The deaf ears of the listening government

Yesterday, commenting on the Prime Minister’s purported U-turn on the Territorial Army, Lord Kinnock pointed out the classic political paradox, ‘that it is passing strange… when a Government heed advice and change policy, it is a humiliating climb-down, but when they fail to do so they are being stiff-necked and arrogant.’

It is hard to deny that Gordon Brown’s government does seem to be rather damned if they do and damned if they don’t but you don’t normally expect them to fall foul of both sides of a paradox all in the same day. Yet just half an hour after Labour Lords had defended Gordon Brown as a listening Prime Minister the government regrettably passed a piece of legislation that would confiscate artistic proceeds from former prisoners without a single speech of support.

The debate on part 7 of the Coroners and Justice Bill took just over an hour and in all that time the government spokesman, Lord Tunnicliffe, did not receive support from one of his colleagues in the chamber. Lord Borrie, a Labour peer and Lord Lester of Herne Hill challenged the bill on human rights grounds saying it was illegitimate. The government’s position was then assaulted by peers from all angles. Lord Ramsbotham called it ‘a sledgehammer to crack a small nut’ and Baroness Stern called it ‘absurd’.

However perhaps the best speech of the day was delivered by Baroness Rendell, better known for her crime fiction novels, she accused the government of endangering a modern day Jean Genet and told the House that the world famed novelist’s theft of diamonds from his hostess while at a literary party did not impact one inch upon his literary prowess.

However, the Government passed the bill relying on its strangely silent majority and while the vote signalled a government victory, Lord Tunnicliffe’s face, having been rhetorically battered, for 60 minutes suggested it was a somewhat pyrrhic victory. Indeed his wry self-acknowledgement of his own lack of support acknowledged the apparent irony that the unanimous argument of the chamber had fallen upon the deaf ears of a ‘listening’ government.

We, at the Howard League, hope that should this awful law come before a court the application of the Human Rights Act will mean that, unlike Genet’s stolen diamonds, this law will not be forever.