Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I rise possibly as an elder, owing to my advanced age; but perhaps not. I would like to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. As he said, there is almost nothing left to say about these prisoners. It is an injustice. I hope that the Government are considering accepting some of these amendments. We cannot say that we have a justice system if we have an innate injustice like this.

I support the tributes to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, but also to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, with whom I have almost nothing in common; we have a very tetchy relationship but, on this, I think he is being superlative in working for the rights of IPP prisoners.

As Greens, we believe that prison is overused as a tool of justice. Far too many people are imprisoned when there are much more effective ways of rehabilitation or stopping reoffending. I can understand the anger of people who say that we should lock up serial rapists and murderers and throw away the key. I do understand that anger; but, in this instance, we have, for example, a 17 year-old who steals a bike, or people who grab other people’s mobile phones. This is clearly an injustice; I find it difficult to believe that anybody listening to this would not agree.

The lawyer and campaigner Peter Stefanovic put out an online video about this. It has had 14 million views. A petition to force the Government to debate this again got easily 10,000 signatures. There is massive public support for sorting out this issue. I know that the Government care very much about the will of the British public. The word that came through for me in some of the responses to the video was “cruel”. The sentencing and continued imprisonment of IPP prisoners has just been cruel. Please, let us see some progress on this Bill, then we can all take the Ministers out for a cup of tea.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, for moving his amendment. I have tabled Amendment 156; it may be convenient to speak to it now. Before doing so, I have some general points to make about the whole issue of IPP, which I will not repeat in detail later.

I am grateful for all the work that my noble friend Lord Moylan has done along with the Prison Reform Trust and UNGRIPP. In 2017, as a result of a debate initiated by the late noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood—I am grateful for the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti —I decided to take a very close look at our penal system. I soon found that I needed to widen my interest to the whole of the criminal justice system because there is so much is wrong with it. One obvious example is joint enterprise murder, but that is for another day.

Let no one think that I am some sort of soft, bleeding heart, out-of-touch do-gooder. I am not. I believe in firm discipline, with all that that implies. But—I repeat, but—no more disciplinary sanctions should be applied, including incarceration, than are needed to have the desired, legitimate effects of protecting the public by incapacitation, and providing retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation. The current IPP regime clearly fails this test on all counts. I will not rehearse the heart-rending histories that we have all heard about. They are not in dispute.

I also accept that some prisoners on an IPP sentence may not be releasable any time soon even under a resentencing scheme. However, keeping prisoners incarcerated unnecessarily costs £44,000 per annum per prisoner and wastes resources. We know we have a terrible prison system because the Chief Inspector of Prisons tell us that is so. In his 2023 report, he said that inspectors have run out of superlatives to describe how poor the purposeful activity component of prison life is, or words to that effect. No wonder IPP prisoners find it so hard to demonstrate any progress with rehabilitation.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Lords Hansard - part two & Report stage
Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

When this Government want to bring in some quite nasty legislation, they can move very fast. I do not see why they could not bring in some rather nice legislation very fast as well.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

Surely the Minister could introduce at Third Reading an order-making power that would last indefinitely.

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, notwithstanding the fact that we are in the season of Advent, approaching Christmas, I am not prepared to argue on the basis of what is naughty and what is nice, or what is nasty and what is nice.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Lords Hansard - part two & Report stage
Monday 13th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Was that objection to what I am saying or support? I could not work it out. We should be aiming for zero road deaths. They just should not happen. The roads and pavement should be safe spaces. We achieve that by making sure that drivers—and pedestrians as well, of course—obey the law. Legislation must comprehend just how damaging bad and careless driving are.

Finally, Amendments 65 and 66A would require a total review of road traffic offences and penalties. That really is the only sensible way forward, and the only way for society to properly address the damage caused by car culture and start the journey towards zero road deaths. I look forward very much to hearing the details of the review and hope that it happens soon.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I most sincerely apologise to the House for not being present at the start of this debate. I strongly support the thrust of the amendment about bridge-bashing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. One day the holes in the cheese will line up and there will be a very serious accident, and the whole world will ask why we did not use technology to avoid such accidents. I strongly support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about “exceptional hardship”; I would not actually vote against the Government on it, but I strongly support it.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Monday 8th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to oppose Amendment 157 and speak to Amendment 164 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe. I am currently drinking only small amounts of alcohol, so I have no personal interest in this matter.

I have listened carefully to the arguments in support of Amendment 157, but I still do not believe it will have the effect desired. I think that all noble Lords in the Committee will agree that any consumption of alcohol will lead to a deterioration in driving standards and increase the risk of an accident. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked where the current limit comes from. The Grand Rapids study of 1964 showed that the risk of having an accident rapidly increased at a blood alcohol concentration—BAC—of 80 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood or the equivalent. That is why our current limit is set at that level, and I think that is the correct level.

My understanding is that compliant drivers feel uncomfortable driving with a BAC of more than 30 milligrams. My feeling is that the majority of drivers adhere strictly to a limit of 50 milligrams in any case, and when they are caught driving at more than 80 milligrams, it is often a stupid, but criminal, mistake which can arise for a variety of reasons which I will not weary the Committee with. The evidence for this contention is that when the 50-milligram limit was introduced in Scotland, the initial compliance improved by only 12% and I suggest that when a contravention occurred and was detected, it was often the kind of “mistake” I referred to. In this country, we rightly have severe penalties for exceeding the current limit; it is also socially unacceptable. Other countries, as observed by noble Lords, have a limit of 50, but without the severe penalties, at that BAC, that we have.

After the Scottish Government lowered their BAC limit, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and I were very keen to see the data, but, I suspect, for slightly different reasons. I was worried that I might be wrong. If that had turned out to be case, I would be supporting Amendment 157. The Scottish Government commissioned research to measure the effect of their changes to the BAC limit. The conclusions were that the change made no detectable difference to the accident rate in Scotland. I never expected it to, and I will explain why in a moment. The Committee will have been grateful for the frankness of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, when he touched on this point.

The proponents of Amendment 157 will have to explain to the Committee why they think the results in England and Wales would be any different from those in Scotland. According to 2019 DfT statistics, of a sample size of 243 dead drivers, 34% had a BAC of 10 or more, so had been drinking, 25% had a BAC of 51 or more, 23% of 81 or more, 22% of 101 or more, 16% of 151 or more, and 5% were at 200. What these figures show is that most non-compliant drivers are not just slightly over the limit, but far over the limit.

I have argued from the government Dispatch Box that there is a cohort of drivers who are unregulated drinkers. They are clinically dependent upon alcohol, they do not know how much they have been drinking, and they pay absolutely no attention whatever to the legal limits—thus, changing the limit will have no effect on them. The police do not find it very difficult to detect drunk drivers who have made the criminal mistake I have already referred to. They tend to overcompensate and drive too cautiously, and so give themselves away, and thus can be legally stopped by the police. Unfortunately, an unregulated driver is much more difficult to detect. They will drive fluidly for relatively short distances, and therefore with a lower chance of even being seen by the police, let alone being caught.

As proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, the only way of dealing with and detecting these very dangerous drivers who are unregulated drinkers is for the police to undertake operations where they stop every driver to check that they have not been drinking. I accept that the amendment might not be perfectly drafted, and that some civil rights precautions may have to be put in. However, not only would the police detect more of these very dangerous drivers but the deterrent effect would be considerable. Although it may be imperfect, Amendment 164 achieves this.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Road Danger Reduction Forum. I support both these amendments. It is absolutely ridiculous that we have such high alcohol limits, and we really ought to bring them down. We should say that no alcohol is permitted when you are driving—when you are in charge of a tonne of metal.

I want to make a small point, but it is something that road safety campaigners care very much about. We have heard the word “accident” used a lot. Road safety campaigners ask that we do not use the word “accident”, because that presupposes that it was accidental. It prejudges the situation, and that is clearly not right when something might come to court. They ask instead that we use the words “incident”, “collision” or even “crash”, but not “accident”. There is also an argument for saying that we should not use the words “road safety”, because that is the solution to the problem; the problem itself is “road danger”. We have to get our head around these differences, because it changes the way we perceive such situations.

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[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the noble Baroness. My only complaint is that I do not think it is aggressive enough. I have driven for several decades. I have driven for hundreds of thousands of miles. Touch wood, I have never been prosecuted for a moving traffic offence. The penalty points system is a good system. If I picked up three points for speeding, or for some minor offence, I would be extremely careful not to reoffend. So I do not understand why, if people get a few points, they cannot take the lesson and be compliant. I strongly support the noble Baroness’s amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and actually agree with him for a change. The wording is not strong enough, so well done to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for putting this amendment forward.

As the noble Baroness said, at the moment, “exceptional hardship” is anything but exceptional. I cite the case of a person who was exempted from a ban because he said that he had to walk his dog and drive to the nearest park, which was a mile away. I find that absolutely extraordinary; it leads me to think that magistrates ought to get a bit more tuition.

Essentially, points on a licence and the threat of losing that licence are an important part of ensuring that people drive safely and take care of other road users. Around 8,800 people are still driving despite having 12 or more points on their licence, and there is a whole industry of solicitors advising drivers on how to work the system in this way. It is very frustrating for the traffic police who care about enforcing the law and find themselves working hard to bring people to justice and get them convicted, only to see those people allowed to drive home after the case.

There are times when hardship may be truly exceptional, for example if an offender is the sole carer of a person with a disability who would suffer if the offender were unable to drive. Even then, it is a failure of the state if the only way a person with a disability can survive is by getting lifts from a person who is such a dangerous driver that they should not be allowed on the road.

Amendment 158 would ensure that “exceptional hardship” is a true exception rather than just a plea of convenience. Our current road traffic laws, as I started to say earlier, are based far too much on the convenience of drivers rather than justice and safety for other road users. This amendment would ensure that the very worst drivers on the roads do not have a convenient excuse to keep driving.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Monday 1st November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this is slightly more complex than one might have thought. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beith, for laying out the nonsensical way in which at the moment we exclude all the other categories. I do recognise the value of what the Government are trying to achieve in Clause 45: it is important that we stop predators from abusing positions of trust to prey on children and vulnerable people.

I also note, as no doubt the Minister will point us to, that this clause includes a Henry VIII power to add to or remove positions of power from the specified list. I normally loathe Henry VIII powers—I think they are extremely dangerous—but obviously I am weakening on this one.

It is also important not to cast the net of this offence too broadly or to define it too narrowly. I find it much more complex than when I first signed the amendment. There must be a level playing field, and a sports instructor should not be held to a higher standard or treated as a greater offender than, say, a dance tutor, because abuse of children is abuse and that is what we are trying to deal with here. I hope the Minister will work with your Lordships’ House to put together an amendment with which we are all happy.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, my task in this debate is easy: all I have to do is to support the noble Lord, Lord Beith, and say that I have rarely heard an amendment moved more comprehensively than he just did.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 29th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, I speak to my Amendment 19 and support the other amendments in the group. I am aware that Amendment 19 attempts to do exactly what Amendment 17 does but, obviously, in a much inferior way. I have added environmental protection, which is a valid objective when travelling to dangerous zones.

I also support Amendment 20 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. I declare an interest because I have daughter who is a journalist and am well aware that journalists perform the most incredible tasks when they go to dangerous areas. I have watched the situation in Syria—about which I know a little because I have worked there—which has been the most dangerous place in the world for journalists for some time. More than 100 have died there because they have tried to report on what Assad has been doing to his own people—atrocities such as gas attacks and so on. We have had a long discussion about what a journalist is and what journalism is, but it is important to remember that they fall into a category which is crucial for our understanding of what goes on—not only in Syria and war zones but in Britain, where journalists often expose wrongdoing of all sorts.

I tried to explain to the Minister about the absence of evidence. I have often been deterred from campaigning on a particular issue in a perfectly peaceful and legitimate way because I know that the policing is going to be over-heavy or for some other factor. There are times when people are deterred from doing the right thing because of legislation like this. In these debates I can offer the House a viewpoint from people who might be affected by it, who might find themselves on the wrong side of these laws. I note that other noble Lords have said that they might be on the wrong side of this law.

The Bill provides for a defence of reasonable excuse but gives nothing more than that. My concern is that too many prosecutions will take place, putting people through lengthy court processes before being acquitted by a jury. This concern is shared by the many humanitarian organisations and journalists who have contacted me regarding the Bill.

The Minister will undoubtedly tell me that these organisations have nothing to worry about—that a jury will find them innocent because they will have a reasonable excuse—but this would be to ignore the real, practical implications that the threat of prosecution has on an organisations. Humanitarian organisations already putting themselves and their people in grave danger will additionally risk being prosecuted for simply trying to help people in need. This risk will increase their insurance premiums or even make it impossible for them to get insurance at all.

Under such circumstances, people may not want to volunteer for these organisations if it risks making them personally liable to prosecution. There is also, of course, the cost of legal advice and representations—thousands of pounds which will have to be spent and will be lost even if they are found not guilty.

Personally, I feel that the Government should not put these innocent people at risk of prosecution. As with Amendments 17 and 19, putting these specific examples in the Bill will help to make it clear to prosecutors that these groups have specific, absolute defences and should not be charged. If the Government reject the amendments, I would ask why. They do nothing to undermine the Government’s intent but would allow humanitarian and environmental protection organisations to do their heroic work without fear of being persecuted and prosecuted when they return to safety in the UK.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, Amendment 20 in the group is in my name. The Committee has looked already at why journalism is vital so there is no need to repeat those arguments in detail. I accept that the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, may be a better solution than mine, which would create an explicit exemption for journalists travelling to or remaining in a designated area.

Since the new offence does not require a person to have any harmful intent, it risks capturing those who mean no harm at all and are acting in the public interest, even if the Government of the day do not think so. Journalists travelling to an area to cover events and inform the public are one obvious such group. Following our debate on the first amendment, I accept that I will have to go away and consider carefully what I mean by journalism and journalistic purposes, but the same problem arises with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson.

Ministers have stated that journalists are not the target of the offence and would qualify for the broad defence of reasonable excuse. I listened very carefully to what my noble friend Lord Howe said about that. However, the same problem that I described when speaking to my Amendment 6 arises, namely that journalists may be unjustly interfered with or arrested. It needs to be clear in the Bill that journalism is exempt. Amendments 21 and 22 would provide for prior authorisation from the Secretary of State. Although that may have its merits for certain sectors, it would be highly undesirable for press freedom as it would allow the Government to whitelist or blacklist journalists and could operate as a de facto licensing system which the press has, rightly, always resisted.

Although there are good reasons for an open-ended reasonable excuse defence, as my noble friend has outlined already, the amendment does not circumscribe it. Given the scope of the offence, the Bill should anticipate the most obvious scenarios where people will have good cause to travel to or remain in a designated country and provide certainty to those people. That is exactly what would be done by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson.

The combination of the lack of an intent requirement and the vagueness of the reasonable excuse defence means that whether an offence is committed becomes a matter of prosecutorial discretion entirely. That is undesirable for legal certainty and the rule of law. In practical terms it would delay, even deter, correspondents from travelling to an area where events are unfolding. Civilians suffering humanitarian catastrophes will not be able to tell their stories to the wider world and the British public will not be able to hear them and do whatever they can to help.

Ministers and other noble Lords may push back against my arguments by pointing out how hard it is to define “journalist” or arguing that terrorists might try to pass themselves off as journalists. I argue that where there is doubt over an individual claiming to be a journalist, the police, prosecutors and the courts can test their bona fides. Some people will wrongly claim the defence; that does not mean that it should not exist. The same argument applies to Amendment 17, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson.

Amendment 17 may well meet my concerns but I am slightly worried about its proposed new subsection (2)(d), which would provide an exemption for a “registered charity”. It might be worth considering restricting the exemption to either a UK registered charity or one that is accredited by the United Nations in some way, because I have been aware of some charities in an operational area being rather less than pure.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I was very pleased with the support, sympathetic noises and comments that I had from other Peers when I first tabled this bus safety amendment and I have brought it back at Third Reading, with thanks to the Minister for not disallowing it. The amendment was drafted with the assistance of the Campaign for Better Transport’s “Save our Buses” campaign and benefited from written evidence submitted to the Transport Committee by the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, or PACTS. It was largely rewritten by the campaigner Tom Kearney, who has been the victim of a bus crash.

The amendment seeks to do two things. First, it would help with confidential reporting, meaning that bus drivers would have access to a system that has long been happening on the railway and within the air industry. This is called the confidential incident reporting and analysis system, or CIRAS, and it means that bus drivers could report anything about faults or problems that they perceived with their vehicles or their routes.

Secondly, it would allow for the quarterly publication of bus casualty data. When we were on the London Assembly, the Greens persuaded Boris Johnson, when he was London Mayor, to improve operational safety performance monitoring and reporting of TfL’s bus routes by adopting this measure. As a result, confidential safety reporting has been in place in London since 4 January this year. TfL has also made its bus operators’ subscription to CIRAS a precondition for running a bus service contract. These safety practices have made London’s bus system, which is about 25% of the UK’s entire bus fleet, substantially more safety conscious. London also has access to casualty data reporting, which has been in operation for nearly three years, since January 2014. TfL publishes bus safety data every quarter, clearly identifying the bus operator involved, incident location, type of injury, sex and age of the injured party, general cause, mode of transport involved, and borough and month in which it happened.

The importance of confidential safety reporting is shown by the statistics now published by Transport for London. The latest statistics suggest that every TfL bus driver has a 0.2% chance per annum of killing someone; a 63% per annum chance of injuring someone; and a 0.016% chance of sending someone to hospital every single day. Given that safety incidents impose costs and cause delays, one would think that bus operators would be motivated to encourage such reporting by their employees. Surprisingly, even though London’s bus operators have franchises across the UK, only their London franchises are subscribed to CIRAS. While I support the idea of localism, it seems strange to me that London’s bus franchises should have a manifestly better operational safety reporting system than any other locality in the United Kingdom.

In the rail industry, 2015 marked the eighth year in a row with zero rail crash fatalities. This year of course we have had the Croydon tram fatalities. I do not know whether the Croydon tram was operating under CIRAS conditions; I would be interested to know whether it was, if the Minister knows and can tell us. We have acted for many years to prevent rail crashes and deaths, so I fail to understand why we so readily accept crashes, injuries, incidents and deaths on our roads.

As a result of the Minister’s previous comments, I have redrafted this amendment so that the section on confidential safety incident reporting conforms to existing rail standards and CIRAS’s name no longer appears, which would mean that it is not quite so time-limited as it might have been before. I hope that these tweaks will remove the barriers to the Government’s acceptance of this incredibly common-sense proposal. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot recall what position I took on the noble Baroness’s amendment in Committee, but I am not sure that it is one that we should accept. The reason is simply that air crashes and rail crashes are extremely complex events and it is not always clear what has caused an accident. The accidents that the noble Baroness refers to are road traffic accidents where, generally speaking, it is obvious what caused the accident. This is not an amendment that I would support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his generous reply. Obviously he did not go as far as I would have liked and I hope the House will allow me a little leeway in demolishing—or commenting on—some of the comments that have been made during this debate.

Earl Attlee: complexity. I have never driven a train or a bus but, as a train is taken along tracks with no steering wheel, it could be argued that a bus is more complex to drive and that there are more complex issues on roads. So that is quite a feeble argument.

Lord Snape, I did not quite follow what you were saying but I can assure you that, from an extra burden point of view—if you are talking about a financial burden, for example—if a company has a turnover of up to £1 million, it would cost it £300 to subscribe to the scheme. If its turnover is from £1 billion to £2 billion, it is £12,000. That is not onerous. You might argue that the data collection is onerous—but I would say, “No data, no measurement”. We cannot judge whether a company is safe if we do not have the data to look at. So this is money well spent.

Lord Horam, you talked about my interesting ideas—I think that was a criticism rather than a compliment—and you also called this heavy-handed. I can only say to you that this is tried and tested in London and it works for the majority of bus companies. You talked about London buses being so good, but they are so good partly because they subscribe to this scheme and bus drivers are allowed to comment on their vehicles and the problems they face. I thank the Peers who commented in a positive way and I shall come to the Minister’s comment in a moment.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has done a fabulous job in moving her amendment and has had success in her reply from the Minister—but will she undertake to study the Companion on the use of the word “you”?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

I do apologise. I have no idea about that. Perhaps you would like to give me a seminar afterwards.

The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, questioned whether or not he was consistent between my bringing the amendment last time and now, I can assure the noble Lord that he was completely consistent. He did not like it then and he does not like it now.

I thank the Minister for the productive meeting and it was good to hear that he was sympathetic to the issues. This is a relatively minor change. Other people have called it heavy-handed but it is a minor change. It saves lives. I cannot think of a higher, nobler cause than saving lives—especially those of the people we purport to govern. We are saving lives and preventing injuries and devastation to families—and the numbers we are talking about are not inconsequential. This is a relatively light touch for something that has such heavy consequences. I am of course disappointed that the Government have not snapped up the amendment but I look forward to it being picked up later.

Its impact on society and on the taxpayer is much heavier than we realise. Every crash has a cost—whether it is in delays to business, to the service or to commuters—that we do not assess. When we talk about the cost to industry, we should also think about the cost to the life of the towns, cities and roads where it happens.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for bringing this amendment. I have long form on this one. I first chaired an EU sub-committee in 2001 that recommended we should fall in line with what was happening in Europe and go down to 50. I moved a Private Member’s Bill—this year or last year, I forget—that ended up going through Committee stage and everything. It cleared the Lords so your Lordships, I hope, have not changed your minds and are still in favour of this—as on the previous occasion when an amendment was tabled. However, there was no shift from the Government.

The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, raised a very interesting point about how we come here with evidence and everybody seeks the change, yet the change does not take place and the deaths continue. She mentioned that there has been a plateau in the number of deaths. There was a decline from 2000 to 2010 but there has been little shift, other than last year when it went marginally up. When I concluded my last contribution on this I forecast—I cannot remember the number—the number of deaths that would take place over 2015, 2016 and 2017. In fact, I think I probably underforecast because of the rise last year.

The simple reason for that is that the Government do not have any initiatives of any importance that are going to change the course of events. It is bits and tiny pieces here and there when we should be looking at the policy that has been proven to work in Scotland. We ended up with the Minister last time saying he would have conversations in Scotland. The Minister for Transport at the other end also said that he would have conversations in Scotland and look at the evidence there, but I have had no further reports from the people I know on the outturn of those conversations and I do not even know if they have been held.

Perhaps the Minister will be kind enough to advise us on what is coming out of Scotland. The initial evidence there was certainly compelling enough to indicate that the change was working and that it had effected a cultural change—people were not even driving the following day. One of the problems you get with drink-driving is that people still drive the following morning when they are intoxicated. That had changed in Scotland to a fair extent. I hope it is being maintained.

I hope the Government are taking this seriously and that at some stage we are going to get a lower limit—even Malta, the last remaining European country with a higher limit, is committed to fall in line down to 50; we alone remain. Ireland has changed. Northern Ireland is changing. Wales wants to change. Yet England alone holds out, wanting to be convinced. The evidence of the deaths is there and it is time we did something about it.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Committee will permit me to speak even though I did not hear the start of my noble friend’s speech—for which I sincerely apologise to the Committee.

I am disappointed that some time ago I tabled a Written Question, to be answered by my noble friend Lord Ahmad for the Department for Transport, asking when we expected to get useful statistics from the experience of Scotland. Although noble Lords have pointed to positive changes in compliance in Scotland, we really need to see from Scotland figures relating to the number of drivers who are far in excess of the legal limit. The statistics for England are very interesting—I found them compelling when I had to answer on this issue at the Dispatch Box. If the Minister cannot tell me now, perhaps she can write to the Committee, but I should like to know when we will get useful statistics from the Scottish experience. That will be very important in informing the Government’s decision on whether we should go to 50 or remain at 80. It is the persistent, unregulated drinkers who have very serious accidents—but without the statistics from Scotland I think we would be making a premature decision.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

What does the noble Earl mean by “serious accidents”? People are being killed and seriously injured by those who have had a drink. A lot of the time those accidents are caused by people who have had far too much to drink but sometimes they are caused by people who have had a small amount to drink—but their faculties and ability to drive are lessened. So it is not just a question of drinking a lot; it is a question of drinking at all.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness. Any alcohol whatever will to some extent cause a reduction in driving capability and increase the risk of having an accident. I am saying that we need to be careful and take advantage of a full range of statistics from the Scottish experience. I was disappointed with the Department for Transport because it could not tell me at what point it thought it would get useful statistics from Scotland.

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the arguments proposed by noble Lords are ones we have heard for many years. The arguments have not changed. Why, therefore, did the party opposite not lower the limit when they were in government? The reason is that it is a tricky issue.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, we are not talking about the past but about now. We have an opportunity to do something now: to save lives and prevent serious injuries. I do not understand this reluctance to face facts. As the noble Lord said—is he a friend?

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Earl Attlee

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Monday 24th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, despite the passion shown by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, I am afraid that I am still not convinced by the renewed arguments for removing this clause. No one denies that existing locally owned bus companies are by and large a success story—I said as much in Committee. They have a great track record of securing awards and a very high satisfaction rate among their passengers. I can see nothing in this Bill that would change that and I wish those municipal bus companies every success as they continue to deliver for their customers.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked: “What is wrong?” The only reason why a local authority would wish to set up its own bus company now would be to put it in prime position to win a franchise contract, a contract that its parent company, the local authority, was awarding. That would make something of a mockery of that franchise competition. Why would another bus operator go to all the expense, in both time and monetary terms, of submitting a bid for the franchise knowing that it was up against another company that was owned by the awarding authority? It would be a done deal from the start, so other operators in that area might as well shut up shop straightaway. I therefore disagree with the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that Clause 21 is not consistent with the objectives of the Bill. It is necessary to make the Bill work properly. Of course, a local authority company would also have to invest resources in submitting a bid, but those resources would come from the local authority, so the body awarding the franchise would have paid for its own company to bid. That does not seem right.

I have a final point which I believe is very important: there is nothing new in this clause. All it does is extend the bar on establishing a bus company to types of local authority that did not exist when the Transport Act 1985 was passed; for example, unitary authorities. The UK bus market has coped very well for the past 30 years without district councils being able to set up their own bus companies, so why the outcry now? I think that I have answered my own question: a combined authority or unitary authority, having secured the necessary powers, would want to establish its own bus company now only to gain a foothold in the franchise process and wipe out the competition. That is not an acceptable way of proceeding. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will vigorously resist the amendment and support Clause 21.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I rise to support the amendment and to rebut utterly what the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has just said. I think he has a rather narrow view of the sort of situation that can arise. I spoke only today to a Green Party councillor from Cannock Chase in Staffordshire who told me that several private bus companies have dropped their less profitable routes, so communities are now stranded. People who do not have cars have no option for travelling apart from begging lifts from neighbours who do.

[Earl Attlee]

Is it not open to local authorities to subsidise the route in question?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

Why not run them more efficiently in the first place? Public ownership can be very cost effective and much more so because it caters to the needs of the people that it represents. People are saying to councils, “This is what we want”, and private bus companies often do not give it to them.

Limiting the power of local authorities to help their communities, as the noble Earl suggests, is a very undemocratic thing to do—perhaps that is not surprising in an undemocratic House. Clause 21 spoils what is a laudable and well-intentioned Bill. I beg the Minister to ignore what he has heard from behind him and to listen to this side of the House. It is a case of representing people and giving them fuller lives, which private bus companies, because they are in it entirely for profit, just do not see. I beg the Minister to accept the amendment.