House of Commons Hansard Debates for 28 Jul 1998 (pt 7)

4 pm

My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth and colleagues who supported the amendment have generously and readily accepted the imperative of achieving Royal Assent for the Bill by the end of this week. I should not have asked them to support our move or asked the House not to insist on the amendment had I not first attempted to develop an alternative approach that could have met the will of this House immediately to equalise the age of consent while also meeting the concerns of the other place to protect vulnerable young people. However, I am satisfied that there is no

28 Jul 1998 : Column 178

compromise solution that could be debated and resolved during the rest of this week that would be acceptable to another place and to this House.

Before I come to my proposals for dealing with the will of the House on the issue as expressed on 22 June, it may be helpful if I set out the background to the issue and explain why the Government accommodated an amendment on the age of consent in the Bill.

Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield): My right hon. Friend is assuming that the Lords would allow the Bill to go down rather than concede to the overwhelming will of the House of Commons. That is a fundamental issue. Why does he assume that the Lords would succeed, particularly as I understand that the proposal will be reintroduced in the next Session, although the Lords could delay that as well? We cannot assume that the problem will be solved if the hereditary peers go, because the life peers also voted against the amendment.

Is this not another capitulation to an unelected Chamber, comparable to what has happened over fox hunting? Under previous Governments, the leaders of the House of Lords have told Cabinet Committees--including those of which I was a member--not to proceed with certain proposals because they would be obstructed. Is not that the real issue--not the Crime and Disorder Bill, which the Lords could hardly reject, or even gay rights, important though the issue is and one that I have always supported, but whether the House of Commons, particularly on a free vote, is to have its will over a House that, on this matter, is elected by nobody, accountable to nobody and representative of nobody?

Mr. Straw: I intend to set out arrangements by which this House will be able to achieve its will over the other place--by invoking the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 if necessary. However, the provisions of the Parliament Act are not available on Bills that begin their journey through Parliament in the other place. Although I fully subscribe to the Labour manifesto pledge to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords--we shall bring forward proposals in due course to give full effect to that commitment--whether we like the fact or not, even if the hereditary peers had not been allowed to vote, the other place would still have voted down the amendment, so this is not the best issue on which to challenge the authority of the other place. That can be done in a different way.

On the two significant crises about the authority of this place over the other place, the issues were Government legislation. The situation is made more complex by the fact that we are dealing with a free vote in both Houses.

Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) rose--

Mr. Straw: If my hon. Friend will allow me, I should like to expand on a further point.

I do not know what the outcome would be if we went in for ping-pong with the other place, but we would certainly not get Royal Assent by the end of this week. That would not be satisfactory. Even if we abandoned the idea of Royal Assent by the end of this week, there is no certainty that the other place would decide to concede the point made by this House on 22 June. The net result could be that, unless we took other steps, the whole Bill,

28 Jul 1998 : Column 179

which has been supported on both sides of the Chamber, would be aborted. I do not believe that it is either appropriate or necessary to take that risk.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): Will the Home Secretary give way?

Mr. Winnick rose--

Mr. Straw: I must give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) first; then I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow. (Mr. Dalyell).

Mr. Winnick: I regret, of course, the decision made last week, but I agree that the Bill must go ahead. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, if the House of Lords, or whatever it might then be called, were elected, it would have as much electoral credibility and legitimacy as the elected House of Commons, and that, bearing in mind how the life peers voted, such an elected Chamber would still have been likely to come to the same decision? Is that not a danger to the authority of the House of Commons?

Mr. Straw: That is an important point of view to be weighed in the balance when we deal with stage two of the manifesto proposals in respect of the other place. However, I happen to believe that other issues, too, will probably arise in which the question of clashes between the House of Lords and the House of Commons will come into play.

Mr. Dalyell: The Home Secretary and his officials have surely had brought to their attention the letter in The Times from a number of distinguished Law Lords, including Lord Ackner and Lord Wilberforce. What is the answer to their question why the amendment was not introduced at a much earlier stage? Why was it brought into the Bill at such a late stage? As one who has taken a view different from that of many of my colleagues, I am curious to know the answer to that question.

Mr. Straw: I shall explain in a second, why the amendment was introduced; the reason relates to proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights. As for the time scale, it was always judged that it was appropriate for the matter to be debated in this House first, before it went to the other place. Had it not been for the intervention of Northern Ireland legislation, there would, in my judgment, have been ample time for the matter to be batted backwards and forwards between the two Houses.

The debate took place on 22 June, the Bill came out of Standing Committee on 11 June, and our original plan was that it would come out of Committee in, say, early June, complete its Report stage by mid-June and, if possible, be considered by their lordships by the end of June. There would then have been ample time for further consideration.

I also make another point, to which I shall return in due course--that the issue of the age of consent, although very important, is a simple one. The question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) is more complicated, but the age of consent is a simple issue that has been discussed on very many occasions in the past. With great respect to their lordships, I thought that

28 Jul 1998 : Column 180

their least persuasive argument in favour of the position that the majority in that House took involved the late stage in the proceedings at which they had to deal with the issue. It is not as if the issue had not been for many years a well-known question, on which people had been able to form rather settled conclusions.

It would be helpful if, before turning to my proposals for dealing with the amendment, I set out the background and explained why the Government accommodated an amendment on the age of consent within the Bill before us.

Hon. Members may be aware that Mr. Euan Sutherland and Mr. Christopher Morris, with the backing of Stonewall, the gay rights organisation, took the United Kingdom Government to the European Court of Human Rights to argue that we were in breach of the European convention on human rights in setting a differential age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual activity.

We learned last summer that the European Commission of Human Rights was about to issue a preliminary finding in favour of Mr. Sutherland. Our legal advice was that it was nigh on certain that that finding would be confirmed by the full court in due course. Such a court ruling would in practice have obliged the United Kingdom Government and Parliament to legislate for an equal age of consent.

Because we thought--correctly, as it happened--that on a free vote an overwhelming majority of the House of Commons would favour setting the age of consent at 16, we judged that to contest the preliminary ruling would serve no purpose whatever, and would waste much public money on legal costs. We therefore sought an agreement with Mr. Sutherland, Mr. Morris and Stonewall by which they would stay their proceedings in the European Court of Human Rights on the basis of undertakings that we would provide.

Those undertakings, which were collectively agreed by the Government, were contained in a document lodged with the European Court on 21 October 1997. A copy of the full text of the undertakings has been placed in the Library--they are a matter of public record.

The undertakings have two principal components. First, we undertook at the "earliest appropriate opportunity" to have a free vote in the House of Commons on the equalisation of the age of consent. That is why we accepted that the Crime and Disorder Bill could be used for that purpose, although the scope of the Bill--which was already amending the law on offences--was such that, irrespective of whether the Government had agreed to include the issue in the Bill, it was rightly for the House to decide whether to amend it as some hon. Members sought to do.

Secondly, the undertaking said that, if a majority of the House of Commons voted in favour of a reduction in the age of consent for homosexual acts to 16,

"the government will bring forward legislation to implement the will of Parliament, such legislation to be introduced in time for the consideration of such legislation to have been completed by the end of the next Parliamentary session"--