Baroness Hamwee (LD)

My Lords, Amendment 118 is in my name. The noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, has been remarkably thorough. I thank her for that, and I will try not to repeat too much. My amendment is more general and slightly differently focused from others in the group. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for signing it. I want to ensure that the Independent Public Advocate’s accumulated experience, ideas and views that she has gained from her work can be part of the mix and that the Secretary of State uses those in codes, guidance, regulations and so on, not only specifically with a particular major incident but to enable the IPA to be proactive and not contained in a little box. It is arguable that Section 35(2)(a) of the Victims and Prisoners Act covers this, but I am not convinced about that. Let the Independent Public Advocate be involved not only if the Secretary of State decides she should be deployed; my amendment mentions the Lord Chancellor as well as the Secretary of State—I hope I have that right because obviously the Lord Chancellor is also the Secretary of State for Justice at the moment, but that is the term used in some of the relevant legislation. The IPA has helpfully written to noble Lords. I am perhaps being a little more ambitious than she has been. She talks about improving transparency and confidence in deployment decisions by ensuring that she has the opportunity to make representations and that those representations are considered; I am going a little further. She has also written to the noble Lord, Lord Alton. We went to and fro over the wording of amendments on this issue. I hope he does not mind if I quote a bit of the letter, in which she says that she can “see real value in the IPA having a role in monitoring and reporting on compliance” and makes the point that: “Without some ability to access relevant information independently, it would be difficult to assess compliance in any meaningful way”. She also understandably, and frankly correctly, refers to the issue of resources, to which other noble Lords have referred. It is not up to this House, but we must will the means to enable her to fulfil the role that we all think that any IPA should be enabled to fulfil.