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Queen's Speech

The noble Lord has my point exactly. The Government also present us with the Children, Schools and Families Bill. Its purpose is stated to be to, ""provide guarantees for parents and pupils setting out what they can expect from the 21st century schools system. These will equip every child, every family and every one who works with them to meet the challenges ahead, and so help secure this country’s success now and in the future"—" this means, we are told— ""through new pupil and parent guarantees the Government is committing for the first time series of specific entitlements for all and providing a means of redress if expectations are not met"." What is this "means of redress"? Will a parent who feels that a guarantee has been broken or a specific entitlement not given—for example, a place in a particular school, or specialised or one-to-one teaching—be able to obtain an order from a judge by way of judicial review to enforce that statutory guarantee? I do not think so. I suspect that we will see some watered down, bureaucratic system of complaint put in place—a complaint to be made to the very government department that is responsible for implementing these so-called guarantees. The Government promise "21st century schools"; I should like to see them promising 19th century schools. They say: ""Building on over a decade of increasing school standards, this Bill will deliver the building blocks for a world class 21st century schooling system that meets the needs of every pupil so that they can achieve their full potential"." Really? A piece of legislation—a Bill—rather than a body of competent and active administrators—will deliver building blocks to meet the needs of every pupil? Will that be justiciable in court? Pass a law and the thing is done? It used to be said—I always thought it rather unfair—that those who can, do and those who cannot, teach. Now we have a Labour gloss on the administration of government. Those who can, do and those who cannot, push a useless piece of legislation through Parliament. The proposed Child Poverty Bill proclaims not a guarantee but an "accountability framework". It will ensure that, ""for the first time Governments will be held to account on the success of their strategies to end child poverty"." How? This time the blurb is specific—not through the courts but through annual reports to Parliament. Big deal. That will put a lot of money in a lot of people’s pockets. Why do the Government not simply set out their policies, put them before the public and, if elected, do their best to achieve them? That is the point that the noble Lord was making a moment ago. Or is the purpose of this charade to set out targets in an attempt to bind a future Administration of whatever party, or combination of parties? These Bills will debase the statute book. A political manifesto is masquerading as a serious addition to the enforceable laws of this country. We are promised a number of Bills. The constitutional renewal Bill will be dealt with by other of my noble friends. However, I was somewhat amused to hear the noble Lord say that this Bill is going to maintain the momentum of the reform of the House of Lords by the abolition of the by-elections for Peers. Back in 1964, when I fought my first election against Nigel Birch in West Flint, the Rhyl Chronicle contained my promise for a Senedd—an Assembly for Wales—proportional representation and the abolition of the hereditary principle in the House of Lords. This Government have really a great deal of momentum behind them, haven’t they? To be fair, however, there is one Bill promised that stands out like a beacon, and that is the Bribery Bill. Unfortunately for the reputation of this country, it is 10 years late. The United Kingdom, rather reluctantly, became a signatory to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development anti-bribery convention in 1997. But, unlike all the other 36 signatories, we did nothing to modernise our law. In late 2001, an obscure section of the emergency legislation, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Bill, prefixed the word "foreign" in the existing references to "public officials", "public bodies" and "agents" who are capable of being bribed in the Victorian legislation that we have. When monitoring was carried out by the OECD working group in 2005, it was found that not one individual or company had been indicted or tried for bribery of a foreign official. The inadequacy of the current law, based as I have said on statutes passed between 1889 and 1916, was highlighted when the Al Yamamah investigation was dropped in December 2006. As your Lordships will recall, the Serious Fraud Office said that it was, ""necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest"." However, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said that it was not likely that a prosecution under the existing law would be successful. The reason was that it would be difficult to prove, as is necessary under the present law, that the person who banked the hundreds of millions of pounds paid in commissions by BAE did not have the authority of his principal, the ruler of the state in question. As a result of that fiasco, the Law Commission was put to work, and it put out a consultation paper in late 2007. In November 2008, it produced its report and a draft Bill. The Government's own draft Bill was subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses under the chairmanship of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and I served on that. A wide body of evidence was considered by that committee and it produced its report in July. The Government have now produced their considered response, accepting most of the recommendations. So we have a piece of legislation coming before your Lordships that amends a hopelessly out-of-date and inadequate law and finally fulfils our international obligations in the criminal law. The issues have been fully considered by the Law Commission. There has been full cross-party scrutiny and evidence, and submissions have been received from all interested parties. Above all, it reforms a discrete part of the criminal law and is not the ragbag of criminal legislation that we have been accustomed to over the past few years. It is quite unlike, for example, the amendments to the law of provocation—to keep open an old wound from the previous Session—where there was criticism from all sides, including from the Law Commission. However, the Government cannot leave it alone. We have another pick-and-mix Bill to contend with: the Crime and Security Bill. The flagship provision appears to be to send parents to prison, or at least to punish them, for what their children have done: it will be not an ASBO, but an ASPO—an anti-social parenting order. Again, no doubt, the pernicious device will be employed of obtaining a civil order not only with a lower standard of proof but with the acceptance of hearsay evidence. That will lead to imprisonment for conduct that is not itself a criminal offence, as has been the effect with the ASBO. While the Government surround us with legal guarantees and add new criminal offences to the 3,000 offences they have introduced in the past 12 years, there is nothing in the measures put forward to deal with the crisis in legal aid, particularly in family cases, and the 23 per cent cut that the Government propose in publicly funded criminal defence work. In their outline legislative programme last June, the Government referred to the value of professional services and their intention to sustain investment in public services. This year is the 60th anniversary of the Legal Aid and Assistance Act 1949, which was passed, ""to provide legal advice for those of slender means and resources so that no one will be financially unable to prosecute a just and reasonable claim or defend a legal right"." That flagship Act was passed by the brilliant Labour Government of 1945. That guarantee has now gone and is weakening all the time. Access to justice is an essential part of a free and democratic society. Looking back over the past 10 years, it cannot be said that the flame of freedom has burnt brightly in the souls of this Administration. Consistent attempts have been made to weaken the right of jury trial, to undermine the presumption of innocence and to strengthen the powers of the state to conduct surveillance, to retain the DNA of innocent people and to create a database state with the collating and co-ordination of information about each citizen, the apotheosis of which was the attempt to introduce compulsory identity cards. Security means not just protection from those who wish to do us harm; security is necessary to protect our way of life and the values by which we live our lives.