Commissioner for Older People (Wales) Bill [HL]

I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 87 and 88, which are grouped with Amendment No. 86. I believe that we can all agree that it is highly desirable that the code of practice issued under Clause 11 should be seen by the providers of care and the elderly to be a significant document. My amendments are an attempt to confer a legal status on the guidance. The legal status attributable to guidance is that which a Bill gives it; but nowhere in the Bill is the legal status on the code of practice addressed. The detail in the guidance will have been formulated by the commissioner and will not have been approved by the Assembly or the Assembly Government. In order to strengthen or enhance the contents of the guidance, it is preferable that the guidance should be approved by the Assembly, or at the very least by the Assembly Government; and having received such statutory approval, its provisions would carry much more weight in the country and its legitimacy would be strengthened. That is the case for Amendment No. 87. As for Amendment No. 88, a legal status attributable by statute to many codes of practice that I can think of is that the courts are required to take them into account in interpreting a particular legislative provision, stopping short of making the code itself legally binding. We know from our discussions of the Bill that the guidance will not be directly enforceable as the Bill stands; it will not have been approved by the Assembly or the Assembly Government. So it may come to be seen as no more than the enunciation of fine principles. In those circumstances it would greatly strengthen the authority of the guidance if the statute provided that the courts should be required to take the guidance into account in interpreting any relevant legislation. It seems to me that the knowledge in the background that the guidance under Clause 11 is admissible as evidence in court and may be taken into account will mean that the incentive to apply the guidelines will become that much greater. That is the case for Amendment No. 88. I beg to move.