Part of Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill – in a Public Bill Committee am 10:15 am ar 22 Tachwedd 2007.
Edward Garnier
Shadow Minister (Justice)
10:15,
22 Tachwedd 2007
I thought that the debate would be quite clear, but it has become rather more muddled as we have moved along. There will not be any reluctance on the part of the commissioner—certainly not the commissioner or ombudsman who gave evidence at the evidence session—to investigate matters that are within its remit. In the same way, there has been no reluctance on the part of prisons inspectors—Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons, the chief inspector of the constabulary or of the probation service, or all the other senior inspecting officials—to investigate matters within their remit. The only reluctance comes from Ministers. This is not a party political point. I am sure that in the last Conservative Government there were occasions when my colleagues would have preferred things not to have come out and when they did come out, preferred them not be investigated, but that is not the point. The point is that when things go wrong and offices are created to investigate things that go wrong, they should jolly well get on and investigate them and not feel in the least bit inhibited. There is a confusion: the Bill will give the commissioner the powers of a High Court judge to summon people and documents. Whether he can summon the Secretary of State or summon documents from his Department it will be interesting to find out in due course, when he sends a request to the Secretary of State using the powers given him in the Bill.
The Minister seems to be saying that Clause 37 is essentially about ad hoc investigation. If the Government want to use the office holder to carry out a particular function on an ad hoc basis, they are appointing the man and not the office holder. We must distinguish between the office of the commissioner and the individual office holder, who may or may not be requested to hold an inquiry, in the same way that a judge or a chairman of a statutory inquiry might be requested to do so by the Government. When we have a train disaster, the Government often set up either a judicial or other statutory inquiry, but that does not affect the position of the coroner as an office holder. In the clause, the Government are saying that there may be circumstances in which they want particular investigations to take place. I am not suggesting that the Government should not be enabled to cause particular people to carry out particular investigations, but it is not apt to do so under clause 37.
My suspicion, which has not been allayed by the arguments put forward by the hon. Lady either in response to me or the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, is that the Government want the Secretary of State to have some form of direction, a power of control, over matters that the commissioner should look into. I do not think that that is right; either we have an independent commissioner or we do not, and on the face of the Bill we do not.
I shall not press the Amendment to a Division, but I urge the Government to be clear in their thinking. To elide functions and to allow confusion to exist, either because the Government want that to happen or because they have not thought about it, is not a sensible way to make legislation. As I am happy to tell the Minister of State, this a plum-duff of a Bill. It is a complete meccano set of lots of different things bolted together; it is an ugly Bill and a badly-designed one. We should be even more careful when we have a Bill of this nature not to make mistakes and not to allow the Government to put things in that they have not properly thought about.
As a condition of my withdrawal of the amendment, I ask the Government to think a little more carefully before we have to deal with this sort of measure in future.
A parliamentary bill is divided into sections called clauses.
Printed in the margin next to each clause is a brief explanatory `side-note' giving details of what the effect of the clause will be.
During the committee stage of a bill, MPs examine these clauses in detail and may introduce new clauses of their own or table amendments to the existing clauses.
When a bill becomes an Act of Parliament, clauses become known as sections.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
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Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
The Speaker - or the chairman in the case of standing committees - has the power to select which amendments should be debated.
A parliamentary bill is divided into sections called clauses.
Printed in the margin next to each clause is a brief explanatory `side-note' giving details of what the effect of the clause will be.
During the committee stage of a bill, MPs examine these clauses in detail and may introduce new clauses of their own or table amendments to the existing clauses.
When a bill becomes an Act of Parliament, clauses become known as sections.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
The House of Commons votes by dividing. Those voting Aye (yes) to any proposition walk through the division lobby to the right of the Speaker and those voting no through the lobby to the left. In each of the lobbies there are desks occupied by Clerks who tick Members' names off division lists as they pass through. Then at the exit doors the Members are counted by two Members acting as tellers. The Speaker calls for a vote by announcing "Clear the Lobbies". In the House of Lords "Clear the Bar" is called. Division Bells ring throughout the building and the police direct all Strangers to leave the vicinity of the Members’ Lobby. They also walk through the public rooms of the House shouting "division". MPs have eight minutes to get to the Division Lobby before the doors are closed. Members make their way to the Chamber, where Whips are on hand to remind the uncertain which way, if any, their party is voting. Meanwhile the Clerks who will take the names of those voting have taken their place at the high tables with the alphabetical lists of MPs' names on which ticks are made to record the vote. When the tellers are ready the counting process begins - the recording of names by the Clerk and the counting of heads by the tellers. When both lobbies have been counted and the figures entered on a card this is given to the Speaker who reads the figures and announces "So the Ayes [or Noes] have it". In the House of Lords the process is the same except that the Lobbies are called the Contents Lobby and the Not Contents Lobby. Unlike many other legislatures, the House of Commons and the House of Lords have not adopted a mechanical or electronic means of voting. This was considered in 1998 but rejected. Divisions rarely take less than ten minutes and those where most Members are voting usually take about fifteen. Further information can be obtained from factsheet P9 at the UK Parliament site.
