dealing with the Leveson proposals is woefully inadequate. It has brought nothing forward, although everyone at the time said how urgent it was to make progress. The process itself is open to severe objection. In paragraph 84 of Leveson’s report, he says,

“The suggestions that I have made in the direction of greater transparency about meetings and contacts should be considered not just as a future project but as an immediate need, not least in relation to interactions relevant to any consideration of this Report”.

“Greater transparency” is not exactly how I would describe what has been happening over the past two and a half months since Leveson reported. We hear mutterings about a royal charter, but there has been no attempt whatever to engage the public or, for that matter, very many politicians in this discussion. Doubtless, a magic circle of them has been engaged, while the press itself shows an almost total lack of inquisitiveness about what is going on. It is such a contrast to what happens in almost every other area where the press is for ever trying to find out what is going on. In this case, it does not seem to be trying to find out what is going on at all.

I say simply to my own Front Bench that in the circumstances of this “news blackout”, with no assurance that the Government intend to act sensibly, I can see no objection whatever to this House suggesting to the Commons a sensible path that I think would have the support of the public. The amendment is good for the press. Above all, it is good for the public, and I support it.

[Baroness Boothroyd]

My Lords, I spoke in the debate on the Leveson report, so I shall certainly not weary the House this afternoon. Let me start by saying that I take no pleasure in what has befallen the newspaper industry in the past few years. I am sure that no one wants to see journalists facing criminal charges, but who among us is proud of the way in which newspapers are now perceived? I believe that the amendments before us would help the newspaper industry to re-establish itself as that trusted investigator it once was, bringing the news to the nation fearlessly and accurately and holding us all to account.

I said in my speech during the Leveson debate that many of the transgressions happened because of the culture of some newspapers whereby they grew to believe that they were untouchable. It is that culture that must be changed. It can be done with the establishment of a new complaints procedure for the public which, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, touched on, allows problems and issues with the press to be nipped in the bud at an early stage and dealt with.

We need a system that allows the citizen to raise their complaint in a low-cost and non-adversarial way. Newspapers must be required to meet and hear those with appropriate complaints against them. A robust arbitration service will, I am sure, help to change the culture of newspaper reporting and improve on the current mentality that everything and everyone is fair game for them.

This Government and all previous Governments over the past 60 years should have taken action and never did. Yet after seven royal commissions or parliamentary inquiries and the spending of a lot of public money, it will no longer suffice to be told that there will be an announcement “tomorrow”. It reminds me of the very famous line in “Gone with the Wind”: “Tomorrow is another day”. We have run out of tomorrows— tomorrow never comes.

It is today that we have to deal with, and it is today that your Lordships must take action. This House must step forward and help our leaders to take the action that they themselves have found difficult. Passing these amendments now does not prevent the Government improving on them should they choose to do so—as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, they are a sort of building block—but the amendments say quite clearly that time has run out and we must take action this very day. I hope that the House will support them.

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, for those of us who were involved in the Committee stage of the Defamation Bill, this is a surprising and exciting development on what might have been regarded as some of the more dry amendments that were then before the House. However, it is important—I declare an interest as a practising barrister with some experience of the law of defamation—that we bear in mind that this is an amendment to the Defamation Bill. It should not be thought that all claims by those who say they have been defamed result in full-scale trials. Thanks largely to the intervention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and the Civil Procedure Rules, and to initiatives by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, by way of protocols, much has been done to improve the way defamation actions are heard.

House of Lords: Reform

Baroness Boothroyd Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hooper]

My Lords, having been a Member of your Lordships' House for 26 years, I have had almost equal experience of the House when it consisted of mixed hereditary and life Peers as of the current composition of appointed life Peers with a small and select band of elected hereditaries. As far as I am concerned, the post-1999 House of Lords is no better, no more democratic and no more able to defeat the Government or ask the House of Commons to think again and does not have a greater breadth of expertise. It is certainly less independent, more partisan and more expensive. I therefore again wish to put on record my regret that the historic and traditional element of our ancient Parliament, which was represented by hereditary Peers, should have been lost apart from the small group who remain and continue to do sterling work. The brilliant speech by my noble friend Lord Elton earlier is a witness to that.

I welcome the proposals before us to the extent that they at least show that the Government are prepared to follow through on the so-called reform Act of 1999. For those of us who were here in 1997 and 1998 when the then Government spoke of their mandate from the public and how urgent and important their proposals were, there was an assumption that the Bill was but the first stage of reform and the dawn of a new era. In fact, all it amounted to was a Bill to abolish the right of hereditary Peers to sit in the House of Lords or, as the then Leader put it, to get rid of hereditary Peers.

I am a natural conservative, in that I do not like change for the sake of change. If changes have to be made, it has to be shown that they are changes for the better. The 1999 reform Act did not achieve that; a wholly appointed House is not an improvement, although I can understand that those who have become Members since 1999 are able to persuade themselves that it is now a much improved place. If I had a magic wand, I would use it to return to the pre-1999 position, and I only wish that the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, had been here in 1998, as I feel sure that she would have been a doughty champion of the status quo then as she is now. I join others in congratulating her—

[Baroness Boothroyd]

I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, but I am not in favour of the status quo. I am in favour of reform, but it must be incremental reform, as laid out in the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Steel. I want reform, but I want sound and good reform when it does come.

[Baroness Hooper]

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. I was about to congratulate her on the style and bravura of her speech yesterday. I must say that, if she supports the Steel Bill, in my opinion that is a long way in the direction of preserving the status quo. However, we are where we are—facing the current proposals.

There are so many ways in which the working of the House of Lords could be improved, and there have been many excellent and some very novel suggestions in the course of this debate. Like others, I have always believed that in considering further reforms we should be looking at the whole of Parliament—that is, at both Houses, also taking into account the powers and functions of the devolved Parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which considerably change the constitutional map.

I have also always believed that we should move towards a fully elected second Chamber, since I do not consider that the present wholly appointed House has democratic legitimacy. However, my idea of a fully elected second Chamber would be via the medium of indirect elections, based on a system of electoral colleges to ensure that the breadth of expertise, which most people agree already exists and must remain if the role of the second Chamber is to be mainly that of scrutinising and revising legislation, should be guaranteed. The electoral college system would allow doctors, lawyers, academics, the voluntary sector, the regions and other groups to be defined to elect their representatives for a period of time. It would be on much the same lines as the hereditary Peers do today so, far from wanting the hereditary Peers to wither away, as has been suggested would be the result of the Steel Bill, I want them to remain and to be reinforced because of the historic continuity that their presence gives to this House.

I cannot therefore find anything to recommend in the Government’s proposals for direct elections or the system that they suggest. Perhaps the only thing I can agree with in these proposals is the decision not to change the name of the House of Lords, at least not in the short term. It would indeed be ridiculous to have a House of Commons without a House of Lords. It is perfectly feasible to have Members of the House of Lords without having to create them all as Peers of the realm, which has indeed become something of a charade. Yet the idea of a senate has no appeal at all.

I started out by trying to find something to welcome in these government proposals. The more that I have listened to the debate and its many brilliant and constructive speeches, the more I recognise that they simply will not do. I hope that the Government will do the same and draw the same conclusion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

Is there anybody I have not insulted yet? Please form an orderly queue. In among the insults, there are some facts. One fact is that it was at times a bit like sitting in the North Korean Parliament. I have often wondered what that was like. Speaker after speaker even had to make the kind of praise that Kim Il-sung had every so often—in this case, it was of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd.

[Baroness Boothroyd]

I wonder whether the Deputy Leader would allow me to bring some semblance of order into this very interesting debate. Perhaps he would answer a serious question which I put yesterday. I am still waiting for an answer and I am sure that we would all be interested in it. In what way would the nation benefit and parliamentary proceedings be enhanced by the abolition of this House of experts and experience, and its replacement by a senate of paid politicians? I am sure that if we came back to answering questions which were being put in the debate, we would all be much happier.

[Lord McNally]

Of course we would. First, there are no proposals to abolish this House. Secondly, the difference between what I am putting before the House for debate and consideration is that this has gone before the electorate in manifestos, while what my noble friend Lord Steel is proposing is an escape hatch. It would mean that we would go to the electorate next time and say, “By the way, that elected House that we promised you is not going to be delivered. We have fixed it so that we are now going to have a wholly appointed House for as long as anybody can see”. I do not think that is a particularly democratic way and that is the difference between what you are proposing and what I am proposing.

[Baroness Boothroyd]

This Government have done so many U-turns, they could do another one.

[Lord McNally]

A most unusual intervention from a Cross-Bencher—you are lucky that we do not have a Speaker. I did at one stage support the Steel Bill. I wanted it because it was the best on offer after the Straw-Hunt proposals were put on ice. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, knows full well that she could have had the Steel Bill in its entirety in the previous Parliament and that we constantly promised her our votes for it. Yet again, we are dealing with things where the Labour Party, with 13 years to do something about them, did precisely nothing.

--- Later in debate ---

Tabled by

[Baroness Boothroyd]

That, notwithstanding the Government’s proposals for the House of Lords set out in Cm 8077, which amount to the abolition of the House of Lords, this House calls on Her Majesty’s Government to bring forward proposals for incremental urgent reforms that would improve the functioning of the existing House of Lords.

Motion not moved.