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The Queen's Speech: proposals will be interesting to current GDL and LPC students
The Queen’s Speech takes place today on Wednesday 9 May 2012. Its full contents are yet to be published. Some of the proposals below, if included, might see themselves in future in the GDL or LPC. Please note that this blogpost is not to be interpreted as evidence that there will be changes to the substantive teaching of the GDL or LPC in any learning providers. All or none of these proposals may be included by HM The Queen on behalf of HM Government today.
Lords Reform Bill – Constitutional and Administrative Law, Graduate Diploma in Law
Despite tension between the Coalition partners, a Bill to bring in an elected senate to replace the House of Lords is expected to be announced, to be introduced within the next 12 months. A lot of this business has already taken place in the Commons Select Committees. All three main parties committed to reform in their 2010 manifestos. Under current Government plans the new senate would be made up of 300 members, with 80% of them elected. The Bill is controversial, and face substantial opposition in both chambers. Conservative backbench MPs have warned that reform is a distraction from more pressing concerns about the economy.
Defamation Bill – Law of Torts, Graduate Diploma in Law; Civil Litigation CPA, Legal Practice Course
The Government has already investigated ways in which to reform libel laws, which could include claimants having to show they have suffered serious harm before suing for defamation. There could also be a system of preliminary hearings in which a judge could throw out spurious cases. Following a draft bill last year, a full bill is now expected.
The Joint Committee on the Draft Defamation Bill published its report on 19 October 2011 on defamation law and welcomes many of the reforms proposed in the draft Bill. That unanimously-agreed report proposed many detailed amendments to the defences available against libel claims, mainly designed to strike a fairer balance between the protection of reputation and freedom of speech. For example, greater protection is proposed for scientists and academics writing in peer-reviewed articles and for publishers in reporting on their debates at conferences.
As well as making recommendations for legislative change, the committee seeks far stronger and more urgent action by judges to manage cases efficiently. An essential step in encouraging early resolution of disputes is the abolition of jury trials in defamation actions, in all but exceptional cases. Judges will then be required to take key decisions affecting the outcome of the case at an early stage, before massive legal costs are incurred.
Banking Reform Bill – “Commercial awareness” CPA in Business Law & Practice, Legal Practice Course
The most widely trailed measure expected to be included in the Queen’s Speech is the long awaited move to split banks into their retail and investment banking functions. The aim is to prevent the investment activities of a bank jeopardising its retail (high street) operations. A detailed blogpost has been previously published on this blog. The retail arms would not be allowed to trade in derivatives or other exotic financial instruments blamed for the financial crash. Banks would have until 2019 to make the changes. A white paper is expected in June with draft legislation to follow in the autumn.
Crime, Communications and Courts Bill – Criminal Litigation CPA, Legal Practice Course
Driving under the influence of drugs could be made its own specific offence in this bill. Offenders could face a fine of up to £5,000, a driving ban of at least 12 months as well as a prison term. The exact drugs covered by the offence and the specified limits for each will be decided following advice from a scientific review panel and public consultation. As previously disclosed by The Daily Telegraph, the new law will cover the abuse of prescription drugs as well as illegal narcotics. The new offence will be enforced by the introduction of “drugyalysers” – drug screening devices – which should be in place by the end of the year. A roadside device would be used to enable a police officer to make an arrest without being required to make motorist perform a Field Impairment – or FIT -Tests of their co-ordination by carrying out tasks such as standing on one leg.
National Crime Agency – Criminal Litigation, CPA Legal Practice Course
Back in 2010, the Government pledged to establish a new National Crime Agency “to lead the fight against organised crime”, enhance border security and fight fraud and cyber crime. Some have dubbed it ‘Britain’s FBI’.
According to the Home Office website, “the government’s vision for the NCA was set out in the NCA Plan published in June 2011. It was also a commitment in the first UK strategy on organised crime, Local to Global: reducing the risk from organised crime. Subject to the Queen’s Speech in May 2012, and the passage through Parliament of a bill to create the NCA, the ambition is that the NCA will be fully operational by December 2013.”
Apparently, the NCA has a number of functions. The NCA will be an operational crime fighting agency that will:
- tackle organised crime
- strengthen our borders
- fight fraud and cyber crime
- protect children and young people
It will apparently build on the work of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and will incorporate some of the functions of the National Policing Improvement Agency which fit the agency’s crime fighting remit.
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill – Employment Special Elective, Legal Practice Course
A wide-ranging bill which will reportedly bring in changes to the pay of top executives, rules on employment tribunals and redundancy and cut red tape for businesses. Companies such as Aviva and Barclays have recently seen embarrassing shareholder votes on the pay of their senior managers. Liberal-Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable is said to be keen change the rules to give shareholders a binding vote on on top pay policies. A requirement for a majority of 75% of shareholders to approve pay deals is thought to have been dropped following opposition from business leaders. This follows outcry over the packages awarded to many business leaders, sometimes in spite of poor performances by companies.
Public Sector Pensions – Employment Special Elective, Legal Practice Course
Proposed changes to public sector pensions have led to large scale industrial action, but the Government looks set to move forward with its proposals. The Government has talked of the need to legislate for changes, such as a move to career average schemes, in the next parliamentary session. This will allow the new schemes to start from 2015.
Lord Hutton of Furness has previously published his final report on public service pension provision on 10 March 2011 in which he set out his recommendations to the Government on pension arrangements that are sustainable and affordable in the long term, fair to both the public service workforce and the taxpayer and consistent with the fiscal challenges ahead, while protecting accrued rights.
Will secret courts be in the Queen's Speech?
The Government published the Justice and Security Green Paper on 19 October 2011. It considered how closed material procedures could be developed in th the UK to ensure that secret intelligence was not revealed in the course of court proceedings.
There is, however, confusion in the Coalition over liberal policies. This one is about secret courts. On 4 April 2012, the BBC reported that:
David Cameron has said “gaps” in national security must be plugged as he defended plans for more secret court hearings and more internet monitoring.
He stressed there had already been “huge engagement” with the legal profession and civil liberties groups and added: “We are not at the end of that process yet… these are issues that we need to deal with. There is still time [before the Queen's Speech] to deal with everybody’s concerns.”
But he added: “Prime ministers have a responsibility for national security. We should take every step that is necessary, to keep the country safe, we shouldn’t put our civil liberties at risk by doing so, but where there are gaps that need to be plugged, we need to plug those gaps.”
The first line of the Liberal Democrat Constitution reads as follows:
The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.
There, however, appears to be confusion over the Liberal Democrats’ stance over ‘secret justice’. Lord Carlile is reported as saying:
The Green Paper Mr Clegg appears to have disowned was, as I understood it, a Green Paper he supported when it was issued. We need some consistency from the Government on these issues, and a proper part played by the Government before the political criticism starts; much of it very poorly informed I’m afraid.
The Daily Mail is strongly opposed to ‘secret justice’. Here is an extract from a recent article:
Ed Miliband has dealt another heavy blow to government plans to extend ‘secret justice’ by warning ministers to drop legislation from next month’s Queen’s Speech and go back to the drawing board. The Labour leader used an interview with the Daily Mail to signal that his party will not support the proposals unless the Government agrees to abandon plans to change the law in the next session of Parliament and open cross-party talks on how to proceed. Mr Miliband admitted the last Labour government had been too ready to make fundamental legal changes that threatened ancient liberties on the grounds of national security, adding: ‘The experience in this area is that rushed legislation is bad legislation.’
There are always people asking for more security, more secrecy. Government often has to say ‘no I’m sorry we are not going to go down that road’
The Ministry of Justice recently reported that:
The Committee regrets that the Green Paper overlooks the very considerable impact of its proposals on the freedom and ability of the media to report on matters of public interest and concern. It is also concerned about the possible impact of the proposals on public confidence and trust in both the Government and the courts.
The principle of ‘open justice’ is provided in 196.
196. The status of the open justice principle as both a foundational common law principle and an important human rights obligation is not in doubt. In Al Rawi, for example, Lord Dyson said:
There are certain features of a common law trial which are fundamental to our system of justice (both criminal and civil). First, subject to certain established and limited exceptions, trials should be conducted and judgments given in public. The importance of the open justice principle has been emphasised many times [...] The open justice principle is not a mere procedural rule. It is a fundamental common law principle. In Scott v Scott [1913] AC 417, Lord Shaw of Dunfermline (p 476) criticised the decision of the lower court to hold a hearing in camera as “constituting a violation of that publicity in the administration of justice which is one of the surest guarantees of our liberties, and an attack upon the very foundations of public and private security.” Lord Haldane LC (p 438) said that any judge faced with a demand to depart from the general rule must treat the question “as one of principle, and as turning, not on convenience, but on necessity”.
However, the Joint Committee on Human Rights then goes on to say:
209. There appears to have been little thinking so far about how to address the many problems to which closed judgments give rise. How can they be made accessible to those, such as special advocates, who are both entitled to access them and require to do so in order to perform their function of representing the interests of parties to litigation who are excluded from closed material procedures? If closed judgments have legal precedent value, as the special advocates told us they sometimes do, how can that content be extracted and made publicly accessible as the rule of law requires it to be? How long will judgments remain closed for? What should be the mechanism for closed judgments becoming open? We recommend that the Government brings forward proposals to deal with the important questions we raise which relate to closed judgments.
210. It was also pointed out to us that the current trend, throughout the court system, is towards greater openness and transparency: in family courts, the Court of Protection, coroners’ inquests and the Supreme Court, for example.[119] The Green Paper, however, is directly at odds with this trend.
So the question is: will secret courts be in the Queen’s Speech? The Queen’s Speech at the beginning of the 2012-13 Session will take place on 9 May 2012.
