Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Rooker and Baroness Donaghy

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I will briefly add to what the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has said. In the original draft Bill that the Joint Committee scrutinised, the Ministry of Justice was the only government department that brought forward proposals of which none had been formally consulted on—not one. Although we are debating Clause 61, Clauses 62, 63, 64 and 65 are all MoJ clauses and none of them has ever been consulted on formally. This is a Christmas tree Bill with 100 different subjects—we could not look at everything, and looked at stuff on the basis of evidence. It was unique in the sense that we had one department that brought forward a range of proposals that it had not consulted on. In a way, this is given away in Clause 61 itself. Line 5 refers to,

“an annual report on standards of decision-making”.

That is the giveaway really. I have to say that the Government’s response was a bit unsatisfactory.

We need to have this short debate, however few minutes it lasts, because, to the best of my knowledge, this is where the defects arise because there is so much going on and this Bill is now much more massive than it was. I have no complaint about that; I am just stating a fact. As parliamentarians, we need further and better particulars. We did not get many to start with, which is why we did not deal with a lot of the Bill. We also had little time to do our job because we were constrained by having to report back to Parliament by 16 December.

The Ministry of Justice appears to be a bit flaky on the administration of justice in a way. That is how I would sum it up, not just on this issue but on others as well, although I am not going to go down the route of listing things. Cost was used as an argument on this, but we never had any costs or alternatives, even though, given the number of changes in the benefit system, that would have seemed a good idea.

As far as I am aware, in the representations we had from the authors of these reports they did not say that it would be a good idea if they did not have to do them. I have not checked all the evidence on the issue I raised last week, but the fact is that the Ministers have been more up-to-date than us. I thought it was worth raising that issue in this Committee, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, if only for flagging this up for Report.

There is an issue here. There were one or two issues on which the Joint Committee did not spend a lot of time, but expressed a bit of concern. Last week the debate on marine accidents showed that as well. It was not a massive issue in the committee, but as time has gone on, it seems as though the importance of the legislation is crucial; obviously I agree with deregulation. The Bill is therefore an opportunity that we should not miss. However, in this case the Government will have to come forward on Report with a much better argument for keeping Clause 61 than they have given so far.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I promise that I will be very brief. I was thinking of Lord Newton of Braintree when the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, moved this amendment—I am sorry that there is only one Conservative in the Room. As Members will know, Lord Newton was chair of the Council on Tribunals, and later chair of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council. He argued very strongly against the government proposal to abolish the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council. I only wish he was alive today, and I hope he is looking down at us. I am sure that he would have been delighted by the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, moved this amendment. I am sure that I am not alone in this House in missing him. When I was chair of ACAS I worked very closely with the then senior chairman—as they were called in those days—of the Employment Tribunals Service, my noble friend Lord Noon. He was part of the administrative tribunals system, and I also met Lord Newton on a number of occasions when he was performing the duties of the senior president.

This is part of the chipping away of tribunals. It may not seem very much on its own, but it is part of squeezing the tribunals together—which had totally different functions and history—cutting them back and now not even allowing transparency of decision-making. Also, as a former member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, I believe that this fails the test of transparency and openness. It is extremely worrying that we have these kinds of developments. It may seem a very small part of a very large Bill, but I hope very much that the Government will reconsider this in the name of transparency and good decision-making.