Universal Sustainable Developments Goals — House of Lords, 2018-11-22
Topic: Mixed Topics
Donald Thomas (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Suttie on obtaining this debate and on the excellent and thoughtful way in which she introduced it. I shall focus on the 16th sustainable development goal which is to: "Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels" What progress has there been that can be reported in integrating that development goal into domestic policy? There is some good news. My first point is about the Bribery Act 2010, which is currently undergoing examination by a Select Committee of which I am member. The proceedings are televised and available in print. Your Lordships will be delighted to know that witness after witness says that the Bribery Act has been a great success and provides a gold standard for the world. There are problems and bits and pieces about it that we are examining, but the general thrust is that the Bribery Act is a way in which we can show the world how to tackle bribery and corruption, so that is a very good thing and one in which we can be a model for the world The second thing we can be proud of is that we retain our strong and independent judiciary. When my noble kinswoman Lady Walmsley was concerned about the environment in Madagascar last year, I was concerned about the judiciary. It was quite extraordinary that if you wanted your case listed, you had to pay an official to get your case into the list. It was extraordinary that if a judge went from outside the capital to the countryside to deal with problems and cases that occurred in country courts, he had to pay his own expenses, and Madagascar is four times the size of the United Kingdom. There are grave problems with the judiciary and its independence in many parts of the world, but that is one thing of which we can be proud and which we can report to the world However, there are problems. The first—the difficulty in recruiting judges—was outlined by the Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, last Tuesday in evidence to the Commons Justice Select Committee. He said that successive cuts to the justice system and dilapidated court buildings have undermined morale among the judiciary. He is concerned about the mood across the judiciary in the wake of the long history of underfunding of the court system and cuts to remuneration. He said that the courts are currently having problems recruiting High Court judges. It is true that judges were offered a 2% pay increase in 2018-19, their biggest pay rise in 10 years. That is almost as meagre as the £5 we received recently. However, many younger judges were badly hit by changes to the judicial pension scheme three years ago, and consequently the remuneration for being a High Court judge, or indeed any judge, is not as great as it was. Who would exchange the freedom of the Bar for the constraints of the judiciary and its hierarchical structures for remuneration of that sort When it comes to access to justice, I have to point to legal aid. Sir Patrick Hastings, Attorney-General in the Attlee Government—his name re-echoes in Gresford, where he appeared for the mine owners in the Gresford Colliery disaster inquiry—introduced the Legal Aid Bill in the Commons in December 1948. He said: "It is the charter of the little man to the British courts of justice. It is a Bill which will open the doors of the courts freely to all persons who may wish to avail themselves of British justice without regard to the question of their wealth or ability to pay".—[Official Report, Commons, 15/12/1948; col. 1.] On Tuesday, the Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, pointed to the fall in legal aid, and in so doing echoed the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, the former head of the UK Supreme Court, who said in 2017: "It is all very well for us to sing the praises of our legal systems, to congratulate ourselves on the high quality of our judges and lawyers, and to take pride in the popularity of the common law in international business. But we have a serious problem with access to justice for ordinary citizens and small and medium-sized businesses" Back in 2010, the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition Government made deep cuts in public services to help reduce the UK’s deficit. The Ministry of Justice was one of the departments hardest hit; it was not protected in any way. At that time it had a budget of £10.9 billion to administer the courts, legal aid, prisons and the probation service. By 2017 the budget was down to £7.6 billion and for 2019-20 it is projected to be £6.38 billion. That is using Treasury public expenditure tables in real terms. That is a fall of more than 40% in funding for the legal system of this country. The result is that, frankly, it is impossible to make a decent living at the Bar in certain areas of law: criminal law, family law and so on. Ultimately, there will be a knock-on effect in the recruitment of high-quality people to the judiciary I am not proud of those cuts to legal aid. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, spoke a moment ago about the cuts of that Government—the suppression, as he put it, of various environmental programmes. We were told at the time that austerity would last until 2015, by which time the deficit would have disappeared. How wrong we were. However, I am proud of the Modern Slavery Act and of the equalities Act, which indicated Lib Dem involvement in that Government. The UK Government’s Global Fund to End Modern Slavery supports work to end the terrible exploitation of vulnerable people, including women and children. The UK became the first donor to the Global Fund to End Violence against Children and contributes funds to tackle online child sexual exploitation. So there are positive signs We face dangers in our society in the area that the 16th goal refers to. On money laundering, the British Government’s own anti-corruption strategy, published in December 2017, said: "The UK’s role as a global financial centre is important to the country’s prosperity but can also be exploited by criminals. The 2016 National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime notes that the UK is one of the most attractive destinations for laundering the proceeds of grand corruption and that professional enablers and intermediaries play a role in this. The National Crime Agency estimates up to £90 billion of illicit funds are laundered through the UK each year" That is a disgrace and something we need to tackle immediately The second danger, as see it, is that of drugs, not merely in London but throughout the country, such as in my home town of Wrexham. Incidentally, Wrexham has received an accolade from Quentin Letts; talking about Jacob Rees-Mogg’s press conference this week, he said that the "diversity count" of the people who held it, "was as low as Wrexham on a wet Friday night" I wondered: what had we done? Anyway, around two years ago, Mr Gavin Rodda, a bus driver, started noticing an increase in drug use and homelessness at the bus station in Wrexham. Spice and Black Mamba, synthetic cannabinoids that have also become rife in Britain’s prisons, were still legal at that time. A blanket ban on those has been put through but the drugs are still widely available. Mr Rodda said that addicts in Wrexham say they can buy Black Mamba for £5 a gram, which is cheaper than heroin, crack cocaine and even a packet of cigarettes. This hits at the fundamental basis of our country I should have liked to address your Lordships on the overseas interventions into British politics that we are facing, but I see that my time is up.