Cohabitation Rights Bill [HL]

Lord Garnier Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be able to support the noble Lord, Lord Marks, in introducing his Second Reading of this Cohabitation Rights Bill. In lay man’s language, I suppose one could call it the “unmarried couples divorce Bill”. The Bill reflects modern societal habits and ways of living, and it is time that Parliament legislated for this reality.

The noble Lord brings with him considerable experience. I believe that, when he began his career at the Bar, he was a family law practitioner, so he brings to the Bill his expertise in that field. I am none the less somewhat fearful that the person succeeding me in this debate is the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, a former President of the Family Division, so I shall keep my remarks short but also, I hope, moderately uncontroversial, as I hope the Bill is.

I also hope, following on from what the noble Lord said a moment ago, that the Government, who gave a manifesto commitment along these lines, and the noble Lord can amalgamate their efforts to produce one Bill which all of us can support. If it has the advantage of government backing, the assistance of the Civil Service and so on then we can produce at speed a Bill which is fit for purpose and will achieve the justice and the humanity the noble Lord speaks of.

I am sure that there will be many issues of detail in relation to financial settlement orders and financial relief, the difference between whether periodic payments or simply lump sum payments should be allowed, and so on. However, I hope that these matters can be discussed between the two parties—the Government and the noble Lord—and, if necessary, ironed out in Committee.

Essentially, this is an idea that has been long in development, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, indicated. I seem to remember supporting a Bill similar to this, if not exactly the same, which was introduced into the other place by the late Lord Davies of Stamford, who was then the Member of Parliament for Grantham and Stamford. It had broad support there but never got much further than a Friday morning’s debate.

As I said, the Bill recognises contemporary societal norms and, above all, protects the children of these unions in a way which is fair and right. I recognise the good sense of the example that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, mentioned just a moment ago about one of the couple working and the other not working, and so on, which seems highly important in modern family law.

Unlike so many Private Members’ Bills, this one has a decent ancestry: that is to say, it flows from a Law Commission recommendation. It is detailed and clear. I am sure it is capable of improvement but, none the less, it is clear in its purposes and its effects. I hope that the House will give it its support today and allow it to pursue its further passage with the assistance of the Government.

Imprisonment for Public Protection

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

It is possible that some of these offenders may have been given a discretionary life sentence and therefore would still be subject to the parole process and therefore still in prison if they had not the met the statutory release test. It is also possible that some of these offenders may have been given standard determinate sentences and therefore could have been released by now. However, all IPP offenders are subject to review by the independent Parole Board, which has, in some cases repeatedly, found them unsafe to be released.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that there are now about 1,000 IPP prisoners still in custody and, of that 1,000, only about 50 are unsuitable for release at any time, by virtue of either their health or the seriousness of the criminal offence for which they were convicted? Does it not seem right that we should make an aggressive effort to release some of those 950 and require the Parole Board and those in charge of early release to concentrate on them rather than, for example, child rapists or other forms of sexual criminal?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord is incorrect: 896 IPP prisoners have never been released; that is 11% down on last year. My view is that we need to get them into the right prison. Two years ago, only 70% of them were in the right prison; now 91% are in the right prison, and we need to support them so they can get out. Prisons like HMP Grendon, which is a therapeutic community, do good work with IPP prisoners, and HMP Warren Hill has specialist units to support them. I want them to progress as quickly as possible but as safely as possible, so when they are out, they can stay out and do so safely.

Imprisonment for Public Protection

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

Can I make two things clear? First, recall is not used as a punishment for a minor breach of licence. I am afraid that the noble Baroness is wrong about that. It is a means of protecting victims and the public when the Probation Service assesses that it can no longer manage that offender in the community. Recall is an important and swift public protection measure. Also, HMPPS has strengthened the scrutiny and quality assurance of recall decisions. There is a higher threshold for IPP prisoners in relation to recall. There must be not only a breach of their licence conditions such that there is a concern about the risk that they present but a causal link between that breach and the index offence for which they are serving the sentence in the first place.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to the figure that my noble friend Lord Moylan mentioned—namely, the nearly 1,000 prisoners on IPP sentences who are still incarcerated and are well beyond their tariff. The Minister will know that not everything that is in her brief is necessarily worth reading out. The resort to the mantra of public safety is overused. There may perhaps be a handful of those 1,000 prisoners who are not safe to be released because they are genuinely dangerous or because they have become so institutionalised that they are incapable of living within the community. Can she please invite her noble friend Lord Timpson, whom we all admire, to work a lot harder than he does—and he works very hard—to ensure that at least 950 of those 1,000 prisoners are released on parole this year?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I join the noble and learned Lord in his admiration for my noble friend Lord Timpson, but the fact is that we have an independent Parole Board, which makes the decisions—not the Government—on whether someone can safely be managed within the community, as the noble and learned Lord knows. If they cannot be safely managed in the community and are released, they will be living next door to you—and no responsible Government are going to do that.

Prisoner Early Release

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

What I can tell the noble Baroness is that all our sympathies are for the victims of these shocking crimes. It is absolutely terrible what happened. By law, tomorrow this this criminal will have to be released. What is important is that there will be substantial and robust licence conditions under MAPPA, with a recall option as well. He will know that the eyes of the state will be on him 24 hours a day.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, there are 3,650 women in prison in England and Wales. There are 12 women’s prisons and, as it happens, all 12 of them are in England. Of that 3,650, 2,500—that is about 70% of the women’s prison population—are in custody for non-violent offences. Why do the Government not release them, or at least some of them, and redesignate some of the women’s prisons to house the rapists and child molesters that seem to be about to be released?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord’s figures are correct. What I also believe is that most women should not be in prison. I believe most women are victims. When you know that over 60% of women in prison have brain damage as a result of being beaten up, you have to ask yourself the question, “Where is the right place for them?” What we need is a very robust and well-invested Probation Service. We need to make sure they have a house to live in when they are released and that they get the support both in prison and out, so that the likelihood of reoffending can be reduced. With the Women’s Justice Board that we set up last year, we have done a great amount of work on a women’s diversion fund. We already had one women’s intensive supervision court, and we have announced another four, so this is part of the process of getting to a point where we can close a women’s prison.

King’s Speech

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Wolfson has done the House a service, not only through what he said and the way that he said it but by saving me from saying it all over again. I agree with every word that he said.

I could also spend the entirety of the time allotted to me in this debate, and a lot more, speaking about the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—whose valedictory speech we will hear very shortly—thanking him for his contribution to public understanding of our constitution through his books, his broadcasts, his journalism, his lectures and his participation among us here in your Lordships’ House. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, I congratulate him on becoming a Knight of the Garter, a fitting recognition by His Majesty of his achievements and his service to the country over many years. I should perhaps also add my congratulations to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, and the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell.

The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has written to the effect that:

“Whereas every other Western democracy has codified its system of government, Britain’s constitution is a mish-mash of laws and conventions, customs and courtesies. Britain sees no need for the legalistic … writing down its constitution in one place. Instead it relies on the notion that its politicians know where the unwritten lines of the constitution lie, and do not cross them. ‘The British constitution’”,


he said,

“‘is a state of mind’”.

He famously described this as the “good chaps” theory of government, which requires a sense of restraint all round to make it work. He said:

“We have long assumed that those who rise to high office will be ‘good chaps’ … who understand the rules and choose to observe them. That has left us vulnerable to those who are not ‘good chaps’ but are willing to smash those rules for their own advantage”.


I will not divert myself down my anecdotage to refer to the Prorogation case, in which I appeared for Sir John Major to intervene on behalf of one former Prime Minister and leader of my party against the then current leader of my party and Prime Minister, but suffice it to say that the case described very neatly what the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, was writing about. Many years ago, Professor Dicey wrote that if you break a convention, you will end up breaking the law. In 2019, that prediction was made good.

Whether one uses the expression “good chaps” or something else, there never was a golden age of politics in our history. It is a history of disagreement and occasionally of violent conflict. However, for most of the last few centuries, we have all understood each other. That attachment to commonly accepted rules, to passionate but well-argued debate and behaviour in the governance of our country’s affairs, is now, as this weekend has demonstrated, under strain.

I have spoken of the fellowship that existed between parliamentarians, the legal profession and the judiciary, which has become attenuated. We used to speak the same constitutional language and understood where we could go and where we should not go. The courts did not invade Parliament, and Parliament and the Executive did not abuse the judiciary. Barristers were not attacked for representing unpopular clients or vicious criminals. We were all part of a shared endeavour to do the very best for our country and its people, even if we came from different backgrounds and wanted different outcomes.

I see that the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, is on the Front Bench. He has worked his guts out trying to improve the prison system, but, sadly, he has been prevented from doing the one thing that he and I want to do, which is to reform the IPP system finally and for good. I am sorry that there was nothing in the gracious Speech that allowed him to bring forward a package of reform.

I will say no more about the jury system. There is plenty of time to say something about that when we come to deal with the now, I understand, newly named courts modernisation Bill—it is the same rubbish but a different name. I think the Government ought to drop it.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 27th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

I will speak briefly to my amendment in this group because it is my duty shortly to chair the Committee. To broaden the debate that the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, introduced, I simply say that there is clearly a need to establish that this post can have confidence and a degree of consensus around it. I am not sure that that has been achieved by what has been proposed so far.

My amendment simply brings in the procedure used in the Commons for most regulatory posts: they are the subject of some sort of hearing process by the relevant Select Committee. That system was developed in the years when I was in the Commons, and as chair of the Justice Committee I operated it several times. It works reasonably well. In rare cases, the Treasury Committee, for example, has a veto on the appointment, as this amendment suggests, but it is a means of trying to ensure that the right questions are asked at the right time when appointments are made. Surely, after recent weeks, we have learned the lesson that, if you do not have proper scrutiny of appointments and a system in which the right questions are asked, things can go very badly wrong. We certainly do not want them to go badly wrong in this area. That is sufficient to explain what my amendment is about.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful that the noble Lord was able to introduce his remarks before he has to go and perform his functions as chairman of the Committee. I have only a few things to say, and my amendment is discrete, in the sense that it does not really affect much of the rest of the Bill. It can be taken quite briefly, and I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, will be able to agree to it, not least because it bolsters the job that he once held.

With respect, I disagree with only one point that the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, made. The function of the commissioner is not simply administrative; there is a judicial element to their work, which is found in Clause 4(4)(d). One of the principal functions of the commissioner is

“determining applications for reconsideration of panel decisions under section 18”.

That said, I fully accept that it is a mixed-function job: it is partly administrative and partly judicial—but then so are quite a lot of senior judicial jobs. The Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls all have heavy administrative burdens as well as having to perform a judicial function, and no one would suggest, I venture to say, that those people should be appointed directly by the Prime Minister.

It is more constitutionally appropriate for the voluntary assisted dying commissioner to be appointed, as so many other judicial and quasi-judicial posts are, by the sovereign on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor. I appreciate that the office of the Lord Chancellor has changed a lot since the 2005 Act—more’s the pity, in my view, but there we are. That was a long time ago. When I become Prime Minister, of course, I shall have it changed.

There is a nice distinction to be drawn with the appointments made in the way that I suggest. If my amendment is accepted by the Committee or by the House as a whole, it will obviously have a knock-on effect on the appointment of the deputy commissioner under paragraph 3(1) of Schedule 1—but let us not delay ourselves with that. All I am saying is that it is more appropriate for this particular function to be appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the Lord Chancellor, as so many similar posts are.

A Minister responding for the Government in the other place said that the investigatory powers commissioner is appointed by the Prime Minister, and he, like the assisted dying commissioner, has to be a sitting or retired member of the senior judiciary. But that is a false point. The distinction between this job and the investigatory powers commissioner is that the investigatory powers commissioner deals with matters of national security—which are essentially a matter for the Prime Minister—whereas this assisted dying commissioner will deal not with matters of national security, foreign policy or anything of that nature but simply with the workings of this Bill, or this Act as it may yet become.

This a very short and simple point that I am sure the noble and learned Lord can easily agree with, because it does not damage the Bill. It is simply a technical adjustment of the route to appointment, and I urge the Committee to support it.

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

My Lords, I will speak to three amendments in this group, two of which stand in my name. The third is Amendment 128 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, which I have co-signed and will touch on briefly now.

Amendment 128 is essentially probing in nature. The Bill lists the principal functions of the commissioner—we do not take particular exception to that—but does not outline their specific duties, so we feel that there is a bit of a gap at present and are probing whether the duties are correct and whether the commissioner has a role in ensuring effective oversight. I look forward to hearing the response of the Bill’s sponsor on that.

I move on to Amendment 129, following on from the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Cass. When I arrived today I did not anticipate that she would be my warm-up act in relation to the amendment—I thank her for her remarks. The amendment essentially deals with whether the commissioner should be required to be either a senior judge or a retired judge. In part it also has a slightly probing quality, and again I will listen to the remarks of the Bill’s sponsor. Given where the passage of the Bill has gone so far and where it might land—the situation is slightly fluid—and although I appreciate that, for instance, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has made suggestions on how we could inject a level of judicial introduction to the panels, we will probably be keen to press this on Report if the issue is not resolved and we are left with the current situation.

The reason for that is that when the Bill was introduced in the Commons, one of its core elements was the judicial function and, indeed, judges on the panels. That was one of the great selling points of the supposed—and slightly self-proclaimed, I have to say—safest Bill in the world. But that position has been resiled from and, although I am sure that the Bill’s sponsor will give reasons for it, we have moved away from that core element. If we do not have that core element of a judge on the panel, do we leave a situation in which the commissioner has to be either a senior serving judge or a retired judge? Would that create a veneer of judicial impact when the core element has been taken out?

That is all the more appropriate when we look at the functions that have been listed for the commissioner, of which there are five under Clause 4(4). Paragraphs (a) and (b) relate to “receiving documents” and compiling a list of eligible panel members. It is hard to see why those functions, which are essentially administrative in nature, would require a level of judicial input. Similarly, paragraph (c) relates to

“making arrangements in relation to such panels”.

Again, that function lies largely within administrative competence rather than requiring any element of judicial quality.

The one area that does touch on that, as has been highlighted, is paragraph (d), which talks about the reconsideration of cases, but cases are not to be reconsidered on their own merits. The Bill’s sponsor in the other place, Kim Leadbeater, said that the commissioner is

“not acting as a judge”,

so there is a query about the level of judicial impact even of paragraph (d). Finally, under paragraph (e) there will be a monitoring role, particularly as regards medical statistics. There is a question mark in relation to that. If we are looking for somebody to undertake that role, which I think was initially put within the remit of the Chief Medical Officer, it seems to me that a medical professional is much better suited to it. There are queries about the applicability and whether we are simply creating a façade of judicial involvement by having the requirements currently in the Bill.

My Amendment 496C would afford a person, if they desire it, the opportunity of a hearing before the commissioner, rather than their case being decided by a paper hearing. That would cover aspects such as someone being registered disabled under the Act, the availability of communication, cognitive impairment and mental distress, in the interests of justice.

Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Lords Chamber

I hope the Minister will be able to look favourably on Amendments 69 and 75, and I would very much welcome a meeting between Committee and Report.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I rise with a degree of caution. I entirely understand the motives behind the amendments moved by my noble friend Lord Sandhurst, and that moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. Shall we begin by trying to remember what an unduly lenient sentence is? It is one that falls outside the range of sentences that a judge, taking into consideration all the relevant factors and having regard to the sentencing guidance, could reasonably consider appropriate. In other words, the sentence must be not just lenient, but unduly lenient. One of the things the Court of Appeal must consider when it is looking at an application to review a sentence is that the offender has been put through the sentencing process, or will be put through the sentencing process, for a second time, and that it will not intervene unless the sentence is significantly below the one the judge should have passed.

Law officers often receive applications—I say this with some experience, as I was a law officer from 2010 to 2012, and in England and Wales it is the law officers who have the ability to make these applications to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division—on the basis that the person complaining about the sentence just thinks it is not adequately severe, but that is not the test. One therefore needs to not encourage an expectation—this is what may follow from the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton—that, by getting a government department or the Crown Prosecution Service to write to a disappointed victim or family member, it must follow that the CPS, or whichever government department is required to do this, agrees, or that it will lead to a successful appeal before the Court of Appeal.

I remember that all sorts of people used to read newspaper articles about a particular sentence that often bore very little resemblance to the sentencing remarks or the details of the case. Sometimes, in some newspapers, you would get an editorial saying that it was a disgrace that this lenient judge has done this, that or the other, and that something must be done, and all sorts of people would then write to the law officer’s department demanding that something be done. Very often the sentence was passed in relation to an offence that did not come under the scheme, or, if it did, on proper examination it did not fall within the ambit of what the Court of Appeal was likely to disturb. So I suspect that all sorts of expectations could be built into the public mind, which could lead only to disappointment.

Secondly, there is something to be said about finality. Although one does not always have any sympathy for a criminal defendant, they are entitled to justice and finality. Having sentenced people, I assure noble Lords that sentencing can be difficult, certainly for a judge who is dealing with, shall we say—I do not mean this in a silly way—the less serious types of criminal offence that none the less come within this scheme. I always found sentencing to be the most difficult part of the judicial function. This is a generalisation, but if you are a High Court judge dealing with criminal cases, the chances are that you will probably have to decide the tariff only on life sentences. But if you are sitting in the Crown Court as a recorder or circuit judge, you may very well have to deal with all sorts of quite complicated considerations when working out the just sentence for a particular defendant based on the facts of a particular offence. It is not always easy.

In my experience of having to seek the advice of the Treasury counsel and making up my own mind about whether an application should go to the Court of Appeal, I found that, by and large, the overwhelming majority of judges passed a just and correct sentence—when I say “correct”, it is not a binary exercise—that was entirely defensible and not the sort of thing that the Court of Appeal would have disturbed. To encourage people to make applications would be a mistake when it is going to lead only to disappointment.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

The amendment would not encourage the CPS, or whatever the notifying body is, to encourage the victim to appeal; it would merely be notifying them of the right. Does the noble and learned Lord accept that?

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

I can see what the printed words say, but if the Crown Prosecution Service was to write to the victim saying, “Do you realise that you can apply to the law officers to have this sentence reviewed by the Court of Appeal?”, it would give an imprimatur and an indication. That is the implication, and we should resist it.

I do not want to go on too long. Anybody can write to the law officers to say, “Will you review this sentence?” It does have to be a victim, or the family or next of kin of a deceased victim. There are plenty of avenues available to the public and to victims if they wish to explore this. To come back to my first point, we need to exercise a degree of caution before opening the floodgates to lots of disappointment.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to which I have added my name. I have listened carefully to what the noble and learned Lord has said, but this is not an attempt to encourage lots of challenges to unduly lenient sentences. It is, above all, an attempt to achieve a degree of parity between the way offenders and defendants are treated.

The intent of the amendment it to suggest that a government department nominated by the Secretary of State should do the informing. It would need to be a body that was viewed as genuinely neutral, but it would be perfectly possible to inform the victim of their right and make quite clear the orbit within which an appeal against an unduly lenient sentence is likely to be successful and the parameters beyond which it would be highly unlikely to be considered, so as to make very clear to the victim, from the very beginning, the possibility of their having a case that might be over the threshold as opposed to being clearly below the threshold. It is entirely possible to imagine that one could create that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 68 is in my name and those of my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and my friend the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and I thank them for their ongoing support.

This amendment revisits an issue I previously raised during the passage of the Sentencing Bill. I return to it because I feel so strongly that this anomaly in our criminal justice system is one that must be resolved and merits further and careful consideration by this Committee. It concerns children who commit offences while under the age of 18 but who, through delay in proceedings entirely outside their control, are first brought before the court only after their 18th birthday. Under the current system, they will be sentenced as adults, losing access to youth-specific disposals, including referral orders, youth rehabilitation orders and the support of youth justice services, even though their offending behaviour occurred during childhood.

As I previously said, this can only be described as a postcode lottery in sentencing outcomes. If two young people commit the exact same offence at the exact same age in similar circumstances, and one happens to live in an area where their case reaches court before their 18th birthday and the other does not, the first will get all the support from the youth court process, while the second defendant, not because of the seriousness of the offence or their maturity, will end up in the adult court. The consequences of not being part of the youth justice process and the subsequent treatment of criminal record disclosures can affect a young person well into adulthood, including their future employment prospects. The Bill provides an opportunity to look at this issue, correct an unfair anomaly and ensure consistency in sentencing.

As I have said previously, the youth justice system exists for a reason. Those of us who have worked in youth justice know how the youth court has specifically trained magistrates who emphasise welfare, education and rehabilitation and can turn young lives around and reduce reoffending. Without this support, their future could be bleak. In the passage of the Sentencing Bill, my friend the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier spoke in support of addressing this anomaly, and I am grateful once again for their support today. I was encouraged by the support of the Minister. While he stated that youth sentencing lay largely outside the scope of the Sentencing Bill, he made it clear that the Government had a great deal of sympathy with the issue. He also indicated that there may be merit in looking at this issue further, while understandably pointing to the need to consider the wider implications across the justice system. I took that as a constructive response. It is in the same spirit that I bring the matter back today.

This amendment simply seeks to ensure that, where offending behaviour took place during childhood, it is assessed and addressed through the correct lens—one that reflects age, maturity and culpability at the time of the offence, rather than being determined by administrative delay entirely outside an offender’s control. I return to this issue today because I feel so strongly that we must address this clear anomaly. I hope that the Government will be willing to take a second look at this and consider how it might be resolved. I beg to move.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be able to support my noble friend Lady Sater’s amendment. I have heard her express these views before, I heard her express them just now, and there is nothing more to be said. I urge this Committee to get on and agree with her.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Sater, my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, for tabling Amendment 68. We agree with the principle that children who commit crimes should thus be charged as children, even if by the time of their court appearance they are above the age of 18. What matters is the mental state of the offender at the time the offence was committed, not the lottery of when he or she comes to court. The amendment seeks to ensure that there is no loophole preventing this being the case, and we therefore hope that the Government will agree with that aim.

Amendment 70 in my name concerns the collection and publication of data relating to offenders’ immigration history and status. This is a sensitive issue. Illegal immigration has long been a core political issue for voters and has become even more salient in recent years. There continues to be widespread misinformation and unfounded assertions, both in person and online. That is because empirical evidence concerning immigration has not always been readily available. People perceive changes occurring as a result of policy, but often operate under the assumption that the Government are shielding themselves from transparency. That is not the case, of course, but it must be dealt with.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than with crime rates. The public feel less safe, they see the demographic change and they link the two. This is problematic. It can lead to misguided opinions about certain parts of society. There is no available data to inform opinions of what the true position is. Non-governmental studies and disjointed data releases have repeatedly justified this connection, but the lack of clarification from the Government still leaves room for the general public to be decried as fearmongering or bigoted. It is not just policy: people deserve to know the impact that government policies are having on their everyday lives, especially when they can have immediate impacts on their safety.

We say that there is a clear case to publish crime data by immigration status. Accurate and comprehensive data allows for informed debate and evidence-based policy. At present the information is scarce, it is fragmented and it leaves the public, and indeed policymakers, reliant on conjecture. If transparency and open justice are priorities, to release offender data by foreign national status and immigration history would provide clarity, support public confidence and allow all sides to address the facts without speculation.

The Minister will be aware of the time we have previously spent on the topics in Amendments 71 and 74. Amendment 71 would exempt sex offenders and domestic abusers from being eligible for early release at the one-third point of their sentence, while Amendment 74 would reaffirm the Government’s policy of favouring suspended sentences but once again seeks to exclude sexual offences and domestic abuse from the presumption. Custodial sentences should of course by judged by the extent to which they deter reoffending. We accept the Government’s belief that short custodial sentences often do not serve this end, but reoffending cannot be the sole metric by which the nature of a punishment is decided. The prison system at least prevents individuals from offending while they are incarcerated.

For sexual offences and domestic abuse, these considerations are not abstract, certainly for the victims. Victims’ lives, safety, sense of security, the opportunity to reorganise their lives and perhaps move or otherwise change their way of living, are directly affected by whether an offender is at liberty or in custody. In 2019, the first year for which comparable data is available, there were 214,000 arrests for domestic abuse and 60,000 convictions, a conviction proportion of 28%. In 2025—six years later and under this Government—there were 360,000 arrests for domestic abuse but only 41,000 convictions, a drop from 60,000 and a conviction rate of just 11%. Something must be done.

The Government have highlighted the scale and seriousness of sexual offences and domestic abuse. They have described violence against women and girls as a “national emergency”. They have committed to strategies including specialist investigative teams and enhanced training for officers, and demonstrated recognition that these crimes demand careful handling. It would be inconsistent to promote such measures while making it easier for offenders of these crimes to avoid immediate custody.

This principle also extends to early release. It becomes a moral question rather than a purely empirical one when an offender has drastically altered the life of a victim by means of their crime. I do not think it reflects who we are as a society if we say that those who commit as invasive and exploitative a crime as sexual assault or domestic abuse should not serve the full extent of their sentences.

I end by saying I hope the Liberal Democrats will support these amendments. They have made it a point of principle, as have we, that victims of domestic violence deserve targeted measures to prevent them suffering further harm. Their justice spokesman in the other place, Josh Barbarinde, tabled a Bill last year to prevent domestic abusers from being released early under the Government’s SDS40 scheme. They now have a chance to put their principle into practice, as Amendment 71 would have exactly the same effect. I hope they will be able to offer their support.

Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Garnier]

40: After Clause 7, insert the following new Clause—
“Compensation for victims of fraud and other economic crimes(1) The Secretary of State must, within one year of the passing of this Act, lay before Parliament a review of victims of fraud, bribery and money laundering offences.(2) The purpose of the review under subsection (1) is to identify how victims of such economic crimes could be better compensated without such victims needing to pursue civil action.(3) The Secretary of State must provide for a public consultation on the review.(4) In this section “victims of economic crime” includes United Kingdom and overseas victims of complex corruption cases where the harm caused by the offending is not easily quantifiable.”Member's explanatory statement
This new clause requires a review to explore how domestic and overseas victims of fraud, bribery and money laundering offences could be better compensated without the need for civil proceedings to recover their losses or compensation.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, this is not the first time I have argued that this jurisdiction does not do enough to ensure that domestic—but more importantly, overseas—victims of economic crime committed by people or organisations based here are adequately compensated for their losses.

If the last Government and the present one have been less than enthusiastic about my proposals, I have received support from, among others, Sam Tate, a partner of the London law firm, Clyde & Co, other legal practitioners who have read my speeches and articles on this subject over the years, and from Sam Hickey, a lawyer qualified in Australia and the United States, in his paper entitled Compensating the Victims of Foreign Bribery: UK Legislation, Practice and Recommended Reforms, published in February 2025 by the International Centre for Asset Recovery, which is part of the Basel Institute on Governance, at Basel University in Switzerland.

Having been the initiator politically of the deferred prosecution agreement—DPA—system in this jurisdiction, and as a vocal advocate for the extension of the failure to prevent economic crime regime, and, I should make clear, also as a barrister whose practice includes economic crime cases, I have taken a long-term interest in this aspect of our justice system. It is, regrettably, my experience from the time I was reappointed as the shadow Attorney-General in 2009, then as Solicitor-General during the early part of the coalition Government in 2010, followed by what is now 14 years on the government and opposition Back Benches, both here and in the other place, that all three parties of government—the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party—have acknowledged with warm words the problems my amendment outlines but have not done enough to make the necessary practical changes.

I do not say that the United Kingdom has done nothing, and there is a reasonable case to suggest that we have been at the forefront of efforts to get a grip on foreign corruption. Several of the DPA cases concluded here have involved admitted allegations of failure to prevent bribery overseas, leading to the imposition of serious financial penalties. But when it comes to compensating the overseas victims of these offences, we have fallen short. It is not right that Crown Court judges—and it will usually be High Court or senior Crown Court judges well able to make the necessary assessments with the right evidence who will be dealing with these cases—should feel inhibited by existing statute law and practice from assessing and awarding compensation to the victims I had in mind because the assessment is or may be thought to be complicated. These judges deal with complex points of law and evidence every day, and victims should not be required to take out separate civil proceedings that are expensive in terms of cost and time in order to get justice.

As I said in your Lordships’ House on 7 February 2024, since the introduction of DPAs in 2014, the courts had by then fined corporations more than £1.5 billion for violations of the Bribery Act, yet only 1.4% of that sum had been given to the citizens of victim countries of the indicted corruption. We are therefore open to charges of hypocrisy, because the United Kingdom has been essentially acting as the world’s policeman while keeping the fines for the Treasury.

Sam Hickey in his paper makes six recommendations on how we can improve our performance as providers of just and appropriate compensation to the victims of overseas corruption. Having overburdened the House only last Thursday evening with my thoughts on the need to reform the criminal law of joint enterprise, I will not go into such depth or detail in arguing for my amendment today. But I recommend that the Minister just takes a few minutes to read Mr Hickey’s paper and the basis for his recommendations, even though he kindly makes several references to things I have already said in your Lordships’ House. If the Minister is really short of sleep, I invite her to read my speeches and published articles on the subject—but in any event, Mr Hickey’s paper should be part of the review I am asking for via Amendment 40.

In essence, Mr Hickey and I, both jointly and severally, urge upon the Government—and I have said as much myself several times in this House and in the articles I have written—that we should no longer simply rely on legal principles relating to compensation orders in favour of identifiable human victims in this jurisdiction when deciding whether to include compensation in the terms of a DPA or when sentencing a corporate defendant following a conviction or plea of guilty by the Crown Court. There should be a rebuttable presumption in favour of including compensation in such agreements or following conviction. Where compensation is included in the terms of a DPA, it should be tailored to the facts of each case.

More specifically, the Serious Fraud Office, as the usual prosecutor in cases of this sort, should actively apply for compensation to be awarded to discrete victims who have suffered quantifiable losses. In the case of Glencore, the SFO did not, despite my prompting when I was acting for the Government of Nigeria, seek to apply for compensation. There were legislative problems that prevented the court dealing with it, but at least the judge had the decency to hear my argument before saying, “Thanks, but no thanks”. However, it does seem to me that there should be a preference for compensation to be put toward the benefit of victim communities or societies in the foreign state through, for example, infrastructure projects such as schools or medical facilities, or towards the reduction of national debt. If none of those is possible, compensation moneys should be put towards the anti-corruption initiatives of governments, NGOs or international organisations—as I have suggested in the past, a United Nations ESCO account might be a suitable destination—as a final resort to ensure that some measure of compensation is paid in every case.

In any event, we should legislate for a rebuttable presumption in favour of real compensation. We should, as I have suggested before, consider a variety of methods for calculating the amount of compensation, including a victim’s losses, the value of the bribe, a percentage of the fines and penalties, or the gross profit of the briber. If there are no discrete victims with quantifiable losses, we should look to whichever measure of compensation is the greatest.

We should devise a formal procedure that victims, states and NGOs could use to request compensation. We need to clarify the concepts underlying compensatory practices, including the kinds of remedies available, the harm that might lead to compensation and the victims who might receive it. We also need, as I have said on several occasions before, to incentivise corporations to pay compensation by, for example, subtracting the compensation from the penalty. I accept that it could be said of my argument that repetition never made a bad point better. But I gently suggest that successive government failures to listen to a reasonable argument, year after year, is not evidence of its successful refutation but of a wilful or negligent refusal to see what is in front of them: that is to say, injustice piled on injustice, and corrupt companies being given license to bribe with impunity and to act without concern for their victims because it is happening out of sight and overseas. Amendment 40 is, if I may say so, a moderate amendment in its ambitions—perhaps too moderate—but it is certainly worthy of the Government’s consideration, and I urge them to do so. I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 46 in this group. In the Commons, it was tabled by Sarah Champion MP, who has long argued for supporting victims effectively and has a particular interest in the function of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. The amendment asks the Secretary of State to amend the criminal injuries compensation scheme to widen eligibility for compensation to all victims of child sex abuse, including online-facilitated sexual abuse, to ensure applicants with unspent convictions are not automatically excluded where offences are linked to the circumstances of their sexual abuse, and to increase the time limit for applications for compensation from victims of child sexual abuse to seven years. I will not give any more detail of that.

The reason for this is that, until the 2012 scheme, a crime was generally considered violent if it involved physical injury, the threat of immediate violence or a non-consensual sexual assault. Those were the ones the compensation scheme could look at. In practice, this means that many cases of online child sexual abuse are excluded, even where the abuse involves sustained coercion, blackmail or domination and the child experiences profound and lasting harm.

We know that victims often face significant barriers in accessing compensation for this reason. There is a problem with the strict time limits that the CICA imposes, because that means that many traumatised victims, who may be navigating complex criminal justice processes and/or are unaware of their eligibility, often struggle to apply in time. The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse report on accountability and reparations recommended extending the time limit for child sexual abuse cases and giving claims officers greater discretion, but these proposals were sadly rejected by the previous Government.

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[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by apologising to noble Lords who had other amendments in the group for not addressing their arguments, but I do not think they needed my assistance. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Sandhurst and to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for their support for my Amendment 40. As has been pointed out, my amendment asks for a review. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Marks, that we need to be imaginative and inventive—those were not his precise words, but I think that is the thrust of what he was saying. I suggest that doing nothing, doing a little slowly or patting ourselves on the back for what we might have done in the past are no longer acceptable.

I know that the Minister is sincere in her response. I am also aware of her professional experience, both in private practice and at the Crime Prosecution Service, and I look forward with gratitude to our meeting. I am aware of the terms of the 2002 Act to which she referred, but it does not meet the problem I have identified, as I know from my own professional experience. Furthermore, the provisions of FiSMA are untested, or insufficiently tested in my view, and I am not sure that reliance on that statute answers the problem we have been discussing. The review that the Minister spoke about is not due to report until 2027. Everything is always tomorrow, the week after, the month after or the year after; nothing is ever grabbed now and answered. This is my experience, having spoken about these questions for many years in the past, so I ask the House to forgive me if I come across as cynical.

That said, I look forward to having a positive discussion with the Minister during the Recess.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

After.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

After? There we are: a week after, a week after, a week after. The great god Delay is the one we all worship—for goodness’ sake. I thank the Minister for the meeting, but I think we spoke about this meeting before Christmas at Second Reading and it has slipped and slipped. I feel like an ice skater who is running out of bad jokes. I thank her for her forbearance. I know she is relatively new to her post and will not have had the joy of having to deal with my repetitive strain injury over the last several years. Anyhow, let us try to make some positive advances, produce some practical answers and not just push this thing further down the road, because there are victims out there whose lives have been ruined by corrupt criminal behaviour. I appreciate our Treasury should be in special measures, but it has been sucking in all this money in London, whereas people in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere are suffering. Having got that off my chest, again, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 40 withdrawn.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kempsell (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 417, from the noble Lord, Lord Banner, to which I have attached my name. I think there is very little I can add to the technical, financial and legal arguments in support that have already been made from all sides of the Committee. I will simply confine myself to a diagonal point on the effectiveness of the UK sanctions regime, which is funded by taxpayers’ money. A huge amount of work and official time goes into ensuring that it is effectively implemented, but the funds and the proceeds remain largely in the UK. It would be a better return on the intention of that public time and effort if those funds ultimately reached victims. That is what the public expect when they support a sanctions regime.

I attach to that the recent debate over the effectiveness of sanctions in general. Surely the measures in these amendments would increase public confidence in the overall sanctions policy of the Government, if the public are able to see that victims themselves are truly the beneficiaries of funds sequestered by their use. I consider the current position to be a rationing of justice and, as Sophocles said, there is no justice if it is rationed.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Banner for introducing this series of amendments and congratulate those who supported him. This is an important public policy question that can, from time to time, raise its ugly head—although it is then ignored. I hope that, as my noble friend has so attractively argued for his amendments just now, we will gain some momentum.

I turn to a related but not exactly identical subject: compensation for overseas victims of crimes committed by British defendants. I raised that question during Second Reading of the Victims and Courts Bill on 16 December, just before Christmas. The Minister there, who is in her place—I think it is the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, who will kindly respond to this group, and I am, as always, grateful to him for bearing that burden—recognised that the question of compensation for overseas victims was a matter of some importance that she would think about. Indeed, she suggested that she might like to meet me to discuss it further. I am open to that invitation, as I am sure would be my noble friend Lord Banner.

My noble friend has opened up a discussion about a lacuna in our law, in that we fail adequately to compensate victims. The victims could be those who have suffered at the hands of the Russians or of those that we, the European Union or the United States have sanctioned. I say in parenthesis that part of my practice at the Bar involves sanctions law, so anything that legislates to increase the size of my practice is to be welcomed. More to the point, it seems to me that we have two parallel streams, which demonstrate that the way we treat victims is insufficient and inadequate.

I thank my noble friend for bringing this to the attention of the Committee and the Government more directly. I trust that, when the Minister comes to respond, he will do so positively. If he is unable to do so, I invite my noble friend to reintroduce his amendment to the Victims and Courts Bill when it comes back to us in Committee at some as yet unannounced date.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Banner and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for their amendments in this group, and all noble Lords who spoke.

Amendments 417 and 419, tabled by my noble friend Lord Banner, would provide courts with the power to make public interest compensation orders during the sentencing of certain offences. He made a typically eloquent and compelling case for these amendments. He has consistently and powerfully campaigned, especially on Ukraine and the proceeds of sanctions, and I pay tribute to him for that.

Public interest compensation orders would grant the courts the ability to compel offenders to pay money to approved international or public interest bodies that support victims of serious human rights violations, such as torture or aggression. The courts would have to consider relevant factors, such as the broader human rights impact of the crime and the need to prioritise direct victims where relevant.

The amendment also lists relevant eligible recipient organisations with powers for the Secretary of State to update them, creating a structured mechanism for using the proceeds of sanctions-related crime in reparative funding for victims in the wider public interest. The amendment proposes a reasonable and practical process through which courts could divert illegally obtained funds to support victims, and I hope that the Government consider it very carefully. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Amendment 418 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, similarly proposes a mechanism through which the courts could direct a portion of confiscated proceeds for public interest or social purposes. It is very similar in nature to Amendment 417; it differs slightly in that it specifically requires the courts to consider whether the crime in question

“involved serious human rights violations, mass atrocity crimes, or grand corruption”.

But like Amendment 417, it raises very important issues as well as a broader question: if we are to make public compensation orders, what crimes should they apply to? I look forward to the Minister’s thoughts on that matter too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Spellar (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby and the noble Lord, Lord Marks. I have been arguing for some years in the House of Commons that the DBS scheme has, frankly, run out of control. I can quote from June 2020, when I said to the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson that it was

“a major obstacle to people turning their lives around. It is inefficient, unfair and, frankly, discriminatory. The Lammy report dealt with this in some depth nearly two years ago, so we do not need any more … inquiries. We need action”.

Reference has been made to the impact in different parts of the country. In smaller police forces, not only are cases often not taken to court but cautions are not issued, and instead people are very informally told to mend their ways. In cities, it can often be very different, and this also still lies on the record. The then Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in his reply to me:

“Any MP will have had very hard cases caused by the DBS system”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/6/20; col. 1309.]


I think there is a general recognition at the political level that this is a problem. I have to say from all my experience that there is deep inertial resistance inside the Civil Service to changing this, and I urge Ministers vigorously to overcome it, particularly given the report done by David Lammy, who was commissioned by the then Conservative Government to look into this area.

We also saw similar problems with the first elections for police and crime commissioners. Unwisely, a requirement was put in that someone should have no criminal conviction. We had a candidate who had to stand down as he had been convicted for possessing an offensive weapon when he was 13. We had another candidate who had committed a minor offence 22 years previously. These are people with long records of public service, and in no way should that have been held against them.

Whatever steps we take should also relate to proportionality and relevance. When I was a Transport Minister, there were proposals to introduce DBS checks at airports—I fully understood that—but if somebody had a conviction for an assault outside a nightclub in Southall on a Saturday night, I was not really worried if he was throwing my bags around in the luggage section. I would have been concerned if he had had a conviction for theft or for dealing in stolen goods. That also needs to be taken into account and be put right.

As a constituency Member of Parliament, I also had a woman who had been given a suspended sentence for an assault, age 18, in an argument with another girl over a partner. In her 40s, this was still preventing her. This does not just affect young people; it blights people right the way through their lives—and not just their lives but their children’s lives, as they are not able to provide support for them and have all the frustration of not developing their skills of life. It does not let people move on but also deprives the workforce of talent.

We are told sometimes that DBS checks and the ongoing system are fine, and that employers will look at them and take proportional action. They do not. Once a DBS check comes back with anything on the record, the fact is that people automatically get dropped. What is even more outrageous is that those same employers then go bleating to government, saying, “We can’t get workers here”, and so we have to bring them in from abroad. That was one factor that led to the huge surge of care workers being brought into this country in recent years—a considerable amount of exploitation and fraud accompanied it, by the way. At the same time, people were being kept off work, on benefits, not able to provide for themselves or their families.

My plea to the Committee is to support change and give people hope that they can turn their lives around, to take the opportunity to reinstate what I would argue were the principles of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act when it was first brought forward, and to make some progress. We may need to make further changes in the future, but these amendments provide a very good start.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad that I waited for the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, to contribute to the debate, as I agree with just about everything that he has said. Noble Lords may say that that is not terribly difficult, given that I have co-signed the amendments that he has signed. I share his view that —I am paraphrasing what he said and will probably get it wrong—reviews can sometimes go nowhere. Having listened to him and to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, I am much attracted to our amendment.

Equally, having heard the noble Lord, Lord Marks, introducing his amendment, and having studied it a little more closely, I am attracted by his idea that the review should look into what I think we all admit is a quite complicated area, in public policy terms, of discussion. I am attracted to the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Marks. If this amendment is accepted by the Government, we would have a report within a year of the Bill’s enactment—we could be talking about, say, June 2027, by the time the review has taken place and the Government have reported. Further, subsection (2) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 420 begins by saying:

“The report must consider at least”,


and then identifies three broad subject areas. It would be able to take on board the points that the noble Lords, Lord Ponsonby and Lord Spellar, have so far outlined.

A combination of these four separate proposals need to grip the Government’s attention, so that we can come back with a coherent, thought-through and workable set of policies that recognise the need for these two public interests to be borne in mind; that is to say, the protection of the public and employers and so forth, set against the need to allow youngsters who may have made some terrible mistakes to get on and live their lives.

I will finish with an anecdote. I used to make a habit of visiting prisons and so forth, when I was shadow Minister of Prisons—before the ark was set afloat. The adult male prison population was once largely aged between 21 and 30. It was an unscientific approach but I noticed that, since around the first decade of this century, the average age of the adult male prison population has risen, largely because of the conviction of historic sex offenders. People have been convicted in, say, the 2010s, in their 60s or 70s, for offences committed when they were youngsters, so the average age of the prison population has to some extent risen. It is a generalisation, and something that the review could look into, but, by and large, people grow out of criminal behaviour. Once they have found a partner and somewhere to live, and got a job—as long as they have not been ruined by Rehabilitation of Offenders Act antipathy—they will get on, earn a living and live their lives. The stupidity of their teenage years falls away behind them, and it should be allowed to stay there.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 9th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I am the only person in this House who was President of the Family Division. I did the final part of the Bland case, to allow him to die. I very much prefer the idea that we should have a court-based decision, for the reasons that have already been given. I am rising only to answer some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge.

First, judges try extremely difficult and emotional cases. I really do not think it is necessary for this House to consider the emotional impact of those cases because that is our job. If it is our job, we do it, and then we hope that we can cope with it. I tried endless life and death cases; I have to tell your Lordships that deciding that a baby should die was even worse than deciding that an adult should die, but it has to be done.

Secondly, I come to the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that not only the 20 Family Division judges should make these decisions but deputy High Court judges and the designated family judges; indeed, there are other judges in the family centres who are equally good. When I was President of the Family Division, I ticketed those family judges who were suited to try adoption cases. I see no problem in the President of the Family Division deciding on those judges and the KCs who are Section 9 deputy High Court judges to work out who would be suitable to try these cases. That would increase the number of judges available from 20 to all the part-time and other judges around the country. That is not the best solution—the best solution is the 20 judges—but the reality is that it would be necessary.

Finally, if Parliament passes this legislation and tells the Family Division and the other family judges that it is their job to deal with somebody who is likely to die within six months—although we all know how inaccurate that six-month figure can be—the judges will do it. They will then have to give priority to life and death cases, which they do anyway, even if it means that other important cases are kept waiting. Therefore, the delays in all the other cases have to give way to the requirement of Parliament that judges try the cases.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am diffidently following the noble and learned Baroness, with her experience both as a legislator and as a very senior judge. I am very pleased she intervened when she did, because her contribution has been most helpful, There is always a difficulty for someone like me, who is not a family law practitioner, to draw a distinction between the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—I broadly support what he advanced—and the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in his construction of the Bill as it stands. There is merit in both, but as a House, we have to try to produce a practical solution. Irrespective of whether one supports the principle behind the Bill, if it goes through, it might as well go through in a way that works.

Putting to one side for the moment the very sensible arguments made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, one of the advantages of the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is that we will be producing answers through a court of record, and it will create a form of precedent. I do not know, and maybe the noble and learned Baroness will tell me differently, but I have a suspicion that to start with there will be a rush of factually different types of case under this application system. At least one or two of the lead cases will be grouped and go to the Court of Appeal, where perhaps the president, with two other highly experienced Lord Justices of Appeal, will set out a legal rubric for judges of first instance to deal with. If the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has a moment, it would be interesting to hear what he has to say as an experienced family law circuit judge.

From the Court of Appeal, a case or a group of cases will go to the Supreme Court. I suspect that will all happen reasonably quickly within the early part of the life of the enacted Bill. Once we have done that, the system will settle. Senior circuit judges, Family Division judges, will be able to deal with these cases—difficult, hideous or contentious as some of them may well be—with the permission of Parliament, of course, but with the guidance of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. That is a system to be preferred, because the panel system in the Bill, which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, described, does not necessarily provide that legal authority, albeit that there could be a judge on the panel. It will not have the imprimatur of the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court in its assessment of what has happened—I may be wrong about that.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

To pick up on what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, has just said, he is absolutely right. In the Bland case, that was exactly what happened. This was a permanent vegetative state. No one had ever had that case come before the courts. A High Court judge dealt with it; I was in the Court of Appeal, where we approved it. The Supreme Court—then the Judicial Committee—approved it. I then tried the first case. Then, it was understood by other judges how it should be dealt with. So, the noble and learned Lord is absolutely right.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for her approbation of what I just said.

My final point concerns what happens if there is a lack of High Court judges in the Family Division. We are told there are 20, and there are 40 circuit judges who specialise in family work. It may well be that when the noble and learned Baroness was in the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court, a commercial judge from the Queen’s Bench Division was appointed as the President of the Family Division. There are plenty of very bright and capable judges in the other divisions who, if required, could apply themselves to these sorts of cases. So, we are not going to be short of personnel; what we are short of is a decision of this House to agree with the position of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, or something like that. It may well be that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, will come up with a way of dealing with the gap between him and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, as one of these 10 thematic discussions, so we get a workable, just and publicly respected system which, if we are to have a Bill, allows the public to feel confident that it will work properly.