Queen’s Speech

Debate (5th Day)

Moved on Monday 14 October by

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:

“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.

My Lords, it is a privilege to open this day of debate on Her Majesty’s most gracious Speech.

The focus of today’s debate is home affairs, justice, constitutional affairs, devolved affairs and local government. The debate will enable us to explore some of the key themes of the gracious Speech, including laying the foundations for a fair, modern and global immigration system by seizing the opportunities of Brexit, doing more to redress the balance in the criminal justice system, and ensuring that victims receive the support they need and the justice they deserve. Both my noble friend Lady Williams and I look forward to hearing noble Lords’ contributions, given the wealth of experience represented on all sides of the House.

The Government are committed to making neighbourhoods safer and to ensuring that punishments fit the crime. People across the country are, rightly, appalled at the rise in violent crime. For that reason, the gracious Speech included a commitment to introduce legislation to ensure that the most serious violent and sexual offenders spend more time in prison, to match the severity of their crimes. The Government will also seek to strengthen community orders so that they deliver an appropriate level of punishment, address offenders’ behaviour, support people in addressing the potential underlying causes of their offending and provide reparation for the benefit of the wider community.

As well as getting tougher on criminals, the Government are determined to ensure that victims receive the support they need and the justice they deserve. To do that, we are accelerating plans to enshrine in legislation the rights to which victims are entitled, as set out in the victims’ code. We will publish the revised code in early 2020. We recognise that rights are meaningless without the means to enforce them. We want to legislate to ensure that victims understand the minimal level of service they can expect from criminal justice agencies and to increase the powers of the Victims’ Commissioner, who is already a powerful voice for victims. The Government will legislate for the new victims’ law to be consulted on early in the new year. These changes will ensure that victims of crime receive the very best support as well as the information they need at every stage of the criminal justice system.

For the families of murder victims there can be many unanswered questions. No one should endure the anguish of having a loved one murdered and then be denied the dignity of giving them a final resting place. That is why the Government have brought forward legislation to make sure that the Parole Board must take into account an offender’s failure to disclose the location of their victim’s remains. This legislation also addresses another situation where a failure to disclose information about victims causes particular distress: where offenders fail to disclose the identities of children who are the subject of indecent images. The Parole Board will similarly be required to take into account any failure to disclose the identity of victims when assessing offenders’ suitability for release.

My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my relevant interest in the register as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, in his place. This is my first opportunity to pay tribute to the noble Lord. I always enjoyed our friendly debates across the Dispatch Boxes. He was engaging and courteous at all times, both in and outside the Chamber. He was a very able Minister and is a real loss to the Government. I know he will continue to make informed contributions to your Lordships’ business, as he will today.

My focus today is a number of the proposals in the Queen’s Speech, covering areas in which I will have some involvement in your Lordships’ House in this Session of Parliament—however long it lasts. While this Session continues, and until Parliament is dissolved, I am absolutely committed to working with those on all Benches to improve the Bills that come before us. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, has told us, the debate today will cover home affairs, justice, local government, devolved affairs and constitutional affairs. I have seen only one of the Bills that is to be brought before us. With that proviso, I intend to set out my initial thinking and how I hope we will progress. My noble friend Lord Rosser will cover the areas that I do not reference. I look forward to all contributions from noble Lords to today’s debate.

Generally, I welcome measures that seek to address crime, in particular violent crime and thereby strengthen the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system. The types of crime perpetrated, and how they come about, change over time. We therefore need to update our response regularly and consistently. But addressing crime is about not only punishment but rehabilitation and addressing the problems in the first place, before we get anywhere near the involvement of the police, prisons or probation services. Longer prison sentences might get the Government a few favourable headlines in some of the tabloids, but do they punish, address offender behaviour and help with rehabilitation? That is the question we should be asking. Any Government who get the balance right and make positive inroads to both addressing offender behaviour and delivering proper rehabilitation will get, and truly deserve, praise for making our country a safer place, and save the taxpayer many millions of pounds.

My Lords, when the Prime Minister promises not to send a letter to the EU requesting an extension and does, and when he promises no border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and then agrees a deal that would put such a border in place, the primary consideration becomes one of trust. Whether it is promises about ending free movement, ensuring the rights of EU citizens living in the UK, supporting our police or tackling violent crime, I suggest that this Government’s promises should not be trusted.

Sometimes this becomes apparently only when you look at the detail. The Home Secretary says free movement between the EU and the UK will end on 31 October when, in fact, this House has already passed secondary legislation which, in the event of no deal, would allow EU citizens unrestricted access to the UK and its employment market, with the only requirement being a day trip to Boulogne every six months, which would be impossible to enforce. Can the Minister say what would happen to free movement in the event of a deal and us going into a transition period? Would free movement end on 31 October?

The Government say they are committed to ensuring that EU citizens resident in the UK have the right to remain, yet on 9 October 2019 only 929,600 of the 2.7 million EU citizens living in the UK had been granted full settled status. That is just over one-third of them. The best way of ensuring that resident European Union citizens, who have built their lives in, and contributed so much to, the United Kingdom, have the right to remain is for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union, and that is what the Liberal Democrats are committed to ensuring through a confirmatory referendum or, if the public vote for a majority Liberal Democrat Government at the next general election, by revoking Article 50.

Further on Brexit and immigration, more than 20 organisations, including the Refugee Council, are currently in receipt of funding from the EU’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund to deliver a range of services aimed at supporting the integration of refugees in the UK. Can the Minister confirm this funding will cease immediately if the UK leaves the EU without a deal? Do the Government not think that the integration of refugees is important?

My Lords, in the gracious Speech there is a reference to the integrity of democracy. I will address the simple principle that the integrity of democracy in this country depends on the survival of the constitution. We have a great number of problems. We are not providing the constitution with the protection it needs, if I may say so, from Parliament. We never have time to examine these issues as a whole. We examine them piecemeal and do not appreciate that each part of the problem adds up to one problem overall, so I will pick four examples.

First, there is the obvious one. To avoid a political difficulty, Mr Cameron, with a great deal of support in Parliament, and, let us not forget, with its certain concurrence, gave us the Brexit referendum. The public were led to believe that their decision in the referendum would be binding on Parliament. They did not choose the questions that they had to answer; the questions were chosen for them. We now know what answer was given. It did not coincide with the views of the majority of people in either of our two Houses. Simply because a referendum has no real place in our constitution, the constitution did not provide and could not be expected to provide an answer to a simple question.

In such a clash, who wins? Those who support Brexit assert—it has been asserted in this Chamber time and again—that a democratic mandate was given to the people and that this overrides Parliament. The same has been frequently asserted in this House the other way around: the ancient principle that ultimate sovereignty rests with Parliament. What a constitutional shambles! It is a salutary lesson to all politicians on all sides that if you mess about with the constitution it will bite back, and it is the public and nation who suffer the consequent injury.

Secondly, as part of a deal to create a coalition Government—in other words, to deal with a political difficulty—the then Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Parliament enacted a new principle: the five-year Parliament. The result is that, although the Prime Minister of the day failed more than once to obtain parliamentary agreement to the deal she had agreed with the EU, an absolutely central part of her legislative programme, the country was deprived of the only constitutional way to resolve the problem: a general election. There should have been one, but there could not be. I am not saying that we need a general election now—I keep off general elections or referenda in the present context—but I am reflecting that what I am sure was an unintended consequence of this enactment is that an important constitutional principle was undermined. Before the constitutional change was made, did anyone give thought to how it might impact on that constitutional principle? I regret to say that I doubt it.

Would the noble and learned Lord agree that in times such as this, it is so important that we rely on our tried parliamentary machinery, and that in recent times we have altered that parliamentary machinery without giving due thought to the consequences?

My short answer is “yes”, but it would be a very long answer if I explained why and what my reservations are about my “yes”.

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interests as set out in the register, in particular as chairman of the British Insurance Brokers’ Association and as a partner in the global commercial law firm DAC Beachcroft LLP.

It is a privilege to follow what I regarded as an outstandingly good speech by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. It was my privilege to sit with him on the Constitution Committee for several years. Sadly, we are no longer on that committee and he has moved on to a much higher role in this House, but I welcome his words of reflection on the unwritten constitution. Because it is not written at the moment, we have the opportunity to write, for the first time, our constitution. That is something for which we should bear in mind his wise words.

I recall that we did have a great debate about all this. I am sad to see that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is not in his place, because that debate took place on the very idea, put forward by the then Lord Chancellor, that we should in effect downgrade the position of Lord Chancellor, albeit by creating the Supreme Court and siting it elsewhere. In a way it also paved the way for the very situation that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has just outlined. The constitutional framework has shifted on to “softer sand”, to use his words. We should pause and reflect on that.

Overshadowing us is the fact that, as we are already acutely aware, while we debate so many important aspects of Her Majesty’s gracious Address, along the Corridor in another place the protracted and debilitating discussion of Brexit continues. I understand that the latest information is that we will be sitting through Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the coming weekend. No doubt we shall hear more about that.

Brexit touches on all aspects of our lives, including those that we are debating today. My area of activity for the last 50 years has been the financial services sector, which leads the world and is vital to our entire social and economic fabric. It makes doing business possible and brings security into all our lives. Its business model is predicated on highly sophisticated and flexible modelling of risk and uncertainty, and it has done everything possible to make itself Brexit-proof. I pay tribute to the chief executive of BIBA, Steve White, and his team, for their skill in helping the industry prepare for whatever transpires. None the less, the current uncertainty is causing incalculable and unnecessary cost, stress and friction. A no-deal Brexit would still cause significant damage. As the Government seek to steer between the Scylla of a Government led by Jeremy Corbyn and the Charybdis of a no-deal Brexit, they do of course enjoy my full support.

My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my interests as a councillor and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I join the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in expressing my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for a positive and always very constructive working relationship.

The focus of my remarks today will be confined to some aspects of local government. Nearly 20% of total national spending on public services is through local government. Sadly, though not surprisingly, the two words not mentioned in the Queen’s Speech were “local” and “government”. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the current Government have no interest in, nor concern for, local government. The sins of omission are as great as those of commission. Despite the fundamental place that local government has in the lives of everyone in our nation, this Government have nothing substantial to say on what they intend to do to enhance that offer.

The Government have accepted for at least the past four years that a crisis exists in the funding of care for vulnerable adults. The Prime Minister has told us that he will solve that crisis. I looked in vain for concrete proposals. Once again, the Government are ducking their responsibilities. The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has put it bluntly, saying that social care in England is adrift in a “sea of inertia” caused by years of budget cuts and concluding:

“The system is not only failing financially, it is failing people”.

The Government’s only financial response is to pass on to hard-pressed council tax payers the burden of funding social care, with some additional national core funding, which will still mean a significant shortfall in what is required. Can the Minister provide a timetable for the publication of a White Paper with proposals for tackling this crisis?

At least the Government have recognised that there is a crisis in the funding of adult social care. The costs of care for vulnerable children is, if anything, a bigger funding crisis. The total number of looked-after children reached a new high of 75,420 last year, representing the biggest annual rise in the number of children in care in eight years. An average of 88 children now come into care every day and, overall, councils face a £3.1 billion funding gap for children’s services by 2025. Again, sadly, the government response in terms of funding is minimal in comparison to the need—just a share of the social care and children’s budget of £410 million, when the need is £600 million for children alone. Can the Minister provide assurance that policies are being developed by the Government to address what appears a startling abdication of responsibility for the most vulnerable children in England?

My Lords, I congratulate the Government and welcome their initiative on the NHS. I assure them that, if they have the chance to put this in place, some of us on this side will ensure that it is well scrutinised and applied. I also welcome the long-awaited Domestic Abuse Bill. I hope that both Houses can come together to find the best way to ensure that this scourge is brought to an end.

I will pick up one minor point in this context. I welcome the Government’s initiative in bringing forward an SI on the alcohol abstinence monitoring requirement. When this was being debated about six years ago, I was involved, with the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, in persuading the Mayor of London to run a trial with it; another trial was introduced in another part of the country. Under this scheme, those found guilty of offences, in many instances involving violence, but who manage to avoid prison, are given community sentences to which are attached a requirement that they should not be taking drugs or alcohol. Monitoring, to make sure they stay sober, has been introduced on an experimental basis. Last week, I had a meeting with the Minister responsible and I am pleased that this is being embraced with enthusiasm and it is now intended to roll it out around the whole country.

This helpful development links to the Domestic Abuse Bill, because much domestic abuse is linked to drugs and, more particularly, alcohol abuse. My major criticism is that people will be kept under review and required to be tested for a period of 120 days. In our jails, people who have problems with drugs and alcohol are given assistance to get sober while they are inside, but when their sentence is over and they go back into the community, they frequently go around in the same old circle and end up recommitting offences, in many cases linked to drug and alcohol abuse. I therefore question whether looking at people for 120 days is enough. I have suggested to the Minister that he should convene a meeting of interested charities and voluntary organisations. Recognising the pressure on resources, we have to look to all the areas where we can get additional assistance. This might involve the voluntary sector, perhaps using organisations such as AA, which have tried-and-tested experience in assisting people to get permanent recovery. A small conference, bringing together interested parties, might find a way to give longer-term assistance and support, well beyond the 120 days. That would benefit not just those individuals but also their families, who are so often affected by the violence arising from drug and alcohol abuse. That is my major, modest contribution to this debate.