European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames and Lord Cormack

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has just said and ever so slightly disagree with my noble friend Lord Hailsham. Whatever the nature of the offence, it is wrong that it should be created in this way. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that custodial sentences are highly unlikely, but that is not the point. To create any sort of offence in this way is fundamentally wrong and we should not have anything to do with it.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has just said. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and my noble friend Lord McNally explained, the Bill as drafted would permit Ministers, when they consider it “appropriate”—a point made by the noble Viscount and a word discussed at length last Wednesday—to create by regulations new criminal offences carrying up to two years’ imprisonment for wide and diffuse purposes. As discussed last week, regulations could also be used to make any provision that could be made by Act of Parliament. The Henry VIII powers are as all-embracing as could be imagined. This is all the more shocking in the context of the creation of new criminal offences. These may concern individual liberty, certainly; reputation, always; and the conduct of business, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has pointed out.

The report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee—on which I sat for a number of years—described the powers as “wider than we have ever seen”. It described Clause 7 as notable for its width, novelty and uncertainty, and the same can be said of all three of the clauses in question. The principle is simple: it is in general not acceptable for the Government to have the power to create new criminal offences by regulation without an Act of Parliament. That principle was treated as cardinal when I was on the Delegated Powers Committee.

In 2014 the committee produced a document headed Guidance for Departments, directed principally at memorandums for the departments. However, on the question of criminal offences it was considered so out of order that new criminal offences would be created by regulation that the guidance did not even address that possibility. The committee said:

“Where a Bill creates a criminal offence with provision for the penalty to be set by delegated legislation”—


that is, the Bill creates the offence—

“the committee would expect, save in exceptional circumstances, a maximum penalty on conviction to be included on the face of the bill. Therefore, where this is not the case, the memorandum should explain why not, and at the very least the Committee would expect the instrument to be subject to affirmative procedure. Similarly, where the ingredients of a criminal offence are to be set by delegated legislation, the Committee would expect a compelling justification”.

However, this Bill potentially permits the creation of a new range of criminal offences. Both the Bill and the Explanatory Notes are silent about everything to do with such offences as might be created except for the broad statement of their purpose in the three clauses, in the most general terms, and with no indication of what offences are envisaged, except that the maximum penalty must not exceed two years imprisonment—which, as the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, pointed out, is a not insubstantial period.

The basic principle was enshrined in Article 39 of Magna Carta: that no one should be imprisoned or stripped of his rights or possessions or deprived of his standing in any way except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. These are constitutional principles as old as this Parliament, and we should be very careful in dealing with the issue of allowing the right of Parliament to insist on a say over criminal offences being created by the diktat of Ministers.