Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-22
Topic: Government Operations
John Morris (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, given the number of speakers, I shall take very little of your Lordships’ time. I welcome the Bill to allow Ministers to take paid maternity leave while remaining in Government. The catalyst for the Bill, as we have been told, is the pregnancy of the Attorney-General, and I join other noble Lords in wishing her well. The office of Attorney-General, which I had the privilege of holding, is unique in the constitution. Shortly after taking office, I swore an ancient oath, in full fig, in the Lord Chief Justice’s court—namely, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf—that I would sue the Queen’s process "after our cunning." I understand that to mean that I use my cunning in its better sense The law officers perform a wide range of duties in the public interest. In those roles, they are independent of the Government and are not bound by the doctrine of collective responsibility. Deploying my cunning, acquired in the course of 11 years in public office, from Cabinet down, I surmised, with the advent of a new Government in 1997, that there might be a gap in the Government’s legislative programme at that point. In short, the Government might not have enough ready-made Bills to hand. As it happened, there was a Bill gathering dust in the law officers’ chambers awaiting such an opportunity to allow the functions of the Attorney-General to be exercised by the Solicitor-General. The Law Officers Bill passed through both Houses without dissent and remains on the statute book as the Law Officers Act 1997 The Explanatory Notes to the present Bill state that the "legal exercise" of a very senior office, such as a Secretary of State, "cannot be ‘covered’ by another Minister" The Government argue that for these functions to be executed, another Minister may have to be appointed at the same rank. This is the ministerial ceiling problem that the Bill seeks to cure. That must be right for a Secretary of State, but the Bill is of general application and the notes appear to be the same. Will the Minister explain the necessity of the Bill for the role of the Attorney-General? In short, my specific question is: what is the practical effect—other than the payment of maternity allowance, which I strongly support —for the specific office of the Attorney-General, which I, like others, understand to be the trigger for the Bill I hope the Minister will assure the House that there is no intention to undermine the office of the Solicitor-General, which is also ancient, having been created in 1461. The Act that I shepherded through Parliament in 1997 to enable the Solicitor-General to exercise all the functions of the Attorney corrected an anomaly in the 1944 Act so that the Solicitor-General can now act without the specific authority of the Attorney-General. I hope the Minister will agree that, other than the payment of a maternity allowance to the Attorney-General, there was no need for this hurriedly introduced Bill to deal with the special needs of the Attorney-General. I look forward to the Minister’s reply. It may well be that the Act that I passed through Parliament was forgotten.