Title (Hansard, 5 December 1966)

§ The Attorney-General
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. I commend the Bill to the House. It has received most detailed consideration in another place, about which some very direct observations were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) earlier, whose admiration for another place he has qualified on more than one occasion. He combined his qualification tonight, I am sorry to say with a swipe at the lawyers. That is a wholly unworthy exercise because, as the House well knows, some of the finest contributions to debate in the House are made by lawyers.
1050 I am afraid that what I have just said is not exactly calculated to win the unanimous support of my hon. and right hon. Friends behind me, but I think that in regard to the Bill they will give their full support, as the House as a whole will do, because its purpose is to give additional strength to the Council on Tribunals.
I should like to pay a tribute to the work of that Council since it was introduced. It has provided a most valuable protection for the citizen, and its recommendations as to the procedures to be conducted in inquiries have undoubtedly resulted in a considerable improvement in those procedures. The Government shows no reluctance in encouraging the Council on Tribunals in its work.

§ Sir Stephen McAdden (Southend, East)
On a point of order. I wonder if you would be kind enough to help me, Mr. Speaker. I am anxious to know what the Attorney-General is saying. I cannot hear a word of what he is saying.

§ Mr. Speaker
I appreciate the difficulty of the House, but it would be courteous if hon. Members would listen to the speeches which are being made.

§ The Attorney-General
I am sorry that I cannot be adequately heard. I pray that the fault is not entirely mine and that no hardness of hearing is beginning to affect any hon. Member below the Gangway. As I was saying, when I was so appropriately interrupted, the House will join with me in taking this opportunity of paying tribute to the work of the Council on Tribunals, under the distinguished chairmanship of Lord Tenby, who has done a great deal to improve the position of the citizen before Tribunals of Inquiry. Therefore, the citizen has certainly in the past tended to be vulnerable and, perhaps, exposed in a way in which he is not in the ordinary processes of the courts. The supervision that has been exercised by the Council on Tribunals has been of immense value.
8.45 p.m.
It is now proposed that the wide range of discretionary inquiries which by reason of the inadequacy of definition of the Act were previously excluded will now be brought within the ambit of the Council's work. I know that the House will want 1051 to give a fair wind to a Measure whose sole purpose is to strengthen the rôle of the Council on Tribunals as a watchdog for the individual.
The Council has asked—

§ Mr. Charles Doughty (Surrey, East)
Because the work of this House is largely contributed to by lawyers, perhaps I may be allowed to ask the Attorney General two questions. Will he see that in future proper legal aid is given to those who appear before tribunals; that those who, like Attorneys General and Solicitors General, are somewhat, if only slightly, tainted with politics, can still appear at these tribunals, whatever the Committee may say?

§ The Attorney-General
I had better not say anything about the latter part of the hon. and learned Gentleman's intervention. We are here dealing with the ordinary tribunals and inquiries and not with the particular tribunals of inquiry set up under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act. As the hon. and learned Gentleman has pointed out, legal aid does not extend at present to proceedings before tribunals of inquiry. This is a matter to which my noble Friend has been giving the most careful and anxious consideration.
The problem is one of money. Legal aid is proving to be a great social service, but unhappily it is also—and perhaps inevitably—proving to be a very costly one. I do not say that the cost is disproportionate to the service, but the public purse is not bottomless for the purposes even of so admirable a social service as legal aid. Therefore, I fear that I can give to the House no undertaking—and I should be in great trouble with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer if I did—that legal aid will be extended to the proceedings before tribunals of inquiry, important though the issues are.
The fact is that most of the tribunals do, I think, bear in mind the difficulties that an unrepresented person may have, and there is certainly no history or record known to my noble Friend or to myself of injustices being caused on that account by reasons of these proceedings—

§ Mr. Robert Maxwell (Buckingham)
I am not a lawyer, but I wonder whether 1052 my right hon. and learned Friend can say whether these tribunals of inquiry could be used as instruments for making our Civil Service a little more efficient and useful to the nation?

§ The Attorney-General
I do not know what has prompted that somewhat fierce stricture on a Civil Service whose qualities are unrivalled in any part of the world. We have already taking place an inquiry, with the most distinguished membership, into the structure of the Civil Service. I doubt whether that inquiry would come within the ambit of this Measure. I see no grounds for such an inquiry, however, and it would have been interesting to discover why my hon. Friend put that question to me, save that he must have done so in the friendly spirit of giving me something to speak of in this situation.

§ Mr. Percival
The right hon. and learned Gentleman was getting along so rapidly that I was afraid he would finish before I had the chance to catch his attention. I wonder whether, before he finishes, he would deal with two matters which, to use his own words, in all this plethora of words have not yet been touched upon.
In moving the Third Reading of the Bill, the right hon. and learned Gentleman might like to tell us exactly what kind of Parliamentary control there is under the procedure which he is now commending to the House. Secondly, he has referred—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The intervention must be a brief one, otherwise the hon. and learned Member will exhaust his right to speak in this debate.

§ Mr. Percival
I will be very brief, Mr. Speaker, if I might have, say, another 30 seconds. The Attorney-General has referred to the fact that the Council will be consulted about exclusions. Will he assure us that the House will be informed of any instances in which the Council does not agree with an exclusion?

§ The Attorney-General
I expect that that could certainly be done. I will certainly look into the point that is made. At present, as I have said, the Council on Tribunals is examining the list of inquiries which ought to be included in the order and the list of exclusions. I 1053 will certainly consider the suggestion that the House should in some way be informed what the exclusions are. The first task, however, is to get moving with the inclusions so that the procedure applicable to them may take effect quickly.
As to the form of Parliamentary supervision over these proposals, the Statutory Instrument which will introduce the order listing the inquiries that are to be brought within the jurisdiction of the Council on Tribunals will come before the House and will be debated by the House, as will all other subsequent orders. In those circumstances, there will be full opportunity for the House to consider these matters with care.>