Assisted Dying Bill [HL]
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Brennan (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to support the amendment for the following reasons. Parliament should speak the truth in legislation. In so doing, whatever degree of sentiment we strongly hold for or against an issue, when it comes to the very content of a statute there is no room for emotion and definitely no place for euphemism. The right words should be used in their right meaning. An Assisted Dying Bill could easily be understood to refer to a palliative care Bill. An assisted suicide Bill tells the truth, and the Bill should say that on its face.
It is a legislative irony that in Switzerland, which gave rise to Dignitas, the legislation specifically refers to suicide. At present, the word “suicide” appears only once in this Bill, in Clause 6(2), and that occurs because of statutory necessity. For the Bill to pass, the medical participant must be given an exemption from prosecution under that Act, otherwise the law will be broken. In the Bill’s present content the word is used once to amend a previous law, but not again.
It is necessary to use the word “suicide” because, first, death is normally a passive process. Medical participation in producing another person’s death is an active process. It involves the person wishing it, the doctor being satisfied and thus able to certify that it is reasonable, a process for use of the drugs that are to be given, and then the prospect of statutory provision. All of that surely requires clarity of expression. Secondly, it is necessary to better inform both our debate and public debate. In a Gallup poll conducted in 2013, 70% of the participants agreed with the proposition to:
“End the patient’s life by some painless means”,
but only 51% were ready to agree to:
“Assist the patient to commit suicide”.
The more bland and emollient the language used, the more acceptable the proposition becomes. The clearer the language, the more we are in touch with reality, and the better the decision to be made.
The Committee benefits from Members such as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, with her clarity of thinking, accuracy of expression and modesty in presentation. I commend the amendment. Returning to my first point, there should be truth in legislation and, using her advice, we should pass this amendment because it is commensurate with the gravity of the issue with which we are dealing: life, or death, committed at the hands of a third party.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I want to make one brief point. I agree with the speakers who have contributed so far that we need clarity and truth. The issue here is the decision to be made. If someone wants to commit suicide, they are deciding whether or not they wish to die. This Bill is not about that at all. It is about people who are dying, and the only question for them is how they die and whether they can die with dignity. That is an entirely different question, and it is extremely important that the Bill is absolutely clear about that distinction.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I hate to cross swords with the noble Baroness, for whom I have enormous respect, but frankly she is wrong. This is about accelerating a death by wilful means, and there is no case for ambiguity here. The noble Lord, Lord Brennan, has made a powerful speech and I endorse all that he said. There is no case for ambiguity. We are talking about terminally ill people who have decided— often, I imagine, after long and careful thought and in consideration of their families—that they want to bring forward the termination. That is suicide, and they are going to be assisted. It would be in the interests not only of clarity but of honesty to make the Bill the “assisted suicide Bill”, because then we would know what we are talking about and people in the country would know what we are talking about. There is a powerful case for the Bill and a powerful case against it, but there is no case at all for fudging it.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
I am grateful to the noble Lord for that illustration, which is very clear and well known to all Members of the House. It is for that type of reason that I have proposed the removal of the word “reasonably” from Clause 2(1)(b) of the noble and learned Lord’s Bill.
A number of clinicians have tried to predict prognosis—for instance, whether to take the risk of a heart or lung transplant, and when to introduce palliative care in non-cancer services for the frail elderly. However, they have found that they just cannot determine time. Prognostication is reasonably accurate on the population level but, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, has just illustrated, it is not accurate at an individual level at all. It is no better than tossing a coin. Indeed, different studies have shown that a prognostication expecting someone to live for more than a year is not too awfully wrong. Similarly, expecting somebody to die within a month is more likely to be accurate than inaccurate. However, in the interval in between you honestly could toss a coin on it. It is for that reason that I suggested that, if the prognosis in the Bill really is to deal with those people who are distressed during their dying phase, the prognosis section should be shortened to six weeks.
There are other aspects to prognostication that I will point out to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. The national clinical director for end-of-life care told the commission that he chaired that predicting the course of a terminal illness is “fraught with difficulty”. In 2004 the RCGP made the same point to the Select Committee chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay:
“It is possible to give reasonably accurate prognoses of death within minutes, hours or a few days. When this stretches to months then the scope for error can extend into years”.
The Royal College of Physicians, giving similar evidence, said that,
“prognosticating may be better when somebody is within the last two or three weeks of their life … when they are six or eight months away from it, it is actually pretty desperately hopeless as an accurate factor”.
More recently, we have seen in the report from the inquiry into the Liverpool care pathway, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, how prognoses of death within 48 hours have sometimes turned out to be wrong. The report called for further research into improving the accuracy of prognosis within the last weeks to days of life.
Yet, in the face of all this evidence, we are being asked to consider legalising assisted suicide or assisted dying for people with a prognosis of six months. The only conceivable explanation is that that is what Oregon’s assisted suicide law says. However, Oregon’s law has been shown to be fallible in the matter of prognosis. Oregon’s own data show that the time from the first request to death by whatever cause, whether through physician-assisted suicide or natural causes, ranges from 15 to 1,009 days, which is two years and nine months. Washington’s data show that, among those being given a prescription for lethal drugs and therefore expected to die within six months, the range was three to 150 weeks. I note that, in every year of that legislation since it has been passed, patients have lived well beyond 24 weeks or six months. The percentage ranges from 5% to 20% of a request for death.
The plain fact is that prognosis of “terminally ill” is highly unreliable over a range of six months. The DS 1500 has been used as a way to allow patients to access benefits rapidly, without having to go through assessment hoops. However, as those who have filled them out know only too often, it is only a guesstimate. Very often, patients vastly outlive the prognosis. We have had to have difficult conversations about how they should now go through the complete assessments. I tabled a Question to ask whether the Department for Work and Pensions collected data on the DS 1500. Unfortunately, it does not. It would be interesting to know for how many months that benefit had been drawn.
The plain fact is that this is unreliable. As a practitioner in the field, I can count the number of terminally ill people whom I have treated. I have not tallied them up among the thousands that I have looked after, but I could bore this House for weeks with the number of clinical stories of people who were expected to die within six months and who stayed alive for much longer. Those are the reasons behind these amendments. I hope that those who are arguing sincerely that the Bill aims to try to improve the dying process in those last days and weeks of life will seriously consider that they are asking people to make a prediction on which there really is not a scientifically accurate basis.
Baroness Meacher
The noble Baroness placed a great deal of emphasis on accuracy. Those points completely fail to take account of the fact that we all have a great will to live. Just because the individual finally has control and some autonomy does not mean that they will rush out to try to take some pills. I feel that this is a completely misguided set of arguments. The most important thing about the Oregon law, which has been in place for 17 years and works extremely effectively, is precisely that some people live for three years. They do not take their lives; they live for three years until life becomes unbearable. It is only at that point that they take the pills or whatever it is. We have to be very careful not to be misled, albeit one can come back with arguments that most doctors exaggerate the length of time that they expect people to live. Even that is not the point.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
When we legislate we need to know that there is accuracy attached to the terms. If we are asking doctors to make a declaration or statement of prognosis, they must at least know that there is some scientific basis behind it. In making a decision, there are three fundamental issues; first, the person must have accurate information; secondly, they must have the mental capacity to make that decision; and, thirdly, it should be voluntary and free of coercion. If you make the decision to end your life because you believe that what lies ahead in the next weeks and months is so terrible but, in reality, you might have improved dramatically and lived for years if you had had the care you needed, then I would say that you are not being supplied with accurate information and that it is therefore not a valid decision.
Lord McColl of Dulwich
I have been trying to intervene for some time. I strongly support the amendment on terminal illness tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, but noble Lords will be pleased to know that most of what I was going to say has already been said so I will not repeat it. It was said very ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, for whom I have the greatest admiration and with whom I have worked for many years.
There is an aspect of the definition of terminal illness that I should like to deal with. Under the benefit rules, an attendance allowance or a personal independence payment can be made under special rules if somebody has a terminal illness. The definition is therefore important. My understanding is that, for the purposes of receiving one of those benefits under the special rules, someone is defined as being terminally ill if they have,
“a progressive disease and his death in consequence of that disease can reasonably be expected within 6 months”.
This definition is set out in Section 66 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992. Are we going to say that anyone who receives one of these benefits would be eligible for assisted suicide on the basis of their physical health? I raise this as a genuine question because the Personal Independence Payment Handbook, issued in August 2014, also states:
“Awards made under the special rules for terminal illness will be for 3 years”.
This seems to be rather at odds with the expectation that the person is reasonably expected to die within six months.
To get this benefit, individuals have to get a completed DS 1500 form from their doctor, as has been mentioned. In a forum discussion on the internet, many of the individuals who got the benefit as a result of this form were definitely of the view that they would be living for more than six months. I am concerned that in future they might be encouraged to consider assisted suicide because they would fall within the definition of the Bill. The form was also referred to in the House of Lords report on the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Joffe. I quote one doctor, who said:
“A simple bit of practical evidence is one of the benefit forms that are filled in for patients assigned to the doctor thinking that the patient has six months to live. I would not like to count how many of those forms I have signed in my life for patients still living after a year, eighteen months or even longer”.
Another doctor giving evidence to that committee about decisions on who had a terminal illness said that,
“doctors make arbitrary decisions about when a patient has reached a terminal stage. This can be when the patient is discharged from specialist care, when the patient moves from a curative state to a palliative state; some just use the position when what is known as the DS 1500 Form is actually prescribed, or some just use the point where patients have become bed-ridden or immobile”.
Surely we need something far more rigorous than someone being “reasonably expected” to die within six months when the consequence is that their life is actually ended. I fully support Amendment 20 of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, to remove the word “reasonably”.
Baroness Meacher
Perhaps I may pick up the point about a six-month prognosis. The point there is that one’s life is ended. The whole point of the Bill is that one’s life is not ended simply because one starts the process at the point when one receives the six-month prognosis. It is all about having autonomy and a sense of control over one’s own situation, so that when life becomes unbearable one can then take that control.
Lord McColl of Dulwich
I thank the noble Baroness for that clarification. I note that in August 2011, 13,400 individuals receiving attendance allowance in England and Wales were considered terminally ill under the benefits definition. That would be a substantial group of people who might reasonably be eligible to have their death hastened by assisted suicide. We need to be very clear what we are talking about in relation to a terminal illness and, at the moment, there is a lot of room for ambiguity. Ambiguity does not lead to safeguards.
Criminal Justice and Courts Bill
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Meacher
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 43A, which takes the place of Amendment 43 on the Marshalled List. The intention was to have withdrawn Amendments 45 and 46, so I shall not refer to those two amendments today.
I must apologise to the Minister and your Lordships for coming into this debate rather late in the day. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, who I was going to say is not in her place but who now is, is the person who has raised the concerns about Clause 19 at earlier stages and had a very helpful meeting with the Minister.
Clause 19 introduces a new offence of ill-treatment or wilful neglect by care workers, including doctors and nurses. A similar offence for care providers is introduced in Clause 20. I have less of a problem with an offence of ill-treatment—it seems to me that that is a proactive act which is a little bit clearer—but I have no doubt that an offence of wilful neglect of an individual would lead to criminal investigations of good clinicians simply because patients may believe that they should have had medications or treatments which were not appropriate at the time or may have been judged not appropriate by the relevant clinician.
Our amendments would raise the bar for such offences for individual doctors and nurses by introducing the requirement that the care worker commits an offence only if their activities amount to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed to the individual who is allegedly ill-treated or neglected. Of course, I understand the history behind Clause 19 and the fact that offences already exist for ill-treatment and wilful neglect of children in certain circumstances and of adults who lack capacity. I suggest that such situations are rather different from those of competent adults in, for example, an acute hospital or GP surgery. My concern is that we have lost sight of proportionality here, and the consequences will be disastrous, both for good, conscientious clinicians and for the NHS, with its impending £30 billion funding gap.
Of course, none of us can accept ill-treatment or wilful neglect of patients—and I will come back to that in a while. I wonder whether those in the Government who designed this new offence for individual clinicians have really appreciated the devastating effect on conscientious care workers if they find themselves under criminal investigation when it is clear that they have used their clinical judgment in good faith or done their very best with the resources available to them.
The Government have stated that the offences are intended to deal only with the most serious incidents—that has to be right. However, the offence is broadly drafted and the police will have an obligation to investigate cases of alleged neglect unless it is absolutely clear at the outset that there is no case to answer. Almost any decision could potentially be investigated for wilful neglect, even though, later, the vast majority and probably the whole lot would not go all the way to prosecution and a guilty verdict. The question of proportionality is therefore highly relevant.
Criminal investigations are incredibly disruptive, time-consuming and costly. The potential cost to the NHS of disproportionate criminal investigations is impossible to estimate accurately, but my main concern is the unwarranted distress and catastrophic nightmare that such investigations would cause for the conscientious worker—and the vast majority facing investigation probably would be conscientious workers. It is not acceptable for the Government to say that it would be up to prosecutors not to prosecute other than in serious cases. It would be far too late at that stage to prevent the damage. Doctors and nurses are likely to find themselves suspended during a criminal investigation—it is very different from a disciplinary investigation. Their self-respect, and professional and public respect, will be in ruins. Huge damage will have been done before the matter comes anywhere near prosecutors. Does the Minister agree that the problem with Clause 19 is the investigations rather than, later down the line, the prosecutions?
I am aware of the Government’s consultation in March this year on the proposed formulation of the new offence. They claim, and I do not doubt it, that the 130 responses indicated broad support for the proposals. On the face of it, they sound eminently reasonable—how could one disagree with them that we need to deal with these problems—but I question the clarity of the consultation documents on the consequences of Clause 19 and those investigations. I do not believe that the British people would support the cost, disruption to services, and devastation caused to good workers, doctors and nurses that criminal investigations would create under these provisions.
I understand that the appalling consequences for doctors in hospital settings have been debated at earlier stages of the Bill. I agree with others that Clause 19 will be entirely disproportionate in its consequences for those hospital staff. I will focus on GPs because they are incredibly vulnerable to malicious complaints.
As things stand, we know that GPs daily experience fear of complaints. We know, and the Minister knows, that GPs regularly have to see 60-plus patients in a day. Many of those patients will have relatively minor ailments, but in that list will undoubtedly be patients with life-threatening illnesses. This means 10 hours of stressful, direct patient contact. Any one of those patients may leave the surgery dissatisfied, rightly or wrongly, with the outcome of the consultation. The patient may want an antibiotic and the doctor may know that it is not the right thing. The issue then is whether the doctor really has the time to explain the whole business about why an antibiotic may not be a good idea. That is their vulnerability: if they had all the time in the day slowly to explain to patients, or to people with learning difficulties or language problems or whatever it is, there would be no problems, but doctors do not have that luxury, and GPs certainly do not. Any angry patient could regard this as wilful neglect. Of course, it is not, and ultimately there would not be a prosecution, but the investigation will nevertheless have to take place.
The point then is not about the prosecution. Does the Minister really believe it appropriate for the threat of a criminal investigation to hang over GPs, nurses and doctors every time they go to work? I could not cope with work if every day—and every 10 minutes—I was worried that I might face a criminal prosecution for the judgment I was making. I say it again: we will not tolerate ill treatment or wilful neglect of patients. The question is whether Clause 19 and criminal investigations are the best way of dealing with these issues.
Have the Government assessed the likely impact of this new offence on the willingness of doctors to become GPs and on their early retirement plans? In this country we already have a shortage of doctors willing to train as GPs. Large numbers of doctors—six in 10, we understand—are planning early retirement. What will happen to the supply of GPs if Clause 19 comes into effect? The BMA describes the situation already as having reached crisis point. GPs are moving abroad as the pressures in this country become more and more unpleasant.
Applicants for GP training are at their lowest level for five years. Advertisements for GP partners that we know five or 10 years ago would have had 30 responses now receive maybe none. Nobody wants to be a GP partner these days even in quite desirable areas—and I happen to know a few. At the same time the pressure to transfer more care into the community rises year on year. I appeal to the Minister to think again before Third Reading. The Minister can quote from the ambitious figures for the number of GP training places to be made available, but will there be any trainees to fill those places? There is also the expectation—I would say a wish—that the number of trainee doctors becoming GPs will increase from 40% to 50%. Well, I doubt it if this clause becomes law.
Amendments 42 and 43A seek to raise the threshold for a criminal investigation of a professional care worker. I read the Minister’s letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, but I have to confess that I was not persuaded by the arguments. As I said, none of us can condone ill treatment or wilful neglect of patients. I have repeated that again and again because that is not the point here. The point is how we deal with these things not whether we do so. The Government have strengthened the Care Quality Commission and I applaud them for doing that. The Care Quality Commission needs to be able to deal with these things effectively, and much better they be dealt with through the Care Quality Commission than in this way. I hope the Minister can assure us that further thought will be give to this damaging clause before Third Reading. I beg to move.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I apologise for coming in just after my noble friend Lady Meacher had started speaking, due to traffic congestion. I am most grateful to her for having put the amendment so clearly. I endorse the point that nobody, but nobody, thinks that wilful neglect is all right. It is not all right. It is not to be allowed to even happen let alone condoned. The problem is that the burden of proof on the individual and on the organisation that employs them has been set at different levels as the clauses are currently drafted. The requirement is to prove gross neglect for an organisation but that had not appeared in relation to the offence committed by the individual. The difficulty is proving intent.
I had a meeting with the Minister at which he spent a great deal of time—I am very grateful to him—and he replied fulsomely with a long letter following that conversation. I remain unconvinced that the Bill will not effectively result in healthcare professionals being hung out to dry—that was a phrase I used before and I use it again—by an organisation that does not support its clinical staff adequately when serious complaints come in. At the end of the day, it is not wilful neglect but it is interpreted and viewed by understandably distressed relatives as neglect of their relative who may have suffered serious harm within the system or become extremely ill because of the progress of the disease. Although the work conditions for the staff have made it extremely difficult for them to function well, they have not been guilty of wilful neglect.
I stress that I do not think this applies only to nurses and doctors. If a physiotherapist or an occupational therapist declines to comply with a request from a patient or their family, that could be interpreted by the family or patient as wilfully withholding something that they feel they need. There is then some unintended adverse incident further down the line that was not predicted and the complaint goes against that healthcare professional. No one should underestimate how damaging it is to a healthcare professional to have a complaint made against them, and how most extremely conscientious healthcare professionals can feel quite destroyed by a complaint. However, an accusation of wilful neglect that goes to the police would certainly destroy somebody’s professional reputation. Even if it proceeds no further, they will find it very difficult to shed the trauma of that experience of being referred to and investigated by the police.
I hope the Minister can clarify exactly how intent will be interpreted and implemented, and how it will be proven that an organisation has intent to neglect patients. I suggest that the organisation can prove that it did not directly intend to but, actually, if it is really badly managed and is not supporting its front-line workers, it is neglecting patients because it is not allowing its staff to do their duty properly. However, I can see that such an offence would be very difficult to stick anyway. Certainly, if the burden of proof is higher for the organisation than for the individual, as I said before, I foresee that people will be hung out to dry.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to the debate on these important new offences. I have listened carefully to all four speeches. If I may, I shall start with government Amendments 47, 48, 49 and 50. These are minor and technical amendments, which add additional types of excluded care provider to those already identified in Clause 21, for the purposes of the care provider ill treatment or wilful neglect offence in Clause 20.
The Clause 21 exclusion currently applies to local authorities when exercising their functions in respect of the provision of education and other children’s services and other organisations when exercising social work functions relating to children on behalf of a local authority. It has come to light that a small number of third-party providers might also exercise education or other children’s services functions on behalf of the local authority or instead of the local authority, following a formal direction from the Secretary of State, or, as the case may be, from Welsh Ministers. Clearly, it would be unfair for such provider organisations not to be excluded from the care provider offence to the same extent that the local authority would be if it were exercising the relevant functions itself. Amendments 47 and 48 therefore remove these organisations, to the extent that they are providing those services, from the meaning of a “care provider” for the purposes of Clause 20 in England and Wales.
Amendment 49 makes similar provision in relation to independent agencies that provide adoption support. Those providers that are run by local authorities will already be covered by the exclusion in Clause 21. However, as currently drafted, independent agencies with which a local authority has made arrangements for the provision of adoption support, will not. Amendment 49 corrects this small inconsistency. I hope that that is helpful to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. The organisations in question are “registered adoption societies” and “registered adoption support agencies”. Amendment 50 places definitions of these phrases in the Bill. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that it is important to make these changes, to ensure that there is consistency and equity in the application of the care provider offence across organisations. To answer the express question of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, who asked whether the exemptions included private adoption agencies, free schools and academies, the answer—as I hope she has gathered from my remarks—is yes.
Amendments 42 and 43A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, seek to achieve two particular purposes, and try to put the individual care worker offence on a par with the care provider offence. They restructure Clause 19(1) so that the care worker offence is dependent on there having been a gross breach of a duty of care owed by the care worker to the victim of the alleged ill treatment or wilful neglect. I understand the point that the amendments seek to make—that there should be some kind of a threshold in order for the offence to bite.
However, there are real problems with the noble Baroness’s approach. We have approached the issue in a different and, I suggest, a better way. The “wilful” element of neglect, and the intent to cause harm required for someone to be found guilty of ill treatment, means that the threshold for this offence as drafted in the Bill is very high and, by its very nature, captures only the worst types of behaviours. Our view is that should a care worker ill treat or wilfully neglect someone in their care, that would always represent a gross breach of a duty of care. It seems to us that a care worker who is being paid to provide healthcare or adult social care services will always owe a duty of care to the individual to whom those services were being provided. That ill treatment or wilful neglect of the individual, which would involve some form of deliberate act or omission, would amount to a gross breach of that duty.
Regretfully, accepting the noble Baroness’s amendments would cause significant unnecessary confusion and complexity and it would risk diverting attention away from the central issue of what has been done by that individual care worker in respect of a person in their care. It would be unhelpful to introduce the concept of a duty of care explicitly. Moreover, specifying that there must be a gross breach of the duty of care in effect raises the threshold before the offence could come into play. There would be a very real risk that behaviour which anyone would recognise as ill treatment or wilful neglect could go unpunished. Any ill treatment or wilful neglect is totally unacceptable, and the care worker offence is drafted very carefully to reflect that. The Government could not accept any amendments that might undermine that and make it harder in practice to prosecute an individual care worker. The approach that we have taken is simpler, clearer and more logical.
The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, expressed her fear that our proposals might lead to an avalanche of cases and to innocent professionals being “hung out to dry”, as it was put. To address that point, it is important to note that employees of a hospital or a care organisation are already subject to other statutory duties in relation to the care of patients, for example with regard to negligence and to health and safety. The offence that we are proposing would only bite if someone behaves in a way that meets the criteria of the offence—the very worst cases where their behaviour amounts to ill treatment or wilful neglect. We do not share the pessimistic view of the attitudes of health and social care staff that—
Baroness Meacher
Can the noble Earl explain what he means by “will not bite”? He seems to be saying that the doctor or nurse will not be found guilty if they have not indulged in a gross breach of duty, but does the noble Earl accept that these doctors and nurses could easily find themselves under criminal investigation even if they have acted utterly properly and with good faith? That is the issue, rather than the issue of where it bites.
Earl Howe
My Lords, this is Report stage so I shall be brief, but I am grateful to my noble friend for the point she has made. I understood from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that she was not proposing to speak to Amendments 45 and 46. Nevertheless, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, raised a point about the unevenness between the two offences. However, I agree with my noble friend Lady Barker. If we interfere with the wording as drafted in the Bill, we are in serious danger of doing the very opposite of what the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, seeks, which is to have the two offences broadly on a par with each other.
Baroness Meacher
I thank the Minister for his response. I do not believe that offences for GPs and other doctors involving competent adults are comparable with offences for front-line staff dealing with incapacitated adults or children. The noble Earl indicated that they are somehow comparable, and that because there has not been a swathe of complaints in relation to the earlier offences, we would not get them here. I think we would and that has not been fully dealt with. I recognise what the noble Earl has said—and certainly recognise what Paul Burstow has said—and do not have concerns about Clause 20 in particular, but there are concerns about this. We have not been able fully to deal with matters today and I hope that we can have a further discussion with the Minister before Third Reading. I understand the purpose of Third Reading but it is very difficult to feel that we can just leave this here when there are so many ends not tied up at this stage.
Baroness Meacher
I understand what the noble Earl is saying but we need to discuss how we take this forward and what we do at Third Reading. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Assisted Dying Bill [HL]
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I support the Bill of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and I will respond to a few of the concerns expressed by the Bill’s opponents. I am very saddened to find a number of people who I greatly respect on the other side of this argument.
Several Peers have told me that their main concern about the Bill was that it might change our attitude to death, but we must change that attitude and end the taboo which has prevented terminally ill people talking about their plight. People often go to their graves lonely and in fear and misery, feeling unable to talk to anyone about what they face.
Former Archbishop Desmond Tutu is surely right; he called for a mind shift in the right-to-die debate. That shift has, of course, happened in a very safe way in Oregon, the example followed closely by the Bill. We know that more than one-third of terminally ill people in Oregon have in fact talked about their forthcoming death. Many choose to discuss their options and have had their fears allayed and wishes met. The result is that only 752 people have finally taken the pills or whatever out of nearly 500,000 deaths since the introduction of the law 17 years ago. I must add that there has been no move to abolish the law—or indeed to extend it to other groups, a fear that many have mentioned. Everyone in Oregon benefits from knowing that they can end their suffering if it becomes unbearable. We all know that any suffering is more bearable if we can do something about it.
Our opponents say that they fear unscrupulous relatives. In Oregon, concern about being a burden to the family is not a significant factor in choosing an assisted suicide. The former chief executive of the Oregon Hospice Association, no less, told us that concerns about being a burden are commonly voiced by terminally ill people, whether or not they seek an assisted death—that is a common feeling when you are terminally ill. Our opponents need not fear abuse by relatives; the safeguards have been shown in Oregon to deal with this relatively small problem very well.
In their literature, our opponents have taken a quote from Keir Starmer, the former DPP, out of context to imply that he is content with the law as it stands. I spoke to Keir Starmer last week. This was not his meaning, but his guidance has resulted in the investigation of 84 cases of assisted dying. In every one, the relatives have been deeply compassionate and none has been prosecuted. I hope that the misleading quote from the former DPP will be removed from our opponents’ literature.
Our opponents have suggested that people who are depressed and may not have capacity have had an assisted death in Oregon. The former CEO of the Oregon Hospice Association, a convert to the Assisted Dying Act since it was introduced, made it clear that only those whose judgment is sound will have an assisted death. Many people with depressive feelings have those feelings because of their terminal illness, and their judgment is perfectly sound.
Lastly, a medical Peer said that, as a doctor, she could not face both ways. My noble friend does not need to. The guiding principles for every doctor in all their work are, of course, to follow the best interests of the patient and to respect a competent patient’s autonomy, wherever that takes them. These principles provide a clear direction of travel for any patient wanting help to end their intolerable suffering.
Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill [HL]
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Meacher (CB)
I rise to contribute briefly to this important debate and most particularly to applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for taking the initiative to raise awareness of the urgent need for reform of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. As she said, modern marriages are very different from those of the early 1970s, such as in the role of fathers in the family and often their very active involvement in childcare. Part-time and flexible working by both parents, increasingly common today, would have been inconceivable in the 1970s. The growth of nursery provision and after- school clubs for children of school age has enabled mothers to be far more involved in the workplace than in the past. All this has changed the financial relationship between couples.
There are couples who opt for a very traditional marriage where for perhaps 20 years the mother stays at home looking after the children and the father goes out to work. The law will have to take account of them.
One of the reasons why divorces are so detrimental to children is the long, drawn-out court battle that too often accompanies them. The judge-made law, largely based on big-money cases of little relevance to couples with limited resources, has created too much uncertainty and complexity, opening opportunities for barristers to fight over endless details on a wide range of issues, costing vast sums of money and creating many months of misery for the whole family. The lack of clarity in the law also makes mediation much more difficult and unlikely to succeed in most cases. Any involvement of the courts in financial settlements should be seen as a failure of the system and of the parents as well—but while the law remains as it is, parents are often driven into the courts very much against their will.
The removal of legal aid from this area of law has already been mentioned. It was rightly highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and other noble Lords as a factor adding to the urgency of the need for reform. I have recently been close to a case where the parents represented themselves. The initial judge, who was certainly no mathematician, clearly found the financial issues impossible to resolve. The initial judgment was completely unworkable. The result was that the whole thing was sorted out only a year later on appeal. This case was limited to financial issues, and in a clear legal context it should have been sorted out in a matter of weeks through mediation. Under the existing law, it took more than two years in all to sort out the financial matters.
I also warmly welcome the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, to limit periodical payments to three years or thereabouts. The current position, under which a divorce is a life sentence for the contributing party, cannot be right in the modern world. Yes, of course the lower earner needs time to adjust, but the contributing party also needs the prospect of a life free from the consequences of a failed marriage.
Finally, I strongly support the noble Baroness’s proposal that prenuptial and post-nuptial agreements should be binding. However, this has to be conditional on the parties having received independent legal advice—or at least having had the opportunity to do so—having made full disclosure and having entered the agreement a reasonable period before the marriage. All of that makes perfect sense to me. Ideally, this should become the normal route to a financial settlement, in which any glitches could be sorted out through mediation. I hope that the Government will allocate parliamentary time to this incredibly important, but in some ways fairly modest, Bill. It would transform the experience of divorce for many couples and save a great deal of misery and money.
Assisted Suicide
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, for tabling this Question and I express my gratitude to the former Director of Public Prosecutions for doing all that he could, within the constraints of the existing law, to recognise the fundamental principle of autonomy for patients and the right to make the most important decision of their lives: how, when and where they wish to die. Do our opponents really feel comfortable about grieving relatives, immediately after the death of their loved ones, being intrusively investigated as potential murderers?
There is now overwhelming support for legislation to provide for professional help to die well at the end of life. I understand those who believe that the timing of our death is a matter for God. However, a recent YouGov poll showed the majority of people with a religious faith—62%—support the legalisation of assisted dying for terminally ill adults with mental capacity, with only 18% against. Of course, religious supporters of assisted dying can find endorsement of their position in the words of the Bible and in modern interpretations of the Bible.
Very important, too, are the views of disabled people. The overwhelming majority of disabled people—75%—support reform, as in the Falconer Bill. As the Disabled Activists for Dignity in Dying briefing note says:
“Disabled people are not afraid of a new law to give terminally ill people choice in how and when they die”.
Support from the population at large is also solid. Some 82% of the general public agree that a doctor should probably or definitely be allowed to end the life of a patient with a painful, incurable disease at the patient’s request. The population is in fact far more radical than the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. Therefore, people with a religious faith, disabled people and the population at large are hoping for government support for this much needed action.
Crime and Courts Bill [HL]
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Meacher
“Enforcement services
(1) The Legal Services Act 2007 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 125 insert—
“125A Extension of Part 6 to enforcement services
(1) For the purposes of this Part (and sections 1, 21 and 27 as they apply in relation to this Part)—
(a) the Bailiffs and Enforcement Agents Council is to be treated as an approved regulator;(b) enforcement services are to be treated as a reserved legal activity;(c) a person authorised under sections 63 and 64 of the Tribunals Courts and Enforcement Act services is to be treated as an authorised person in relation to that activity;(d) the Bailiffs and Enforcement Agents Council is to be treated as a relevant authorising body in relation to such a person, and(e) regulations under the Tribunals Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 and the National Standards for Enforcement Agents are to be treated as regulatory arrangements of the Bailiffs and Enforcement Agents Council as an approved regulator.(2) For the purposes of sections 112 and 145 (as extended by this section), a person authorised under sections 63 and 64 of the Tribunals Courts and Enforcement Act is to be treated as a “relevant authorised person” in relation to the Regulator.””
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, Amendment 2 seeks to provide some protection for vulnerable people who have suffered unacceptably at the hands of a bailiff. The amendment provides complainants with access to the Legal Ombudsman if the internal complaints processes fail to resolve a dispute. I should make it clear that the Legal Ombudsman is able and willing to take on this role, which would be quite compatible with other work that the ombudsman is already doing or is shortly to take on.
On Report, I moved a much more ambitious amendment that would have introduced independent regulation of bailiffs. This amendment is just one small element of such a system, but a very important one. In the health service, which I know, the independent health ombudsman is crucial in ensuring that lessons are learnt from complaints and that the quality of service improves. This is what an independent appeals process is all about—improving the quality of service and stamping out bad practice. Nowhere is this more important than in the debt collection field.
As we know, the job of a bailiff is intensely difficult. Extracting money or goods from a person who, for whatever reason, has fallen into debt is almost inevitably confrontational. Very many of those people will be vulnerable, and that is really my point. They may be disabled or mentally ill, or they may be mothers with young children or elderly people with failing memories or full-scale dementia.
We also know that hundreds of thousands of households could be confronted by bailiffs for the very first time when further cuts and caps are applied to the welfare benefits system at the end of March next year. Households affected by the housing benefit cap, the overall benefits cap and a council tax of 20%, which will be new to them, and who cannot move into smaller accommodation or into a cheaper area may find their income after paying rent very substantially lower than anything that they are used to. If a family cares for a relative nearby or their property has been adapted for a disabled child, it will be impractical to move.
Your Lordships know very well the problems that families will face next year. Many will be unable to eat and to keep warm. I make this point only because these families, with their inevitable debts, will be in a completely new situation. They will not have confronted this situation before, and it will be a deeply shocking experience. The bailiffs who come to their doors demanding payment will inevitably include those who are by nature aggressive and who may have limited communication skills and little, if any, empathy for vulnerable people.
Citizens Advice says that it dealt with 24,700 problems relating to private bailiffs last year, including forcing entry to a home—knocking the door down—seizure of exempt goods that they should not have seized, harassment and intimidation. These numbers will soar next year. To make matters worse, there are particular reasons why bailiffs are more likely to make mistakes than other operatives or professions, including the archaic legislation and case law, going back to the Middle Ages, and the plethora of different legislation applying to different debts. Having made a mistake, bailiffs are much more likely to become aggressive.
The case for oversight of the bailiff industry and for a grievance procedure delivered independently from bailiff firms has been accepted by previous Conservative and Labour Governments. Only an independent complaints ombudsman can deliver redress in a way that is consistent with principles of administrative justice, award financial restitution where appropriate, publish data on good and bad practice and, most importantly, make recommendations for improvements.
The coalition agreement identified that there is a serious problem with bailiffs acting aggressively and that vulnerable debtors need protection from that. I thank the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for a helpful and, in some ways, positive discussion yesterday and for his follow-up letter. In that letter—I hope he will not mind my quoting it—he said:
“We recognise that this is a widespread problem. We understand that the actions taken by many bailiffs can be, at best, deliberately belligerent and, at worst, aggressive or threatening”.
Furthermore, the Minister agrees with us that the people affected,
“will often be the most vulnerable in society”.
He adds:
“We cannot allow them to be subject to bullying behaviour by bailiffs and are committed to taking action to prevent this”.
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, also refers to the despicable behaviour that some debtors have had to endure. I myself could not express more strongly the reasons for this amendment.
When we have independent regulators for most, if not all, the professions where practitioners are highly educated, talented and carefully selected to ensure that their personalities are just as they should be for the job, how can any Government reject the proposal for part of a regulatory function—an independent appeal process—for bailiffs? The Minister explained that they need to take more time to decide how best to protect vulnerable people. However, I do not believe that the decision, in principle, that an independent appeals process is justified requires any more time. The proposal has been considered for more than 20 years. The Government themselves have spent seven months looking at these issues and want to pass this legislation while they continue deliberating on how and to what extent they will protect vulnerable people from abuse by bailiffs. The Government should have clarified the minimalist system that I believe they plan to put in place before bringing forward this legislation. I do not think that it is acceptable to bring forward the legislation before we know what the Government plan to do.
I now understand that an independent appeals process could be introduced by regulations, but there is no assurance at all that the Government will introduce an independent appeals process. Without this amendment, nothing in this legislation will ensure that that is done. I regard this as the absolute minimum required to begin a process of improving the quality of service of bailiffs. If the Minister feels unable to agree the detail of this amendment but will make a commitment on the Floor of the House that an independent appeals process will be introduced to cover bailiffs, I shall be content to withdraw the amendment. However, if the Government can tell us only that they will do their best, then I believe we owe it to the many harassed, abused and terrified vulnerable people to seek to pass this amendment. I await the Minister’s reply and beg to move.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Cormack, for their comments from the Conservative Benches. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield for his time in preparing to speak in this debate. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and I am particularly grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham.
I was involved in the debate about bailiffs 20 years ago, but I accept that the debate has been going on longer than that. I am assured that this amendment would provide the protection of an independent appeal process and the legal ombudsman recognises this. I therefore do not accept that comment. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me on two occasions and in writing a lengthy letter yesterday, but I have to confess that his comments are deeply disappointing. I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.
Crime and Courts Bill [HL]
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Meacher
“Regulation of bailiffs
(1) The Secretary of State shall establish arrangements for the regulation of enforcement services and enforcement agents, as defined in Part 3 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007.
(2) In establishing a regulatory system for enforcement services and agents, the Secretary of State shall, by order, make arrangements for the licensing and accreditation of companies whose activities involve judicial or quasi-judicial enforcement of debts, collection of fines and seizure and sale of goods.
(3) The Secretary of State may, by order, designate a person or body (“the Regulator”) to authorise persons to provide enforcement services, and regulate the conduct of such authorised persons and businesses.
(4) In carrying out functions as are conferred on the Regulator by or under this section, the Regulator shall—
(a) carry out inspections as it considers necessary of authorised persons holding licences or accredited under this section;(b) provide for, or procure the provision of, training and accreditation;(c) keep under review generally the activities of bailiffs and enforcement agents;(d) establish an independent complaints system for debtors to use in cases where bailiffs and enforcement agents have abused their powers.”
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, Amendment 111 would introduce a new clause, Clause 22, to establish an independent regulator for enforcement services and enforcement agents—known to most of us as bailiffs.
The importance of this amendment lies in the enormity of the problem. For years, banks have used hard-sell techniques on the doorstep to foist loans onto vulnerable people, many of whom have no prospect at all of repaying that debt. Many others find themselves with debts that they can just about cover on condition that life carries on fairly calmly. But of course if crisis strikes—serious illness, disability or mental breakdown—the debts become unmanageable. And a third issue is now looming. Next year we will see the biggest cuts in welfare spending ever experienced in this country. Evidence from a small survey in Haringey suggests that the cumulative impact of the local housing allowance cap, the overall benefit cap and cuts in council tax benefit—just those three things alone—will cut the income of couples with two children by just over £108 per week, leaving such families with only £150 per week to cover food, fuel, clothes, transport and other necessities. They will not cope; it is quite simple. I am very grateful to the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust for those figures.
Lord McNally
I hesitate to respond to what is clearly a very emotive situation as laid out by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. There is danger in all of these cases—and even the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, fell into it—of using illustrations in an emotive fashion. We are trying to get a balance. I suggest that what you are saying and the assurance that has just been given by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, come within some assessment of vulnerability which will require further guidance. This is not me laying down the law from the Dispatch Box. I am trying to make a common-sense assessment. I regret that I cannot start responding to various speculations in advance of the publication of the work that we have done.
Baroness Meacher
I thank the Minister for his response, but I have to say that it is deeply distressing that we are having this debate when we do not really know what we are talking about. We do not have even the response to the consultation. We do not know what the Government’s plans really are. We should be having significant amendments debated and completed at Report stage, yet we cannot do that.
Will the Minister make clear whether the consultation response, or indications about the key points in it, could be made available to us before Third Reading? That is one important point. Secondly, I hope to have a meeting with Helen Grant and obtain some information from her. I would like to reserve the right to bring something back at Third Reading, hopefully on the basis of some rather better information than we had today. As Lord Beecham said, I am aware of this matter going on for 20 years. I was involved in the bailiff issue 20 and indeed 30 years ago, when I worked at the CAB. It is not new. It is overdue and we are in grave danger of having too little too late. Will the Minister say whether he can produce some information before Third Reading.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I can only say that I can in due course—in so many different ways, in due course.
Divorce
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(15 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I rise to give strong support to the case for reform so well presented by my noble friend Lady Deech. For the past 20 years or more I, and no doubt pretty much everyone I know, have watched friends, colleagues and relatives go through the divorce process, spending tens of thousands of pounds and more on legal fees and ending up with a settlement that seemed grossly unfair to one side or the other. The law on divorce, now 40 years old, was drafted when women typically remained at home to look after the children for many years and when the male parent had overwhelming power over the financial resources of the family. I ran the campaign for the Child Poverty Action Group in 1971 as part of a national debate that resulted in the establishment of child benefit. At that time I received more than 2,000 letters from women of all social classes, including the wives of doctors and vicars—the most extraordinary people, I have to say; I was very surprised by those letters—and many others who told me that the family allowance, as it was then, was the only money on which they could completely rely. No wonder that the divorce law passed in 1973 was based on the assumption that women were the helpless victims.
The world today is very different. It is now assumed that women work. The welfare benefits legislation passed this year assumes that mothers on benefits begin planning their return to work when their youngest baby reaches the age of one. Work-related interviews, followed by work-related activities, all prepare mothers for the world of work as soon as they can turn around after the birth of a child. I and other noble Lords argued at the time that for all sorts of reasons—the ill health of young children, disability and so on—the legislation expected mothers to return to work too soon. I still hold to that view. From the point of view of this debate, the essential point is that the benefits regime makes clear that our British state no longer expects mothers to remain at home once children are settled even in nursery.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, explained so well, Europe and Scotland now have divorce laws fit for the 21st century. These laws are based on some very important principles. Probably the most important point is that the principles should be clearly elaborated and established so that both sides in a marriage, right from the start, can anticipate what a divorce would mean for them. The fair point has been made that there are young women today who literally see that the best thing to do is to marry a very rich man. Those women will undoubtedly end up in a divorce court.
In my view, the principles should include the principle that only the property acquired during the marriage should be divided and that inherited wealth should not be included, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has said. Future earning streams should not be taken for granted; lifetime awards are unfair and unacceptable and, in my experience, have led to men, fathers, living in tiny bedsits while they fund the home of their ex-wife. This cannot be right. That both men and women have earning power is an essential assumption that should lie behind these laws. This assumption lies behind the case for time-limited awards. As has already been mentioned, Scottish awards are for three years. Any award should support the family at least until a child reaches and is settled in school. However, that is very different from a lifetime award. Both men and women can be assumed to earn when a child is settled in school. I feel very strongly that the conduct of the parties will continue not to be taken into account. This is essential to avoid the evils of allegations and counter-allegations forming the basis of lengthy and sordid court hearings.
I welcome the plans to overhaul family justice and to move to a system where divorce will be substantially resolved through mediation or, in more complex cases, through “court-lite” shorter and simpler hearings. The drive to reduce the £1.6 billion cost of the family justice system will undoubtedly drive reform. I appeal to the Minister to press for a reform of the law on financial provision in divorce at the same time as the reform of divorce proceedings.
Finally, on the matter of prenuptial agreements, which again has already been mentioned, the Appeal Court judges made plain their view that the existing law under which prenuptial agreements are not enforceable is patronising and outdated. This country surely must come into line with Europe in providing for prenuptial agreements to be enforceable. I would be grateful for the Minister’s views on the need for reform of the law on financial provision in divorce, and on the particular point on prenuptial agreements.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for initiating the debate. The fact that she has done so is fully justified by the quality of the contributions. I start at the end, as it were, by responding to the noble Lord, Lord Bach. I am well aware of his work and concern in this area. I do not think that there is any break in the approach as between the two Governments. We shall build on what the noble Lord did under the previous Government. He has already reflected on there being no silver bullets or quick-fix solutions to this matter and said that it has to be thought through, listening carefully to experience and advice on all sides. As he rightly said, we are dealing with extremely complex financial and emotional issues.
As the noble Lord knows, the justice review to which he referred is conducted by an independent panel chaired by David Norgrove. It will publish an interim report in the spring of 2011, when we will get the first impact of its thinking. The Government will await the outcome of the family justice review before making any firm decisions on comprehensive divorce law reform. However, dissatisfaction and complaints have emerged from all sides in this debate, from those who have gone through divorce and from divorce practitioners. I was not shocked by the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, as I had seen the letter that she had sent to colleagues, in which she outlined her approach to these matters. I certainly do not consider her views idiosyncratic. I would be a brave man to do so in any circumstances, but particularly so as regards the field we are discussing.
As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said, we live in an age when there are many divorces. The timely intervention of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn and the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, were right. In all but a few cases, we enter marriage in the belief that it is for life. When it sometimes does not end up like that, it is very traumatic. I am not sure that we are all like the girls in a Manchester school who, when asked in a recent television survey, said that their ambition in life was to marry a footballer as a way to fame and fortune. The implication was that a marriage in those circumstances would be fairly short. However, the right reverend Prelate’s speech resonated for most people in terms of a moral approach to marriage—a determination to try and make it work. The law’s job when breakdown occurs is to try and help as much as it can in ensuring a civilised break.
I listened to the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady Meacher, and I agree that the independence of women has recently increased enormously. However, I am still not sure that the balance in divorce cases is quite as equal as they imply. As the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, implied, it can often be unequally weighted against the woman in terms of being able to maintain standards or build a career after divorce. As we know too well from some of our crime statistics, far too many women in this country have to manage dysfunctional families long after the male has gone.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I am responding to the noble Lord’s indication that we were implying somehow that the positions of men and women are equal. My concern—and perhaps that of my noble friend Lady Deech, though I should not speak for her—is simply that things have changed a great deal in the past 40 years, and the law was written at a time when the position of women was very different from what it is today. Situations vary. There are occasions when the woman is the all-powerful and rich earner, and others when it is the man. All situations have to be judged on their merits. I did not want the Minister to take that as a suggestion of equality.
Lord McNally
I fully understand and accept that. Things have changed a great deal in the past 40 years, but a lot of things have stayed the same. We have to take both realities into account. In terms of divorce, the lower down the social scale—if that is the right description—the less things have changed. I can quite imagine that the qualified professional woman is able to re-establish herself very quickly. The woman who has been holding a family together but is very much dependent on a male breadwinner is in a very much different situation. I just make the point that when we are looking at reform, we have to ensure, as our system does, that judges consider three principles—need, compensation and sharing, shaped by the overarching requirement for fairness. Each party is entitled to an equal share of the assets of the partnership unless there is good reason to the contrary, but the yardstick of equality is to be used as an aid, not as a rule. Any decision will be based on individual circumstances and needs. The court does not impose a one-size-fits-all solution. Consideration will be given to the potential earning capacity of both parties. Spousal maintenance orders can be conditional and time-limited, ending in any case if the recipient marries again. One-third of divorced couples make an application for ancillary relief, but a large majority of them seek simply a consent order.
Mention was made by, among others, the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, of prenups. We await with interest Wednesday’s ruling of the Supreme Court in Granatino v Radmacher. At present, the courts can take into account prenuptial agreements as part of the balancing exercise that judges must undertake in ancillary relief proceedings under Section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. The judges can still apply discretion—
Drugs and Crime
Baroness Meacher Excerpts(15 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Meacher
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime discussion paper Treating Drug Dependence through Healthcare, not Punishment.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I rise to ask the Minister about the Government’s response to the remarkable draft discussion paper issued on 2 March this year by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime entitled From Coercion to Cohesion: Treating Drug Dependence through Healthcare, not Punishment. For nearly 50 years, ever since the first UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, the UNODC has operated as the defender of the punitive approach to drug addiction as well as to drug trafficking. Some 186 countries have signed up to the three UN conventions, all of which promote a criminalising philosophy. Until relatively recently, virtually all of those countries have followed the criminalising approach without question. For those of us who believe that the war on drugs is misguided and destructive both for individuals and communities, this new UNODC document is indeed a major milestone for the UN and hence for the world drug policy regime.
What does the new document say? A quote from the foreword, signed by none other than Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the UNODC, makes clear the radical shift of policy. Mr Costa himself has for years promoted criminalisation. The fact that he now feels it is right to challenge 50 years of UN dogma must be something of a turning point. Mr Costa now says:
“The aim of this draft discussion paper, ‘From Coercion to Cohesion’ is to promote a health-oriented approach to drug dependence”.
The paper quotes the narcotic drug conventions in support of the health-oriented approach. One of the great strengths of the paper is that it argues the scientific case for treatment as an alternative to criminal justice sanctions, suggesting that the health approach,
“is in agreement with a large body of scientific evidence”,
including epidemiological, clinical and neurobiological.
Many across the world have said these things, but not the UNODC. The paper argues that,
“there is increasing evidence that a health-oriented approach is also the most effective in reducing illicit drug use”.
By the same token, imprisonment often worsens the problem in a variety of ways. In my view, no serious policy-maker can ignore this paper.
There are two explanations for the change of heart by the UNODC. First, the sheer cost and level of destruction caused by the war on drugs has become a significant world problem. Secondly, more and more countries have become disenchanted by the UN conventions as interpreted—until now—by the UNODC and they have taken unilateral action. I would add a third explanation—action by 30 Peers from this House. I shall say a little about each of these.
First, as to the cost, the criminals and gangsters involved in the drugs trade are benefiting to the tune of about £320 billion a year, and I know that a lot of people in this House are aware of that. The most severe consequences of course have been in Latin America and Afghanistan. In Mexico, for example, drug trafficking employs some half a million workers and has involved some 5,600 killings a year. The profits to Latin American traffickers have financed 25 years of civil war in Colombia and devastating social disruption in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia. These profits are aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan and, indeed, funding the killing of British soldiers. That is what we are talking about here. The US spends some $40 billion a year trying to eliminate the supply of drugs; it arrests 1.5 million of its citizens each year; it imprisons half a million of them. We in Britain spend £19 billion or so on the criminal justice system responding to drugs and drug-related crime, most of it a consequence of the criminalisation of drug use.
The second explanation for the 180-degree policy shift of the UNODC is the growing disenchantment with the UN conventions. For some years a number of countries have made it clear that they are not happy with the criminalising consequences of the UN conventions—notably Brazil, Mexico and Bolivia in South America, but also Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states, Switzerland and others in Europe, and, indeed, a number of states in Australia and the US. They have explored more civil or health-oriented approaches to drug addiction and have in many case removed criminal penalties for the possession of cannabis or, indeed, for the possession of all drugs. These initiatives have not led, as feared, to increased drug addiction. Rather, countries such as the US and UK, with tougher policies on drugs, have levels of narcotic drug use at least as high as those countries with more liberal policies.
On the role of the House, in 2009, 30 Members of this House signed a letter to the UN Secretary-General, Mr Ban Ki-Moon, urging him to establish an inter-governmental panel charged with the task of examining all possible alternative policies for the control of the drugs trade, including an evaluation of the experience of countries that have experimented with alternative policies despite the UN conventions. In his reply, Mr Ban assured us that the commission on narcotic drugs had on its agenda a review of current policies. We responded saying that we were not aware of any resources devoted to any such review, and so the correspondence continued. It seems reasonable to suppose that interest in an area of failure by the top man in the UN may have been helpful in strengthening the arm of the forces of reform within the UNODC.
I was subsequently invited to the UN Commission in Vienna in March this year and met Mr Costa. Certainly he was well aware of the activities of 30 Members of this House. Since then, Mr Gilberto Gerra, a health policy chief at the UNODC, who was involved in my meeting with Mr Costa, has asked us to do what we can to achieve endorsement of the discussion document by as many Governments as possible across the world—a slightly daunting task, I have to say. I am hoping that our coalition Government will be the first formally to endorse From Coercion to Cohesion. There are strong reasons why they may want to do just that.
As I mentioned earlier, this country spends more than £19 billion on the criminal justice system due to the criminalisation of drugs. The Government want to cut all wasteful public expenditure. There is no more obvious public service area of waste than this—waste of resources on prisons, police officers, court officials, judges and the whole paraphernalia of the system. I should assure the Minister that, by endorsing the UNODC document, the Government would be committing themselves neither to any specific policies nor to any change in the treatment of drug traffickers. This is, not surprisingly, a purely pragmatic document where recommendations, if implemented in some form, would lead to major savings in public spending and to benefits for hundreds of thousands of individuals, for communities and for our whole society.
Let us take just one example of a good policy. The UK’s randomised injecting opioid treatment trial programme showed that heroin-injecting addicts reduced their crimes by more than two-thirds as a result of the programme. Taking heroin-injecting addicts substantially out of the criminal justice system would provide enormous savings to the taxpayer, albeit that some of that money would need to be reinvested in health services. Yet even more savings would be achieved through cuts in the benefits bill as users engaged in therapeutic programmes to help them reduce their drug use, organise their lives and in time return to employment. They might remain intermittent drug users, but if drug use were decriminalised, they could become contributing members of society.
On the supply side, the heroin addicts involved in the RIOTT programme reduced their spending on street drugs by £250 per week, from £300 to £50. It is clear that if countries across the world adopted similar programmes, drug traffickers would lose the bulk of their opium sales. This approach would massively dent the billions of pounds currently earned by the gangsters, who rely on addiction and illegality.
This QSD does not pose an idle question. It represents a real plea for the Government’s endorsement of the UNODC’s most important paper in 50 years. Although many would have liked it to go further, I was delighted to see reference to a review of drugs policy on page 23 of the coalition Government’s programme. They now have UNODC support for such a review. We have the biggest opportunity in 50 years to begin to resolve one of the world’s most challenging and destructive problems. I await the Government’s response with interest.