Andy Slaughter
MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick · Labour · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Bill, and thank the Government for introducing it and bringing it back to the House before the summer recess. It is the result of years of committed campaigning, led by the families of the victims and survivors of Hillsborough.”
“I know that case means a huge amount to the hon. Lady as a constituency MP, and I thank her for all the work she does on the Justice Committee. I think we have only begun to scratch the surface. This Bill will be a transforming piece of legislation. I will make one final comment.”
“This would be a new, independent public body that collated, analysed and followed up on the conclusions and recommendations made after official investigations into deaths and state failings, in order to improve oversight and implementation of them.”
“I think I have taken enough time, but I thank the Member for that intervention. This afternoon, the Justice Committee signed off a new major report on legal aid, which will be published on Friday. Those who are interested can read more there.”
“In the time that I have, I will focus my remarks on clauses 1 to 16, which create a new appeals body for immigration and asylum cases known as the independent immigration appeals authority.”
“From that visit, our diagnosis was that these are operational problems. There are two key questions for the House: will the IIAA fix the problems with the current system, and will it be truly independent from the Home Office?”
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“While we are waiting for the improvements that the Secretary of State has promised in the regulation and resourcing of social landlords, many tenants are relying on legal aid solicitors and law centres to pursue disrepair claims. Thanks to legal aid cuts, they are already a vanishing part of the legal system, but from next year, housing claims will be subject to fixed recoverable costs, which will make it unaffordable for small firms and not-for-profits to take on housing cases. Will the Secretary of State talk to his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice about how representation can be maintained for victims of the neglect, incompetence and discrimination so tragically highlighted in Awaab’s case?”
“What assessment have the Government made of the role of far-right parties in Israel’s new Government, as they are Netanyahu’s principal coalition partner? Will UK Ministers be meeting representatives of those far-right parties?”
“My right hon. Friend notes that the Home Secretary says that she did not ignore the law, but she does not say that she followed the law or complied with the law. Yesterday, a Minister appeared to be saying that the Home Secretary chose to break the law in one way, rather than another way, which was to put people out destitute on to the streets of Kent. Is that not almost an admission that there has been lawbreaking in this case?”
“Even the Business Secretary, the man of a thousand name badges, could not defend the Home Secretary in the comments that he made. The Prime Minister should not be doing that either.”
“What this points to more is the judgment and conduct of the Prime Minister, who, knowing all this and knowing who he was reappointing, went ahead and did just that, in the same way that he appointed the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson) to a Cabinet position. Incidentally, when questioned about the breach of security for which the right hon. Gentleman was previously sacked, the Prime Minister said that that was “four years ago.” If being four years ago is an excuse, what is being six days ago? Let us look in more forensic detail at the conduct of the Home Secretary, but let us not let the Prime Minister off the hook either. He must take responsibility for those appointments that he has made.”
“It is the job of Government to try to evade answering questions, but not on matters as serious as this, and not when specific and direct questions of fact are asked and not responded to. I think we know enough, without having those questions answered, about where the Home Secretary has been coming from in these events. We have to have, in the terms of the motion, these inquiries made and these documents released, because we have a right to know. That is the reason why my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has tabled today’s motion. However, I do not think the jury is out any more on the judgment or conduct of the Home Secretary.”
“What it comes down to is that, throughout this process, since she was reappointed, the Home Secretary has dodged questions again and again. Whether that has been by using weasel words, contradicting herself or using a bit of legal sophistry, the fact of the matter is that she will not answer these questions. I have asked her again and again, including in written questions, to specifically address the deficiencies in the letter she sent to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and the same reply comes back. Indeed, I received a reply to another question yesterday which said: “I refer the Hon. member to that letter”— that is, the letter of 31 October. It is just not good enough. Of course, we are not naive enough to expect to always get answers to questions we ask here.”
“30.] Leaving aside the fact that, on at least one occasion, individuals in a state of destitution were released on to the streets—the streets of Victoria rather than Kent—it does appear that, in the majority of cases, the Home Secretary decided to allow Manston to fill up to two or three times its capacity and to allow people to be contained there not for hours or days but for weeks and, in doing so, knew she was breaking the law. She decided that she would break the law in that way rather than in another way. Again, that is not good enough. She had the option of not breaking the law; she had the option of finding hotel or other accommodation for the people who were stacking up at Manston in appalling conditions—we have seen the reports and the photographic evidence—so they could have been placed elsewhere.”
“Indeed, I think the Minister who answered the urgent question yesterday got close to what actually happened when he said: “There are competing legal duties on Ministers. Another legal duty that we need to pay heed to is our duty not to leave individuals destitute. It would be wrong for the Home Office to allow individuals…in a condition of some destitution, to be released on to the rural lanes of Kent without great care. That is why the Home Secretary has balanced her duties”. —[ Official Report , 7 November 2022; Vol. 722, c.”
“Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and there has been some debate as to what the Home Secretary means by it. As I pointed out in an intervention earlier, she does not say—this would be much more straightforward—“I followed legal advice.” There was clear legal advice as to whether detention at Manston over 24 hours was legal, and it clearly was not. She could have said, “At all times I complied with legal advice,” but she said, “I didn’t ignore legal advice,” which could cover a multitude of circumstances. It could mean that she considered that advice and then rejected it, notwithstanding the fact that it was sound and solid legal advice. It could mean that she took another course of action, and I think we are getting near to what actually happened there.”
“She talks about insecure communication inside Government, but she does not relate that to anything other than her tenure at the Home Office; she does not relate it to her much longer tenure as Attorney General, when, as we have heard, she was accused several times of leaking. Then we come to the matter that was raised in the urgent question yesterday, which has been raised on several other occasions as well, which is the Home Secretary’s statement—again, I think it is very carefully worded—that, “I have never ignored legal advice.” —[ Official Report , 31 October 2022; Vol. 721, c. 639.] My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) asked about that yesterday, as did my right hon.”
“Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and her political grandstanding resignation letter? The second point is that the Home Secretary is very selective in the denials she makes in her letter to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. She says that 19 October was the only time she used her personal email to send Home Office documents to people outside Government. She talks only about email; she does not talk about other non-secure networks, such as messaging services. She talks about insecure communication outside Government, but what about insecure communication inside Government, which would equally be a breach of procedure?”
“She said in her resignation letter: “As soon as I realised my mistake, I rapidly reported this on official channels, and informed the Cabinet Secretary.” However, when she wrote with a detailed timeline to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, she revealed that she actually waited several hours before making any such report. She revealed that she was confronted by other members of the Conservative party outside this Chamber and that matters were put to her; it was not that she volunteered them. When, after that, she finally decided to report her breach of security, for which she was sacked, she did not go to the Cabinet Secretary; she went to her own special adviser. The question is, why did events unfold in that way and why was her account so different in her letter to my right hon.”
“It should not have to be, because it should have been put in the public domain already by the Government. Let us come on to the more recent conduct and the resignation. I have tried several times over the past week and a half to get answers from the several statements we have had from the Home Secretary and others, usually in response to urgent questions in the House. The first point is that there are stark contradictions in the versions that the Home Secretary herself has given—for example, between her resignation letter and the much more detailed letter that she then voluntarily sent to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson).”
“It was reported on 26 October in the Daily Mail that the Attorney General had been investigated as part of a leak investigation, and it was reported on 29 October in The Sun that she had been subject to official Cabinet leak inquiries three times in one year. I have tabled questions, including as recently as today, to try to get to the bottom of this. I asked the Minister for the Cabinet Office “whether the Government Security Group conducted an investigation into release of information relating to Government plans to seek an injunction against the BBC over concerns of national security.” The Minister replied that it is their policy “not to comment on leak investigations.” That is just not good enough in this case. That is why this information is being requested.”
“As always, it is the cover-up that is the problem as much as, if not more so than, the offence itself. The Home Secretary has form on this issue. She was Attorney General on and off for well over a year. I had the chance to observe her behaviour then, and I am afraid to say that there were regular reports of her being investigated for leaking sensitive Government information. On 22 January, The Daily Telegraph reported that the Attorney General would be seeking an injunction against the BBC over a case involving the Security Service. I asked her about that at Attorney General’s questions.”
“I am going to branch out in a different direction and speak to the motion. It is very precise and quite narrowly drawn, but it goes to the conduct and character of the Home Secretary, which is an important matter for us to discuss, and that is possibly why so many, if not all, Government Members have found it difficult to speak to the motion. They can talk to the Home Secretary’s policies—failed as they are, they are ones that appeal to them—but they find it difficult, perhaps, to defend her behaviour. The serious issue here is not the course of conduct that led to the Home Secretary’s sacking; we know about that. It is the way the Home Secretary has conducted herself since that sacking; it is her refusal to answer questions. That is why these documents and reports need to be asked for.”
“I thank the hon. Lady, my neighbour, for giving way. To answer her question, we know what the Government are doing: they are increasing the misery for our constituents. The southern part of my constituency is already under the flightpath and the whole of it will be if, God forbid, the third runaway is ever built. There is a totally cavalier attitude, particularly to depriving people of sleep. No other country, certainly in Europe, would put up with an airport like Heathrow’s being expanded and the transgressions that night flights in particular make on the people who have to live with them.”
“What the Minister said to my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, and what the Home Secretary told the House last week balanced breaking the law by leaving asylum seekers in Manston for weeks against breaking the law by abandoning them on the streets without means, and then—Victoria station aside—they decided to commit the first piece of law breaking. Will the Minister publish the advice that led him to that unusual legal opinion?”
“I am sure that we all want social landlords, and indeed all landlords, to be held to account when they fall short. Does the Secretary of State accept that there may be a problem with some financial penalties? We may end up punishing tenants twice: once for having a bad landlord and again by having funds withheld. I can give a specific example from my constituency. A social landlord is failing financially so is penalised by not being able to bid for the building safety fund, with the consequence either that fire safety works do not get done, or that properties are not sold or developed and new properties are not built. Will he look at that specific instance and see whether we can avoid penalising tenants in that way?”
“My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. As she has correctly said, the biggest problem with social housing is that there is not enough of it. The past 12 years have seen under-investment in the social housing grant and many properties being lost to the system—many associations are selling off properties because of the multiple demands of having a development programme that they cannot fulfil, of having poor conditions of properties and of having overcrowding in their stock. That means that, increasingly, they are looking at more and more desperate measures. Although the measures in the Bill are welcome, what we really need is to see social housing restored to its pre-eminence as the first port of call, rather than the last port of call, for people in housing need.”
“In her resignation letter, the Home Secretary said: “As soon as I realised my mistake, I rapidly reported this on official channels, and informed the Cabinet Secretary.” Nothing in that statement is correct, according to the Home Secretary’s own account when she wrote to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee yesterday. She waited several hours, she was confronted rather than volunteering information, and she finally reported her breach of security not to the Cabinet Secretary but to her special adviser. If we are being charitable, there is a conflict between the Home Secretary’s versions of events, and surely that merits an independent investigation if we are to have confidence in the person who is primarily responsible for our national security.”
“The Home Secretary is a security risk. She said more than once in her letter to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, that 19 October was the only time she used her personal email to send Home Office documents to people outside Government. Does that include other, non-secure networks such as messaging services? Does it include any insecure communication inside Government? And does it include the time she spent in other Departments, especially her tenure as Attorney General, which lasted over a year compared with the few chaotic weeks she has been Home Secretary?”
“The Minister’s defence of the Home Secretary reminds me of the old saying: “The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.” The Prime Minister said a few moments ago that the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson) had been reappointed to the Cabinet, despite his leaking confidential data. Of course, that was four years ago, and now we are talking about something that happened six days ago, so what is the minimum period of punishment or rehabilitation for breaching the ministerial code?”
“I know we are not here to talk primarily about rent controls, but they go back to at least 1915. On section 21, the hon. Gentleman may be flogging a dead horse. I do not know whether he has seen the briefing from the National Residential Landlords Association, but it says that 70% of landlords could envisage operating without section 21 and another 8% say that it had never been important to them in the first place. The hon. Gentleman may be defending the landlords’ cause, but they may have accommodated the Government’s position and our position already.”
“A few years later, the Housing Act 1988 introduced assured tenancies, which are still the default tenancy, and are the main—should be the exclusive—tenancy for other social landlords, such as housing associations. We also had protected and controlled tenancies. Other Members with constituencies such as mine, with large private rented sectors, will still come across some protected tenancies, which predate that Act. Generally speaking, those tenants have had, by definition, decades-long good relationships with landlords, fuelled by the fact that they not only have security but a degree of rent control—a fair rent, though not entirely.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms Nokes, and to take part in a debate instigated by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden). I will start by trying to agree with the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on this point at least: it is a complex matter to get rid of section 21. Just doing so is not going to be an answer to all our problems in the private rented sector or the housing market as a whole. He took us back to 1985—somewhere I am always happier, politics apart. The housing market was very different in those days. We had just had the Housing Act 1985, which introduced secure tenancy for local authority tenants.”
“Since the Housing Act 1988, we have declined into a society in which people’s right to a decent home—that is a human right, although if we are going to have another change of Lord Chancellor, perhaps it will not remain one for very long—has declined. The Government need to look at this sector in the round. They cannot just say, “We will do one or two piecemeal things”. They cannot tinker with the housing market; it needs full, wholesale reform.”
“If the Government think they will get a big tick from the private rented sector—any part of it—simply by dealing with the section 21 issue, I need to disabuse the Minister of that notion. Nevertheless, we would like to hear a little more confirmation about what the Government are going to do to about the situation—most of these people, whether they would prefer to be in social housing or to be owner-occupiers, increasingly do not want to be in the private rented sector. If we had a decent and thriving private rented sector, then some people would make it their first choice, but many people are in the sector because they have no other option. They have run out of options in terms of their living conditions, their overcrowding, their security and the amount of rent they have to pay. The sector needs a proper look.”
“Next April, the Government will impose fixed recoverable costs, which means that not-for-profit organisations such as law centres and those few solicitors who still operate under legal aid will not be able to subsidise their housing work by recovering costs inter partes in that way. I have nothing against fixed recoverable costs in principle, but in practice they will mean a further collapse in the housing legal sector, which in turn will mean that it will be increasingly difficult for people to challenge matters. The other issues that the NRLA raised are local housing allowance and universal credit, including the delay in paying universal credit, and the gap between what housing allowance gives and the actual cost of properties. Those are all legitimate points.”
“This is my last point. I mentioned earlier that the National Residential Landlords Association had given a very thoughtful briefing for this debate. As a body, it is helpful in engaging with people, including with tenants’ organisations and trying to represent decent landlords in that way—all their members probably are decent landlords, because indecent landlords would probably not be members of the NRLA. It specifically mentioned improving tenants’ access to legal support. That is absolutely vital, whereas other things that the Government are doing are not. If tenants want to challenge matters—even section 21 notices can be challenged if they have not been properly served or executed, or if there are other matters, or if there has been harassment—legal advice is very important.”
“Clearly, there have to be some, but if there are too many and they are too vague, we will simply be replacing one type of no-fault eviction with another. I do not say all that to get the Government to say, “We will take this away and bring it back in a couple of years’ time.” We would like the Minister to keep the promise that has been made. I know it was a couple of Prime Ministers ago—I think it was last week—but I think we heard from the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) that this was still part of the legislative agenda. I hope it still is and I hope they get on with it and do it. What they must not do is think that that is the end of the matter. We will have to wait for a Labour Government to have wholesale housing reform, but if the Minister is going to surprise me on that, I will be very grateful.”
“Yet as I say, the problems were not as apparent then; they are now. It will take years to build the properties we need. To make the substantive changes in the law, we probably need another major piece of housing legislation. In the time it takes to turn that round, the private rented sector has to be reformed; that is a quicker option. That includes getting rid of no-fault evictions to give people that basic security, but that will not be sufficient in itself. It has to be done in the round. We have to look at rent levels; if landlords can put rents up as high as they want to, that will just be another way of evicting people without due cause. We have to look at disrepair, which is worse than I have seen it for 20 or 30 years. We have to look at what the exemptions and exceptions are that would allow a landlord to evict.”
“It is selling off hundreds of its properties as they become void, just to make ends meet. The social housing that was the first port of call for people who wanted secure, affordable rented accommodation is no longer there for many people. As for the other source, which was through planning gain, I am afraid we are still—despite the best efforts of the Mayor of London and others, along with individual councils—subject to viability assessments. Therefore, we are not in any way delivering the degree of social housing that we need to. Such is the context in which we see the private rented sector. It will take time and a Labour Government, I am afraid, to turn that round. I wish the last Labour Government had done more on building social housing and possibly on reforming the private rented sector.”
“I am sure that most of them would prefer the security and affordability of living in the social housing sector, but that is simply not open to them. The dramatic decline in social housing really began with austerity in 2010, with the almost complete eradication of the social housing grant, after which more and more pressures and misery were piled on social landlords. Post Grenfell, we now have essential work on fire safety, but it is costing individual landlords tens of millions of pounds and they are getting very little of that back from the building safety fund. There is also retrofitting to comply with environmental standards. There are all those issues, along with the lack of resources among housing associations. I have a major housing association in my constituency that has no build programme until at least 2030.”
“It is not that most landlords are not well intentioned or do not look after their tenants or, indeed, that they are not entitled to make a return on their investments, but I fundamentally believe there is a slightly different relationship because we are dealing with someone’s home. The dramatic effect of that is disguised by the fact that—even in 1989, after council house sales had been going for most of a decade but had not really taken off—we still had a thriving social housing market in the 1980s. It was the first port of call for people who wanted a secure home in the rented sector. That disguised the full effect of assured shorthold tenancy and section 21. The briefing we have from Crisis for this debate tells us that 1.3 million families with children now live in the private rented sector of nearly 4.5 million households.”
“I will develop my argument and hope to take in that point. I was giving the background to saying that the one thing that dramatically changed—one of the most fundamental changes in housing law, in the Housing Act 1988—was the ability to opt out of an assured tenancy and create an assured shorthold tenancy. Some social landlords do that; I deprecate it, but they do. Certainly, most private landlords would do that. That was a real change: introducing the free market, changing the relationship between landlord and tenant, and treating people’s homes as commodities for the first time.”
“I am a little confused by the hon. Gentleman’s speech, and I wonder whether the 230,000 who have signed the petition would think that they were listening to the right debate. I thought he said that he wishes to remain in the ambit of the European convention on human rights, and therefore of the Court—I think that that is Government policy as of last week—but he now seems to be arguing against that. Where exactly does he stand?”
“Perhaps it should remain unclear and we can all move on to more important things.”
“That is quite a harsh term for a Government to use about one of their own flagship pieces of legislation, so probably the best thing that could happen to that Bill now is to be quietly tucked away in a cupboard, so that it becomes just a bit of constitutional history and never sees the light of day. I do not know, but certainly my impression from Justice questions last week—in which three times the Secretary of State or the Minister said very clearly that the Government would wish to stay within the ambit of the European convention and the European Court—is that there seems to be no urgency at all about replacing the current legislation. That implies that we can perhaps move on and quietly forget this whole rather sorry episode. I notice that the Library page relating to today’s debate says of the Bill that “its fate is…unclear”.”
“I feel that, on many occasions, what is put forward and argued results from the outcomes of individual cases that individual MPs do not like, or from their own prejudices or what they perceive to be the views of their constituents, but which might in fact not be. That is a very poor way to legislate, so I was pleased to see that, with the demise of the right hon. Member for Esher and Walton, the Bill of Rights Bill—which was very much his individual project, in a way that is probably quite unhealthy—also saw its demise. Indeed, it was described in rather brutal terms, not by his successor but by Downing Street, as “a complete mess”.”
“Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) asked the Minister replying to today’s debate: “It is becoming pretty clear that we cannot get a grip on the small boats crisis and deliver significant reform of our asylum system without reforming the Human Rights Act. What is the Government’s plan?” The Minister’s response was: “we are committed to the European convention on human rights and to the UN refugee convention. We believe that our proposals are within the law and that no court has said otherwise.” —[ Official Report , 18 October 2022; Vol. 720, c. 525.] They cannot really have it both ways: either the existing law is sufficient to do what the Government are doing or it needs to be changed.”
“It is a practical as well as principled part of constitutional law, and it has worked very well. However, all this did not start in the last year or two, but probably over a decade ago, with the use of legislation aiming to repeal or reform the Human Rights Act as part of the culture wars agenda and throwing red meat to various members of the governing party. It is in the same bracket now as tomorrow’s Bill on retained EU law, flights to Rwanda and the public order legislation to curtail freedom of speech that we had last week. It is a real shame that we are passing legislation of that kind, as is the motivation for passing it. All this also means that we get confused about the constitutional impact. For example—given that both Members are present—at Justice questions last week, the hon.”
“That was a substantial piece of work and its recommendations were proportionate, so if changes are to be made, we should perhaps be guided rather more by that than by the subsequent consultation, which as far as I can see paid no regard whatever to the Gross report. In fact, it appeared to be based rather more on a shorter piece of work, the 2009 book, “The Assault on Liberty”. The right hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) read his own book again—something that I have tried and failed to do on several occasions—rather than looking at the report that his Department commissioned. It is a shame, and I would probably err on the side of not reforming at all, because the Human Rights Act is a piece of legislation that we should be proud of.”
“It is a pleasure to be serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue, and a real pleasure to follow the eminent Chairs of two Select Committees: the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Justice Committee. With perhaps difference nuances, they both said very much the same thing, and so I will not repeat it for a third time: if there is a priority in legislation, reform of the Human Rights Act is not it. That is essentially what the terms of the petition say. Despite that, when he was Lord Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) set up the Gross review.”
“I am not hopeful because the Secretary of State has already said that he will take his time, but I hope that we will hear at least a little bit about the direction of travel and where the Government think we should be going on this issue. That would be a helpful outcome of this debate. The almost 250,000 people who have urged caution on him would be pleased to hear that that message is being heeded in the Ministry of Justice.”
“Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) said, this is not about lawyers or high-falutin’ principles; it is about the ability of citizens to challenge the state and institutions on important areas of law, and regarding decisions that fundamentally affect their everyday lives, when they get things wrong. What is obnoxious about that? That is the role that the Human Rights Act performed; that is the role it continues to perform, with or without the sort of amendments that we have talked about today. To repeal it, as an act of political bravado, is simply irresponsible and I urge the Minister away from that course. I like to think that we will hear a little bit more from the Minister.”
“Constitutional legislation is a very difficult thing to get right, but the Act was thought to be a success, and it effectively made the conduct of justice easy, because it brought human rights down to domestic level. It gave direct access to the UK courts, and it meant that justice was obtainable at lower cost, more speedily and in a more relevant way. The Government have said they will not take us out of the European convention on human rights, and that we will still be subject to the judgments of the European Court, so the only change will be that it the process will be much more protracted. How can that be in the interests of justice, or the interests of the citizen? As my hon.”
“In a way, the Government are in a favourable position. They have an excuse to move on and quietly forget the bee in the bonnet of the right hon. Member for Esher and Walton. If they wish to follow the lead of the Chair of the Justice Committee and look at the matter again, they have a really fine report by Sir Peter Gross and his colleagues. They do not really need to go any further than that. I will not go through this in depth—I do not see any point in doing so until we know what the Government are bringing forward—but it made me weep to see the way that the Human Rights Act was being misconstrued, whether in relation to parliamentary sovereignty or in relation to the margin of appreciation. The proposed reforms, particularly to sections 2 and 3 of the Act, really distorted both the purpose and the effect of the Act.”
“Thank you, Ms Fovargue. That welcome respite from my speech gives me a hint not to go on too long. Before we were interrupted by the bell, I was saying that reforming human rights legislation should not be a priority for the Government. Having had time to study his brief, the Minister knows—perhaps he will even still be in post tomorrow; who knows?—that the criminal and civil courts face some of their worst backlogs. There is a real crisis of confidence in the justice system. There is also real crisis in accessing justice, and particularly in legal aid, as the Government concede to some extent in the reviews they have undertaken—or, in the case of the civil legal aid review, are undertaking. There is more than enough for the Minister and his colleagues to do without looking for work and interfering with legislation that is working well.”