JUSTICE OPINION

There have been some interesting commentaries on the justice system this week.  In Peru we had the sort of action I believe is common in America - the two British girls charged with drugs smuggling have been protesting their innocence in court, but, with the prospect of 15 years in prison, were advised to plead guilty and receive a mere 6 years sentence.  This says nothing about their guilt or innocence of course, but merely that the local justice system is punitive.

In the UK, we are less punitive in this way.  But there remain anomalies.  Voting rights for prisoners is one.  Although a recent decision in Parliament was not to afford voting rights to prisoners, that decision is now being re-examined.  It is generally acceptable here that those convicted of a crime may be incarcerated (not quite as readily as in the US).  But it does seem inequitable that, if you have a penal system based on rehabilitation, as we have here, you should deny prisoners access to basic rights throughout the process of their return to society.  The possibility of restoring voting rights towards the end of a sentence is now being considered.  This makes good sense, although one has to accept that the voting pattern of prisoners may not be in line with patterns throughout the country.  The world is divided on this question.  US State legislatures have also taken differing views.  What public opinion may make of the new proposal is to be seen; one possibility may well be that the public will see crimes as lying on some sort of scale of awfulness - it may be OK for burglars to vote, although maybe not child killers.  But I like that there is a debate.

With the death of the notorious/famous gangster Ronnie Biggs, the media has been replaying his life and some of his public statements.  One that struck me was from while he had been on the run 12 years (I think) after he had escaped from prison.  He was asked whether he didn't feel that he ought to return to UK to finish his prison sentence.  'No,' he said.  'The aim of incarceration is rehabilitation.  I have been living outside of prison for 12 years during which time I have committed no crime of any sort.  I am therefore completely rehabilitated and have no need to return to prison.'  Good point!  Would that more criminals could achieve rehabilitation without the cost to the State of their incarceration.

One issue which seems to raise people's blood pressure more than others is that of MPs' or Lords' parliamentary expenses.  There have been a number of criminal convictions now of members who made false statements in order to claim expenses.  This is as it should be and should satisfy the public that such matters are properly policed.  But recent cases of Lords attending the House for 30 minutes and thus claiming an attendance allowance has caused further ire.  I just wanted to say that actually, however mean you might think this practice to be, it is not illegal.  If you attend your place of work, you are entitled to the payments due from that attendance.  Until the rules are rewritten or laws passed, even if it seems that 30 mins is an unacceptable length for a working day, it is the rules not the members' practices that are at fault.  One member of the public interviewed on this subject, however, was so incensed that he demanded that all Lords should be sacked - thus effectively destroying any reasonable argument there might be for doing something about this situation.  He then compounded his irrational outburst by saying that 'they only do the job for the money.'  Er, yes, that's the general idea of employment.

Clearly, MPs and Lords have a lot of PR work to do.  But also I do find interesting this apparent view that our actions should not only be legal, but also fair and perhaps moral.  There is currently no way for the courts to consider such a concept, but nor do I believe that all we humans behave all the time in such an equitable way.  But maybe we should try to bring more of this moral consideration into the justice system.  Perhaps we could start with sentencing.  I was fascinated that the police managed to persuade the courts that the Great Train Robbers, Biggs included, should be given prison terms of up to 25 years.  This was pure vindictiveness on the part of the police, at a time when more serious crimes received lesser sentences (or am I constructing my own scale of awfulness?).  Or perhaps the sentences were a message to the criminal underworld that we frown on organised crime.  But this was a crime unique, or perhaps just of its time, in that no guns were used.  25 years for an unarmed robbery was not a good message to criminals though even then and the justice system did not in that case appear to have considered for example that the robbers might have tried to minimise injuries and have been less brutal than say a mugger or a rapist.

Finally, I can't finish this piece without a comment on the Charles Saatchi case.  Two employees of the Saatchis (Charles and Nigella Lawson) were on trial accused of stealing or misusing several hundred thousand pounds from Charles' bank account.  The defence case was that Nigella Lawson had condoned the theft of Charles' money in exchange for their concealing her drug use.  In these unusual circumstances, although Nigella was not charged with any offence, indeed although it was the employees who were on trial and she was a witness for the prosecution, the judge permitted her cross-examination.  The net result is that the only details of the trial that emerged were the employees' unsubstantiated allegations of Nigella's lifestyle and their criticism of her household management and her childminding abilities.  I am appalled.  Nigella denies the allegations of course.  But, even were the allegations true, no proof has been offered to the court; as far as I know, Nigella has committed no crime; and an opinion poll seems to have found that the public are still content that Nigella's alleged lifestyle is acceptable.  Yet Nigella's life has been pulled apart in the media, through no fault of her own (arguably) and hardly anything has been said about the accused's dissolute lifestyle.  The jury has decided to accept the word of two women who clearly dipped freely into Charles Saatchi's bank account to treat themselves to holidays and expensive clothes, which, whether condoned or not, is entirely irrelevant to their employment, two women who claim that they were in effect paid off to conceal evidence ie allowed to commit a crime by dissembling to their employer and keeping a confidence which they have now anyway broken, and who one might say have now revealed their true characters by selling their stories immediately to the media, no doubt aiming further to justify their nefarious activities and blacken further the name of a woman who has been neither accused nor convicted, nor given the opportunity to defend herself.  This seems to be the opposite of fairness in court.  The justice system has done itself no good in my eyes today.

PEER PRESSURE

Reform of the House of Lords, our second parliamentary chamber, has been under discussion again recently.  It was, despite some reaction from politicians, included in The Queen’s speech, the traditional announcement of the forthcoming legislative programme.  The question on many people’s lips, or at least in their minds, is why is the government bothering about such almost arcane, certainly controversial, matters, when the economy is foundering, businesses are going bust and so many people are out of work?

I doubt any reforms will go as far as making any proportion of the chamber elected.  It looks unlikely that all-party agreement (which is essential to any parliamentary reform) will be forthcoming to such a radical change.  But all parties do now seem to agree that there are too many members in The Lords.  So I guess some limiting figure will be put on the ideal size of a second chamber.  But maybe nothing else will be done at the moment.  How important is this?

The original system provided for a chamber of hereditary Lords and Royals, the aristocracy in other words, the landed gentry, and Bishops.  It worked.  It was a group of people, admittedly a group designated entirely by privilege, but a group who had no particular tie to a political party (you could argue that there were a disproportionate number of Tory sympathisers, given their vested interest in land, money and capitalism, but there were also Socialist landowners), and who could be relied upon to be sensible, learned in many cases, and even-handed.  They provided a reasonable check to the unfettered politicking and power-broking of the Lower House, where nominally constituents were supposed to be the prime consideration, but where (as often now too) personal interests and lack of interest in the common good were rife.  Despite its many flaws, I think it was a rather good system.

More recently, Life Peers, those made Lords by The Queen at the behest of the Prime Minister, have multiplied to outnumber the Hereditary Peers.  I don’t think Royals are now listed as Members, so presumably only those that are also hereditary peers with their own land are on the list.  Anyway, it has now become the norm for Prime Ministers, particularly after being newly elected, to nominate a number of new peers, in order to ‘right the balance’ of the political parties represented in The Lords.  There are 25 Bishops and 90 Hereditary Peers, which would once have been the total size of the Second Chamber.  But there are now also 231 Labour, 166 Conservative and 86 Liberal Democrat Life Peers.  This is clearly ridiculous.  There are only 650 MPs, but currently, there are 818 members of the House of Lords.  So, far from being a mini-version of the House of Commons, which is what it might be with just a few ennobled members from each party, it has in fact grown cumbersome and almost meaningless as an impartial reviewing body. 

You will probably gather from the above figures that The Lords contains members of other political parties (30) and some 154 non-party members.  Wouldn’t it be a great second house if there were no party affiliated members and only the 270-odd unaffiliated Peers, Hereditary Peers and Bishops.  I think that could work too.

But, needless to say, people still think of the Lords as a privileged anachronism and call for an elected body.  I can see the simplistic thinking here.  Elections to a second chamber would remove those who are only there by right and not by dint of competence.  But the trouble is, we would still have to find a means of selecting the candidates.  What would they offer?  What would they promise?  Would they have a political agenda and just replace the current crop of political cronies?  Or would they have an independent agenda?  Could there be such a thing without a Party?  Perhaps they would be prominent or wealthy members of society and just replace the Hereditary Peers as a sort of nouveau riche peerage.  They could then use their wealth to campaign on the basis of their achievements and capabilities.  Or perhaps they would have unofficial constituencies and promise action in their local areas.  But would they, without some form of affiliation, be able to deliver on any promise?  And the fact remains, that all this would just add to the annual political diary.  Do we really want yet more politicking and electioneering and more political expenditure on top of the local elections and General Election?  I wouldn’t want to see it anyway.

But there are alternatives.  I quite like, as I have made clear, the appointment of an unelected chamber by virtue of competence or apparent fair-mindedness.  Why don’t we replace the political Peers with groups of such proved ability?  A few successful company directors, say, or surgeons, or dentists, or magistrates, or academics of certain disciplines, such as law, or others (can’t think of any more for the moment, except estate agents or bankers, which most people would probably find unacceptable) who have achieved on the basis of expertise or widely-accepted talents.  This would certainly bring The Lords up to date and ought to give us a chamber capable of serving the intended purpose.

But we come back to the question – why is the Prime Minster worrying about this now?  It is not I suspect because he is concerned about any lack of competence in the House, but much more about its composition.  He would normally be thinking now about Tory party members who might be elevated to The Lords; his party members are after all outnumbered by Labour members by about 20 (if you include hereditary peer party members).  But this is not a Conservative Government, it is a Coalition, which means that there would also be Liberal Democrat nominations, who, once the Coalition comes to an end, would become opposition to the Conservatives.  Cameron would have to appoint over 100 new Conservative peers to ensure he maintained some sort of superiority over opposition parties.  And that’s not including the 200 odd independents and minor parties.  Yes, this seems like a good time to stop this nonsense, to put a cap on the numbers and to try to maintain some sort of position of power, the existing balane at least, within the second chamber.

But reactions to the proposed legislation so far have been pretty muted, if not apathetic.  Clearly my idea of a chamber of dentists and estate agents should be included in the discussion to elicit more animated debate.