Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I will go on to say that but what is particularly important is how the British Transport Police is funded. Secondly, unlike police forces in England and Wales, the British Transport Police has a national remit which includes jurisdiction across the railway network in England and Wales—and in Scotland, where policing in the latter is otherwise devolved to the Scottish Government. Thirdly, the British Transport Police is primarily contracted and funded by providers of railway services—the train operators and Network Rail—applying the “user pays” principle. Railway service providers are required to enter into a police services agreement with the British Transport Police as a condition of their licence to operate. Home Office forces have no such contractual or financial relationship with industry of day-to-day significance.

Taking into consideration these difficulties, a direction to the British Transport Police is so significant in regards to the potential impact on accountability, devolved policing arrangements with Scotland and arrangements with industry that it requires a Secretary of State to affirm that the issue is of sufficient national interest. I would also be very surprised if my right honourable friend the Secretary of State did not want to be aware that agreement could not be reached. It would be a very serious matter. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will be prepared to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Berkeley]

While the noble Earl is quite right about the funding, if the direction to the British Transport Police involves large expenditure, will that come with a cheque or a commitment to pay the extra cost or is the industry to be expected to pay it?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, in all these arrangements assistance is quite often provided under the old pals Act and they do not worry about the expenditure. However, if specialist resources were required—perhaps a mobile crane or a digging machine—that extra expense would have to be recovered. It is inevitable that agreement would be reached. However, the British Transport Police would not have that sort of equipment available. It would normally be used to intercept someone on the transport network.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 28th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, first, I apologise to the House and to the Minister for popping out earlier to speak about sewage in the Moses Room, although I suppose I could rephrase that better by saying, “to speak in the Moses Room about sewage”.

I will make a few remarks this afternoon about border controls, in Part 3, and the problems that are being experienced, such as the delays faced by people coming into this country. It is interesting that the Bill contains three pages about the power of immigration officers but fails to address completely the fact that there are not enough of them. The latest news on Heathrow is that the MoD police have been drafted in, along with clerks—anyone to reduce queues—but I do not know whether they will have the powers conveyed on them by this Bill if it sees its way through both Houses.

The morale in the Immigration Service is said to be at rock bottom, which is really not very surprising when you have the combination of a 25% staff cut imposed by this Government and a requirement for all passengers to have a full check rather than using the risk-based approach. I suggest that one, two or even three hours of delays, as is reported, is pretty bad for business. I am talking not just about the operators, who I will come on to, but about those who do or want to do business in this country.

The Government argued that cutting the top rate of income tax was essential to keeping big business here. Other people have argued that a third runway at Heathrow is needed, otherwise the aircraft manufacturing businesses will all move to France, which has no traffic jams at its airports. I suggest that if the people to whom presumably these remarks are addressed are delayed by one, two or even three hours every time they come into this country, that is probably even more serious than where they set up their offices or the quality of life here. As for the reputation that we may well get if this happens before or during the Olympics, it is pretty worrying.

I give just three examples of where this seems to be going wrong. As I mentioned, at Heathrow, which has had the most publicity, BAA confirms, according to the Sunday Times yesterday, that the queues were up to three hours long at passport control in April. If you have just flown from Paris, Brussels or somewhere else within Europe that takes less than an hour, to be held up for another three hours is probably not very good.

Tony McMullin, the interim regional director of the border force’s northern region, says in an e-mail that attempts to send staff to cover at Heathrow, Stansted, Luton and Gatwick were,

“pretty shambolic and did not work”.

I hope he does not suffer the same face as his predecessor, Mr Brodie Clark, who quite rightly spoke out against the problems and had to resign. It clearly is not working and clearly needs more people.

The second example is Eurotunnel. I talked to someone from Eurotunnel the other day, and there was something in the media about a week ago about the queues of cars going into the terminal at Calais being so long that they were blocking the motorway. The French motorway police phoned the company and said, “We’re going to send everyone to Dunkirk or back to Paris unless you sort out the queues”. Eurotunnel’s only way of sorting out the queues is to send the trains off to the UK half empty, because the immigration people cannot process the people in the cars fast enough. If this went on, it would have a serious affect on Eurotunnel’s business. That is not the fault of the Immigration Service but of Ministers. Do they care? The same thing will probably happen to some of the airlines.

Finally, there is the question of Eurostar. There has been a lot of publicity about that recently. For many years, passengers from Brussels going to Lille were asked to go through British passport control in Brussels. They objected; why should they have to show their ID cards or passports when travelling between two Schengen countries? Our immigration people in Brussels put in something so that if you had a ticket to go to Lille you did not have to show your passport. Of course, pretty quickly those who wanted to come here illegally found that the best thing was to buy a ticket to Lille and stay on the train to get into this country.

Then the French Government threatened the British Government and Eurostar, saying that unless they sorted out this problem they could not run any trains at all, which was not very helpful either. Now, if you come to London, you have to show your passport in Brussels and then again in London. We are back to one or possibly two hours’ delay when you get to St Pancras: again, a problem if you have come for only a short time and were only on the train for an hour or something. It is also pretty irritating if you have taken a family for a couple of days to Euro Disney. I am told that 95% of the passengers on the Disney trains have British passports. These families with small children are still subjected to this one or two hour delay. That really is not right.

The Government have to come up with some solutions pretty quickly. Eurostar announced in the last day or two that it wants to run trains to Geneva, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Are we going to have outposts of British immigration in every city that these trains want to stop at, checking people’s passports? That does not seem realistic. We have to come up with solutions. I have one or two to put to the Minister and the House.

One short-term solution is to go back to a risk-based solution by which those who are most likely to be in need of full passport control get it and the others can get through. Secondly, it is a minor detail but if every passenger has to stand behind a red line and then walk five or six yards to the immigration officer, that adds probably 25% to the processing time. Why must you have a line five yards away? Everything is done on a computer reader now. Frankly, one yard away would be perfectly all right.

The Government then have to staff-up to ensure that there is a maximum delay for travellers, except in an emergency. My first thought would be 15 minutes coming from the EU and 30 minutes from outside. This should be combined with a risk-based approach. I do not know how many noble Lords have been through immigration recently, but there are these iris scanners now. They actually take longer than the scanner that looks at your passport; they are both very slow. There must be a quicker way of doing that.

For the through-rains, the only solution, and a perfectly acceptable one, is to do the checks on the train between Lille and Ashford if the train stops at Ashford. You can have hand-held devices to look at passports and any other ID cards that you might need. The trains that Eurostar uses at the moment each have two jails. They are quite nice jails. They are aluminium-lined and with nice hooks so that if you are in handcuffs you can presumably be hooked up to the ceiling. That means that people cannot run away when the doors get opened at St Pancras, and they can be sent back on the next train.

I know that the Minister will reject my final suggestion, but what would really happen if we joined Schengen? Would it be all that different? Why do we go through all this? That is probably a step too far, but something has to be done. It is getting chaotic, and getting worse. We will look real idiots at the time of the Olympics. Besides the Olympics, there are people trying to go about their daily business who we want to live and work in this country. They are getting seriously put off. I look forward to the Minister’s comments when he comes to reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for that offer at the end. That is exactly how we wish to approach the Bill. I am grateful for the broad welcome that has come from all parts of the House about the thrust of the Bill and I recognise that, in a limited time, people are bound to raise the points that they do not like rather than emphasise the points that they do like.

The noble Lord was a little modest in his introduction. He is a very distinguished lawyer and, as he knows, I am not. In the two years I have been in this job, I have got used to saying very quickly to people, “I am not a lawyer”. I have now abandoned that mantra because my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford took me for lunch the other day with a very distinguished professor of law from the University of Yale. I used my usual defensive opening, “Well, I am not a lawyer”, and he leant forward and said, “Then I’ll speak very slowly”.

However, I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that we have benefited from a debate in which we have been able to hear a wide range of people with tremendous depth of experience about the issues under discussion. We have heard from some of our most distinguished judicial representatives: the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, is a former Lord Chief Justice; my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, is a former Lord Chancellor; the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, is a former Law Lord; and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was President of the Family Division. It is always a great pleasure to hear their contributions. I always have some mixed feelings about the interventions from my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay because he says things in such a gentle voice that I am convinced that he is on my side but at about two o'clock in the morning I wake up and realise that he has delivered the most devastating critique of what I was hoping to do. So I shall wait for that 2 am moment some time tomorrow morning.

This has been a very good debate. I fully take on board that we have a task in Committee to look at these proposals. Some of the issues that have been raised will have to be explained, debated and discussed, and how we propose to do things will have to be weighed against alternatives. That is certainly how my noble friend Lord Henley and I will take this forward. I would also like to put on record our thanks, particularly for Part 2 of the Bill, to the Constitution Committee for its contribution: a very timely report. With her usual courtesy, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, explained to the House, and to me separately, why she could not be with us for the wind-ups tonight. I know that she will play a full part when we reach Committee.

I will try to cover a range of the issues raised during the debate. Although we will be returning to them all in Committee, it is right that I also try deal with them tonight. A large number of people—the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Harris and Lord Prescott, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith and Lady Doocey—raised the question of whether there was an incipient conflict between the accountability of the PCCs and the National Crime Agency. I am not sure. I think that the best answer probably came from the noble Lord, Lord Dear, in his recognition that there will probably be a certain tension in these roles but not a destructive tension.

Somebody mentioned that there has been a debate since 1929 about how national and how local a police force should be. It is true that in this country we have had policing that has done both, but as fresh challenges have come up, successive Administrations have sought to create agencies that can meet the wider challenges that go beyond localism without losing the benefits of localism. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dear, that this is not a slippery slope towards an FBI. It will be a powerful agency, and again I hear what the noble Lord says about the importance of the power of direction if it is going to be effective. However, that is something that we can look at in Committee.

I move on to the powers of the director-general to direct a police force in England and Wales to perform a particular task, and whether that conflicts with the chief officer’s accountability to the local police and crime commissioner. The power of the director-general directly to task a police force will be a very limited backstop measure, used only when co-operative arrangements cannot be agreed on and where it is essential for the national effort against serious and organised crime that action is taken by that police force. This power does not cut across the responsibility of police and crime commissioners to hold their chief constables properly to account for the totality of policing in that force’s area, including tackling cross-boundary policing challenges such as organised crime, terrorism, public disorder, civil emergencies and cyberthreats. This includes the responsibility of police and crime commissioners to ensure that their chief constable co-operates effectively with the National Crime Agency.

Noble Lords asked whether this would be done within a reduced budget. We are clear that the National Crime Agency, like SOCA, will need to live within its spending review settlement, which will be based on the respective budgets of the precursor organisations. The agency will deliver more through its enhanced intelligence capability, capturing a single national picture of the threat presented by organised crime. It will also have more effective tasking and co-ordinating arrangements, enabling more effective prioritisation and smarter use of its own and others’ assets.

[Lord Berkeley]

The noble Lord twice mentioned organised crime. Will he explain what disorganised crime is?

[Lord McNally]

Not at 9.35 pm after six hours of debate. We will leave that for another day.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Smith, asked whether CEOP would retain its identity. CEOP will keep its ability to create and maintain the innovative partnerships that are so valuable. It will keep its independent brand and multidisciplinary workforce, and it will have a ring-fenced budget, operational independence within the NCA and independent governance.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Lords, Lord McColl and Lord Dear, raised the question of human trafficking. The National Crime Agency will have a key role in building on the existing arrangements for tackling human trafficking by using its enhanced intelligence capabilities and co-ordinating functions to target organised criminal gangs involved in human trafficking, wherever they are. The UK Human Trafficking Centre will move into the National Crime Agency as part of the precursor transfer of the Serious Organised Crime Agency. This will ensure that human trafficking continues to receive the priority and attention that it deserves.

My noble friend Lord Alderdice raised the important and particular issue of how the National Crime Agency will operate in Northern Ireland. The NCA will be a UK-wide agency. In framing the provisions of the Bill and developing the operating model on the ground, we were acutely conscious of the fact that policing is devolved in Northern Ireland, and of the need to work with the grain of existing police arrangements. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary worked closely with the Minister of Justice, David Ford, to ensure that the legislative framework properly respects the devolution settlement. The provisions were designed not to interfere with the important accountability arrangements for policing in Northern Ireland. In accordance with the Sewel convention, it will be necessary for the Northern Ireland Assembly to agree a legislative consent Motion in respect of the provisions in Part 1 of the Bill. I am sure that the Assembly will debate the matter robustly, and we will welcome any proposals for strengthening the partnership working between the National Crime Agency and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Doocey, Lady Hamwee, Lady Harris and Lady Smith, and the noble Lords, Lord Dear and Lord Condon, raised the question of counterterrorism functions. We have made it very clear that decisions on the future of counterterrorism policing should not be taken until after the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, and after the NCA has been fully established. Only then will counterterrorism policing be considered, and decisions taken on what role the NCA might play. Without prejudice to any further decision on the issue, Clause 2 will enable the functions of the NCA to be extended by order to cover counterterrorism policing. Any such order would be subject to super-affirmative procedures to ensure full parliamentary scrutiny. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dear, that we do want any turf wars. Just as we will set an example in this House of constructive examination of the cases, I hope the various police authorities will do the same.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith and my noble friend Lady Harris raised the question of whether the new agency will be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. I am the Minister responsible for freedom of information and I have given this considerable thought. At the moment SOCA is covered by the Freedom of Information Act. The question I had to face was whether it was cleaner simply to make the larger body exempt. It is a matter that can be well examined in Committee. We are committed to making the National Crime Agency open, public-facing and transparent. Careful consideration was given to whether the National Crime Agency should be brought under the Freedom of Information Act, which was not the case with the Serious Organised Crime Agency. We want the public to have access to a wide range of information about what the agency is doing, how it is performing, its internal procedures and the latest assessment of the threat from organised crime. The measures in the Bill, such as a duty to publish information, will ensure that this happens. The National Crime Agency will handle large volumes of sensitive information, including intelligence material which could have a critical impact on national security. If the National Crime Agency were subject to the Freedom of Information Act, there is a risk that international and private-sector partners would be more reluctant to share information with the agency. Intelligence shows that organised criminals will seek to exploit any avenue, including freedom of information requests, to further their criminal activity. As I said, it was a matter of a judgment. I am very happy to revisit it in Committee. Perhaps when we do so, the Opposition could tell us why SOCA was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and we could explore their thinking at that time. I suspect it was not very far from the thinking that we have gone through when looking at the setting-up of this agency.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Condon, asked about the National Policing Improvement Agency functions. The wind-down of the agency is well under way with some functions already transferred to the Home Office and others to the Serious Organised Crime Agency as an interim step to their new home in the National Crime Agency in 2013. A programme of further transfers to other successor organisations, such as the new police professional body and the new police information and communications technology company is being managed in conjunction with the National Policing Improvement Agency. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has already set out the details of these transfers in two Written Ministerial Statements. The future destination of all remaining National Policing Improvement Agency functions will be announced in due course.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Lords, Lord Elystan-Morgan and Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, and my noble friends Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Dholakia asked about changes to the county and family courts. There is no secret agenda for further court closures. That is a separate issue that will be debated, discussed and decided on its merits at the time. In both cases this will give greater flexibility and efficiency, and in the main the practitioners involved in those courts have welcomed the move. I was particularly pleased to hear the endorsement that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, felt able to give, although I suspect that, once again, we will examine this carefully in Committee.

An issue that is of concern to my noble friend Lord Dholakia and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, as well as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is whether the role of magistrates will be diminished in the new single family court. I can assure noble Lords that the Government have no intention of diminishing the importance of magistrates in the family justice system. Magistrates will continue to play a vital role in the new family court, but on the specific question of whether a lay magistrate would sit alone in these cases, the answer is no.

There was a full and informed discussion on the merits of diversity. One of my tasks in the Ministry of Justice is to promote diversity. To a certain extent I accept the point made by my noble friend Lord Thomas that, particularly at the top end, the shape of our judiciary reflects the Bar of 30 years ago. However, I have said before from this Box that when people ask me what the biggest difference is on returning to Whitehall after a 30-year gap, it is that the Civil Service has managed to diversify in a most remarkable way over that period. Although I might have started life as a Fabian, I am not convinced that the inevitability of gradualness is going to produce the diverse judiciary that a 21st century functioning democracy deserves. I am in nothing but awe of both the intellectual calibre and the integrity of our judiciary. Wherever I go, I realise what a great national asset we have in it. However, I do not think that its merit cannot be produced from a more diverse source that better reflects our society.

I look forward to discussing these issues in Committee and I hope that we will see broad cross-party support in this House for what we are trying to do. We are not proceeding recklessly, rather we are building on some worthwhile reforms. We have listened to much of the advice given by the Constitution Committee and I think that we are on the right track. However, I also agree with a point that was made a number of times, which is that if we are going to get diversity, it is not a matter for government alone. The professions and the judiciary have to buy into it. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, asked particularly about the Judicial Diversity Taskforce. The work of the taskforce on diversity is crucial and I can provide a reassurance that it will continue to drive progress in this area. I certainly made it clear when I became Minister that one of my priorities was attending meetings of the taskforce and making sure that we kept up the pressure and commitment from the various parts of the system that are recommended on that force.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Neuberger and Lady Prashar, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, queried the involvement of the Lord Chancellor in the appointment process. Obviously, we will return to this. I have sat in on some of the discussions and it certainly is not any kind of power grab by the present Lord Chancellor. In fact, like me, he is rather an enthusiast for the separation of powers. In the discussions, the opinion came from a number of sources that the relationship between the President of the Supreme Court, the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor was absolutely crucial to the effective working of justice and therefore making sure that they were a cohesive group was very important.

As has been pointed out, at the moment the Lord Chancellor has a veto, which is a pretty large intrusion into any selection process. In these proposals, that veto is dropped and he becomes one of a committee. It will be very interesting to tease this out in Committee. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, will confirm, these are not only judicial offices but considerable administrative offices—perhaps they regret it—particularly for the Lord Chief Justice, and their relationships with the Executive and Parliament have to be managed properly to reflect the realities of those relationships. Looking over at the Cross Benches, I can see that noble Lords are keeping their powder dry for Committee.

The noble Lords, Lord Touhig and Lord Ponsonby, raised the issue of the enforcement of fines. The issue of fines enforcement and the vulnerable is important. Fines are a criminal sentence and taxpayers should not be subsidising those who deliberately avoid payment. Under our proposals, if the offender provides accurate means information at the outset of their engagement with the justice system and keeps to the payment plan set out by the court, enforcement action will not take place.

We heard a number of very interesting comments on court broadcasting from the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, who is much influenced by Scottish experience. Again, let us have a good Committee session on that.

On community sentencing, I would make a virtue of the fact that it is only a holding clause at the moment. It is also an opportunity. We heard my noble friend Lady Linklater and the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Judd and Lord Dholakia, eloquently putting the case for constructive community sentencing. We are in consultation; this is the opportunity to use that consultation to make that case.

On drug-driving, I draw the House’s attention to the fact that my noble friend Lord Attlee has been here throughout this debate precisely because he is going to cover those clauses in the Bill. He even whispered to me that if any noble Lords wished to nobble him and talk to him before that, he is ready to receive them.

It would only be fair if I said that we could leave other matters to Committee. I understand the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, about family visa cases and, again, we will make our case in Committee.

On the timetable that the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, asked about, I am afraid that I cannot help. The Bill will be the first steps in the reform of the family court. There are significant changes in store that will take some time to implement, so I cannot at this time give a timetable, but we will do so when we are able.

The noble Lord, Lord Henley, and I look forward to exploring these and other issues in Committee. I believe that this Bill will greatly enhance the national response to serious and organised crime while delivering a swift, more transparent and effective courts and tribunals system. I warmly commend it to the House.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, being the last Back-Bencher to speak, I thought I would talk about an issue that was not actually legislation in the gracious Speech; there was a statement of intent that the:

“Government will continue to work with the fifteen other Commonwealth Realms to take forward reform of the rules governing succession to the Crown”.

This is interpreted to mean that the eldest child, of either sex, would inherit the Crown and there would no longer be a ban on Roman Catholics inheriting. I suggest that this is not before time. The Prime Minister has also been quoted as saying that he will introduce legislation before the next election, so there is clearly not much hurry there.

Given that today’s debate includes legal issues, I thought it would be useful to suggest that this legislation should be extended to clarify the status and role of the Duchy of Cornwall. I raised this briefly during debate on the Legal Aid and Sentencing Bill, for reasons I will explain later. The main issue to be resolved is whether the Duchy is a private or public body, something in between or outside the law completely. As a representative of the Duchy claimed at a hearing of the First-tier Tribunal of the General Regulatory Council, which I quoted,

“the Duchy is not democratically accountable in any meaningful sense”.

I believe that it is time that it was. I have since uncovered a further list of rights, duties and obligations that the Duchy still has. Some are effectively dormant, some are used occasionally and some rather more frequently, but there is the threat of use and a lack of democratic accountability on all these counts. I shall quickly list them. One involves the harbour authority of the Isles of Scilly, which includes the right to create by-laws and breaching them would be a criminal offence, which would be rather odd if a private person was able to do it. The Duchy is a major landowner in much of Cornwall. Some say it is a good landowner, some say otherwise, but that is no great surprise. What is missing is the leaseholders’ ability to get enfranchisement or be able to buy the freehold of their property. If they were council tenants they would have been able to do that for years, but you cannot do that with the Duchy. The Duchy also has the right to Crown immunity. I understand that between 2003 and 2008 it made some £43 million in capital gains and did not pay any capital gains tax on that sum.

I turn now to more interesting issues. The Duchy has the right to any whale, sturgeon or porpoise that gets landed in the county. I am not sure whether the present Prince of Wales would exercise that privilege, and quite right too. The Duchy is the Receiver of Wrecks, and again, why is this different in Cornwall? It also has the right to the gold and silver mined in the county. It is interesting to note that apparently the Crown Estate is challenging this right. It is not the Government and it is not the Royal Family challenging each other; perhaps there is an argument for putting them all into one pot.

The Duchy owns the foreshore and fundus in Cornwall, so if you want to play on the beach or use a ferry, you have to pay a sort of tax to the Duchy. I believe that it is proposing to charge those people who want to use metal detectors on the beach £50 to do so. That is not done anywhere else in the country, so why should Cornwall be able to do it?

The next two things are much more difficult. Bona vacantia and escheat concern treasure trove, something that we all understand. Basically, it means that the Duchy has the right to ownerless property, goods and treasure. Is that a right for a private individual or a public body? There is also an obligation to meet part of the costs of the head of state—something we have debated often enough—and to submit accounts to Parliament. There is a right to be consulted on and give consent to Bills that affect the private interests of the Prince of Wales. That, too, is a good one.

No doubt there are many more of these issues, but the most important one is that the Duchy has the right to be represented by the Attorney-General. It would be nice to be represented by the Attorney-General at no cost. This is really why I tabled an amendment to the legal aid Bill because it is unfair that people who have a dispute with the Duchy have to provide for their own costs while the Duchy can use as much of the state legal machinery as it wants. Again, that is pretty unfair.

What should be done about this? There is a Bill in the Queen’s Speech which I mentioned earlier. At the moment we have the Duchy of Cornwall owned by Prince Charles as if it was his private fiefdom. It does not have any democratic accountability. Its tenants are left effectively without any means of making complaints because they know that if they do so, they will be treated rather badly. Why should an unelected body not only have such powers, but go on to claim that it is not even a public body at all, as it has done? It is as if it sees itself as sort of floating above the riff raff as it is not democratically accountable in any meaningful sense.

I suggest that it is time to modernise the Duchy and put it on a modern footing, or possibly dissolve it. The problem of revenue for Prince Charles could be solved through the Crown Estate because this year the Government have introduced a new law which says that the Royal Family should get 15% of the Crown Estate’s revenue. I did ask whether the Crown Estate has a forward budget and I was told it does not, but as it is to get a slice of all the revenue from the windmills that are being put up around our coast, I think that there is probably plenty of money around. I suggest that Duchy tenants should be allowed the right to buy their houses or properties as if they were council tenants, which in any case would be good revenue for the Treasury. Most important, the Duchy should not have Crown immunity and we should not need to ask permission to promote Bills that affect the Prince of Wales’s private interests. Moreover, the free legal services of the Attorney-General, although very nice, should be abolished. All these things are pretty important in order to bring the Duchy into the 21st century.

It may even be best to transfer all the residual rights to the Crown Estate and abolish the Duchy completely. Land could be handed to the local council. Would it be nationalised or was it nationalised already? That is a debate we can have, but anyway it could be done on the basis of localism, with surplus going to the Treasury. The harbour of the Isles of Scilly could be transferred to the council, or turned into a trust port, with enough land to help it. There is an awful lot to do and a lot of uncertainty about all this, and it is very unfair on people who are trying to do business or take action against the Duchy that there are all these things stacked up against them. I hope that the Government will look at this and take it forward.

In closing, I must challenge the statement by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, in his response to me in that debate in January, when he said it was for the courts to decide whether a body is a public authority. He might be right if it is just the Human Rights Act we are talking about, but I suggest that it is for Parliament to decide and it is for the Government to start this process. I hope they will soon.

Immigration: Eurostar

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to enable Eurostar to resume regular services between Brussels and Lille while avoiding any delays caused by immigration control being conducted at St Pancras.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, there has been no suspension of regular Eurostar services between Brussels and London which also stop at Lille. Following misuse of Brussels to Lille tickets by those seeking to avoid UK border checks, Eurostar has restricted the sale of tickets to casual travellers to three trains a day. Only these services are subject to routine immigration checks at St Pancras. We seek to keep delays to a minimum.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his response but is he aware that the consequence of all this is that passengers coming into the UK from Brussels, Lille, Disneyland Paris and anywhere except Paris have to queue to get through immigration for between half an hour and one hour at St Pancras? I have queued twice and I saw lots of families travelling from Disneyland Paris, of whom probably 99 per cent were British, having to queue for an hour, which is rather hard on them. Why cannot the immigration service process passports on the train after the passengers have left Lille, as it used to?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, the ideal would be to process the passports at Brussels, which we try to do for seven of the 10 or 11 trains a day that go from there, stopping at Lille, that do not allow people to buy casual tickets. The noble Lord knows of the so-called Lille loophole, which we want to plug. As he has said, one solution would be to have staff on the train. We believe that that would be unnecessarily expensive and would not be cost-effective. We are talking about only three trains a day being affected by the Lille loophole. We think that we can continue to negotiate with the Brussels authorities to get them to allow us to do all the checks on all the trains, including the three on which casual tickets are allowed to be bought, at Brussels as would be appropriate.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th February 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Berkeley]

56A: After Clause 104, insert the following new Clause—
“Public authorities
(1) The Freedom of Information Act 2000 is amended as follows.
(2) In Part VI (other public bodies and offices: general) of Schedule 1 (public authorities), after “The Consumer Panel established under section 16 of the Communications Act 2003” insert “The Corporation of Trinity House”.”

[Lord Berkeley]

This amendment is designed to include Trinity House within the scope of the Freedom of Information act. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, has reminded the House this evening that a review of the FOI Act is going on, which is very welcome, but I am hoping that the Government will accept my amendment on the basis that they have already committed to include Trinity House in the FOI Act, as I shall demonstrate, and it would save a lot of time and effort.

Trinity House is the lighthouse and navigation aids authority that maintains the navigation aids around the coast of England and Wales. I think it should be included because I believe it is a public body. Ships going into UK ports pay light dues into a central fund called the General Lighthouse Fund, which is administered and disbursed by the Department for Transport to the three lighthouse authorities in England, Scotland and Ireland. This amendment would bring Trinity House in line with the Northern Lighthouse Board, which looks after the lights in Scotland and is already covered by FOI. If Ministers are concerned about how much extra work it would be for the GLF, I understand that the Northern Lighthouse Board has received just over 40 FOI inquiries, so I do not think it is any great effort for lighthouse authorities to be included.

I thought of including the Commissioners of Irish Lights in this amendment, but since the Minister for Shipping, Mike Penning MP, is at the moment negotiating with the Irish Government a very welcome change so that the lights around Ireland are not funded by ships going into UK ports by the time of the next election, I thought I would leave the Commissioners of Irish Lights out.

The Independent Light Dues Forum wrote to the Ministry of Justice on 25 January 2011 welcoming the ministry’s announcement about opening public bodies to public scrutiny and the possibility of including Trinity House within FOI. The ministry responded on 23 February last year saying that Trinity House would be consulted about possible inclusion, which is absolutely right, of course. On 5 May, I received a letter from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that stated:

“We intend to extend the Act to bodies which we believe to perform functions of a public nature, such as the Trinity House Lighthouse Service, through secondary legislation under section 5 of the Act rather than the Protection of Freedoms Bill”.

He did not say why. It would achieve the same objective if this Bill were amended now.

When she replies, will the Minister say why it matters which legislative route is to be used to deliver the same outcome? I think it is quite important that this happens quite quickly. It is a year since this was first raised, and I hope that the Minister will accept my amendment, if only to avoid me bothering her again. I beg to move.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for his introduction of his amendment. As he explained, the Government announced on 7 January last year our intention to consult a number of bodies about them being subject to the Freedom of Information Act by virtue of an order made under Section 5(1)(a) of the Act. It is a shame that the noble Lord, Lord Wills, is not in his place because this is relevant to the earlier debate.

A body may be included in such an order to the extent that it exercises functions of a public nature. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, this consultation includes the Trinity Lighthouse Service and is currently ongoing. The consultation process is an important one. It is designed to ensure that all relevant legal and policy factors are considered before a final decision is made about whether some, or all, of the functions of a body such as Trinity House should be covered by the Act.

The Corporation of Trinity House undertakes a number of important functions. Without wishing to express a view while the consultation is ongoing, I can understand why the noble Lord might consider its functions as a general lighthouse authority to be the sort of thing that could be covered by the FOI Act. As he said, the letter that he received from my noble friend Lord McNally stated that to be the case. The fact that the Northern Lighthouse Board is already covered obviously provides another point of comparison.

However, the Corporation of Trinity House also undertakes a number of other functions as a charity and as a provider of deep sea navigation pilots for ships trading in northern European waters. In light of this, we need to consider carefully which, if any, of the corporation’s functions should be brought within the Act. The consultation process currently taking place is designed to allow for this sort of consideration to take place.

--- Later in debate ---

If we were to accept this amendment now, we would effectively be pre-empting the outcome of the current consultation. The consultation must be allowed to run its course. Having made the case for bringing Trinity House within the scope of the Act, and in light of me having repeated and restated the points that my noble friend Lord McNally made to him in his letter last year, I hope that the noble Lord feels able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Berkeley]

Perhaps I might ask the noble Baroness about the length of the consultation period. The letter that I quoted from, dated 5 May 2011, from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said:

“We are currently in the process of consulting the bodies concerned”.

It is very unusual for a government consultation to go on for nine months. Have the Government started another consultation? It is very good to have such long consultations, but it is a bit unusual. When is the consultation on the Trinity House issue going to finish? I would be very grateful for the noble Baroness’s response.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

We certainly plan to conclude the consultation fairly soon, and to bring an order under Section 5 for all the new public bodies that we are currently consulting on later in the year.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for that answer and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 56A withdrawn.

Railways: Theft

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 3rd October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate for drawing that to our attention and for emphasising the problems that we and the church are facing. I know that he has been in touch with the Home Office and that Ministers have responded to the church’s concerns about these matters. He is quite right to draw attention to the advantage of the cashless model, but there are other matters that we could look at, such as design, material and even, I understand, reviewing the properties of the copper and lead themselves to see whether they can be made more traceable in due course.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that it is not only the railways and power transmission that are affected but telecoms cables? Is he also aware that a lot of these people just stuff the cables into containers and export them? Am I right in detecting a lack of urgency in the Government coming up with a solution, which could be very serious?

[Lord Henley]

I completely refute the idea that there is a lack of urgency. Only the day before my noble friend left the job that I am now in, she hosted a meeting of Ministers from a whole range of departments to look at the problems facing us and what we ought to do. However, I am grateful to the noble Lord for pointing out that an awful lot of this metal is not going to scrap metal dealers but going straight into containers and being exported. I have mentioned the role that the Environment Agency has to play in that, which we will look at.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Lords Chamber

I hope very much that the Minister can accept the spirit of these amendments. The previous Government attempted to do that and were not able to produce exactly the right solution. She has the opportunity to produce a lasting solution for the future of the BTP’s powers and jurisdictions. If she does that, the travelling public, railway staff and the officers of the British Transport Police will be greatly in her debt.

[Lord Berkeley]

I support all these amendments, too. I will not repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and my noble friend Lord Faulkner have said because I fully support all their contributions, but it is worth pointing out that the BTP is pretty unique as a very specialist police force. I think the statistics are that half of its officers tend to operate in London, both on the Underground and on the main line, and the rest are split between the main line elsewhere in the country and Network Rail.

When it comes to dealing with incidents—whether it is some of the bad behaviour that my noble friend Lord Faulkner was mentioning or cable theft on the railway, which is a very serious issue and delays many trains—the BTP’s specialist knowledge in working safely on the lines, where there are sometimes high-speed trains and which sometimes can be electrified, is probably unique. When one has been delayed on the railways and has seen the difference in response professionalism between the local force that probably has not had much experience of this and the BTP, it brings into focus how important it is that the BTP’s expertise is maintained and enhanced.

It is absolutely essential that the ideas behind these amendments—that the BTP is put on the same footing as Home Office forces—are accepted. I hope the noble Baroness will accept the principle, but I wonder whether there is a problem because the BTP is the responsibility of the Department for Transport and other forces are the responsibility of the Home Office. I sometimes detect a kind of tension between the two, which the two previous noble Lords have also alluded to. I hope that these amendments will help to improve relationships and—something I see as being thoroughly important—enable BTP officers to move around, not just on the railways but in adjacent areas where they need to do their work without the constraint of having to apply to go into another force’s territory.

I look forward to hearing what the noble Baroness will say in response and I thoroughly support these amendments.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I shall make only three brief points. Like the others who have spoken, I should like to hear what the Minister will say in response to the case that has been put forward. When I spoke to these amendments in Committee, I am afraid I got into the history of the BTP but I will not repeat that. Noble Lords will know that my concern for and interest in the branch is real.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, gave us an interesting history and pointed out some of the difficulties that the BTP has faced in trying to make its case to the Government. Those are very powerful and persuasive points. The additional comments from my noble friends Lord Faulkner and Lord Berkeley have made a pretty irresistible case. It is time to look at how the geographic forces interrelate with the BTP and vice versa. The safety of the travelling public and the interests of all concerned would benefit from that. I am concerned that it is perhaps more complex than has been said in the past few minutes. Therefore, we shall need to look at that sometime. However, I hope the Minister will reassure us that she will not leave it to ordinary processes and that, on this occasion, she will tackle what is required positively to give us some hope that the situation will not be allowed to drag on, and so that we get some resolution to these points.

Police: Officer Numbers

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I am afraid I am at a loss to know to what Question the noble Lord is referring, but I will look into it.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I wrote down very carefully the answer that the Minister gave to a previous question. She said that there is no link between the number of officers and the level of crime. Does it therefore follow that if we had no police officers that would not affect the level of crime?

Identity Documents Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, the Government have given it further consideration and decided that they are not going to supply refunds. That was the position of the House of Commons. It is very clear that the Government are not going to avail themselves of the opportunity to waive financial privilege. This amendment would impose a charge on the taxpayer. Our view is that the taxpayer should be saved from having the charge imposed. Citizens are also taxpayers, not simply purchasers of ID cards.

On the substance of the matter, I say that we should have a sense of proportion about £30. It is absolutely not the same as, for instance, the example cited by the noble Lord opposite of assisted places for children. Of course, if a child had an assisted place, their educational career depended on it, and the policy changed, one would not cut off a child who was in mid-educational career. That is utterly different from a payment of £30. We should keep a sense of proportion. We do not believe that the purchase of the card constitutes any kind of contract between the Government and the taxpayer. Therefore, we do not believe that there is an obligation on the Government to refund the money, so the Government do not intend to do so.

The card will no longer have a database behind it to demonstrate its validity. Of course, it will not be an illegal act for someone to use it when they go to the pub. However, it has no legal validity, and one could perfectly well use a passport or driving licence for that purpose. For all these reasons, the Government do not believe that it is right—

[Lord Berkeley]

Will the Minister explain what would happen if someone used one of these ID cards to go for a short holiday on the continent? It is a lot cheaper to buy an ID card than a passport. She may say that £30 is nothing to people who go on holiday, but that is a slightly arrogant approach. She says that the card could be used in pubs that ask for ID, but that no one will be able to check it against a database. However, we all know, from going into and out of this country, that there are different ways of being checked by electronic means. Will these identity cards still work when one goes through immigration or will they be cancelled?

The Minister says that the database has been abolished. I doubt whether any database ever gets abolished, because MI5 or someone else will want to keep it. At what stage will the ID card not work when one goes through immigration, and what is the other solution? Not everyone has a driving licence—why should they? Will it be the case that one cannot go abroad unless one has a passport, so that going abroad will not be possible for people who cannot afford a passport? I would be glad if the Minister would respond to some of those questions.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

The ID cards will not have a database behind them. The previous Government decided that the database should be separate from the passport database. It is not possible to join up the two databases because they are not compatible; that is one of the problems. This database will not exist. Therefore, the ID card, although it might be regarded as a courtesy proof of age, for instance in a pub, will have no legal validity at the border. The receiving country might be willing to accept it, but I fear that the individual might not get back into this country because they would have to show a document that had a database behind it.