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Law Commission

The noble Lord may be right in respect of bringing stuff forward at the last minute in a five-year Parliament, but years have gone by. It cannot be said that political considerations would have been particularly relevant two or three years ago on matters that by that time had already been outstanding for four or five years. If these matters had been political, they would not have been included in the Law Commission’s programme in the first place or indeed agreed by the Government, because the Government agree these things. On the timing of an eventual Bill, I take the noble Lord’s point—it would perhaps be inappropriate to do that in the run-up to an election—but we have no indication at all of why the Government decided not to proceed with these Bills.

There are a couple of other Bills where apparently some sort of conclusion may be expected. There is a remedies against public authorities Bill, which celebrates

its fourth birthday in 10 or 12 days’ time, on which the ministry committed to providing by Easter 2014 a complete analysis of the results of a pilot scheme. Are the Government ready to pronounce upon those results and, therefore, their intentions regarding that Bill? The other Bill to which there was a commitment to provide a response during the summer is a High Court jurisdiction in criminal cases Bill, which is now nearly three years old. Will we in fact get a response this summer, and is it possible for what I suspect will be such highly technical matters to be brought forward during the dog days of this Parliament—although, frankly, it does not look as though there will be much else to do? Then, as I said, there is the public services ombudsman Bill, to which a response was expected from the Cabinet Office, not the Ministry of Justice, by Easter. I am not aware that any such response has been in the public domain; again, perhaps, if not today then subsequently, we might find out.

All this raises questions not about how the commission works—it is doing its work—but about how that work is received and dealt with at the government end. It was interesting to read the triennial review of the Law Commission on this subject. Paragraph 43 asserts:

“The Law Commission faces many difficult challenges at the moment. It is currently developing its 12th Programme of Law Reform in an uncertain climate. The Protocol governing the Commission’s work provides that before approving the inclusion of a project in the overall programme the Lord Chancellor will expect the relevant Minister to give an undertaking that there is a serious intention to take forward law reform in this area”.

Touching on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, it then asserts:

“With the timescale for the 12th Programme spanning the next General Election, the Commission and Ministers will be making decisions in a context where there is a great deal of uncertainty about whether the incoming Government will support any project”.

That raises two points. First, in respect of matters that cannot be concluded in this Parliament, will the Government facilitate discussions between the Opposition and the commission about what a future Government might do? I ask that particularly in the light of recent decisions by the Prime Minister not to facilitate discussions between the Civil Service and the Opposition until much later this year—much closer to a general election than has been indicated in the past. As noble Lords will understand, I have very strong objections to that of a political kind. However, with Law Commission Bills we are not talking about highly controversial political matters anyway. I cannot see that discussions would be at all embarrassing to the Government; these are not government policies that will be under review. I cannot see any difficulty in facilitating a discussion between the Opposition and the commission about the commission’s own agenda. It would be helpful to an incoming Government, which I hope to see—and which noble Lords opposite hope not to see—or for any future Opposition to have that kind of relationship with the commission, so that the whole process can be accelerated and the Law Commission does not have to start from scratch.