HL Deb 08 April 1963 vol 248 cc801-8

2.51 p.m.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE)

My Lords, last Thursday I made a statement with regard to the Legal Aid Bill, and I told your Lordships that I did riot intend to move, when the time came "That the Bill do now pass". I should, if the House will permit me, like to make a further statement on the matter, for the impression may have been gained that there was something improper in this House discussing and considering the terms of this Bill.

I should like to make it clear, if I can, that there was no impropriety. This House can—and I am sure your Lordships would wish this to be maintained—discuss any Motion or any Bill it chooses. Each House is the guardian of its privileges; and, while it not the duty of either House to uphold the privileges of the other, your Lordships' House recognises the privileges of the House of Commons with regard to finance. Your Lordships are, I am sure, all aware of the procedure with regard to privilege Amendments, by which offending provisions are nullified or removed before the Bill leaves your Lordships' House and is sent to the Commons. The position is different where the contents of the Bill as a whole are purely financial, or where the financial provisions are not susceptible of separation from its other provisions. In Erskine May it is written, at page 807, with regard to such Bills, … it may be stated generally that the Commons (contrary to their practice regarding amendments) never waive their privileges in relation to public Bills sent down from the Lords", and a little later, the practice in this matter is now so regular and well understood that the Lords never deliberately send down a Bill which formally infringes the privileges of the Commons. If the Lords do send down such a Bill, the Commons lay it aside.

While, in my submission, there was nothing wrong in my asking your Lordships to consider this Bill, and nothing unconstitutional in your Lordships' considering it, I did not think it right that I should ask your Lordships to pass it with the inevitable consequence that it would be laid aside. But I hope that none of your Lordships will assert that there is any limitation on what your Lordships can discuss, any more than that there was anything wrong in your Lordships considering Bills in the past which, when they got to the commons, were laid aside. I hope that I have said enough to dispose of any suggestion that your Lordships have, at my instigation, been acting unconstitutionally in relation to this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, last Thursday referred to the Leader of the House of Commons and suggested that he was responsible for the course pursued in your Lordships' House. That, my Lords, is not so. It is my responsibility, and mine alone.

The question may be asked: "What it the purpose of considering a Bill if, when it has been considered by this House, it is going to be laid aside?" I should like to say a little, if I may, on that. I certainly do not share the view that the debate we had on Second Reading was a waste of time. It was a most valuable debate, and I was glad to get your Lordships' reaction to the Government's proposals. I had hoped to get the benefit of your Lordships' views on the detailed provisions of this Bill during the course of the Committee stage. They would, I know, have been most valuable and I hoped that the result would be that, with your Lordships' assistance, we should get a Bill which met entirely with your Lordships' approval.

It was not my intention to ask your Lordships to pass the Bill, but it was proposed to introduce in the House of Commons a Bill the contents of which would be the same as those of the Bill approved, but not passed, by your Lordships. If that House of Commons Bill was passed, it would then come to your Lordships' House. If the contents were not altered in the Commons, your Lordships might not have thought it necessary to spend much time upon it. If the contents were altered your Lordships might have thought it was necessary only to consider the alterations. That was the plan, and I hope that I have said sufficient to satisfy your Lordships that I was not inviting your Lordships to waste your time or to engage in a useless exercise.

From such inquiries as I have been able to make, there is really no prospect of a Legal Aid Bill coming here from the Commons till late in the Session. As your Lordships know only too well, the pressure of work then on your Lordships is very great. In July, it might prove very difficult indeed, if the Bill did come here from the Commons, to find enough time for proper consideration of it, if your Lordships saw it then for the first time. I had hoped that the course I proposed would be to your Lordships' convenience and give your Lordships ample time now for consideration of the Government's proposals. It is an important Bill, designed to remove injustice, and welcomed by all Parties, but I should have liked your Lordships' views upon it during the Committee stage. However, I do not think it would be right, in view of the reaction to my statement last Thursday, for me now to ask your Lordships to give further consideration to the Bill, useful and valuable though that consideration would be, and therefore, I think it right that I should take this opportunity of saying that I shall not, in the circumstances, ask your Lordships to proceed further with the Bill.

2.56 p.m.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, I am sure that the House will appreciate the statement which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has just made and the spirit in which he has made it. I fully understand that his object in introducing the Bill in this House was in order to get the views of this House, and I would assure him at once that it was never in my mind, and I am sure not in the mind of my noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth, that there was any impropriety in the matter; still less that there was anything to be criticised in the way in which the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack dealt with the matter. We have all known him for very many years, and the last thing that we should wish to impute to him is the slightest suggestion of any impropriety.

Having said that, I should add that I think it would have been wiser if the noble and learned Lord had taken the House into his confidence at the outset and explained to us what he had in mind. None of us had any idea, when the Bill was introduced on Second Reading, that it was the intention of the noble and learned Lord to carry the matter up to the Third Reading and then to drop the Bill. Further, if that had been the intention at the time, it might have been advisable if there had been some discussion on this point through the usual channels. I think that the time of the House would have been saved and we might have arrived at an amicable conclusion.

I am afraid that I cannot agree with the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack that this is a useful or desirable method of ascertaining the views of the House. I do not think it right that the House should be asked solemnly to go through the farce of having a Second Reading of a Bill, Committee stage, Report stage and Third Reading, merely in order to ascertain the views of the House. It may be that it has been done on other occasions. I cannot remember. It must have been done in my absence, because, if I had been present I should certainly have raised a protest. There is machinery in this House, and very effective machinery, for ascertaining the views of the House. I would respectfully suggest that we have the Motion. If it was thought desirable to ascertain the views of the House on the principle of giving assistance to unassisted persons who fight successful actions against legally assisted persons, if that was the intention, surely it would have been very easy, in the early days of the Session, when we are sometimes looking for Business and have not much to do, for the Government to present a White Paper setting out all their thoughts in this matter, which we could have discussed on a Motion.

We could have had a wider discussion on such a Motion than was in order on the Second Reading (though I must say that some of us did not limit ourselves to the exact proposals in the Bill) possibly on the whole question of legal aid, and certainly on this particular question, and whether it was desirable to go rather further than was suggested in the Bill itself. I am sure that if that had been discussed in the early days of the Session we could have had a Bill presented in good time and it would have had a very good chance of going through this Session. As it is—and I welcome the decision of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack not to pursue the matter further—it looks as if I shall once more have to make the speech that I usually make in July, saying that we are not given enough time to discuss properly measures which come from another place.

While I am on my feet, I would respectfully ask your Lordships to give me your indulgence if I say one or two words more. This is a perennial problem, this problem of Bills, sometimes complicated, needing the attention of this House coming up late in the Session, with the result that we are pushed either to sit very late when we are not physically in a position to give them our undivided attention, or to pass them cursorily without going through them in that detail which they might deserve. It does seem as if the time has come when we might reconsider our procedure. I think the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack made a suggestion of that kind, and I very much welcome it. We are not afraid of altering our procedure (we encouraged one alteration only the other day), and I am sure we could do better than we are doing at the present time and not be pushed every year into this unhappy position.

It so happens that there is on the Order Paper a Motion in the name of my noble friend Lord Shackleton which is due for discussion fairly soon, and I hope that we may use that opportunity of discussing the whole question of our procedure and whether we can do rather better than we have done in the past. But to-day I should like to welcome the decision of the Lord Chancellor not to proceed further with this Bill. I hope that we shall not lose the Bill, and that it will be possible to get a Bill from another place which we shall be able to support. I can give the noble and learned Lord my own assurance, and I am sure that of my noble friends, that when this Bill comes we shall do everything in our power, because we support the principle of it, to get it through this Session.

3.4 p.m.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his conciliatory approach to this matter, and I want, if I may, to add something from my point of view. I fully accept the point he made to begin with, that the Opposition should have been consulted before this experiment was made. I was under the impression that they had been, otherwise I should have seen to it that they were. I must accept responsibility for not having seen that they were consulted. I was under a misapprehension, and I can only apologise to your Lordships. On the other hand, I do not think the Motion as an alternative means of procedure would do. I very much hope that we shall have an opportunity of discussing both this and other difficulties in relation to the machinery of government on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, to which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, referred. But I do not think this difficulty is primarily a question of procedure, although it is closely bound up with the legal history of Parliament itself.

The real nature of our difficulties stems from the fact that, quite properly, another place desire to consider first the main programme Bills of the Government, and as they always take their time in that consideration, and as they have the apparatus in Standing Committees to consider several Bills in parallel, this means that a number of Bills come to us comparatively late in the Session and we have to work very fast in order to carry them through. I doubt whether an alteration in our procedure would solve that difficulty. This experiment was designed to deal with this very problem, and it is for this reason that I am sorry that in this particular case it has met with this fate. It was felt, I think rightly, to be a legitimate extension of the practice we adopt over privilege Amendments, and I cannot help believing that if I had been more rapid in my appreciation of the fact that the Opposition had not been adequately consulted this Bill might have had a better fate. I do riot want to say more about the matter this afternoon, except to say how grateful I am to the noble Lord for taking this conciliatory point of view and accepting my noble and learned friend's statement in the spirit in which it was tendered.

3.7 p.m.

LORD REA

My Lords, I will not detain you for long, but perhaps I may be allowed to say one or two words. First, I should like to thank the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack for his very frank and full explanation of the whole matter from its inception. With great respect, I would say that we on these Benches feel that he has come to a very sound conclusion in deciding not to proceed further with the Bill. I am not going into the complications of Parliamentary procedure, but it seems to some of us on this side of the House that the matter arose out of the congestion of Business, and that, in order to facilitate Business, what amounted to a device was arrived at whereby your Lordships were asked to go through the motions of passing a Bill up to the last stage and then accept the fact that it was never meant to go on the Statute Book at all, except by chance if it came up in a similar form from the other House. It seems to me that that is slightly making an abuse of your Lordships' House, to go through the motions of a mime in order to help matters. If time has to be found, and some device has to be found, I would suggest, with respect, that it is for the Government to make time in their own programme and not to utilise your Lordships' House for a way round a difficult situation.