Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2022-05-12
Topic: Mixed Topics
Charles Falconer (Labour, Centre-left): I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, to the naughty step. The precise nature of our misbehaviours may vary from time to time I agree with everything the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said, in particular about the talking-shop blancmange collapsing at ping-pong. I think the Cross Benchers thought, when they were electing the noble and learned Lord as Convenor, that they were electing Gregory Peck—because of his looks and because of the fact that he played Atticus Finch. In fact, as his revolutionary sentiments this afternoon have indicated, they elected Jane Fonda without realising it This is a Government where power is focused on a small number of elected politicians, unconstrained by the law, because they control lawmaking; unaffected by parliamentary scrutiny, because they use their Commons majority to reduce scrutiny as much as possible; and fighting back against the courts, not by responding to judgments, but by making it clear to the courts that if they find against the Government in important cases, those judges will pay a political price. This is completely exceptional in my experience. I describe an elective dictatorship, possible because the Executive control Parliament We are a liberal democracy: not liberal in the sense of "progressive" but in the sense that the Government govern for all the people, constrained by law and constitutional convention. We are not a dictatorship democracy where, once elected, the Government can do exactly what they like and ignore the interests of those who did or might vote against them. The consequences of a dictatorship democracy, which we are moving towards, is a divided society; a politically corrupt elite running the country; and an incompetent Government, because they are never properly scrutinised. Our constitution is designed to stop this happening. The combined power of parliamentary scrutiny and the force of law are the main constraints. These constraints have been significantly undermined over the last decade The degradation of those constraints is going to be accelerated by the constitutional proposals contained in the gracious Speech. This has happened because of the character of the Government over the last 10 years. Of course, there is the position of the current Prime Minister, who exudes an utter disdain for Parliament, for the courts, for Scotland, for law and lawyers. Every constitution depends on the sensitivity of the head of Government to constitutional propriety. The current Prime Minister’s attitude is brilliantly summed up by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, much revered in this place, who described him in an interview in January this year as, "absolutely tone deaf to all the niceties of this. He hasn’t got a single feel for either proper behaviour, proper procedure, not a single nerve end. He has got no sense of the restraints you need to make this work. If a bit of it annoys him or gets in his way, he tries to cast it aside, like proroguing parliament, like the Standards Committee" But it goes much deeper, I say, than a PM who could not give a damn; it also involves a Government which deceive about their policies. If noble Lords have a moment, read the evidence of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, before the Grenfell Tower inquiry, where he chides counsel for the inquiry for suggesting that the way we discover what the Government were doing was to look at the press releases of the Government at the time. These describe a policy of "two regulations out, one in", which they used to reduce fire regulations. The noble Lord criticised Mr Richard Millett QC, for suggesting to him that one should view that as an indication of what the Government stood for Priti Patel is currently doing Rwanda. She previously suggested she had a policy of push-back: asylum seekers were being pushed back in small boats. Court proceedings were begun. The courts insisted on getting a copy of the policy in writing. The Government said, "No—public interest immunity: you cannot have it." The courts rightly swept that aside. When the document was produced, it was revealed that the policy was explicitly not to apply to asylum seekers. It is wrong that we need the courts in order to discover what is going on in the Government. Part of this trend is the determination to reduce the basic rights of the citizens, their civil rights The gracious Speech, as many have said, refers to restoring "the balance of power between the legislature and the courts by introducing a Bill of Rights."—[Official Report, Commons, 10/5/22; col. 6.] We know what this means, because it is set out in the consultation paper the Government have issued. The Government take issue with the idea that legislation should be construed, as far as possible, to be consistent with the Human Rights Act. They attack the notion that the framework documents for citizens’ rights should be living instruments that move with the times. They attack the notion that, for example, the law, through the European convention, was able to eradicate the idea that, if you were illegitimate, it was acceptable for the state to discriminate against you; that it was acceptable for corporal punishment, the birch, to be used as an answer to crime; or that, if you were gay, it was possible to discriminate against you. All those were put right by the idea of a law being able to move with the times. This Government want to ensure that only the Commons majority can determine where we should be, and that would be only on the basis of a dictatorship democracy I agree with the words of my illustrious predecessor, Lord Hailsham, in 1976, when he railed against an elective dictatorship: "My object is continuity and evolution"— and so is mine— "not change for its own sake."— And so is mine— "But my conviction remains that the best way of achieving continuity is by a thorough re-construction of the fabric of our historic mansion. It is no longer wind- or weather-proof. Nor are its foundations still secure." With respect, I agree that those words apply now.