House of Lords
Introduction: The Lord Bishop of Winchester
Death of a Member: Lord Newton of Braintree
The Lord Speaker (Baroness D’Souza)
My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death yesterday of the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree. On behalf of the House, I extend our deepest condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.
Piracy
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the assistance given by the Serious Organised Crime Agency to the Regional Anti-Piracy Prosecutions and Intelligence Co-ordination Centre in the Seychelles will include information gleaned from suspicious activity reports.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)
My Lords, no decision has been made on whether SOCA will share information from suspicious activity reports with the Regional Anti-Piracy Prosecutions and Intelligence Co-ordination Centre. We are still determining the centre’s requirements, which will include safeguards for the protection of personal data.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response—although, alas, there is not a huge amount to thank him for but just a little bit—but I should be grateful if he would ensure that we are told when a decision has been reached on this matter. Would he not agree, moreover, that now that the Government are getting a better grip on all aspects of the problems of Somalia, including that of piracy, it is high time that the Government insisted that anyone assembling a ransom should file a suspicious activity report about that? Would he also confirm that the Prime Minister has now asked for a proper study to be made of all aspects of the issue of assembling ransoms?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I thought that my Answer was quite helpful. However, I can give the noble Lord an assurance that he will be told, and the House will be informed, when we have made a decision. As regards whether SARs should be used whenever a ransom has been paid, the paying of ransom, as the noble Lord will be aware, is not illegal as such, although we deplore the practice because we do not think it assists. I can also confirm that, as the noble Lord put it, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister does want further work to be looked at in this area to see whether it should be something for which a SAR should automatically be filed if that is the case.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, it has been known for some time that terrorist groups such as AQIM have used kidnap for ransom as a source of income. Why did the Government not mention this in the course of the extended correspondence with the EU Select Committee about piracy off the coast of Somalia?
Lord Henley
My Lords, we made it clear that we do not believe that the money going in ransoms to—if I can put it this way—the ordinary Somali pirates is generally going into terrorists’ hands. What is being gathered by AQIM is coming from other kidnapping operations and, as the noble Lord will be aware, there is a very good chance that that is going into terrorism operations, in which case it would be illegal to pay that ransom.
Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, is the national maritime intelligence centre now fully manned and operational at Northwood?
Lord Henley
My Lords, to the best of my knowledge, that is the case, but if I am wrong, of course I will write to the noble Lord.
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, given that the money-laundering regulations, which are part of the law now, make it perfectly clear that any payment made in connection with a criminal activity has to be reported to the government authorities and that consent has to be given before any payments are made, why has there been a de facto exemption in the case of payments negotiated by insurance companies or their representatives for ransoms in connection with piracy, which, whatever else it is, is clearly a criminal activity?
Lord Henley
My Lords, the simple fact is that, much as we deplore the payment of ransoms—Her Majesty's Government have made that clear for some time—they are not illegal as such. That is why, in answer to the supplementary question from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I made it clear that the Prime Minister has asked for work to be conducted in this field.
The Earl of Sandwich
My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that a heavy burden has fallen on the criminal court in Mombasa, in Kenya? To what extent are the Seychelles and Mauritius taking that burden from Kenya?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I think we are going slightly beyond the original Question, but the noble Earl raises an interesting point and I would prefer to write to him about that.
Lord Clinton-Davis
Is there a time limit for the further work that is being undertaken by the Government?
Lord Henley
My Lords, there is no time limit and it would be wrong to impose one at this stage. All I can make clear is that the Prime Minister has asked for further work to be done.
Olympic Games 2012: Disruption to Businesses
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Viscount Goschen
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to ensure that disruption to businesses in London caused by the 2012 Olympic Games is minimised.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, London will be open for business this summer. Everyone involved in planning for the Games is focused on delivering a great Games while keeping London and the UK moving. Since November 2010, Transport for London has been working with businesses of all sizes in the capital to help them plan ahead for the impact that the Games might have on their staff travel, their deliveries and other aspects of their operations.
Viscount Goschen
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that helpful Answer. Given that businesses in central London—here I have an interest of sorts to declare—have been officially advised to plan for severe disruption to their operations because of traffic congestion as a result of the Olympic route network and the congested public transport system, can he assure the House that everything possible will be done to ensure that, while the Olympic Games are a great success, the normal commercial business of London is kept moving as far as possible?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, we recognise the importance of this issue. We accept that there will be serious consequences if we get the planning wrong. There may be some severe disruption to a few businesses in certain locations, but the overall policy objective is business as usual. There will be impacts on businesses, most of which, overall, will be positive. However, there are potential adverse impacts. They can be mitigated by timely information and good planning. The website, Get Ahead of the Games, provides both the necessary information and the planning tools.
Lord Addington
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that having the greatest sporting festival in the world on our doorstep is something for which we should be prepared to tolerate a little delay? Can he further give us assurances and guidance about where we have looked for examples of how best to deal with any confusion?
Earl Attlee
My noble friend makes an extremely important point. It is quite clear to me that those planning for the Olympics have carefully studied the experience of other nations when they have put their Games on, which is one reason why I think that we are on track to deliver an excellent set of Games.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, it is of course enormously important that transport in London is sustained sufficiently for normal businesses to be able to operate. However, the Minister will know of one form of business that will already be adversely affected—black cabs, which will not be able to go into these privileged lanes. So, that is one business that is facing a real challenge. Can the Minister assure us that government Ministers and others who have privileged transport will not trespass into these lanes, which we recognise are in response to the requirements of the Olympic authorities and already attract the unfortunate epithet of the Zil lanes, after the privileged form of transport in Moscow? I can think of nothing more offensive to the ordinary Londoner than to see that these lanes which are reserved for athletes to fulfil their Olympic obligations are being patronised by government Ministers.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, if I may say so, that was an ingenious question from the spokesman for the Opposition. However, noble Lords will recall that the bid plans were approved by the previous Administration. On a particular point about the Olympic route network and the Games lanes, the Games lanes will be put in place only where there are two lanes, and only for as long as necessary.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, could the Minister tell me what thought has been given to the effect on retail business of the extended closure of pedestrian crossings? Certain major roads in the centre of London will have a barrier completely down the middle, and the number of pedestrian crossings will be reduced by half. Will that not affect people in retail terms since they will be able to buy only from whatever business happens to be on their side of the road?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, it is important to remember that there will be opportunities as well as disadvantages for retail businesses. I would urge retail businesses to visit the Get Ahead of the Games website, where, by using the tools available, they will easily be able to see what the impact of travel disruption will be.
Lord Reid of Cardowan
Perhaps the Minister could address the potential effects of a cyber surge in view of the huge interest there will be in the Olympic Games themselves, the potentially huge diversion of businesses and their employees to outside of London, based on the need to avoid any transport and other difficulties. There may well be a pretty large surge of demand for internet capabilities. Can the Minister tell us what provision or action the Government have made or taken to ensure continuity of service in the cyber and internet fields? It could cause huge disruption to business if that is not assured.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, in preparing for this Question I had not specifically looked at cyber issues. However, I know that my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones spends all her time working on cyber issues.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
Does my noble friend regard it as a good or a bad omen that the first appearance of the phrase “the rush hour” in the English language appeared within two years of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896?
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, will the Minister expand a little on his response to my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham? We read in the press of the arrival of hundreds if not thousands of members of the Olympic family—which I think probably means the International Olympic Committee and all the hangers-on. No doubt each participating member state will send a senior Minister and their entourage, and that is before we get to our own Ministers. Will all these people be able to use these special lanes in addition to the athletes—who are the ones we want to get there on time—or will they be confined just to the athletes? If the lanes are extended to all these other people who think that they have a role to play then, as my noble friend said, the public will get very angry indeed.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Lord will understand that the provision of the Olympic route network was a key component of our bid to host the Olympics. If we had simply said to the International Olympic Committee, “Oh yes, we will have a great transport system”, we simply would not have secured the bid. We had to tell the International Olympic Committee specifically how we would provide the transport, including the Olympic route network.
Lord Elton
My Lords, can my noble friend readdress the question asked by my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes? If 50 per cent of the crossing places in, for instance, Oxford Street are to be closed and barriers will make it impossible to cross the road other than in the remaining 50 per cent of places, many people who are not that fit will have to make very long journeys on foot to get across the road, even when it is not rush hour. That, together with fighting against the tide, will put some people out of the commercial race altogether.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I understand my noble friend’s point but, where restrictions are planned, they will be in place only for as long as necessary.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
My Lords, the Minister keeps repeating that this or that plan has been approved and that this or that has got us the Games. Will he please tell us who will be able to use the lanes? It is quite simple and straightforward.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the answer is athletes, technical officials, media covering the Games, the Olympic and Paralympic family, and Games partners, who provide £1 billion funding for the Games and contribute to the operational running of the Games.
Lord Broers
My Lords, can the Minister reassure us that there will be excellent communications between the various modes of transportation so that those involved in surface rail will talk to those who work on the Underground, and vice versa? Last week there was a massive delay at Waterloo, yet the Underground had no notice of this and went on piling people into Waterloo. I hope that the two will talk to each other during the Games.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I know that generally noble Lords have been disappointed with some of the information systems during transport disruptions. I recently visited the Transport for London surface operations control centre in London and was very impressed by it. In addition, for the Games a transport co-ordination centre will ensure co-ordination and communication between all transport operators, authorities and Games organisers. It will focus on transport operations that could affect delivery of the Games and it will be funded by the Olympic Delivery Authority.
Lord Tomlinson
Does the noble Earl accept that, although privileged access to Downing Street is worse than privileged access to the Games, nevertheless privileged access to the Games, as well as to Downing Street, will be found repugnant by many British people?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I hope the noble Lord understands that these plans were approved by the previous Administration. This Government were not in a position to alter the bid made by that Administration.
Armed Forces: Redundancies
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Walker of Aldringham
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of service men and women being made redundant from the Armed Forces are expected to be between the ages of 18 and 24.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, as a result of the strategic defence and security review and the comprehensive spending review, it has been necessary to plan for redundancies in both the Civil Service and the Armed Forces to restore public finances and to better equip and shape the forces for the future. I can advise that some 12 per cent of those selected for redundancy in tranche one of the Armed Forces redundancy programme were aged 24 or below—that is, some 350 people. Selections for tranche two have yet to take place.
Lord Walker of Aldringham
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I venture to suggest that the number will end up somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000, but we shall wait to see in due course. These young people will leave the services having been trained at taxpayers’ expense for war—a profession that does not read across easily to other professions. We may well find that they will have great difficulty in getting employment thereafter and merely add to the 1 million unemployed 18 to 24 year-olds. Last year, the Government added £1 billion to the programme. The absurdity is that those made redundant are going to be replaced by the Territorial Army.
Lord Walker of Aldringham
My question is coming. They are going to be replaced by the Territorial Army, which is composed of part-timers whereas those being made redundant are full-timers, whose members will have two jobs, two wages and two paymasters. Will the Government reconsider this issue? It would be perfectly possible to continue to employ those who do not wish to leave the Army, either by giving them some of the £1 billion that the Government are investing in the young or by underrecruiting the unrecruited TA.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I think that I recognise a certain anti-TA bias in that comment, which neither I nor the Government share. The total reduction in the size of the Armed Forces over the next several years will amount to 17,000 and it is estimated that the total necessary redundancies from currently serving personnel will be 11,000. The proportion of those servicemen under the age of 25 will be much closer to 2,000 to 3,000 than the figures the noble and gallant Lord has suggested.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet
My Lords, would the noble Lord assure me and the House that servicemen and women in this age group who may be redundant will be guided towards apprenticeships which we already have in place for service people leaving the services early? It is particularly important that such people are trained up and apprenticeships are very necessary to achieve this.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Of course, many of those who came in as young leaders in the armed services are already being trained in the Army in the sort of skills that are highly valuable in civilian life. There is a resettlement scheme in place which will provide transitional training. In recent times, 93 per cent of those who left the Army under the resettlement scheme have found jobs within six months and 97 per cent within 12 months. I am sure that people with good records in the Army will have much that sort of experience.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, redundant personnel will have spent many years living and working in the Armed Forces. Are the Government going to give them training to enable them to find accommodation, food and other essentials? I also find it strange that, at the same time, there are advertisements on television for jobs in the Armed Forces. Can the Minister explain why?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I think noble Lords will understand why continuing recruitment at a lower level needs to continue in order to maintain the correct balance of age groups and skills in the Armed Forces, even as they are reduced. There are opportunities for those selected for redundancy to apply for other skill training within the armed services, so it is not simply one out and another person in.
Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the current machinations about aircraft for aircraft carriers bring to mind the maxim, “Order, counter-order, disorder” and, rather more coarsely, the ouslam bird? Does he not agree that getting rid of the seed corn now will mean that the generation of the carriers will be rather more expensive and far more difficult than it need be?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we all recognise that we are not in an entirely happy situation as far as the carriers are concerned. That is part of the problems which this Government inherited with very large carriers already under way. The question of how far we maintain and renew the skills involved is under active consideration. Our American and French partners will, no doubt, be willing to assist in this. Indeed, discussions are already under way.
Lord Dannatt
My Lords, referring back to a previous question, would the Minister give a further assurance about the importance placed on recruiting 18 to 24 year-olds? The Armed Forces are essentially a group of organisations which rely on young people. Does he agree that it is important to continue to recruit these people, to advertise and to make sure that our training establishments are properly maintained? Does he further agree that there will come a moment when we may have to expand our Armed Forces again and that we do not wish to run down our machinery too much in advance of that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I entirely agree that we need to maintain a balance in the forces. Many people join the Armed Forces in the hope of staying in for 22 years, but others join hoping to stay in for three or six years. In visiting one or two TA units, I have been struck by the number of people in the TA who have spent time with the Regular Forces or, in some cases, who started in the TA, moved into the Regular Forces and then came out and back to the TA. There is not a simple package or career structure in place. It is very good for some young people to spend some time with the Armed Forces and then come back into civilian life.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
My Lords, further to the Minister’s answer on recruitment, is there to be a freeze or will there continue to be recruitment to the Armed Forces in the future?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, as I have already said, we are continuing to recruit, but at a lower level as we adjust numbers. I am told that levels of applications to join the Armed Forces at the present time are high.
Lord Rosser
Are these service personnel being made redundant to make savings and keep expenditure within budget, despite the Government being able to afford a reduction in the top rate of income tax, or are they being made redundant because they are not needed to meet current and projected military commitments— namely, that they are surplus to requirements?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have not yet heard the Labour Party come out in favour of a substantial increase in defence spending in future years. If the Labour Party would like to commit itself to such a substantial increase, much of this would be avoided.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, I missed the Minister’s answer to the previous question.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
There is a range of reasons why some reductions, including in defence expenditure, are being made. As we withdraw our troops from Afghanistan in 2014, for the first time in a very long time we will not be, we hope, engaged in any active military operations; and, as we withdraw our troops from Germany, for the first time in over 200 years we will be within sight of our Armed Forces being mainly based in the United Kingdom. Some real and major adjustments to our Armed Forces will be under way in the next five to 10 years.
Scotland: Constitutional Future
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they expect to publish their response to the consultation on Scotland’s constitutional future.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, on 20 March the Secretary of State wrote to party spokespeople setting out an initial summary of the findings of the consultation. This letter was deposited in the Library and I set out the initial findings during the Committee stage of the Scotland Bill on 21 March. Officials are currently reviewing and analysing the consultation responses and a full summary will be published before the Third Reading of the Scotland Bill.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, will the Minister confess that the Government have broken their promise to publish the response in advance of the Report stage of the Scotland Bill, which we are taking this afternoon? In order to make amends, will he discuss with his colleagues a way of getting every department of government, particularly the Treasury, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Defence, to commission independent reports in advance of the referendum on the real costs of breaking up Britain?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will agree that we had a good debate about the referendum in Committee last Wednesday. I was able to give clear indications to the effect that, for example, the majority who responded to the consultation believed that powers should be devolved to the Scottish Parliament and that a great majority of those also supported the use of a Section 30 order. Our initial analysis shows clear support for a single question on independence, for the referendum to be held sooner rather than later, and for the involvement of the Electoral Commission. With regard to the second part of the noble Lord’s question, I hope that all departments will be very much engaged in setting out a positive case for the union.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, first, I thank my noble and learned friend for the undertaking to publish the full results of the consultation before Third Reading. That is very welcome and much appreciated. Secondly, given that the Government have decided not to proceed by amendment of the Scotland Bill to a referendum, will he give an undertaking that in the absence of reaching agreement on a single question organised by the Electoral Commission, the Government will bring forward their own legislation in the next Session of Parliament, as a Section 30 order requires the consent of the First Minister and his officials?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, a Section 30 order requires the consent of both Houses of this Parliament and of the Scottish Parliament. As I said last week, if agreement cannot be reached on a Section 30 order and if we are to try to ensure that this matter is kept out of the courts, which would be very helpful, the Government will need to consider what other options are open to them in order to provide a legal, fair and decisive referendum. Many people said that there would be no chance of getting a legislative consent Motion in respect of the Scotland Bill, but that is now within our grasp and is going to happen. I think we should focus our efforts on making sure, as I believe we can, that we get a Section 30 order for a fair, legal and decisive referendum.
Lord Reid of Cardowan
My Lords, will the Minister take this opportunity to repeat to the House the assurance he gave in Committee that while the question of whether Scotland wishes to leave the United Kingdom is properly a matter for the Scottish people, any other question that would affect the relationship between the people of the United Kingdom—that is, extended devolution—cannot just be a decision for the Scottish people? It must also be a decision for which there is consultation with either the rest of the people of the United Kingdom or the United Kingdom Parliament.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Reid, makes an important distinction between a question about a referendum on Scotland leaving the United Kingdom and one that would necessarily involve other parts of the United Kingdom. That is why the Government believe it is inappropriate for any referendum to have two questions. He is right to say that if there is to be further devolution, there must be some means of engaging other parts of the United Kingdom. The main provisions of the Scotland Bill, which we are currently debating, were included in the manifestos of the three parties at the last general election.
The Earl of Clancarty
Have the Government given any thought to a consultation on England’s constitutional future, bearing in mind that with the increasingly powerful and dedicated representation that the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament afford to their citizens, this country is going to feel increasingly left out?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I hope that in our arguments and debates about a referendum on Scotland’s future, we can make it clear that not only do we believe that Scotland is better off within the United Kingdom, but the United Kingdom is better off with Scotland.
The noble Earl will be aware that a commission has been set up to look at the implications of devolution for the procedures in the House of Commons, under the chairmanship of the Sir William Mackay. We await the outcome of that commission.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, coming back to the original Question, will the noble and learned Lord accept that with the Bill in your Lordships’ House at the moment, it is completely unacceptable for the full consultation not to be published until just before Third Reading? Will he accept that in view of that, and the fact that noble Lords may well wish to lay amendments on Third Reading, there should be greater latitude for amendments to be laid at that stage?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I do not necessarily think I can indicate the latitude that would be allowed at that stage, although I hear what the noble Lord says. I hope he will agree, that we gave considerable indications in Committee and, indeed, if the matter arises again today, on Report. In answering the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I indicated some of the key elements where the majority of opinion lies within the consultation. I think that was able to inform our debate on a referendum last week. I very much hope that by the time we get to Third Reading, people will have had an opportunity not just to analyse the numbers but also the quality of some of the responses, and they will feel that the preferences expressed by the Government in the consultation document command considerable support.
Business of the House
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That Standing Order 46 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with on Tuesday 27 March to allow the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill to be taken through its remaining stages that day.
Procedure of the House
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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16:51 - Division on Lord Cormack’s Amendment - Ayes: 319 / Noes: 96 - Lord Cormack’s Amendment agreed.
The Chairman of Committees
That the 11th Report from the Select Committee (HL Paper 253) be agreed to.
Relevant document: 3rd Report from the House Committee.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara)
My Lords, in moving this Motion, I would first like to apologise for the fact that the debate has been brought forward by a day. The date was rearranged at the request of the usual channels, in order to avoid disrupting business tomorrow, when I know the House will be keen to make progress on the legal aid Bill. However, the Procedure Committee report has been available for almost two months now, and the Liaison Committee report was published last Wednesday, so I hope that noble Lords will have had ample opportunity to consider them.
I have waited until now to move the Motion on the Procedure Committee report because I felt that it would be useful for the House to be able to debate it alongside any report from the Liaison Committee. The proposals in both reports require extra resources and I am sure that noble Lords will wish to consider their implications in the round. In order to assist the House in considering these proposals, the House Committee agreed to publish its Third Report, which sets out the potential costs of the proposals contained within the Procedure Committee and Liaison Committee reports. The House is not being invited to come to a decision on the House Committee report; it is purely for information. However, I hope that noble Lords will find its contents useful during the course of today’s debates.
I should make it clear at the outset that, although the Procedure Committee and Liaison Committee reports are linked by the common issue of costs, we will debate them separately, as they cover very different areas of the work of the House. After I have introduced the Procedure Committee report, I expect the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, to move her amendment. I would then expect that the majority of the debate on the Procedure Committee report would take place on that amendment. After the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness has been disposed of, the House can then take each of the other amendments in turn—without, I hope, further debate. Only once a final decision on the Procedure Committee report has been taken will we turn to the Liaison Committee report.
I now turn to the Procedure Committee report itself, to which four amendments were tabled. The report covers two issues: Grand Committees and Questions for Written Answer. I shall first address Grand Committees, and the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. The committee’s recommendations on Grand Committees derive from recommendations made by the Leader’s Group on Working Practices, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad. The Leader’s Group recommended, first, that,
“the sitting hours of the Grand Committee should in future be more predictable and longer”,
and, secondly,
“that a rule be established, and included in the Companion, that all Government Bills introduced in the Commons should be considered in Grand Committee, apart from major constitutional Bills and emergency legislation and other exceptionally controversial Bills”.
Finally, the group recommended that some new types of business, including Oral Statements, could be taken in Grand Committee.
The Procedure Committee considered these recommendations along with proposals by the Leader of the House, which varied from them in certain important respects. First, on longer sitting hours, the Leader’s Group recommended, in broad terms, that Grand Committees sit every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, from 10.30 am until 12.30 pm, and from 2.30 pm until 6.30 pm. The Leader of the House, as our report states in paragraph 3, proposed instead that Grand Committees on Monday to Wednesday should continue to start at their present times, but that Grand Committees on primary legislation on these days should sit until 10 pm, with a one-hour break for dinner. Sitting times on Thursdays would also be varied, with Grand Committees on primary legislation sitting from noon until 7 pm, with a one-hour break.
It is not for me to comment on the merits of longer Grand Committee hours. Longer hours will involve additional costs, and the House Committee has examined them and set out its commitment to deliver savings to offset any additional expenditure, so that the overall effect is cost-neutral. It is for the House as a whole, in light of the House Committee’s report, to decide whether the benefits of increased Grand Committee scrutiny of primary legislation justify any additional expenditure. Nor is it for me to comment on the relative merits of morning as against evening sittings. The Leader took the view that morning sittings would be unlikely to find favour with the House as a whole, and the committee, on balance, agreed. The committee also agreed with the Leader’s proposal that, on days when more than one Oral Statement is to be made or repeated, the option should be available to take one of the Statements in Grand Committee, during the dinner break.
I now turn to the committee’s recommendation on the committal of Bills to the Grand Committee. As I have already said, the Leader’s Group recommended that there be a rule, enshrined in the Companion, that government Bills sent from the Commons be committed to Grand Committee, subject to certain exceptions. The Leader argued that the proposed exceptions, constitutional or emergency Bills, or other “exceptionally controversial Bills”, were both too rigid and impossible to define. He proposed instead that there should be general presumption that government Bills introduced in the Commons should be committed to Grand Committee, except where the usual channels agree otherwise. My understanding is that this approach would allow the usual channels to consider a range of factors, such as the level of interest across the House in a particular Bill, in deciding whether it would be in the interests of Members that that Bill should be considered in Grand Committee or in a Committee of the Whole House. However, as now, the final decision would rest with the House as a formal committal Motion would need to be agreed in the usual way.
Finally, I wish to draw noble Lords’ attention to the final bullet point in paragraph 10, which states that the new arrangements, if agreed by the House, would be adopted on a trial basis, for the 2012-13 Session only. It would require a further decision of the House, following a review by the Procedure Committee, to extend them beyond spring 2013.
As the report makes clear, the committee was not unanimous in agreeing its recommendations on Grand Committees. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, both made clear their preference for the approach recommended by the Leader’s Group, and this is reflected in the noble Baroness’s amendment. This amendment will be called next, and I shall leave it to the noble Baroness and others to debate the merits of the two alternative approaches on offer. My position on this amendment is entirely neutral.
The second amendment, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is more far-reaching in that it would return the entire issue of Grand Committees to the Procedure Committee. No doubt the noble Lord, when he speaks, will clarify what he hopes to achieve by means of his amendment and what he thinks the Procedure Committee should consider further. Again, my position on the amendment is entirely neutral.
I now turn to the second part of the report, which concerns Questions for Written Answer. The committee proposes a new weekly limit of 12 on the number of Written Questions that Members are entitled to table. The committee unanimously supported this recommendation. The background is covered briefly in the report. The number of Questions for Written Answer has risen inexorably in the past 10 years, from an average of 29 on each sitting day in 2003-04 to 60 per day in the current Session.
None of us doubts that the tabling of Questions for Written Answer is a vital part of parliamentary scrutiny of government. However, these Questions come at a cost. The report quotes the average cost to the Government of £159 per Written Question. We did not put a figure on the cost to this House—for instance, in staff time and printing—but a recent report by the House of Commons Procedure Committee suggested that the cost to the House of Commons was around £80 per Written Question, giving a total cost to the public purse of just under £240 per Written Question. Putting these figures into the context of the House of Lords, Written Questions cost the public around £14,300 in respect of each sitting day, rather than the £9,500 quoted in the report.
The committee also bore in mind the huge discrepancy between Members of the House in the rate at which they table Written Questions. The Clerk of the Parliaments provided analysis of all Written Questions tabled from October to December 2011, which showed that just 10 Members of your Lordships’ House tabled 45 per cent of all Questions for Written Answer. Just three noble Lords tabled 27 per cent of all Questions in that period.
Taking these factors into account, the committee agreed unanimously that a weekly limit of 12 Questions per Member was proportionate and reasonable, and would enable noble Lords to continue their essential work of scrutinising the Government, while reducing the scope for what some might regard as abuse of the Order Paper. I therefore oppose the amendment in the name of noble Lord, Lord Greaves, which I believe the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, intends to move. The committee has considered the matter in considerable detail on the basis of a very thorough analysis of the evidence supplied. We have made a recommendation. The House may agree to it or not, but I see no point in referring the matter back at this stage.
Finally, the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, would create a new rule that, in weeks when the House was not sitting, Members would be entitled to table up to six Questions for Written Answer. Of course I understand what the noble Lord is seeking to achieve. However, I hope that the House will agree that this would be a significant change, which would have cost implications both for the House and for government departments. It could also have a major impact on the staff of the House, particularly the Table Office. I certainly do not reject the noble Lord’s amendment out of hand, but I suggest that we need to give more detailed consideration to the practicalities of his proposal. If he is willing not to move his amendment when his turn comes, I will undertake to put the proposal before the Procedure Committee when it next meets, which is likely to be early in the new Session.
I trust that I have said enough on the report and the amendments. As I have already indicated, my position on the issue of Grand Committees is neutral, given that, as the report states, the committee was not unanimous in reaching its recommendations. On Questions for Written Answer, the committee was unanimous, and I commend the recommendation set out in paragraph 15 of the report to the House. I beg to move.
Amendment to the Motion
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
As an amendment to the above Motion, at the end to insert “, but with the fourth bullet point in paragraph 10 left out and replaced with the following words:
“That all government Bills introduced in the House of Commons should be considered in Grand Committee, apart from major constitutional Bills and emergency legislation and other exceptionally controversial Bills”.”
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I am grateful to the Chairman of Committees for moving the Motion on the reports. All the proposals contained in the reports have their roots in the recommendations of the report of the Leader’s Group on Working Practices chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad. We on these Benches support moves to improve and modernise the working practices of your Lordships’ House. While not everyone would necessarily agree with every recommendation from the Leader’s Group, we recognise that the group made a constructive and coherent attempt to bring forward improvements, building on the work originally put in place by the former Lord Speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. Similarly constructive attempts were made in the past on these Benches, in groups chaired by my noble friends Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Grocott. However, their recommendations related to a different, more iterative process in relation to Grand Committees.
All these constructive attempts shared another characteristic: they were all packages intended to bring forward balanced proposals for reform that would be of benefit to the House as a whole, not necessarily to the Executive or the Opposition. We on these Benches argue that this should have been—and still should be—the approach taken to the Goodlad proposals. However, the impression given is that of a piecemeal, cherry-picking approach that brings forward proposals that seek to advantage the Executive at the expense of our self-regulating House. That is what is in front of your Lordships today.
I know that there is some anxiety on all sides of the House about the order in which the recommendations were considered by the respective committees, and about the proposals brought before the House. There is some suspicion, for example, about the timing of the proposals to put more Bills into Grand Committee, especially at a time when our forthcoming Recess has been extended because of lack of business. On all Benches there is a constant demand—not new under this Government, I have to confess—for less, rather than more, legislation; and press briefings inform us that the next Session is likely to be relatively light apart from the vexed issue of Lords reform. Proposals stemming from the Goodlad group should be brought forward in a way that is strategic, systematic, coherent and consistent.
In moving my amendment, I shall deal with two issues before us today: Grand Committees and Questions for Written Answer. We on these Benches agree with the principle of considering more Bills in Grand Committee. Scrutiny in Grand Committee, especially of technical Bills, is enhanced in many ways. Certainly at present the Grand Committee has more capacity for the scrutiny of Bills and should be properly utilised. The proposals originally brought forward by the Leader of the House appear to take more power for the Executive but, although they are framed in terms of increasing the timing of sittings of Grand Committee, from discussions with the usual channels I heard and understood that the principal objective of the Leader of the House was not greater time but greater flexibility in the use of Grand Committee, and of course I welcome that. Indeed, I understand that the Leader has written to Cross-Bench Peers along those lines. Even so, I am aware that many on the Benches behind me have strong reservations about the proposals. We sought to work through the usual channels constructively to try to find clarifications of the proposals for the benefit of the whole House. I had hoped that such clarifications could be agreed, but I am sorry to report that agreement proved not to be possible.
We tried very constructively but agreement was eventually not forthcoming. Accordingly, I tabled the amendment standing in my name that seeks to reinsert the formula originally proposed by the Leader’s Group—a proposal that had support from all parties, and from Members of no party, across your Lordships’ House. My amendment to the report from the Procedure Committee will not have been a surprise to members of that committee, as the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees said. On each and every occasion when the proposals were discussed, I put forward strong arguments in favour of retaining the criteria contained in the Goodlad proposals—namely, that emergency Bills, constitutional Bills and other exceptionally controversial Bills should not be dealt with in Grand Committee. This is in complete accord with the recommendations of the 1994 Rippon report, upon which I understand the recommendations were drafted.
The noble Lord the Leader may well say later that the wording of the proposal before us—
“That there should be a presumption that Government bills introduced in the House of Commons should be committed to a Grand Committee, except where the Usual Channels agree otherwise”—
is less prescriptive and allows greater flexibility. I disagree. Rather, such a presumption seeks to increase the power and influence of the Executive, altering the balance between the Executive and your Lordships’ House in favour of the Executive, Ministers and the Government. I urge noble Lords to support my amendment in order to ensure that the proper balance between the Executive and a self-regulating House of Lords is retained. That is the effect of my amendment and the balance that I believe this House needs and wants to strike.
On the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that the report should be referred back to the committee, a range of issues should be considered, including the timings of Grand Committees and the implication for resources. We have some sympathy with the desire of the Leader of the House for there to be more flexibility in the hours of work of the Grand Committee. That is why we tried as hard as we did to agree clarification, which would have aided the whole House.
I am glad that the proposals before us no longer reflect the Goodlad recommendation that Grand Committees should meet in the morning, because I agree with the noble Lord the Leader that such timings would inconvenience the whole House. Rather than the Grand Committee being able to sit until 10 pm, my strong preference, as I argued in meetings of the Procedure Committee and the House Committee, would be to end it by 8.30 pm with no supper break. Apart from being more convenient for Members of the House, it would enable the Administration to plan its resources and thus keep down costs. Of course, if more Bills were to be considered in Grand Committee where votes are not taken, more time than usual would be needed for Report, to enable votes on a greater number of issues. We found that in relation to the Welfare Reform Bill.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. I agree with much of what she said, but not all of it. I would not dissent from her on the issue of hours. I have no quarrel with my noble friend the Leader of the House on that, but the noble Baroness’s suggestion of an 8.30 pm finish has much to commend it without in any way reducing the hours that my noble friend would have. That is not the real issue that I want to address.
I am very proud to be a Member of this House. When I came from another place I looked upon this House as one where legislation was properly scrutinised, time was taken and “we do things differently here”. In the context of legislation we do things better here. This is something that we do not wish to lose. We are a self-regulating House. I never want us to be in danger of becoming a government-regulated House. That is why I put down this amendment. I do not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, in stating that, as a rule, all Bills should go to Grand Committee except for her three exceptions.
I do not agree with the noble Baroness for two reasons. One is that it is always difficult to define an exception. What is a highly controversial Bill to some Members of the House may be a matter of simple common sense to others. What is a constitutional Bill to some Members of the House may not be to others. I instance the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. That was, as far as I am concerned, a major constitutional Bill. There were those who argued during our deliberations that it was not. Who is to determine? At the moment it is entirely up to your Lordships’ House to decide whether a Bill goes to Grand Committee or not.
As this Session grinds to a halt we have had a good example in the Welfare Reform Bill. It was suggested that it would be better dealt with in Grand Committee and it went there. It had the consequence, to which the noble Baroness has referred, that Report took much longer because there was no opportunity for voting in Grand Committee. When we are contemplating a move of this nature, we have to bear it in mind that votes do not take place in Grand Committee. My noble friend interjects, “Yet”, and that is one of the points behind my amendment, and one of the reasons why I would like to see this matter looked at again by the Procedure Committee.
In another place a few years ago, the Executive decided that they wanted to take a greater grip of Parliament and to have every Bill programmed. Of course, having sat for almost equal lengths of time on the government and opposition sides of the House, I know that perspective changes according to where you sit. It was wonderful to behold some of the Rottweiler Ministers of 1979 to 1997 suddenly becoming gamekeepers turned poacher when they were in opposition. I make no complaint about that, but I look with fond nostalgia on the memory of the great, late Eric Forth, than whom there was no more draconian Minister and than whom there was no more belligerent opposition Member.
We look at things from different points of view, but Parliament should never be the creature of the Executive. It is difficult enough for Parliament to hold the Executive to account when the Executive are drawn from Parliament. I am not suggesting that we should alter our system. I do not want us to go to an American-style separation of powers, but I recognise that if we are going to get the balance right, the Executive must not trammel, crib, cabin and confine the legislature.
This is exactly what happened in another place shortly after the coming to power of the Blair Administration, when we moved inexorably—partly because Eric Forth and his friends were using the weapon of time somewhat indiscriminately—to the situation where every Bill became timetabled. How often in my brief period here have I heard Members lament the fact that in spite of a change of Government, the timetabling procedures remain? More and more responsibility falls upon your Lordships’ House because of that.
It would be very unfortunate if we allowed ourselves to lose the flexibility that true self-regulation provides. During those 18 years in opposition in the other place, I often came out of the Division Lobby feeling depressed—we could not win, the Government’s majority was so enormous—but my colleagues and I would suddenly see a glimmer of hope and the cry would go up, “Our hope is in the Lords”. Indeed it was, and not infrequently it was realised. The Labour Governments of Mr Blair and Mr Brown suffered a number of significant defeats in this place and sometimes as a consequence they thought again.
As we have seen recently in the long saga of the Health and Social Care Bill, legislation that is—I want to be kind—not exactly perfect can be significantly improved by expertise, time and the fact that Members here have no constituency responsibilities, and no need to answer to an electorate every five years. Things can be improved in here, and we are going to have plenty of opportunity, I suspect, in the forthcoming Session of Parliament to debate that very point. Anything that detracts from self-regulation is to the detriment of this House in particular and Parliament in general.
I say to my noble friend the Leader of the House that he should please beware of that word “presumption”. Just think how much trouble has been caused in recent months by the insertion of that word “presumption” in the context of planning. I do not like documents which presume and I do not like measures which presume. I have nothing against Bills going to Grand Committee but they must go on their individual merits because the House approves of the suggestion that that is where they should go. I urge my noble friend the Leader of the House, when he speaks, to recognise that fact.
That is why I am suggesting that the committee should have the chance to look again and to answer whether we are inadvertently handing over an important aspect of self-regulation. Consider, in the light of the debates that will take place on a possible Lords reform Bill, whether we need this sort of change. We certainly do not need it now because we know from all the leaks that we are going to have a legislation-light Queen’s Speech. If that is the case, why do we need to have this presumption now?
There is another issue—the elephant in the room that is the Bill that dare not speak its name. We all know that it is likely that the Deputy Prime Minister will have his way with us and will produce in the Queen’s Speech some measure of reform affecting your Lordships’ House. I blame not the Leader of the House nor anyone else but in the somewhat febrile atmosphere that has existed in this place for some months there is a teeny suspicion that one of the reasons we are doing this today is to clear the decks for House of Lords reform. That may not be the case. I know not.
In conclusion, I say to my noble friend, than whom there is no more consummate politician in the whole of Parliament, please do not bother with this because you can have your way on individual Bills. They can go to Grand Committee with the House’s approval and blessing and there they can be scrutinised. But do not have this presumption.
Another thing we should bear in mind is not to follow the other place down another steep, slippery slope where so many things are being considered simultaneously in Westminster Hall, in the Chamber and in Committee that it is difficult for an honourable Member adequately to discharge his or her duties. I rest my case.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord has just said. If there is to be a presumption then the presumption should be that legislation should be taken here. There is only one alternative that is worse than the committee’s suggestion and that is the recommendation of the noble Baroness, which institutes a rule.
Many will agree that one of the prevailing sins of the British Parliament is that we legislate a great deal too much. A great deal of excessive complication has begotten in our society a high level of bureaucracy in all parts of society—in the private sector as well as the public. This is a serious and malignant failing of our present political culture. What would be the effect if, having cleared much of the business from this Chamber into Grand Committee, there were weeks when there was nothing to be done here? Would that not be an encouragement for the other place to send even more torrents of ill considered law to this place? I am sorry if it is offensive to some who served in the other place but the whipping system that has developed there is now so ruthless, and the guillotine system operated with such consistency and a strong hand, that they deprive the other place of giving the thought to crucial legislation that it not only should but would be well equipped to do if the Members were let off the leash.
The proposal would surely create a vacuum for yet more legislation. The average output of Parliament has been 13,000 pages of legislation a year over the past few years. This year it might exceed even that. It is more than is produced by any comparable democracy in the western world by a long way. Therefore, on that ground if no other, I urge us to reject the committee’s proposal for this presumption and to reject absolutely the recommendation of the noble Baroness, which is in line with the Leader’s Group, that we have a rule that only three types of legislation can be retained in this place without agreement.
Lord Crickhowell
My Lords, I have spent nearly 43 years in Parliament, 17 of them in the other place. When I am urged by Ministers to give more time for amendments to be debated, I confess to being just a little cynical and a little doubtful that that is what is really intended. In those 43 years, I have learnt that the principal weapon that Members of both Houses have in controlling an Executive who are all too eager to bring forward legislation is time. Time and again, we find that the amendments that get accepted come at the end of a Session, when the Government of the day run out of time and are forced to accept them. Therefore, when I see a proposal being supported by my noble friend the Leader of the House on the grounds that Members of this House need more time and greater ability to put forward more amendments and debate them endlessly, I confess that I hesitate to accept that that can be the entire motivation.
I will make three brief points about the timing of this proposition and its introduction. First, as has already been referred to, it is a little ironic suddenly to be told that we can have a week off after we have spent 25 days in this House debating one of the most controversial Bills that any of us can remember. However, I will not dwell on that for too long.
Secondly, there has been a change of timetable, bringing the debate on this Motion forward from tomorrow to today. Reference has already been made to this, and I understand that the proposal came not from my noble friend the Leader but through the usual channels. I was in the House until quite late on Thursday afternoon. By the time that statement was made, and certainly by the time it was understood, a large number of Members had left. It was only on Thursday afternoon that discussions among the handful who were still around made us realise that we would be debating this important Motion. I know that there was a download at the bottom of the message that the Whips sent out. However, I suspect that on a sunny weekend not every Member downloads those messages, or takes in what the whole argument is about. The timing was unfortunate from that point of view.
Thirdly and crucially, we all know that this proposal is coming forward for a trial period to coincide with the introduction of the most controversial and important constitutional measure of our time. I would call it the “Abolition of the House of Lords Bill”. However, whatever you call it, I cannot think of a worse time to introduce a trial of this kind without stirring up the suspicion that those who control the business of the House have that in mind. I am not making that accusation, although I do think that it was a little unwise, or a little unusual, of my noble friend the Leader of the House—for whom I have the greatest possible respect—to send a letter to Members of this House, signed jointly with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, urging them to go along with this proposal.
I asked my noble friend at a meeting that I had with him just after two o’clock this afternoon, which I shall come to, whether an identical—
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord in full flow. However, it is very interesting that all Members of this House, apart from my own Benches, received a copy of this explanatory letter from the Leader of the House.
Lord Crickhowell
I am interested in that point, because I expressly asked the Leader of the House in his room, at about 2.05 pm, whether all Members had received the same letter. He told me that actually a rather different letter had been sent to, I think, the Cross Benches. I am merely quoting my noble friend, no more.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
I offered the noble Baroness a letter. I rewrote it several times last week. Sadly, she refused to accept it.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, perhaps I may clarify the situation. Forgive me, but we had agreed that we would have an exchange of letters which we would find mutually acceptable, which could then be put in the Library of the House. That is quite a different letter from the one that other noble Lords received.
Lord Crickhowell
That is rather an interesting exchange. It has magnified what I had intended to say. However, it was also a little unusual. This is a House matter, and normally we leave the introduction of such measures for individual Members of this House. It is a little unusual—I am not saying it is unique—to have a letter of that kind. It is also slightly unusual to receive an urgent message to get in touch with the Leader’s Office. I was on the train up from Wales, and I was asked to go and meet him. As usual we had the most civilised and delicate discussion about these matters, in which we agreed to differ. I explained that I would be opposing this Motion because I think that the timing is catastrophically unfortunate. I do not think that it should be introduced as an experiment when we are going to have this major Bill before us, with the suspicion that will inevitably arise—and has arisen—that the decks are being cleared.
I also support almost everything else that my noble friend Lord Cormack said. He referred to the possibility of the kind of disciplines being introduced into this House that have been introduced in the Commons. Indeed, the letter from my noble friend the Leader says that this measure is being introduced in order to avoid,
“having to introduce Commons-style restrictions on members’ ability to table amendments”.
Is it a threat? I hope not.
I am totally opposed to doing this at this time. I am glad that the proposals that we should sit in the morning, which I spoke against long ago, have been withdrawn. I do not think that this set of proposals is any more acceptable. The wisest thing now would be for my noble friend the Leader, and those responsible, to listen to what has been said and to take the proposals away and reconsider them. If he will not agree to do that and my noble friend Lord Cormack presses his amendment to the Motion, I will vote for it, and I hope that it will be widely supported in the House.
Baroness Boothroyd
My Lords, I rise to inform the House that I have not received a letter, either from the Leader of the House, the Leader of the Opposition, or from my own Convenor. I wish to speak to the report of the Procedure Committee, and I do so with considerable concern as to the changes it proposes to our proceedings.
The proposition is that most Bills coming from the Commons should be referred to a Grand Committee, rather than be taken on the Floor of this Chamber. We have heard that the exceptions to this proposition will allow Bills on major constitutional issues or those dealing with emergency legislation to be taken on the Floor of the House. I would not expect any Government to have the audacity to deny this Chamber the ability to debate and decide on such legislation. However, the report also tells us that there should be a “presumption”—that is the committee’s chosen word; it is not my word—that all other legislation, including controversial, but not “exceptionally” controversial, Bills be also committed to a Grand Committee. As far as I am concerned, most Bills are controversial in varying degrees, and it depends on our personal knowledge of, and hopes and fears for, the legislation proposed therein. I ask the Chairman of Committees or the Leader of the House—whoever is to reply to this debate—what type of Bill will be regarded as controversial, and what will be regarded as exceptionally controversial?
The Health and Social Care Bill was hard-fought legislation—most of my colleagues would agree with that—but under the terms before us today would that Bill have been regarded as controversial and committed directly to Grand Committee, where an interested and involved public would have had great difficulty in witnessing the debates? Or would that Bill have been regarded as exceptionally controversial, and dealt with in this Chamber? Who defines and clarifies that legislation is exceptionally controversial, as opposed to that which is controversial but not exceptionally so? I need to know. Perhaps the Leader of the House will tell us when he winds up. I imagine that I shall be told that the matter may be for the usual channels to define and clarify, or that it may be a matter for the Leader of the House, but I believe that there is some value in posing this question and getting an answer that will be recorded in Hansard so that it can be referred to.
There are times when this Chamber is so crowded that Members have no place to sit and we are standing around it, or shoulder to shoulder behind the Bar of the House. This applies particularly when amendments are being moved and when we wish to hear Ministers wind up on them. To start with, the current situation here is most unsatisfactory. I should therefore like to know what arrangements have been made in the Moses Room for accommodating Members who wish to contribute or listen to debate. That is not an area that lends itself to even a small proportion of the membership of this House, and certainly not to the numbers that would wish to attend during a controversial debate. I would like to hear how we will be accommodated there and, equally importantly—this is very important to me—how members of the public who wish to witness our proceedings will be accommodated.
Last Thursday in this House, the government Chief Whip told us,
“that it is the Government’s intention only to make proposals with regard to Grand Committee that will enable the House to have more opportunity to scrutinise legislation without having the late finishes or early starts”.—[Official Report, 22/3/12; col. 1027.]
That is a fine ambition indeed. However, there are those of us who see the presumption to put government Bills into Grand Committee as an act of stealth to clear the way for a constitutional Bill bringing about the demise of this House. There are those on the red-carpeted corridors out there who think that that is so; but I could not possibly comment. No doubt the Leader of the House will do so, and I look forward to what he has to say on that point.
I very much appreciate the work that goes on in the committees of this House, particularly the Procedure Committee. I note in its report that some of its Members dissented from the recommendations. I certainly cannot support the report and will therefore, when the time comes, support reference back.
Lord Tebbit
My Lords, I would like to give some small advice, if I may, to my noble friend the Leader of the House. It is: beware of what you wish for. It is by the natural order of things that one day, unless the abolition of the House of Lords Bill goes through in the form in which we understand it will be put to this House, he may be the Leader of the Opposition. He would then very much regret some of the proposals which are now being foisted upon us.
I agree with all that my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lord Crickhowell and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, have said. A lot of this mischief has arisen not just because of the passion for legislation of all Governments these days. Many years ago, as a Back-Bencher, I introduced a Private Member’s Bill—which, surprisingly, did not get anywhere—called the Limitation of Legislation Bill, which proposed that, from the date of enactment, there should be no increase in the total number of words on the statute book. That is, before you put new words on you would have to find a few to take off as well. I think that we would have been better governed had that Bill been enacted.
However, that has all been worsened by another of the dreadful fads at the other end of this corridor, called “family-friendly hours”. Because we no longer have Committees going on down there into the small hours of the morning, we get more legislation timetabled in some fashion or another, which means that far more of it comes here having been inadequately discussed or not discussed at all. So their family-friendly hours become our distinctly unfriendly hours. They then lead to a very unfriendly proposal of the kind we are facing today.
The points have been well made. I do not think it is necessary for me to take up your Lordships’ time by repeating them. However, since the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—although it has not yet been moved—I wonder if I might do so too? There may not have been abuse—as some would call it—of the Written Question, but it has at times been pushed a bit far in its volume if not its quality. However, I must say to my noble friend the Leader of the House that I recently tabled a Written Question asking whether, when he had said that it was the Government’s policy that the number of seats in this House should be allocated to parties predominantly—in fact, he did not even say predominantly—by reference to the number of votes cast in the most recent general election, he meant that the Government were going to bring forward proposals for the introduction into this House of an appropriate number of Members of the British National Party, UKIP, the Greens and other minority parties. I received a reply from him which told me that the nomination of Members for this House was blah, blah, blah. It did not answer the Question. So I put down exactly the same Question again. There were two Questions from me. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, put down a similar Question and she, like me, got exactly the same non-answer again. I scored an unnecessary Question because I did not get an answer. I regret to say that that is happening increasingly frequently these days, so one devises the same Question again or the same Question is even accepted again literally word for word by the Table Office.
I cannot guarantee to my noble friend that I might not go along to the Table Office and put the Question down for the third time to make my point. If we want to get fewer Written Questions, we might try much harder to get replies which relate to the Question, not to what the Minister might wish that the Question had been.
Lord Laming
My Lords, I have never felt so lonely for such a long time. I voted for this report in committee and I will vote for it again today. The noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, has also indicated how incompetent I am that I cannot get a letter to all Members of the Cross-Bench group. We all—well, a large proportion of the House—supported the Leader’s Group, but when it comes to implementing its recommendations the debate demonstrates how difficult it is to get agreement across your Lordships' House. It may be that I am too innocent to be allowed out, but I have tried to address the issue before the House and not be dragged into other, wider issues. Perhaps that is a failure on my part.
Having considered the report of the Leader’s Group on these matters in recommendations 9, 20 and 22, it seemed to me that the committee had addressed the issues with great care and concern. I agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on one point: this House needs to preserve as much flexibility as possible for a self-regulating House. I regret to say that I cannot support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, because it states that all Bills should go to Grand Committee except in exceptional situations or when they are very controversial. If we think about this Session, there is not one Bill that could have been described as anything other than controversial. The amendment of the noble Baroness is altogether too restrictive for a self-regulatory House.
It is very important that this House takes forward the need to change in a way that enables us to manage the business as effectively as possible. I have formed a high regard for the usual channels and the way in which they try to deal with the business of this House. I believe that the usual channels can be relied on to reach sensible decisions which will command the confidence of the House. The recommendations are for a trial period. We have the opportunity to rehearse them in due course and we can learn from experience.
On Written Answers, the point was made about the expense that has been accrued by some noble Lords. Of course we want noble Lords to fulfil their responsibilities within the House, but that has to be balanced against the proper use of public finance, particularly at this time. I commend the recommendations relating to both Committees and Written Answers.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, if we start sending more things to Committees off the Floor of the House, we will soon discover that variant of Parkinson’s Law: talk expands to fill the time provided.
I would far prefer us to go back to what we used to do not that many years ago, which was to vote in Committee on the principle of amendments—even if they were defective, we looked at the principle. At Report, we tidied them up, which took much less time. That is why debates on Report are much more focused and we are not allowed to do the to and froing. Third Reading was purely confined to sorting out the typos, the essential little mistakes, not dealing with anything of principle. If we started to go back to that system, with voting in Committee, we would have far more abbreviated proceedings later on. All we are doing is talking it through in Committee and again at Report.
We have to use that as a brake on the deluge of legislation that is coming on us these days. If we give more time for talking, we will just get more to talk about.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I shall talk just briefly about my amendment on Written Answers during times when the House is not sitting. We have talked about Written Answers long and hard already today. Unfortunately, holding the Government to account does not stop when the House is not sitting. I am not an abuser of the system, and I am sorry that some people are, but I think that it would be a very good idea to be able to table more Questions during the recesses, and to be able to get Answers back rather more frequently than we do at the moment, which I think is once every five weeks in the Summer Recess. I am therefore very grateful to the Chairman of Committees for offering to take it back to the committee, and I hope that we can take it forward on that basis.
Lord Elton
My Lords, while we are all on this matter, which we very rarely are, may I take the opportunity to point out another reason why we are actually where we are? It is not simply the volume of legislation, or the number of pages going on the statute book. In fact, it is the number of Peers speaking, the length of time that they speak and the number of times that they repeat themselves on the same issue. There are notable offenders, and it is for members of their parties or groups to bring them to task. However, if we were all aware of the fact that once a point has been well made and accepted, there is no need to make it again, and that when 12 people want to make it, it is really only necessary to hear from two of them at the most, we would then save a very great deal of time.
Being a hereditary Peer, perhaps I might just cast noble Lords’ minds back to the time when there were over 1,100 Members of this House—far more than there are now. Far fewer of them attended than attend now, and the only people who came to speak were people who knew a great deal about their subjects and knew that they would be listened to. The result was that the speakers’ lists were about a third of the length that they are now, and that the speeches were about three times as good. If we could exercise a little self-restraint and not talk too often about things that have caught our fancy the previous week—or if, when we did so, we could keep it short and not do it too often—we would get a lot done much quicker than we do now.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, I appreciate the good advice from my noble friend Lord Elton, but there are two issues to which I wish to refer. The first is the difficulty I have with the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. There are some controversial, even exceptionally controversial, pieces of legislation which are very well dealt with in Grand Committee. The Welfare Reform Bill was a very clearly controversial—indeed, I think the noble Baroness will agree exceptionally controversial—piece of legislation, but it benefited from being dealt with in Grand Committee. There are therefore assumptions that are too wide-ranging.
Secondly, when it comes to the timing of Grand Committee, there is a case that Grand Committee might be able to go on until 10 o’clock on occasion, but it would be a mistake to make that a regular procedure because it would mean that we would be running two Chambers at the same time, and there are some difficulties with that. Therefore, I make a plea that we ensure that in what is remitted to Grand Committee, and on the timings of Grand Committee, there is a deal of flexibility perhaps on that basis of presumption, and certainly not on the basis of more rules.
Baroness Hayman
My Lords, I had not intended to contribute to today’s debate, but three things make me want to contribute briefly. One was the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for whom I have the utmost affection and respect, and with whom I share a commitment to change, reform and improvement in the way in which we deal with legislation in this House. We deal with legislation very well, but we can deal with it better, and the report of the Leader’s Group gave us some very clear ways in which we can take that forward. However, the pick-and-mix approach of taking one highly controversial issue which can have all sorts of unintended consequences, at a time when you do not have to be paranoid to think that someone is after you in terms of the next Session of Parliament, puts back the cause of those of us who are reformers. Certainly, the five years I had the honour to occupy the Woolsack taught me that to move things forward in this House you have to do a great deal of groundwork and create a great deal of consensus—and that has not happened on this occasion.
The second contribution was from the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit. Although I believe that we have to take some action on Written Questions, like the noble Lord, I cannot understand how two Members of this House, from different perspectives, put down a Question about a government policy that was delineated in the coalition agreement as government policy and are told that we cannot have an answer to it because appointments to the House of Lords have, in the past, been a matter for the Prime Minister. I think that those were the words used. I do not understand how one cannot get a comment on government policy in that area.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I have an interest in the subject raised by the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. It is not true that the Prime Minister responded to my Questions and those of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, with something irrelevant. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, said, “Blah, blah, blah”. The answer to me was that, whatever the Government committed themselves to in this matter, it would be the Prime Minister who decided—full stop. That is where we stood with Written Answers last week.
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, I would never presume to call myself a politician. I suppose that, if anything, I am an observer of politics who occasionally commentates on it. In the 16 years that I was the lobby correspondent for the Economist, from 1975 to 1991, the House of Commons did not have a guillotine as routine, and again and again I saw its effect as an exceptional measure. It was something that the Government of the day considered very carefully. I saw the good effect that it had on the process of negotiation and the scrutiny of legislation, and the extent to which it resulted in better outcomes of that legislation. However, I was shocked when Mr Tony Blair’s Government introduced the guillotine as a regular feature and I was disappointed when my right honourable friend the Prime Minister perpetuated it. I found myself asking: if we were to have an elected Senate here, how long would it be before the guillotine was introduced here and then who would scrutinise the Executive?
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, as a member of the Leader’s Group, I have noticed that not a great deal of this debate has been devoted to the consideration given by that group to the matters under discussion today. That of course is partly because times have moved on and there are matters hanging over the future of this House that may have altered some people’s perceptions. However, it ought to be recognised that the Leader’s Group gave quite close consideration to these issues. It took a great deal of evidence and concluded that Grand Committee procedure leads to better scrutiny of primary legislation. One reason given was that there was,
“greater informality of the Grand Committee and the better communications between ministers and officials, leading to better quality responses”.
Having said that, the Leader’s Group also took the view that certain matters arouse such considerable interest beyond those who might normally be anticipated to have an interest in the subject matter of the debate that they would be inappropriately held in Grand Committee. We have actually seen the limitations of the space available in an earlier debate at the end of the last calendar year when we were discussing the European Union eurozone crisis. The Room was full to bursting and there was not enough time or space for everyone who wanted to participate.
Consequently, I think that the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, has some merit in it because it recognises—and explicitly recognises by quotation—the words and the reasoning of the Leader’s Group. I also acknowledge, however, that deciding what constitutes an exceptionally controversial Bill—as was pointed out to us by the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd—is difficult to determine. I do not feel confident that presumptions can be made on that point; and I do not believe that the usual channels will necessarily agree on it. It seems that these should be matters for the decision of the House when the Bill is first debated.
Lord Elton
If one looks at the Companion, one finds that there is no proposal to change: there may be an addition to the Companion about the presumption, but there is still the need to get the approval of the House. It seems to me, therefore, that we are actually arguing about a very small difference.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
That may be so. The recommendations of the Leader’s Group referred to the Companion in this context, indicating that it was preferable to have a rule rather than a presumption. I beg to submit that the House would do well to consider that original recommendation.
The formidable speech made by my noble friend Lord Cormack will have arrested many people’s prior commitments and considerations. However, if his amendment is not carried, there is a considerable case for recognising that the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, is a better reflection of the Leader’s Group than the proposal that we should act on a presumption and agreement through the usual channels. I hope very much that that will be taken into account in reaching a decision.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, this might be a useful opportunity to say a few words, but I begin by joining the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, in paying tribute to Lord Newton of Braintree. Anybody who had seen him—as we all had—over the past six months could not but admire his tremendous courage and extraordinary pluckiness in being here in all his physicality and playing a real part in Bills. I worked with him very closely when he was Leader of the House of Commons and I was Government Chief Whip here. He was a joy to work with—a pleasant man in all respects. We as a House and as a party will miss him; he was a great Conservative and a great parliamentarian.
Turning back to this debate, during the course of this afternoon my eye has been drawn to the screens. I could not help but see that in the Moses Room, there is a debate on the Lord’s Resistance Army and I wonder if some noble Lords have not wandered into the wrong debate.
We are currently considering a report from the Procedure Committee and it is no coincidence that we are considering alongside it a report from the Liaison Committee. Both reports have the same origin; namely, the work of the Leader’s Group on Working Practices. Both address the same welcome phenomenon, which is that more Members are participating more actively in our proceedings. In short, the proposals are intended to accommodate increased demand from Members who wish to take an active part in our proceedings, and to reduce the number of late sittings that have been taking place after 10 o’clock at night. Average daily attendance has risen considerably by comparison with the last Parliament, as has the average number of votes cast per Division, the number of Questions for Written Answer tabled each day, and the number of short debates being tabled. From that point of view, my noble friend Lord Elton has hit the nail on the head.
These trends have had an impact on our scrutiny of legislation. This Session has seen more Bills take longer than eight days to consider in Committee than did so over the whole of the last Parliament. That is a quite a significant statistic. More Members are speaking for longer on more amendments. At the same time, we have sent fewer Bills to Grand Committee than was the norm across the last two Parliaments and, indeed, since 2001. In combination, these trends have put pressure on time in the Chamber, in particular on our rising times.
One response, although I hasten to add that it is not one that I am suggesting now, would be to go down the route that the House of Commons has chosen: fixed rising times in combination with taking the bulk of Committee stages off the Floor of the House along with the timetabling and selection of amendments. That is what my noble friend Lord Cormack has warned us against, and I agree with every word he said. I could not possibly support what he fears or what I have just mentioned, and I do so for the same reasons as my noble friend and other noble Lords who have spoken.
The proposals from the Procedure Committee actually take a very different approach, one that maintains and protects the freedoms of Members of this House to table amendments and have them spoken to by a Minister without selection or guillotine, a freedom which I hope we will never lose. By introducing additional flexibility in the sitting hours of the Grand Committee on Bills and creating a presumption that we should look to commit Bills arriving from the Commons to Grand Committee, save when there are good reasons not to do so, the proposals would help us make better use of our time. They would provide the necessary extra opportunities for Members to take part, and in doing so would ease the pressure on time in this Chamber, thus making it easier for the House to rise on time. If the House rejects these proposals, it would mean that we might have to become used to sitting regularly beyond our target rising time.
The Procedure Committee has also taken the view that a presumption would be useful. I support that view. The question why was framed by my noble friend Lord Cormack in his speech. He fears that we are handing something over to the Executive. That is quite a hard thing to do in a House where the Executive has no majority, but let me try and explain.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, you do not have to be a mathematician to work out that the 37 per cent of the House which makes up the coalition is not a majority.
I support the view on presumption because the experience of this Session shows that there are Bills that we could and should be sending to Grand Committee but do not, and that this detracts from the time we have available to spend on those Bills that do merit consideration on the Floor of the House and on other kinds of business. Let me give some examples. If the Academies Bill had gone to Grand Committee, perhaps we need not have sat at 11 o’clock in the morning to take the Health and Social Care Bill. If the Postal Services Bill had gone to Grand Committee, perhaps we need not have finished the proceedings on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill at two o’clock in the morning.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord the Leader of the House, but as all noble Lords will recall, the Academies Bill was the first Bill to be introduced in this House, and there was simply no other business. The Health and Social Care Bill came forward towards the end of the parliamentary Session, and therefore it is inconceivable that had the Academies Bill been taken in Grand Committee, it would have made an iota of difference to the Health and Social Care Bill.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, if it made no difference, presumably the noble Baroness would not have refused, as she did, to put it into Grand Committee in the first place.
We could make better use of this Chamber. Let me give another example. Last December, the Grand Committee had an urgent debate on the eurozone crisis attended by some 50 Members of the House. The Chamber was not available because the Protection of Freedoms Bill was in Committee of the whole House with about a dozen participants. Many noble Lords at the time raised the question whether we were using the time in the Chamber wisely. The presumption, which the Procedure Committee recommends—
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I am terribly sorry, but I have to set the record straight. The Protection of Freedoms Bill was an interesting Bill because it was the very first time that the House as a whole agreed that half of the Bill would be taken in Grand Committee and the most controversial aspects would be taken on the Floor of the House. Therefore, I think a very good agreement was brought to bear in that instance.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I have no quarrel with the decision the noble Baroness made in that instance. The noble Baroness thinks I am getting at her—I will get at her in a moment, but I am not getting at her for that. I am simply pointing out that these were decisions—we took them using the usual channels and we took them together—to do things in a certain way. I am simply suggesting that in retrospect we might have done them rather differently and in a way that might have suited more Members of the House.
The presumption that the Procedure Committee recommends will also not open the floodgates to a Commons-style system, where the bulk of Committee stages are taken off the Floor of the House for two simple reasons; first, because the House will not let it. If this Report is agreed to, no Bill will go to Grand Committee without the express permission and agreement of this House. Therefore, the House will, quite rightly, retain control of which Bills go to Grand Committee, a point that my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury raised.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right in his description of the effectiveness of Grand Committee for the Welfare Reform Bill, but that was not the nature of it being exceptionally controversial. The difficulty was that we had a number of substantially disabled colleagues who wished to take part who were unhappy, with good reason, about the physical layout of the Committee Room. What my noble friends proposed was that the segments of the Bill that affected disability issues should be taken on the Floor of the House while the rest went up into Grand Committee. That would have been a solution, had the usual channels on both sides accepted it, which would have satisfied the entire House and improved scrutiny and attendance.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I wrote to many of the participants and all those to whom I wrote without exception said how well they thought that it had gone. Allowances were made by the House authorities to make the Committee Room more acceptable to those Members in wheelchairs. The point about the presumption is that it would give us the flexibility to make that sort of judgment again in future.
If the report is agreed to, the House would remain the arbiter of which Bills and what proportion of the Bills were sent to Grand Committee. In my view, the House is the best judge of which Bill should be sent where, and that decision should be made case by case.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
I am most grateful to the noble Lord and I thank him for the good humour with which he has handled the debate, in which he has found himself without a huge amount of support. However, could he perhaps skate a little less rapidly over the point that the proposal in the Procedure Committee actually enhances the power of the Government? The two parts of the sentence in question—the presumption, and the fact that if there is no agreement between the usual channels, the matter will be taken in Grand Committee—give the Government a complete lock, apart from the nuclear option of coming to the House at the end of Second Reading and asking for a vote. That is a substantial increase in the power of the Executive, because the Government can always instruct their Chief Whip to refuse to agree to the matter being taken in the House. I would be grateful if he could address a little bit more that enhancement of the power of the Executive, which I hope was not his intention—and, if it was not, either of the two amendments that have been moved would be preferable.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I do not think that there is any intention to give the Executive more power, or that it is a by-product of what I am suggesting. What would give the Executive more power would have been to accept the original suggestion from the Goodlad committee that there should be a rule, with certain exceptions, that all Bills emanating from the House of Commons should go to Grand Committee. We very much see it as continuing on more or less a similar basis to the one we have, by gaining agreement in the usual channels. The difference is that, if a Bill were not to go to Grand Committee, there would obviously have to be a vote on the Floor of the House. With a really controversial Bill, I cannot imagine that the House would support that view if it did not wish to do so.
Lord Elton
Am I right in thinking that under the proposals, when at the end of the Second Reading, the Lord Speaker or Deputy Speaker stands up and moves that the Bill goes to Grand Committee or the Floor of the House, any noble Lord could then speak, and a Division would be held if there was no agreement? That would take the power that the noble Lord thinks is being put into the hands of the Executive right out again.
Lord Strathclyde
Yes, my Lords, my noble friend has got it entirely right. There would still be a Motion before the House and any noble Lord could put an amendment down to it or divide on it.
I see the potential extra hour and a half as an addition of welcome flexibility to the scheduling of Grand Committee and not a requirement to sit to the maximum each day. That was the point that my noble friend Lord Alderdice made. I have already made that clear to the Leader of the Opposition in a dialogue off the Floor. It would sometimes suit the participants to complete a Committee stage in a smaller number of longer sittings than to have to find time in their diaries for a larger number of days. Therefore, my noble friend Lord Alderdice has nothing to worry about.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that people would get too tired, but we are already sitting until 10 o’clock on the Floor of the House, so there is no reason why they should not be able to do so in Grand Committee—and, as I pointed out, that would not necessarily happen all the time.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, again, I speak with reference to the Welfare Reform Bill, where the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, who was the Whip, and the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, were admirable in their courtesy, openness and responsiveness to the Committee Members; it was impeccably handled.
The point is that Report is easy, because you have traversed the ground already in Committee. You have the evidence, you have had the meetings, you have had the seminars, you have had the briefings, you are making one speech perhaps to move or in support of your amendment—possibly a minor one to wind up—and that is it. It is easy. The difficult, demanding, tiring and heavily detailed work is done in Committee, particularly on a Bill such as the Welfare Reform Bill, where you are continuously interrogating the Minister in order to get the detailed information so that you can come back to it in subsequent, reiterative amendments. It is hugely demanding, and going on as late as 7.30 pm has meant that some of our older Members and more disabled Members have been severely tired. I have very great concerns about lengthening sitting hours on the grounds that Committee stage is as easy and straightforward as Report; it is not.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, all we are doing here is extending the envelope by which the Grand Committee can sit. It will not necessarily have to sit as long as that every single day. What is more, a presumption towards committing Commons Bills to Grand Committee cannot release any capacity that does not exist already. We already have the capacity to have a Grand Committee sitting on legislation four days a week, and the Companion already enables any government Bill to be committed to Grand Committee, as recommended by the first working group on this subject by Lord Rippon of Hexham as far back as 1994, and even he gave no exceptions.
Meanwhile, the proposed extension in the sitting hours of Grand Committees would affect how the time spent on each Committee stage is divided up across sittings and among Bills. It would not reduce the number of hours spent on each Committee stage and so make room for more legislation.
Last of all, I turn to what my noble friend Lord Cormack called the elephant in the room over the last three days. I have been struck by—indeed, I have been astonished at—the number of Members who have spoken to me in the corridor or have sent me a text message to say that they think that this process is all part of a sneaky government ploy to push through a Lords reform Bill without anybody noticing, and to minimise collateral damage to the rest of the programme —to do it by stealth, said the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd. Well, I have been waiting a long time to find a good wheeze to get such a Bill through the House of Lords without anybody noticing. I assure noble Lords, this is not it. This is not a great ploy or a great scheme; if it were, obviously we have been horribly found out.
If the House agrees this report, next Session the House will decide, case by case, which Bills are considered in Committee here on the Floor and in the Moses Room. The House itself will decide at what pace it progresses and which amendments are made to which Bills. I have every confidence that, if a Lords reform Bill makes it into the Queen’s Speech, the House will take every decision it wishes next Session.
Lord Strathclyde
Let me just finish my point. This report will have no impact on the passage of such a Bill if it came forward. I would give way to my noble friend, but I have obviously pre-empted her question. I hope I gave her the confirmation that she required.
The proposals in this report were born out of the working practices group and the Procedure Committee. They are designed to resolve the problem of there simply not being enough time to accommodate all of those who wish to speak to their amendments to Bills. Either more goes to Grand Committee or we sit beyond 10 pm.
I hope that I have said enough to explain the proposals from my perspective. They build on the work of the working practices group. They seek to accommodate a more active membership by making better use of the Grand Committee and better use of this Chamber. I hope that the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, will not find favour with the House. I understand why she has put it down, but equally I do not think that it will be effective or workable. I urge my noble friend Lord Cormack not to move his amendment for the simple reason that the Procedure Committee has already given the proposals careful and prolonged consideration. The committee has made the recommendations that are before the House today, and it is time for the House to make a decision on them. I commend the report to the House.
The Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I shall be extremely brief because, fortunately, none of the points made in the debate on the report require an answer from me. As I said in the first place, the committee was not unanimous on this subject and therefore my position is completely neutral. On the question of Questions for Written Answer, there was not a voice against the proposal in the Procedure Committee’s report.
I must apologise to the House, and particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. I was misinformed that he was going to move the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves: he is not going to do so. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for agreeing that we could take his matter back to the committee. I now leave it to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, to decide what to do with her amendment, and after that we shall move on to those of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and others.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I have listened carefully to this excellent short debate. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, made a cogent case and has been strongly supported by noble Lords from all sides of the House. He is right that we must not put ourselves in danger of becoming a regulated House with timetabling. I also note that the noble Lord the Leader said that he hoped we would never lose our freedom not to be timetabled, and I am sure that all noble Lords will wish to keep him to that hope.
Parliament must be able to hold the Executive to account, and time must always be allowed for proper scrutiny of legislation. To do otherwise is to shift the balance of power in favour of the Executive. I note that the noble Lord said that, before a Bill is committed to Grand Committee, there might well be a vote in this Chamber to decide whether it should be so committed or debated here on the Floor of the House. I simply point out that the noble Lord and his Benches have a political majority in this House, and I imagine that on such an occasion there would be a whipped vote. I believe therefore that this would hand power to the Executive.
Presumption is clearly dangerous, as we have all agreed in the debate. I understand the concern expressed around the Chamber about the prescription of the Goodlad committee’s proposals—and, indeed, of my own amendment—and the difficulty of defining “controversial”. Defining “constitutional” is a lot more straightforward.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, made an important contribution—I wish her a happy birthday—and I concur with her comments and those of the noble Lord the Leader about our joint admiration for the bravery and principles of Lord Newton of Braintree, who I believe we are all proud to call our noble friend.
I also agree with the noble Baroness that to deal in isolation with the issue of the hours that the Grand Committee should sit and the Bills that should be referred to it sets back both the process and the progress of reform. On the basis that I believe the House will vote in favour of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I am happy to withdraw my own amendment. I hope that his amendment will be passed and that when the matter is referred back to the Procedure Committee—of which I am proud to be a member—it will listen to representations from around the House, so that when a proposal is brought forward in future it truly will be reflective of the views of the House as a whole. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Cormack
As an amendment to the Motion in the name of the Chairman of Committees, at the end to insert “, with the exception of paragraphs 10 and 11 (Grand Committees), which shall be referred back to the committee for further consideration”.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I do not wish to take up any more of the House’s time, save to say that I suspect I know which Lobby my late noble friend Lord Newton would be in. He is so much missed, as has been said. Nothing that we do this afternoon takes away any power or influence from the Leader of the House. Every Government are entitled to get their business but not in the process, in any way, directly or indirectly, to trammel the unfettered, self-regulating House of Lords, of which we are all so proud. I hope that noble Lords in all parts of the House will feel able to send a message to the committee, asking it to reflect on this debate and look at this issue again. In the mean time, we take nothing from the Leader but are careful to keep what we have. I beg to test the opinion of the House.
Liaison Committee: Third Report
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chairman of Committees
That the 3rd Report from the Select Committee (HL Paper 279) be agreed to.
Relevant document: 3rd Report from the House Committee.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara)
My Lords, the Liaison Committee’s terms of reference require it to advise the House on the resources required for Select Committee work, to review the Select Committee work of the House and to consider requests for ad hoc committees. Its terms of reference also include a requirement to consider the availability of noble Lords to serve on committees, which I think we would all agree is not an issue at present. Indeed, one of the objectives of our recent deliberations has been to find new opportunities for a wider group of Members to participate in committee work.
The report of the Leader’s Group on Working Practices has given us a further opportunity to re-examine the committee work of the House. The recommendations in our present report are intended to refresh and rebalance the range of subjects that are scrutinised and, in so doing, to engage a wider range of Members in the work of the House.
Select Committee activity is—rightly—highly regarded both within the House of Lords and outside, and contributes greatly to the reputation of the House as a second Chamber. In our first report of this Session, we concluded that there were a number of general principles that we should apply in considering proposals for committee activity. We concluded that new committees should be appointed for a limited time only and that there was a case for ad hoc committees with narrower and more topical remits conducting shorter inquiries. The report was agreed by the House in June 2010 and we sought to apply those principles in our recent review.
Regular turnover of committee members gives a wider range of Members the opportunity to serve. Short, sharp inquiries should also make it easier for Members with significant commitments outside the House to participate. Therefore, we concluded and recommended to the House that new investigative Select Committees should be appointed for a fixed term of up to one Session to conduct a specific inquiry. It would remain open to committees appointed on this basis to bid for reappointment at the end of their term.
Fixed terms would allow the Liaison Committee to play a more active role in reviewing and adapting Select Committee activity in the future. The resources to support new Select Committee activity would be released at the end of each session, allowing the committee more room to accommodate bids for new Select Committees. I remind Members that they may submit proposals for new ad hoc committees at any time, and I encourage them to do so.
The report recommends the appointment of two new ad hoc committees. One, on small and medium-sized enterprises exporting goods and services, is based on a proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Popat, and others. The other, on public services, stems in part from the proposal that was initially canvassed in the report of the Leader’s Group and subsequently elaborated in a note by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and others. The potential range for a committee on public services is wide, and the Liaison Committee recommends the subject of public service provision in the light of demographic change. We also consider that, once appointed, the committee should consider carefully its call for evidence in order to focus its work in a practical way.
In recent Sessions the House typically appointed one ad hoc committee. Our recommendation that the House should appoint two ad hoc committees next Session means that we are recommending an additional unit of committee activity. We have sought and obtained the approval of the House Committee for the additional expenditure necessary, which is estimated at around £225,000. We also reviewed the existing committee structure, and benefited from oral as well as written submissions from the chairmen of four of the major investigative Select Committees of the House: the European Union Committee, the Science and Technology Committee, the Economic Affairs Committee, and the Communications Committee.
In respect of the European Union Committee, which currently appoints seven sub-committees to complement the work of the main committee, we concluded that it should remain the focus of House of Lords committee scrutiny. We consider, however, that it would now be appropriate to divert some of the resources allocated to it to support new committee activity in other areas. We therefore recommend that from the start of the next Session the number of EU sub-committees should be reduced from seven to six, and that the European Union Committee should reapportion responsibilities between its remaining sub-committees as it sees fit.
In respect of the Science and Technology Committee, we concluded that from the start of the next Session it should be allocated the resources of a single Select Committee. We recommend that it should, however, retain the power to appoint sub-committees, and the power to co-opt additional members for particular inquiries, but that those powers should not be exercised in such a way as to increase the workload of the committee beyond that of a single committee unit.
The chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, tabled an amendment to leave out the paragraph of the report that recommends a reduction in the committee’s resources. I remind the House, however, that in the Liaison Committee’s first report of this Session, we said that,
“in the event of further demands for committee work requiring redeployment of committee resources we would in the first instance look towards retrenchment of the Science and Technology Committee”.
We received representations from the chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee that that committee should be able to appoint its Finance Bill Sub-Committee at an earlier point in the year than at present, following the new approach to tax policy-making adopted by the Government. The chairman, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, assured us that both the committee and the sub-committee would continue to respect Commons financial privilege, and that no additional resource would be required. No change in the terms of reference will be needed to enable this to happen, and we recommend that it should.
Finally, we reviewed the work of the Communications Committee, which is not a sessional committee. We recommend that it should be reappointed on the same basis as at present at the start of next Session. We will review the question of its further reappointment towards the end of that Session.
Our proposed reduction in sub-committee activity by two units—one European Union sub-committee and one Science and Technology sub-committee—would free up resources for new committee activity. Consistent with the strong support of the Leader’s Group for pre-legislative scrutiny, we have reconfirmed our support for pre-legislative scrutiny and believe that some of the resources that would be released by the reduction in sub-committee activity should be reallocated to supporting an additional pre-legislative scrutiny committee.
We also recommend an important new area of Select Committee activity: post-legislative scrutiny. The Leader’s Group recommends a single post-legislative scrutiny committee to manage the process of reviewing up to four selected Acts of Parliament each year. The Leader of the House proposed instead—and we agreed—that it would make better use of the expertise of Members to establish an ad hoc committee on a particular Act or Acts.
In our report we recommended the appointment of an ad hoc post-legislative scrutiny committee to examine the Children and Adoption Act 2006 and the Adoption and Children Act 2002, and to report in a timely manner so as to allow for evaluation of the committee’s work before the end of the 2012-13 Session. If time allows, the resources allocated to the first post-legislative scrutiny committee could then be made available for a post-legislative scrutiny committee on another topic to be established within the 2012-13 Session.
Finally, we considered two further procedural changes to enable a wider group of Members to participate in committee work. The first, to which I have already alluded, was that the maximum size of sub-committees to the European Union Committee should be increased from 12 to 14 Members. The effect of this would be to provide 84 places for Members on the six remaining sub-committees. Secondly, we invited the Procedure Committee to consider the reduction from four to three years of the rotation rule relating to length of service on investigative sessional committees, in order more frequently to refresh the membership of these committees.
I pay tribute to the valuable work done by all House of Lords committees. The Liaison Committee’s recommendations are intended to revitalise existing committee activity and provide an overall expansion of this activity, thereby enabling a greater number of Members to participate in a wider range of inquiries. I beg to move.
Amendment to the Motion
Lord Krebs
As an amendment to the above Motion, at the end to insert “, with the exception of paragraphs 18 and 47 (the Science and Technology Committee)”.
Lord Krebs
My Lords, I declare my interests as the chairman of the Science and Technology Committee and as a career scientist. As the chairman of the Liaison Committee said, my amendment refers to paragraphs 18 and 47 of the committee’s report, which include the proposal to reduce the resources of the Science and Technology Committee to those of a single committee from the present level of a Select Committee and a sub-committee. Although the report is not specific, my reading is that it will, in effect, halve the number of inquiries that the committee is able to carry out. This does not seem to square with the Leader of the House’s letter to Cross-Benchers in which he refers to a small reduction in resource to the Science and Technology Select Committee.
My amendment is important because it gets to the heart of what the House does best—using its great depth and breadth of expertise to investigate and to hold the Government to account. This House is unique in the world in its depth of scientific expertise. The Goodlad report of April 2011, of which we heard earlier, acknowledged,
“the clear public interest in making best use of the expertise of the House’s Members”.
Science in its broadest sense—including social science, medicine, engineering and technology—permeates almost every aspect of government policy. This is notably true of the all-important agenda of rebalancing the economy by developing new industries based on advanced knowledge and technology.
The Science and Technology Committee not only has great depth of expertise but great breadth in its coverage. I will list just a few examples of areas that we have covered in recent years. They include policies related to education, innovation and economic growth, energy supply, treatment of infectious diseases, ageing—a topic of particular interest to many of us—internet security, preservation of our heritage, and disposal of waste. The reports of the Select Committee also have significant impact. To name just one recent example, our report on the future of nuclear energy resulted in a substantial change in the Government’s approach. If the lights stay on in 15 years’ time, we should thank the Science and Technology Committee for its work.
Our reports not only have the stamp of authority within government but are highly respected and admired in the wider world. I will quote Mark Henderson of the Times, who wrote of our report on genomic medicine, published two or three years ago, that it was,
“a quite remarkable summary of the state of the science and the steps the Government must take”.
He went on to say:
“It is hard to imagine even a body like the US Senate producing a report of quite this quality and authority ... There’s a reason why this report is so good: it was compiled by a committee of people with genuine experience and understanding of science”.
To avoid misunderstanding, I should add that the committee is not just a club for scientists. It has an eclectic mix of Members, which enriches its deliberations and sharpens its recommendations.
The Science and Technology Committee has a tradition of following up its reports, thus ensuring that its scrutiny is thorough and insistent. For example, our recent report on public procurement and innovation was very critical of the Government’s approach to driving innovation in UK industry with its £230 billion annual procurement budget. The Government largely accepted our recommendations and we said that we would return to this topic soon to inquire whether the recommendations had been carried through.
The ad hoc committees referred to by the noble Lord the chairman of the Liaison Committee will not have this capacity to follow through their inquiries and check that the Government have indeed acted on their recommendations. The Liaison Committee’s proposal to reduce the resources of the Science and Technology Committee will do great reputational damage to this House. The presidents of four national academies—the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Academy —wrote a joint letter to the Prime Minister expressing their concern about the Liaison Committee’s proposal.
I appreciate, of course, that the Liaison Committee has a difficult job. It wishes to create new ad hoc committees to inquire into new areas, and to enable a wider range of noble Lords to participate in committee work. It is trying to do this at a time of scarce resources. However, in allocating these resources it is essential to be very thorough in assessing value for money. Indeed, the report of the Liaison Committee refers to value for money in paragraph 8. I looked very carefully through the report to understand how this assessment of value for money was made but I was unsuccessful in finding any relevant analysis. The Science and Technology Committee, at its present level of support, represents excellent value for money. It uses the unique expertise of the House, it covers a very wide range of policy areas, and its reports have authority, impact and respect within government and more widely. It conducts follow-up inquiries to ensure that its recommendations have been acted on.
I am not, however, simply defending the status quo. I made specific and constructive suggestions to the Liaison Committee to enable it to achieve its objective without damaging the work of the Science and Technology Committee. These suggestions, which included increasing our co-option of additional Members to embrace a wider variety of expertise from the House, and shortening the term of service of members of the committee, were not taken up in the report. I invite the noble Lord the Chairman, when he responds, to explain to the House how his committee carried out its assessment of value for money, and why it concluded that better value for money would be had from reducing the activity of a demonstrably successful, immensely valuable, high-reputation committee and creating new committees. I believe that any such analysis would support my amendment.
Before I close—and I wish to be brief—I suggest to the noble Lord the chairman of the Liaison Committee that he takes this proposal back to the committee for further consideration. If he agreed to do so, that would be the basis for my withdrawing the amendment. Meanwhile, I beg to move.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, I endorse everything that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has said. I used to be a member of the committee and I have been co-opted to a number of recent inquiries, including the one to which he referred about the UK’s capacity for undertaking nuclear research. I want to draw the attention of the House to one particular point made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs: that is the wide influence that the Science and Technology Committee has, and the respect within which it is held, not only in this country but across the world.
Some years ago, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, came to see me to ask whether I would be willing to chair an inquiry into a subject on which I had been rather jumping about as a member of the Select Committee, which I called in those days science and the public. He offered me that opportunity and of course I accepted. It became known as the science and society inquiry. Neither the noble Lord, Lord Winston, nor I had any idea at that stage how far that report would penetrate to reach not just thousands but millions of people across the world.
I will not go into the detail but we made the recommendation that the public understanding of science was a rather inadequate way to approach the relationship and that there should be wide engagement by scientists with the public, with ears as well as voices being important. I recently had an indication of how far the impact of that report had gone. The British Council organised a two-day seminar in this country, in London, to reflect the 10-year anniversary of the Science and Society report. Representatives of no fewer than 55 countries across the world attended. I was astonished. That report had become, if not the Bible, certainly the guidance for a large number of countries across the world on how relations between science and the public, science and society, should be developed.
To pick up one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, the committee has always included people like me who are not scientists. I deferred always to my scientist colleagues on any issue of scientific understanding; that was their specialty. However, a number of people have said to me: “You know, that Science and Society report could not have been written by a scientist”. Of course, I had had a certain amount of experience in government and elsewhere of dealing with scientists and of trying to ensure that they were explaining themselves properly to the public. Of all the reports which the Science and Technology Committee has produced, that has turned out to be one of the most influential. It was produced by Sub-Committee B, as it was called, not the main committee.
With great respect, the description by my noble friend the Leader of the House—I have the letter, too—of a small reduction in resources simply does not begin to reflect what would be the impact of the Liaison Committee’s proposals. If a committee is to undertake a serious inquiry, a minimum number of people have to be allocated to support that committee. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, it appears to be the intention that the committee should be reduced to one inquiry at any one time. That is a huge reduction in the work of one of the most highly regarded committees in this House and is simply not acceptable. I ask the committee to think again.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, will no doubt decide how he will handle the amendment in the light of what the Chairman of Committees says. I would find it very difficult not to support him. The committee is in danger of doing serious damage to one of the most valued and valuable parts of this House of Lords. I very much hope that it will reconsider the issue.
Lord Filkin
My Lords, I rise, as a member of the Goodlad committee, to give my warm support to the recommendations of the Liaison Committee and to at least put on the record some of the argumentation as to why the other issues need to be considered and supported by the House.
In this report from the Liaison Committee we consider some of the significant areas for improvement to the working practices of this House which, in many previous debates, have been strongly argued for by many Members from all parts of the House. I can be brief because they come to relatively few fundamental points.
First, most Members of the House believe that if we spent more time on pre-legislative scrutiny of more Bills, we would have better legislation. This recommendation both makes that possible and starts an increase in the resources going to pre-legislative scrutiny, which is to be commended.
Secondly, many of us have argued for years that we should carry out post-legislative scrutiny. We should look, in a sober, thoughtful and informed way, at the effects of the legislation that we pass. The Commons is doing some but we have done nothing. We have not yet brought our considerable expertise and knowledge of many of the aspects on which we legislate to looking at whether the legislation achieves its objectives—and if not, why not—so that we can better inform both that policy area and, more significantly, our own processes of scrutiny of legislation.
Thirdly, the Liaison Committee makes a recommendation for a process to bring in additional ad hoc committees. The Leader of the House will know that I would not have brought it in in exactly that way but, nevertheless, it is to be welcomed in terms of what it would allow the House to do. It would allow the House to identify a topic of significant domestic policy interest which is potentially cross-cutting, and so in no way duplicate the work of the Commons; and it would have a short remit of a year in which to bring forward an influential and reflective report. There are two good examples there and I shall spend 30 seconds speaking on one of them. Most of us know that the significant demographic changes in our society will have a fundamental effect on public services—the demand for them, their cost, and the impact of that—and yet no-one in either House has as yet looked at that issue. It cries out for a short, sharp, well-informed and expert committee of this House, drawing on experts from outside. It is a topic to which the House would bring great value.
One of the more contentious elements of the Goodlad report was the recommendation that this House should be better at reviewing its committees as they exist. In the past the House has sometimes tried to do this and, for obvious reasons, it is painful. There is great resistance to making any change to the existing architecture of committees. Why so? It is because people develop passion, commitment, and expertise. Everything that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, and everything that the noble Lord, Lord Roper, so eloquently said in his argumentation of the value that the EU Committee has brought to this House, is true. However, unfortunately that is not the point. The point is that unless the House can continue to increase its resources to allow new topics to be studied, there will always be a starvation of the issues that are not being debated because the existing agenda dominates the resources, and existing interests in the House are eloquent in its defence. I respect their doing so—I would do the same myself—but that squeezes out anything new to the disadvantage of the House.
If, the House considers that it can have only one net addition, the Liaison Committee would then have the invidious task of deciding that we did not do more pre-legislative scrutiny, that we did not start post-legislative scrutiny, and that we did not have a process whereby we selected a couple of topics of cross-cutting domestic policy to look at each year. That would be regrettable. I regret that the Science and Technology Committee and the EU Committee are to be reduced, but that is necessary in circumstances where we do not have limitless resources. They can both make their case in a year’s time as to why they should be increased.
However, the thrust of the report essentially is that we would be a better House if we accept these recommendations. It would involve substantially more of the expertise in the House which currently has no voice in our affairs because some noble Lords do not have a seat on a committee of the House and are longing to have that opportunity. For those reasons, I strongly support the Liaison Committee’s recommendations.
Lord Broers
My Lords, I speak as a past chairman and present member of the Select Committee for Science and Technology. I cannot accept the argument of the noble Lord. The Science and Technology Select Committee provides fundamental information across the board in our country, particularly as an economic entity, that is relevant to all legislation. It is therefore incredibly important.
The most effective way to rebuild our economy is to restore our industrial leadership in the manufacturing of innovative products. This will only happen if we regain competitiveness in research and development. This is the business of the Science and Technology Select Committee. We inquire into whether our educational system is producing the graduates needed by industry for its R&D activities, whether the Government are using their procurement effectively to stimulate innovation, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has said, and we inquire into the state of specific industries such as nuclear power.
At present, the lack of R&D spend is the Achilles’ heel of our economy. To reach the level of spending in Germany we would have to spend £10 billion more than we are spending at the moment, and to rival the USA we would have to spend £13 billion more. The Government are doing well in some of their initiatives, such as the catapults, but this is really only seed money. We need to keep our eye upon our academic and industrial performance in both the private and public sectors, and this is what the Select Committee does.
The committee needs two sub-committees in order to cover the two broad fields of science and technology: the engineering and physical, and the biological and medical. For example, the committee needs different talents to inquire into genomic medicine and renewable energies, or to inquire into pandemic flu and nuclear power. Innovative products, and therefore gains in our health, transport, energy, communications and other systems, will also help us with our massive deficit. These potential gains are also the business of the Science and Technology Select Committee. This is not the time to cut in half the resources available to that committee.
Lord Roper
My Lords, I speak as the chairman of the European Union Committee, and I regret that I will be critical of the report presented by the Lord Chairman of Committees. I have not tabled an amendment, but in my view, and that of many of my colleagues on the committee and in the sub-committees, the report of the Liaison Committee is the unsatisfactory outcome of an unsatisfactory process as far as the European Union Committee is concerned.
First, the process. Earlier this year I learnt that the Liaison Committee was, entirely appropriately, reviewing the House’s committee structure in the light of the Goodlad report. I wrote to ask to appear before the committee, and that request was granted. However, I was surprised to be told, in the letter inviting me to appear, that before the Liaison Committee had heard the arguments from my committee for its continuance of the committee in its present structure, the Liaison Committee was already minded to cut the number of European Union sub-committees by two or by one. I have sent to Members the detailed argument that I then put forward, which also appears in appendix 2 to the report that we are considering.
The last time the Liaison Committee conducted a general review of Lords committee activity was in 2010. On that occasion, unlike this time, it asked for information from the various committees before it made any decision. In 2010, the Liaison Committee concluded that the European Union Committee was performing a relevant and useful function, and it recommended no change. In fact, it recommended that certain other committees should be considered first if reductions needed to be made. I am unclear about what has changed in the mean time, except that on this occasion the Liaison Committee seemed to have made up its mind, or to have gone a long way towards doing so, before it took any evidence.
So far as concerns the outcome, in the end the Liaison Committee recommended the reduction of only one European Union sub-committee, which is why I did not table an amendment to today’s Motion. Some of my colleagues on the committee—and noble Lords may well hear from them—may feel that I am being excessively reasonable, but I am conscious of the wider financial context in which these decisions had to be made. However, even a cut of one sub-committee will have an impact on our work. The European Union will continue to propose new laws that will affect UK citizens and companies, and consultation documents and White Papers will continue to come forward.
We have to deal with something like 1,000 documents a year from the European Union. This reduction will simply reduce the ability of the House of Lords to scrutinise the proposals effectively. In particular, it will reduce its ability to conduct an in-depth examination of key proposals. These inquiries are what give the committee, and therefore the House, such a strong reputation with civil society groups in this country, with European Union institutions and with other parliaments across the European Union. The House will also be reducing its ability to hold the Government to account.
The House sees the reports that we publish; it does not see the 500 letters a year that we send to Ministers raising problems that arise from the documents that we consider. However, that is the method by which we ensure that we have an explanation from the Government and a justification of their position. Ministers have told me that they consider that what we do is the most effective scrutiny of any part of their department’s work. The House risks weakening our work in an area where our reputation is currently, and justifiably, exceptionally strong. That is why I regret the Liaison Committee’s decision, and I fear that in due course the House, too, will come to regret it.
I conclude with a note about the suggestion to increase the maximum membership of sub-committees from 12 to 14. In the full Select Committee’s view, sub-committees of 14 risk being too large. An excessive number of members could make it difficult to work effectively as a team. Therefore, we would rather co-opt an additional two members to a sub-committee for a particular inquiry, thereby involving a wider group of Members of the House to take part in different aspects of our work. We feel that otherwise the current size of 12 members per sub-committee is probably right.
Lord Jopling
We have just heard from the Cross Benches; I think it is our turn. I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Roper, has just said. I was first elected at the other end of this building almost 48 years ago. One strand that has run through the entire time in which I have served in both Houses has been my enthusiasm for the Select Committee system, which all those years ago I believed, very strongly, was the way in which Parliament could better exert its influence over the Executive. I was a member of two of Dick Crossman’s Select Committees—the first ones to be set up—back in the 1960s. In the early 1980s, following the 1979 election, I, with my late lamented friend Norman St John-Stevas, later Lord St John of Fawsley, who sadly is no longer with us, set up the departmental committees. I conducted all the negotiations over them with the Opposition at the time. Since coming to your Lordships’ House, I have been a member of, I think, three European Union committees. I have been chairman of two of them and I continue to serve on Sub-Committee C.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on, if nothing else, the basis that to give way once might be thought a virtue but to give way seven times seems more like a form of masochism peculiar to the practices of this place. Therefore, I shall support the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for a variety of reasons but I shall be brief.
For a number of years, the Lords Science and Technology Committee fulfilled a role in the absence of a similar committee in the other place. The other place now has such a committee, but a House that can stand down a committee of that type in a contemporary world is quite capable of standing it down again. A far more important point here is that in the other place I know of only one Member who has a recent and strong scientific background. He is able and good, and he will make a significant mark in that place. However, in this place—and without sparing the blushes of my colleagues—we have people such as the noble Lords, Lord Oxburgh, Lord Broers, Lord Krebs and Lord May, and that is before we stretch to the marvellous range of medics who have a scientific background and can speak with relevance to what goes on in those committees. I think that the one Member of the other place whom I mentioned would not wish to be weighed in the balances against that collection of talent.
The role of these specialists, and the place which this committee gives them, is important in two fundamental ways. The first is that cross-examination of witnesses requires experts. We have seen committee reports—especially, lately, from the other place—where there has been an absence of experts to make the cross-examination as sharp as it should be. I can assure you that it is very sharp on this particular committee. The second role that these specialists play is to identify where, one way or another, the evidence is to be found. These internationally-rated scientists—perhaps unlike those of us who depend on them—have that significant skill. Although I should declare an interest as a past chairman of this committee, I am not a practising scientist. These experts have given their time and energy to this House, and their main mode of contribution is often through this Select Committee.
I turn to the issue of impact. Today there has been a government announcement of £66 million for research on dementia. Our report on science and ageing set that hare running when we pointed out the sums that were spent in this area as compared with other illnesses. The impact on society of weakness in this area is huge. I am therefore glad that the Government are following it through. We also managed to persuade the Wellcome Trust and the MRC to put up £30 million about four years ago.
Lastly, after the recent follow-up report that the committee issued on flu pandemics, I had a letter from several consultants thanking us for paying such attention to the subject and making their task more manageable. I think that we would do a great disservice to this House, and to the importance of science and technology, if we did not accept this amendment.
Lord Winston
My Lords, I will be brief. I would like to take up a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, in a previous debate. It seems absolutely ridiculous to change the nature of these expert Select Committees at this time, when the whole question of the reform of the House of Lords will start to be discussed in the next few months. I beg the House to consider that issue, because the Science and Technology Committee is a highly respected committee. I could cite a list of sub-committees that have all made an international impact, from our treatment of antibiotic resistance, to the change in aircraft passenger environment, to the use of science in education in schools—where, for example, extensive, major changes have been made as a result of the House of Lords report. I am really surprised at the noble Lord, Lord Filkin. After all, he spent some time in the Home Office, which has to deal with a range of scientific issues, from animal research, to security and surveillance, to electronic monitoring, to weapons. We have to recognise—
Lord Winston
Perhaps I may finish my sentence. We have to recognise that science now pervades every aspect of what we do and is vitally important to this country as never before.
Lord Filkin
I would not wish to confuse my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Winston. I totally respect the importance of science and technology: it could not be more important. The thrust of the Liaison Committee’s report, which I was supporting, was the need for balance—by which I mean, if we cannot do everything, we need to have some space to harness the expertise of this House to those subjects that are almost completely ignored. This process allows us to do so.
Lord May of Oxford
My Lords, in the light of what the noble Lord has just said, I have every sympathy with the problem that the Liaison Committee is seeking to address. The past few years have, after all, seen an extraordinary increase in the number of people joining us in this House, adding roughly one-third to the number of just a few years ago. It is of course proper to wish to handle things in such a way that more people can be engaged, and that is very difficult at a time when the resources cannot expand to accommodate it. I am not going to go over again the ground that has been covered, and there will be yet further examples of how extraordinary the Science and Technology Committee has been—but it is not alone in that. However, one of the distinctive and hugely useful features of the House of Lords is the expertise and first-hand knowledge that it possesses. The best of briefing is no substitute for that. We have expertise in law, engineering, science, medicine, economics, social science, the arts, business and much else, and we want to embrace it all.
I have sat on both ends of the Select Committee table—I was also interrogated by them in my five-year stint as Chief Scientific Adviser to the John Major and Tony Blair Governments. The committees were very different entities—they were not just the one Science and Technology Committee. The House of Commons is often excellent, but it rarely matches the expert, knowledgeable, thoughtful approach that is brought forward in this House. In my experience of the other place, particularly with regard to issues of genetic modification, opinion is too often substituted for knowledge and beliefs for thoughtful analysis.
It is against that background that I offer what I hope might be a solution—or at least the elements of a solution—to the conundrum before us, of whether we embrace more people in ways that play to their strength. Let us not forget that, until relatively recently, the Science and Technology Committee typically ran two sub-committees, one of which it has lost. The committee has always co-opted other people. I have looked at the past six years and, typically, a little more than one in five of those serving on the Science and Technology Committee or its sub-committees were co-opted from outside. It therefore has a way of going about enlarging its ambit. The result of losing one of those sub-committees is the loss of some of those opportunities. If we lose the second one, we will have lost—apart from the ability to do the work—roughly half of a sub-committee’s worth of co-opted people.
I am coming to my suggestion. Having come off the Science and Technology Committee, my interests in the last three or four years have shifted; I have become involved with the Bank of England and others in systemic risk in financial systems. It is quite substantial. I am not aware of anybody in the House who has this precise kind of competence, which has not conventionally been something of major focus in the Bank. Therefore, I asked the Economic Affairs Committees whether I could be a co-opted member if and when there were things of this kind. I was told that those committees did not co-opt people. In so far as I have discovered—and I may be wrong—the idea of co-opting a fifth to a quarter of the members, which is habitual for the Science and Technology Committee, is not habitual to the other Select Committees. If this is true—if the others are more like Economic Affairs than Science and Technology—simply by altering that, we could have a much wider embrace of people who were not at that time on committees. The resources mean that we are not going to have more bums on Select Committee seats; it is just a question of how we can embrace a much wider group of people. That is an important approach.
The other proposal in this Liaison Committee report is to use four ad hoc committees. Personally, I think the idea of one or two ad hoc committees is extremely good, for the reasons that we have already heard. I also understand that we have resources for one more fully funded Select Committee. I suggest that we do not go for four ad hoc committees, rather one or two at a time, and keep what is one of the demonstrable jewels in this place, which is the full strength of its input to science and technology in the broadest sense, and with an emphasis on the technology as well as the science.
Lord Bowness
My Lords, I wish to endorse the words of the noble Lord, Lord Roper, the chairman of the European Union Select Committee, and to agree with my noble friend Lord Jopling. I confirm that the views they have expressed are those widely held by the members of the main committee and its sub-committees. Having said that, I do not intend to indulge in special pleading for any particular part of the European Union Select Committee, and I am sure that if the recommendation is approved today, it will find a way so far as is possible to continue its work at the level and standards that have been achieved under its successive chairmen.
However, I have two observations to make. First, we are being asked to reduce the number of sub-committees against the background of the express desire of the Minister for Europe that parliamentary scrutiny of European legislation should be improved. That is a matter for Parliament and not for Government, but it is an objective which presumably we all share, whatever our views of the European Union. Are noble Lords in the House today quite certain that that exhortation to do more can be achieved with fewer resources, and has there been—as we frequently ask the European Commission—an appropriate impact assessment? Secondly, it was the Government that chose to increase the number of Members of your Lordships’ House, and quite reasonably the House now has to find ways of ensuring that as many of our number as possible are able to play a part in the committee work of the House.
As I read it, the Leader’s Group recommended an expansion of committee work with additional resources and not at the expense of existing committees. I would submit that it is not really possible to expand the House by the numbers it has and, despite the House Committee’s desire to hold or reduce costs over the current planning period, to improve scrutiny and increase the amount of committee work. The Leader’s Group recommended additional expenditure of just over 1 per cent of existing expenditure. Moreover, if I read the report correctly, the cost of the two extra committees would be some £450,000, which, if the Sunday Times is correct—I cannot be sure of that, of course—is what we will save as a result of not sitting an extra week at Easter.
I wish that we could have had a comprehensive debate about the working practices report, especially those parts concerned with resources, rather than the piecemeal approach of a recommendation here and a recommendation there. I hope that it is not too late for that to happen.
Viscount Hanworth
My Lords, the Liaison Committee has proposed to curtail the work of the Science and Technology Committee by effectively halving the time and resources that are devoted to it. I should like to declare in the strongest possible manner that to do so would be a misguided action. I would go so far as to say that in the perception of many people, it would be an act of vandalism. It appears from the report of the Liaison Committee that it sees the role of Select Committees primarily as that of contributing to the House’s scrutiny of the Government’s legislative and executive activities. It proposes to curtail the work of the Science and Technology Committee in order to make way for two new committees which might serve the purpose of engaging Members of the House more fully in committee work. Be that as it may, the fact is that the Science and Technology Committee plays a much larger role than has been attributed to it by the Liaison Committee.
Ever since they have been published on the web, and no doubt for much longer than that, the reports of the committee have disseminated scientific information and judicious opinion on scientific matters to a very wide readership. I have read the submission of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, to the Liaison Committee and it is my opinion, at least in that context, that he has been far too modest in proclaiming the importance of the Science and Technology Committee. However, today he has left us in no doubt at all about its importance. I am sure that the reports produced by the committee have contributed greatly to the reputation of the House of Lords as a forum for serious and informed debate. If the committee’s activities are curtailed, the House will suffer a commensurate loss of reputation. I do not think that I can express the matter more clearly than that.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, I think it might be useful to hear from these Benches and from another side of the argument. One of the essences of science is the requirement to look at all the different arguments. The Liaison Committee has had to look at a number of difficult problems, and as a member of that committee, it is important for me to bring them to your Lordships’ attention.
The first point is that we do not have sufficient resources, financially or otherwise, to service all the areas that Members quite properly wish to address. That is a fact. On the island where I spend as much time as I can, when I look across the border I see that people have had their pensions and salaries reduced by about 10 per cent overall. We have escaped that on this side of the water, but we have not completely escaped the need to address the problem of austerity. We simply do not have the money to devote to all the things we would like to do.
The second point is that we have substantially increased the number of Members of your Lordships’ House. Those Members are bringing with them considerable expertise. In some areas they may even be bringing more up-to-date expertise than that of those who have been here for some time, so they should not be undervalued. In that context, we need to find a way to move forward. It is absolutely right that we should dwell on our reputation from the past, but it is equally important to continue to develop and to move forward, otherwise we will simply become stuck.
One crucial area of development is that of information and communications technology. We have a Communications Committee; it is neither a Select Committee nor a sessional committee, but in effect a kind of ad hoc committee on communications. It is quite clear that over the past year or two, that committee’s understanding of its remit has developed. It now looks not just at questions of the content of communication and broadcast, but at the technology of broadband and digital communication. Whenever, as a member of the committee, I asked whether there had been some kind of formal communication between it and the Science and Technology Committee about this, I was told that there had not. That was a failing on the part of both committees. If the Science and Technology Committee was not consulting with the Communications Committee, and if that committee was not making requests to consult with the Science and Technology Committee, both of them were failing to look to the future. I have to say that science and technology is also social science and social technology, and we have had only a very modest amount of research in those areas by the Science and Technology Committee. There was a recent rather good report on behaviour change, but the overall amount has been very modest.
It is not enough for us simply to say, “We want to keep what we have and we want more”, because we do not have the resources and we do have new people with their thoughts and ideas. It is therefore not enough simply to say, when it comes to the European Committee, “We have got seven sub-committees, but we want eight, with one on foreign affairs”. We do not have the money for that.
So, what do we do? The proposal is to continue with the Communications Committee, and a specific proposal that I myself put to the Liaison Committee was that we should ask it to consult with the Science and Technology Committee over the coming year so that areas of overlap can be accommodated in the work of the Communications Committee, and indeed that its name should be changed to exemplify the fact that there is a science and technology component to its work. It is not a matter of shutting down but of opening up and of further understanding. Here is an area of science and technology that is extremely relevant. When you go out on the streets, you can see that young people are more aware in their daily lives of the communications aspects of science and technology than of any other. Again, it is not a matter of closing down but of developing.
There is absolutely no reason why some of the ad hoc committees, which will be relatively short term, should not pick up on issues of science, technology and medicine. Nothing should restrict them just because they are ad hoc committees. Indeed, in pre- and post-legislative scrutiny, there is no reason why some things that they pick up should be in these areas.
I appeal to noble Lords to understand the dilemma of a Liaison Committee, acting on behalf of the House and with modest resources, that has to deal with a substantial increase in the number of Members, an ever increasing amount of material that we could reasonably, legitimately, profitably—and in a way that enhances the reputation of the House—consider, but that also has to address the reality of the boundaries and limits imposed on us. I trust that however we choose to vote, the conversation will continue so that we continue to do the best we can for the House while addressing all the pressures that are on the Liaison Committee and the other committees that have to take responsibility.
Lord Grenfell
I am most grateful to noble Lords. I begin by declaring an interest, in particular with reference to recommendation 46 about the reduction in the European Union sub-committee structure by one sub-committee. In 2003, when I had the honour of being chairman of the European Union Committee, I argued very strongly for an extra committee and we obtained one. It was not done lightly. It was done because the volume of draft legislation coming from the European Union was enormous and we did not feel that we were able to cover, in particular, draft directives and other documents in the area of social affairs and education. We therefore asked for the extra committee and we got it.
It seems strange that we are arguing for a reduction in the capacity of the European Union committee structure at a time when national parliaments are being asked—in fact, pressed—by the European Union to take a much more significant role and to be a much more substantial part of the structure of the European Union. This is, therefore, not a good time for us to think about reducing our capacity to meet that very considerable challenge. The noble Lord, Lord Roper, in his excellent letter, in appendix 2 of the report and in his very good statement this afternoon, set out the scale of the burden now borne by the European Union Committee. I am rather disappointed that an amendment on that subject has not been tabled to the Motion.
The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said again and again that it was a fact that there were not sufficient resources. One might ask why there are not sufficient resources. That seems to me the nub of the question: what are the causes of the financial constraint? One of them—there are several—and maybe one of the biggest, is the unnecessary inflation of the membership of the House. That is to a very large extent a direct cause of the financial problem.
When we consider the additional cost of a new unit of committee activity—who on earth invented that frightful description of our work?—we are told that the additional marginal cost will be in the region of £225,000. That frightens me. Will the abolition of one of our European Union sub-committees save £225,000? If it does, it will save the equivalent of what seven Members of the House of Lords receive in expenses during the course of a year. There is not much chance at the moment of the number of Peers and the membership of the House being reduced by seven. It is going up all the time by several factors of that. This shows how strangely we approach this question of resources. Having seven fewer Members claiming up to £30,000 a year in legitimate expenses and attendance allowance would pay for the European Union sub-committee and, happily, the sub-committee of the Science and Technology Committee. I was deeply moved and impressed by what the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and his fellow scientists said about that.
Could we not try to be realistic about this and see it in the proper context of resources? If we had a smaller House, we would have more resources. It stands to reason that if we reduce the number of Members of the House, we will reduce the amount that the Exchequer has to put out to pay to keep them here. Why do we always say that there are no resources yet do not address the question of why? The size of the House is a major contributor to that unfortunate situation.
The House has a worldwide reputation of being one of the most cost-effective second Chambers in the world. Within that, it has a reputation of being probably the best scrutiny Chamber in the world. From my own experience, I can certainly tell noble Lords that in the European Union we have consistently been considered—run close by the French Senate—the most effective Chamber scrutinising draft European legislation. Do we want to lose that capacity? No, we do not, so let us look at ways of keeping it. I beg noble Lords to strongly consider why we are short of resources, to address that issue and not to undermine the huge reputation of the House.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I shall speak briefly. I have read the report of the Liaison Committee with great care. I think that it was carefully argued. I fully appreciate why, in times of financial constraint, it made the proposals that it did. However, we as a country depend on increasing our income and overcoming our deficit. There can be no question, in my opinion, that the development of science, education and technology will play a vital role in helping us to recover from the deficit state in which we find ourselves. Unfortunately, we are slow to take account of, develop and extend the results of scientific discovery—a problem that we have faced over many years.
We live now in an era of evidence-based and translational medicine—meaning the ability to convert the results of basic science into developments in patient care and new methods of treatment of disease. It is crucial that the results of research in basic science, engineering and technology should do the same. Happily, the Government have put more money into scientific research. The Technology Strategy Board is making a major impact, and so, too, are a huge number of other important developments—but they need development and they need support.
I have been in the House for 23 years. For 15 of those years, I served as a member of your Lordships’ Committee on Science and Technology. I chaired an inquiry some years ago into research in the National Health Service. That was a privilege. The report of that sub-committee inquiry led to the Culyer report and then the Cooksey report, and ultimately to the introduction of the NHS research programme—and now the highly effective National Institute for Health Research.
I worked on a small inquiry of the sub-committee which, curiously, in a limited field, dealt with the medicinal uses of cannabis and led eventually to the development of a standardised product of cannabis leaf that is now being sold across the world—used for absorption through the mucus membrane of the mouth—and that brings in money from across the world because of its effect in the treatment of multiple sclerosis. I could quote a lot of other inquiries that have been crucial: not least, for instance, the committee I chaired into complementary and alternative medicine, to try to bring a rational basis to the study of this particular area, in which a large amount of money is spent by very many people in this country. That report was taken on board by the National Institutes of Health in the United States as the basis for a programme of research on which it embarked, and into which it put money, to try to get an evidence base for that field of complementary medicine. I could quote many other examples—and many other examples have been quoted today.
The reason I support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Krebs is that the reports of the Science and Technology Committee in this House have not only had a major influence on government policy across the entire scientific field but have won the respect of Britain’s scientific community. Above all, they have won the respect of the international scientific community. As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said, the report on science and society was widely commended in the United States media. I could quote a huge number of other reports from the committee that have had a similar effect.
It is absolutely crucial that the committee should continue to function in its present capacity. My noble friend Lord Krebs said, in his carefully argued and detailed letter in annexe 3 to the third report from the Liaison Committee, proposed,
“wider involvement of members in the committee activity of the House whilst preserving the advantages of a sessional committee”.
He proposed a number of methods for co-opting members to each of the sub-committees and made it clear that he could continue with the two sub-committees of the science committee with co-opted members, increasing the involvement of other Members of the House.
It would be a sad day if that committee, which has fulfilled such a vital role in Britain’s science community, and which has received such outstanding credit from across the world, were to lose one of its sub-committees at a time when Britain needs much more development in science, engineering and technology. For that reason, I strongly support my noble friend Lord Krebs.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, it will not come as a surprise to the House to hear that I fear that the Liaison Committee has got the importance of our European committees badly out of focus.
It is welcome that the European committees have been cut from eight—seven plus one—to one and six sub-committees. However, that still leaves 84 Members of your Lordships’ House on the sub-committees, a further 14 on the main committee, with the result that the time of 98 of your Lordships is taken by the European Select Committee. I have mentioned this before. There is a long series of Questions from the noble Lords, Lord Tebbit and Lord Vinson, answered by the Government, which show that the European Committee has virtually no influence on the legislation that comes to us from Brussels. As your Lordships know, that is quite a substantial proportion of our general legislation and easily the majority of—
Lord Sewel
There is the vexatious question of the reform of the common fisheries policy. Has the noble Lord looked at the Green Paper that the Fisheries Commissioner has published? Is he aware that it borrows—I dare not use the word “plagiarises”—significantly from the report of the committee of this House?
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I understand that the decision of the European Commission to review the common fisheries policy is due more to the series on television by Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall than to your Lordships’ Select Committee. And anyway, we await reform of the common fisheries policy, as we have for the past 30 years.
I do not want to turn this into a debate on the pluses and minuses of the European Union, but I want to explain to your Lordships why seven European committees is still far too many. I referred to the series of Questions from the noble Lords, Lord Tebbit and Lord Vinson, the answers to which show that the Select Committee has had virtually no influence on legislation coming to us from Brussels. That is not surprising. Your Lordships may be aware of the process of European legislation, which is proposed in secret by the Commission, negotiated in secret in COREPER and passed in secret in the Council. There is nothing that your Lordships’ House or the other place can do when it has gone through that process.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord when he is in full flight on one of his well chosen paths, but I wonder how on earth he thinks that a government reply to another Member of this House can demonstrate that the influence of the committee and its sub-committees is nil. Of course, the noble Lord wants that to be the answer; of course, he wants there to be a reduction in the sub-committees and the committee to ensure that we do not scrutinise the European Union properly, because he wants to strengthen the argument to leave the European Union. However, it would be quite nice if we could address the subject before the House, which is the matter of the Liaison Committee’s report, and could above all face the fact that the European Committee deals with a core function that is not dealt with by any other committee or by the House as a whole. If you reduce that core function, you reduce the effectiveness of how we scrutinise this work. I wish that the noble Lord would take account of that instead of arguing the contrary.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I was about to explain to your Lordships why that core function is pointless compared to the work that the other Select Committees do in this House—and we have heard of powerful examples from the Science and Technology Committee. All the other committees are taken very seriously in this country and worldwide, whereas the debates of the European Committee in your Lordships’ House are ill attended and do nothing to inform public opinion about how the European Union works—and its membership, as I have said again and again, is solidly Europhile. We have just had two interventions to prove that.
The noble Lord, Lord Roper, has told us that the committee scrutinises very effectively European legislation. It writes to Ministers. But your Lordships will be aware of the scrutiny reserve, an agreement whereby successive Governments have given an assurance, although it is not a legal assurance, to both Houses of Parliament that if a piece of legislation is under scrutiny the Government of the day will not sign up to it in Brussels unless that committee agrees. Written Answers from the Government show that that has been overridden hundreds of times in the past 10 years—I think it is 343 times in the past five years.
I mention all this only to show that we put all this effort into the European Union committees and get very little out of them. I am sorry to offend noble and Europhile Lords, and I hope that the House does not think that I am banging on again about Europe. But hearing the comments about the eminent scientists in this Room who have spoken only for the Science and Technology Committee, and looking at the other committees, which are full of expertise and widely respected in the country and internationally, I fear that we have the balance wrong. Two or three European committees, including the main one, would be quite enough. We should redirect those energies into committees that will serve the House and the country well.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I hear the debate that we have had this evening but I have to say that I support the recommendations from the Liaison Committee, which closely follow the proposals from the report of the Leader’s Group. I warmly welcome the recommendation that two new cross-cutting and ad hoc committees should be set up, although my preference would have been for an appointment of two and a half years to enable the committees themselves to deliberate on the subjects of the report and to enable the committees to follow up the conclusions of the report, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, suggested.
I also welcome the proposals on pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny, which I believe to be extremely important. If there is to be new draft legislation on adoption, as suggested by the Prime Minister, I would be grateful for an assurance from the Chairman of Committees that it will not be introduced until the post-legislative scrutiny has been concluded.
The decisions regarding the European Committee and the Science and Technology Committee were not easy. In fact, they were extremely difficult. There were hard choices, and it is never a good time to bring about change. Of course, many noble Lords are concerned that, by reducing the number of European sub-committees from seven to six, we are diminishing the importance that this House rightly gives to proper scrutiny of EU documents and proposals, and diminishes our standing as a House of expertise. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, I am confident that the excellent and much needed scrutiny will continue with six sub-committees and a slightly larger membership, if the committees wish to enlarge.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Would the noble Baroness not just sail over it? Would she care to comment on the override by the Government of hundreds of scrutiny reserves in the past few years?
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I would not care to comment on that at the moment, but I am grateful for the invitation from the noble Lord. I was going to say how much the House as a whole rightly regards the work of the Science and Technology Committee. Clearly, the breadth of knowledge inside that committee, along with the understanding and the influence of the reports, is phenomenal, and I am sure that that will continue. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, resources are scarce. Throughout our deliberations in the committee, I have argued for additional resources to be made available for an additional committee, and I will continue to make that argument in the coming year, so that when we have deliberations at this time next year, I may well be able to argue in favour of more work for the Science and Technology Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, made a very good speech here and in Committee, and I have supported him in his arguments throughout. However, I support the report from the committee that is before us today, and I urge the whole House to adopt it. Should there be a vote, I wish to make it clear that the people on my Benches will have a free vote.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I know that I am going to disappoint noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. It is not my purpose, but I think it is the result of the report published by the Liaison Committee that I support. As the House knows, the report proposes that more of our resources should go to one-year inquiries set up by the House for a specific purpose and with a specific membership—what we call ad hoc committees. That is a change of direction from the way in which we have dealt with things before, and I believe that it is right that these proposals for ad hoc committees should come from Back-Benchers. If this report is agreed to, I look forward to a meeting of the Liaison Committee next December when we consider a really good range of proposals for new ad hoc committees proposed by Back-Benchers around the House.
The whole point of this report is that it provides more opportunities for a broader range of Members to take part in the committee work of this House, and for those committees to be timely and to engage us in debate. The committees are meant to inform the House on subjects that we consider important. That is not to take away anything that the Science and Technology Committee does and has done. After all, this report is a package of recommendations. If it is agreed to, new resources will be made available to the Committee Office.
The report is also clear that some trimming of existing committees is required if we are to set up the new committees as proposed, and we have limited the trimming to a single sub-committee of the European Union Committee. The reason was asked by my noble friend Lord Jopling and indeed by the noble Lords, Lord Roper, Lord Grenfell, and others. They asked why we pick on the EU Committee, and the answer is, not because we do not value its work but because it absorbs by far the largest proportion of the House’s Select Committee resources—eight committees in total—and so it is the obvious place to look when trying to release resources. This is also why, to answer the noble Lord, Lord Roper, the Liaison Committee was already minded to propose the change before hearing from the noble Lord. It was in no sense any disrespect to him as chairman or indeed to the quality of the work that he has done.
The second place was the Science and Technology Committee and its sub-committees. We felt that, in the future, the resources should be that of a single Select Committee. The reason why we suggest that is that it would put it on the same resource footing as the Constitution Committee, the Communications Committee and the Economic Affairs Committee, which itself appoints a sub-committee.
Of course, this House has a notable reputation in science and technology, but there are other fields of experience and interest in this House, and I suggest we should make use for them. However, I stress that there is no reason why Back-Benchers cannot propose technical and scientific subjects to the Liaison Committee as subjects for ad hoc committees. There is also no reason why, in future Sessions, we should not re-examine this decision. I am in favour of trying out pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, and others. It may be that in a couple of Sessions’ time we find that it is not a good use of the House’s resources and that we should look again at the situation in the Science and Technology Committee.
Lord Strathclyde
Is the noble Lord intervening to raise something, or does he wish to wind up?
Lord Krebs
Yes. I thank the noble Lord for his comments so far, but I would appreciate it if he would address the question that I put on what mechanism was used in the report to assess the value for money from different options. It is all very well to say that we need to create resources for new activities, but how was that evaluation carried out? I request some transparency on that.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, we started off from a slightly different position. We wanted to do more different things, such as pre-leg, post-leg and two new stand-alone ad hoc committees, and they had to be paid for by some trimming elsewhere. We took the view that there could be a reduction in the EU sub-committees, and I am afraid that the Science and Technology Committee was next in line. We suggested this in the report that we published right at the beginning of this Session nearly two years ago, when we said:
“So far as the Science and Technology Committee is concerned, we note that the Committee has recently worked through two units of activity … Given that the House of Commons committee on this subject is now permanently established, we consider these two units of activity should be regarded as an absolute maximum; and in the event of further demands for committee work arising which require redeployment of committee resources we would in the first instance look towards retrenchment of the Science and Technology Committee”.
So all this was forecast a long time ago. I think there is a mood in the House to try to look at other ways in which we can work on our committee structure.
The Science and Technology Committee will continue. It will no doubt continue to work through a sub-committee, and I hope that it will continue to do its work extremely effectively.
Lord Haskel
Will the noble Lord respond to the point made by several scientists when speaking about the Science and Technology Committee: that it also serves the public and that the Liaison Committee has looked at it purely from the point of view of serving the convenience of the House? Will he respond to the point that we are also here to serve the public, as well as serving our own interests?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, there is going to be a new committee on post-legislative scrutiny of adoption and family services; more pre-legislative scrutiny; and two new committees, one on SMEs and exports and the other on public services and demography. All of these are designed to serve the interests of the public using much more of the expertise that exists around the House. This decision was not taken easily or capriciously; its implications were well understood. As I have said, in the longer term there is no reason why we should not revisit it.
Lord Methuen
On what basis is the Committee Office funded and why, with this huge influx of new Members, could more resources not be given to it to enable these additional committees and the existing ones to be adequately funded?
Lord Strathclyde
The reason is that we are trying to work within our existing budgets. Throughout the public sector there are limits on increasing expenditure. The House of Commons is facing a substantial decrease in expenditure and it would look a bit odd if the House of Lords alone decided to spend even more public money.
Lord May of Oxford
Does the noble Lord believe that his second attempt to answer the question of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, answered it? I did not understand it. Given that he asserted that there was going to be a cost-benefit analysis, I did not hear anything like that in his reply.
Lord Strathclyde
It is very difficult to provide a cost-benefit analysis until we have seen the work and the success of the new committees that have been proposed. We are proposing four new committees—they do not exist at the moment—which will be paid for in part by a small reduction—I still say that it is a small reduction—in the amount of money available to the Science and Technology Committee. The best time for a cost-benefit analysis will be at the end of the first or second Session when we have seen how these new committees have worked out.
The Chairman of Committees
I will be brief because I know that certain Members of the House want to get on to the next business with rather a great deal of impatience. I shall not take long. I will not be able to name everyone in the impressive list of noble Lords who have spoken, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the massed ranks of fellow scientists that he has managed to assemble today.
In what I thought was a very impressive speech, the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, was right to say how difficult it was to review the committee structure because no one wanted change. Everyone wants to keep exactly the same thing going on—people are always resistant to change—but at the same time they want new committees. That is what we are trying to do. As the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and the noble Lord the Leader of the House said—
Lord Winston
I wonder if the noble Lord might be prepared to withdraw that remark about the “massed ranks”. It seems contemptuous of the serious point that we as scientists are trying to put to the House of Lords.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Would the noble Lord also refer to the massed ranks of europhiles who came to the defence of those committees?
The Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I certainly was not trying to be contemptuous of the noble Lord, Lord Winston—rather the opposite; I was impressed by the number of scientists who had spoken. I am sorry that the noble Lord misunderstood me, or maybe I did not express myself well.
As the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said, it is a question of resources. We cannot continue to spend more and more money. In this report we have recommended one additional unit of committee activity—I know that the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, does not like that phrase but it describes rather well what we do—and the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, mentioned how we had followed the recommendations of the Goodlad committee. We are going to have two pre-legislative scrutiny committees, one more than we have at the moment; one post-legislative scrutiny committee—I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, about adoption, and obviously if something develops on that we can review the subject later on—and two brand new ad hoc committees on topical subjects. I think that that is what the House wanted. It would be even better if we could just go on with the old committees as well, but it would be irresponsible of our committee to continually recommend more and more.
On the point about the European Union Committee, we will still have six sub-committees and a main committee so there will be seven committees in action in that area. They will still be better resourced than most, if not all, such sub-committees in other EU national parliaments.
We were grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Roper, for coming to see us and explaining things. We had intended to be helpful in telling him roughly what we thought, and we had intended that he would therefore know what to expect and what to argue. We also did not want committees to plan work beyond the end of the Session that they would then have to alter. Indeed, the noble Lord persuaded us not to reduce the size of the EU Committee to five but to keep it at six. I had thought that it was the European Union Committee’s desire that the membership of the sub-committees should go up from 12 to 14; that is the impression that we on the committee were given. If that is not the case, though, it is only—
Lord Roper
My Lords, there was some sort of misunderstanding. When I came before the Liaison Committee, I suggested the increase in size as an alternative way to involve more Peers, rather than reducing the number of committees.
The Chairman of Committees
I would say only that membership can be up to 14. There is no need for the European Union Committee to appoint 14 on each of its sub-committees; it can continue at 12, as it wants to at the moment.
Noble Lords have made a number of other points but I do not think I can add much more. On the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, about the Science and Technology Committee, there is nothing to stop that committee conducting follow-up inquiries in future. Paragraph 47 of the report makes clear that the committee should retain the power to appoint a sub-committee and to co-opt additional Members for particular inquiries. Both those points are already made in the report.
I hope that the House will agree to the report. It will breathe fresh air into the committee structure and I commend it to the House.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve
Will the noble Lord confirm that the Government remain committed to policies and structures in the House; and that the Liaison Committee, above all, remains so committed and will support evidence-based policy rather than a slide towards the new, the “breath of fresh air” and the policy-based evidence?
The Chairman of Committees
I am sorry to disappoint the noble Baroness but I do not speak for the Government.
Lord Krebs
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord the Chairman of the Liaison Committee for his summing up, and the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. A number of telling points have been made during today’s debate. I am a little disappointed that in the replies from the noble Lord the Leader of the House and the Chairman of the Liaison Committee those points were not all fully addressed. However, I take heart from the noble Lord the Leader reiterating the point that he made in a letter that he sent to the Cross-Bench Convenor, and perhaps to others, that the reduction that he envisages in the support for the Science and Technology Committee is a small one, which is very different from my understanding when I read the report that essentially support for the committee was going to be halved. I see a glimmer of hope there and I hope that in further discussion I can understand how small “small” is. I assume that “small” is smaller than what I see as large. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Public Bodies (Abolition of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) Order 2012
Lord De Mauley
That the draft orders and regulations laid before the House on 19 January and 7, 9, 27 February be approved.
Relevant documents: 51st Report from the Merits Committee, 39th, 41st and 42nd Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 19 March.
Insolvency Act 1986 (Disqualification from Parliament) Order 2012
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord De Mauley
That the draft order laid before the House on 3 May 2011 be approved.
Relevant document: 21st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 20 March.
Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2012
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord De Mauley
That the draft orders and regulations laid before the House on 9 and 28 February and 1 March be approved.
Relevant documents: 41st and 43rd Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 20 and 21 March.
Localism Act 2011 (Consequential Amendments) Order 2012
Baroness Hanham
That the draft orders laid before the House on 9 February be approved.
Relevant document: 41st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 21 March.
Scotland Bill
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness
That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:
Clauses 1 to 9, Schedule 1, Clauses 10 to 12, Schedule 2, Clauses 13 to 29, Schedule 3, Clauses 30 to 33, Schedule 4, Clauses 34 and 35, Schedule 5, Clauses 36 to 45.
Scotland Bill
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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21:13 - Division on Amendment 1A - Ayes: 72 / Noes: 151 - Amendment 1A disagreed.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
I beg to move that the Report be now received.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, your Lordships will remember that last Wednesday I indicated that agreement had been reached between the United Kingdom Government and the Scottish Government on a number of changes to the Scotland Bill and supporting non-legislative measures. Following this agreement the Scottish Government tabled a legislative consent Motion recommending the Scottish Parliament support the Bill. The amendments in this group are part of the changes to the Scotland Bill as a consequence of the agreement that has been reached between the Government and the Scottish Government to ensure that the Bill continues to retain the support of the Scottish Parliament, previously affirmed in an overwhelming vote of support in March 2011.
These amendments will remove Clause 7, Clause 12 and the associated Schedule 2, Clause 13 and Clause 26 of the Bill. With regard to Clause 7, the Government’s intention in pursuing the limited reference procedure contained in that clause was to prevent unnecessary delays to Bills in the Scottish Parliament, where the majority of provisions are considered to be within the legislative competence of that Parliament. The Scottish Government had raised concerns that this clause could have potential for introducing unintended consequences and delay in enacting legislation in the Scottish Parliament.
Likewise, during Committee consideration, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, raised concerns about whether the provision was necessary, as he believed that the existing arrangements appeared to be adequate. As a result of our discussions with the Scottish Government, we have agreed that this clause should be removed. The Scottish Government accept that in future, as at present, only a full Act of the Scottish Parliament can be referred to the Supreme Court, even if only a single provision raises competence issues.
Amendment 14 removes Clause 26 from the Bill. This would have allowed UK Ministers to implement international obligations on a UK basis, where it would be more convenient to take action on such a basis. The Scottish Government believe that this clause could undermine the clarity about which Parliament and which Ministers have responsibility for a particular matter. Both Governments acknowledge the importance of ensuring that all of the United Kingdom's international obligations are fully implemented across the UK on a timely basis.
The UK Government are willing to remove this clause, on the understanding of course that Scottish Ministers will ensure that any international obligations that fall within their responsibility are implemented on time. In turn, we have made clear to Scottish Ministers that the Government would be prepared to use their existing powers of direction under Section 58(2) of the Scotland Act 1998, should we have concerns about the implementation of international obligations within the remit of Scottish Ministers.
Clause 12 and associated Schedule 2 relate to insolvency. It would have returned legislative competence back to the United Kingdom Parliament in relation to all aspects of the winding up of business associations. The United Kingdom Government continue to believe that, where appropriate, Scottish procedures for insolvency should be in step with the rest of the United Kingdom. Our discussions with the Scottish Government have provided us with assurances that these concerns can be addressed without amending the devolution settlement in this respect. We therefore seek to remove this clause on the understanding that the Scottish Government will consider the modernisation measures for the devolved areas of winding up in Scotland introduced into the reserved insolvency procedures in 2009 and 2010; and have provided assurances that future changes made by the UK Parliament or Ministers in this area will be considered timeously by the Scottish Government in their area of competence.
Finally, Amendment 7 seeks to remove Clause 13, dealing with the regulation of health professionals, from the Bill. While the Scottish Parliament has had power to introduce for Scotland separate legislation in respect of regulating a number of health profession—that is, those not listed by reference to specific statutes in Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act—it has chosen not to do so. Rather, it has approved the use of the existing, reserved machinery, in the form of orders made under Section 60 of the Health Act 1999, to regulate new groups of healthcare professionals.
During our discussions with the Scottish Government they raised some concerns about this clause. The Scottish Government have provided us with clear assurances that they will work closely with the Government to ensure that consistent regulatory regimes apply to all health professions. Given these assurances, the Government are content to continue to develop policy in relation to regulating the health professions with the Scottish Government. The United Kingdom Government, through the Department of Health in England, will continue to engage closely with officials, not just in Scotland but also in the Administrations in Northern Ireland and Wales, to develop future policy proposals concerning the regulation of healthcare professionals.
The Government have received assurances on all these matters that the same effect that was sought by provisions in the Bill can be secured by non-legislative means. On that basis we have agreed to seek to take out the provisions from the Bill. I beg to move the amendments.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, I wonder if this would be a good opportunity for the Minister in his reply to inform the House what will now happen in relation to the legislative consent Motion. It would be helpful if he could briefly give us a timetable about when it will be considered by the Scottish Parliament and the procedures thereafter. If there are any problems, how will this House be informed? Does he envisage that the legislative consent Motion will be passed through the Scottish Parliament without any difficulty; and are there any further procedures that may be necessary within this Parliament following the passage of the legislative consent Motion?
Lord Boyd of Duncansby
My Lords, before I address the amendments that the noble and learned Lord has spoken to, I should place on record the fact that the handling of this Bill has been nothing short of scandalous. To start three hours late, almost on the dinner hour, is quite unforgiveable. Yet again, those of us who are participating in this Bill are under pressure to sit longer and at unusual times to accommodate the Government’s business. At a time when we are trying in this House to demonstrate the evident utility of remaining part of the United Kingdom, of Scotland playing a meaningful role in Parliament, and of this Parliament playing a meaningful role in the affairs of Scotland, it smacks of contempt for the position of Scotland. I do not for one moment suggest that the noble and learned Lord has any part in this. I know that he is frustrated by the progress that has been made, but frankly those who are responsible for this should be ashamed of themselves.
As for the amendments that the noble and learned Lord has spoken to, we are pleased that agreement has been reached between the Government and Scottish Ministers. This allows for the passing of the legislative consent Motion. We recognise, of course, that compromises have been made on both sides, though those made by the Scottish Ministers from the demands that they set have clearly been much more substantial. It will be interesting to read how Scottish Ministers deal with the Scotland Bill Committee and Report when they come to deal with the legislative consent Motion. This group of amendments implements much, though not all, of the agreement. Inevitably, there are issues that we support, such as the removal of the clause on the partial suspension of Bills of the Scottish Parliament or the reference to the Supreme Court, and those that we find much more difficult, such as the regulation of health professionals. However, in the spirit of compromise, we support these amendments.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, before the noble and learned Lord sits down, perhaps I could associate myself with his earlier remarks. I regret that I have not taken part in the proceedings on this Bill until now. I was not sure whether or not I should declare an interest as someone who spends most of the year in Scotland. Now that I have worked it out that I do not, I feel free to join in.
My specific question follows what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd, said. Our Companion requires that there should be 14 days between Committee and Report. On this occasion, there has been one working day, which was a Thursday. I have never formed part of the usual channels—and never will—so can the Minister explain to your Lordships how this decision has taken place at this stage of this hugely important Bill to the Scottish people, who have not been consulted about it at all?
No one has told the Scottish people that this Bill is going to result in them paying more tax in future, and no one has asked them. All we are being told is that the manifestos said that the Calman commission results were going to be taken seriously, but no one knew at the time of the election that this was going to be the outcome. I am sure that the Minister is not personally responsible but I ask him to explain to us how and why this decision was taken, in view of the enormous importance of these matters to the Scottish people.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I heard the stringent comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. I am sure that they will be noted. Having had experience of the House of Commons, the Scottish Parliament and your Lordships’ House, if there is a thread that links these three experiences it is that the usual channels have currents and depths that I have rarely, if ever, been able to fathom.
Lord Sewel
Of course we do not hold the Minister at all responsible for what happens in the usual channels, but it seems rather perverse that we have discussed this Bill late at night and on Thursdays, under pressure of time. I accepted that because of the nature of the parliamentary timetable, but then we were told that we are having an extra week’s recess. Those extra days would have enabled this Bill to be given the due and proper consideration that it deserves, and I hope that the Minister and my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench will pass on those comments to the usual channels.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
This almost proves my point. I am sure that these points will be noted and I will indeed draw them to the attention of colleagues.
With regard to the further point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, about the number of days between Committee and Report, it was agreed between the usual channels, and as a result of a delay for further sessions in Committee to take place after the end of the consultation on the referendum, there was a need to reduce. As I indicated, that was agreed. In response to his further point, all parties—or at least all non-Scottish National parties that fought elections in Scotland: the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats—had these proposals in their manifestos and I do not think it is fair to say that they had not been aired at all prior to the general election, nor indeed since.
I welcome the general support that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, has given to these moves, in the spirit of seeking agreement. He asked about insolvency. Specifically, there will be engagement with the Scottish Government to ensure that the modernisation programme contained in the reforms of 2009-10 is delivered in Scotland for the benefit of those affected by corporate insolvencies.
More generally, the Accountant in Bankruptcy is an executive agency of the Scottish Government that holds policy responsibility for devolved insolvency matters in Scotland, and the Insolvency Service is aware of the need to stay in close contact with counterparts in the Accountant in Bankruptcy’s office, as indeed already happens, to help ensure that as far as possible developments in insolvency law in devolved areas do not create unnecessary difficulties for users of the legislation. So there are the specific provisions of the 2009-10 changes, which we have had assurances will be implemented, and there is a means by which we can maintain contact and dialogue in the longer term.
With regard to health professionals, like the noble and learned Lord, I was a member of the Calman commission and certainly took this matter seriously. He will appreciate that we have agreed to seek removal of this clause on the receipt of assurances that the Scottish Government will work with us to ensure consistency in the regulation of health professionals. I sometimes wonder if we had had some representations from the Scottish Government when we sat on the Calman commission whether we might have been able to reflect those in the report, but that was not the case.
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, asked about the procedure from here on in. In his letter to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Parliamentary Business and Government Strategy, Mr Bruce Crawford, having gone through the terms of the agreement, indicated:
“I can therefore confirm that the Scottish Government is now prepared to recommend to the Scottish Parliament that it consents to the Bill, amended in line with your proposals, and supported by the undertakings in your letter”.
Of course, it will be a matter for the Scottish Parliament. It is my understanding that the Scotland Bill Committee of that Parliament will meet to discuss the amendments on Wednesday. We expect that the legislative consent Motion will be debated after the Easter Recess but before Third Reading in your Lordships’ House. Given the engagement that there has been, I very much look forward to the Scottish Parliament approving the Motion to support the Bill. I hope that answers the noble Lord’s inquiry.
The Earl of Caithness
Before my noble friend sits down, could he comment on his final point? If the legislative consent Motion is agreed by the Scottish Parliament before Third Reading and we pass an amendment at Third Reading, what is the situation then?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I suspect that the Scottish Parliament may have something to say about it if it is something that it does not agree with.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
“Legislative competence: amendment to the 1998 Act
In section 29 of the 1998 Act (legislative competence) after subsection (2)(d) insert—“(da) it would result in residents in England, Wales or Northern Ireland being treated differently to citizens from other EU member states.””
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I add my voice to those who are complaining about the way in which this Bill has been handled. In his reply, it would be helpful if the Minister could indicate where he proposes to get to this evening. It is suggested we can get to Clause 25—that is 15 groups of amendments and we normally finish at 10 o’clock. Although I mean to be brief, I do not think that that will be achievable. It is extraordinary that a Bill of this importance is being treated in this way. When I complain to the usual channels, they blame each other. Something has gone very wrong with the business managers in this House and they need to get their act together.
The great argument for devolution, which I opposed, was that Westminster was not able to deal with Scottish legislation. I have been around Westminster since 1983 and I have never seen a piece of legislation affecting Scotland handled as badly as this piece of legislation has.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Has the noble Lord heard the suggestion from the Government’s usual channels that if we do not make progress today and Wednesday we should consider sitting on Thursday to deal with it? Is that not an astonishing suggestion?
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
It is an interesting suggestion and if I thought it was correct I might defer consideration of my amendment until then as I would be able to get a majority quite easily, even if I just voted for it myself.
The noble Lords, Lord Hannay, Lord Sutherland and Lord Foulkes, have added their names to Amendment 1A. This is an historic occasion and there will be few occasions in this House when these four names together appear on one amendment. It emphasises the nature of this amendment and the nature of the injustice it seeks to deal with.
The amendment simply says that residents in England, Wales and Northern Ireland should be treated in exactly the same way by the Scottish Parliament as other members of other European states. One would assume this matter was completely uncontroversial. The amendment is grouped with Amendment 59, which provides for the Scottish universities to be consulted and for a delaying implementation provision in order to deal with any administrative difficulties that might arise.
I was acutely conscious of this issue when I ran at the beginning of this year for rector at the University of St Andrews, I regret to say unsuccessfully. I was beaten by a better candidate who had more time to commit to a great university. I attended the University of St Andrews with Alex Salmond. He ran the SNP and I ran the Tories. We had 1,300 members; he had three. It has changed round since those days. One of the characteristics of the University of St Andrews was that lots of students came from the rest of the United Kingdom and that is still the case today. What outraged me was discovering that students sitting side by side in classes are expected, in the case of those who live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, to pay £36,000 in fees while those who live in Scotland or Poland or Germany or Italy or anywhere else in the European Union pay nothing at all.
That is an utterly divisive and wrong policy. It has been exacerbated by the increase in fees and by the fact that Scottish universities have four-year degrees. This amendment seeks to create the circumstances which would exist in Scotland if it were independent. If we had an independent Scotland, it would not be allowed under European law to discriminate in this way against those people who live in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
I know that some people—not everyone, including me—have received directly a brief from the universities in Scotland which have expressed concern about this amendment. My noble friend Lord Vallance has made representations to me that if it were passed it would mean that there would be administrative chaos for the student intake arriving in September, which is why the amendment allows for some delay while this matter is sorted out.
The Scottish Government have been saying that if English and Welsh and Irish students—and that means people who are resident in England, Wales and Ireland; they might well be Scottish students whose families have moved to other parts of the United Kingdom—could go to universities in Scotland for free, there would be a flood across the border. This is the most disingenuous and dishonest argument. Ireland has no fees. People can go from Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland and they deal with it by having a quota for the number of students that they will accept. If it is suggested that quotas would be wrong, there is already a quota in operation. There is a quota set by the Scottish Government on the number of students who come from Scotland and from other European Union countries. To suggest that they could not have people resident in the rest of the United Kingdom coming on the same terms as those from Germany and elsewhere is, to say the least, misleading.
Lord Baker of Dorking
My noble friend is right about the incident that affected me because in the previous Budget the Chancellor gave £150 million to university technical colleges to develop the ones my educational trust is promoting. These train technicians and engineers. We have 19 in England and are looking at 22. But I discovered under the Barnett Formula that, out of the £150 million, £25 million was allocated to Scotland. I was rather glad about that because I have industrialists wanting to support UTCs in Aberdeen and in Glasgow. When I went up and met Mr Russell, who is the Education Minister in the SNP Government, he told me that that money had been spent on other things. I have no idea what it was spent on; it certainly was not spent on what it had been allocated for.
This is another case where Scottish students and indeed the Scottish economy are losing out as a result of this particular arrangement under the Barnett formula. The money has been snaffled to do something else with and it is a great loss to Scotland.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I am most grateful to my noble friend. I am not arguing that the Barnett funds should not be transferred from one budget to another but I am arguing for free tuition being available, in the same way that it is available for German and French students, for students from the rest of the United Kingdom. I do not think that is unreasonable. If the issue of funding will cause difficulty between the Governments, they have got lots of negotiations on and they should sort it out. If we believe in the United Kingdom—and I do with a passion—I can think of nothing worse than creating a situation where young people are burdened with substantial debt because they went to a Scottish university and they see everyone else in Europe going for free.
It could be argued that that arises from the Scottish Government’s policy of having free tuition fees. I do not argue against their ability to do that but they have to operate it in a fair and balanced way. This amendment would enable fair treatment for all students throughout the United Kingdom. It may not be perfectly worded. I would be very happy if my noble and learned friend said that he could not accept this amendment but that he would bring forward one of his own at a later stage of the Bill which would remedy the problem. I do not want to detain the House as I am anxious that if we divide, everyone will have disappeared. I beg to move.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, I was pleased to put my name to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. It is not something anyone on this side does lightly. However, as I have said before, even a Tory is not always wrong and on this occasion he is absolutely right—spot on. It is an issue of fairness. I shall be very brief.
It is an issue of fairness when students from Lithuania and Poland can go to Scottish universities for free, but students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland have to pay full fees. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, there is double jeopardy. The parents of the students from Poland and Lithuania do not contribute to the costs of Scottish universities, but the parents of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish students pay UK taxes. They have to pay full fees and the taxes that subsidise Scottish universities.
I know that there are concerns about funding. These have been expressed by the chancellor of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, and in a letter to me from the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Kelvin, the chancellor of the University of the West of Scotland. However, that is not a matter for us; it is a matter for the Scottish Executive. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, they get billions of pounds from the block grant. It is a matter of priorities. Scotland has free care for the elderly, free prescriptions for everyone, including the very rich, and a whole range of other things that are provided. Surely this is something to which they can give consideration. Without pre-empting what the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, will say, he has looked at the funding in much more detail and can make suggestions. If the Scottish Executive need help, I am sure he would be very willing to provide it—at no cost, I presume.
Finally, I say to my colleagues on the Labour Benches that we now have no Whip on this matter. Therefore, we have the opportunity to vote as we wish. I hope we will make the right decision in voting on this and support the amendment. I have spoken to Labour MSPs who have supported what the SNP Administration are doing. They said that they did not want to do it and regretted having to do it but had no option because of how it was put to them in terms of funding. We have an option: we can support the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and we can support fairness. I urge noble Lords so to do.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, the position before us requires a brief summary of how we got to where we are. I see a number of Members in the House who did not sit through all the longueurs of the Committee stage. To them I say, “Welcome to the Michael and George show. It’s amazing”. That said, why are we where we are? How did we get here and what is it? If you live in Dublin or Dundee, you pay no fees. If you live in Belfast or Berwick—I do my shopping in Berwick—you will pay fees at a Scottish university. We could go on with examples.
We all accept that these are unfortunate consequences of administrative procedures. We might also accept that they are unintended consequences of administrative procedures. However, I ask noble Lords to note that they are divisive consequences of administrative procedures, of which the only beneficiaries are those who would turn that divisiveness into the final division of separation. This suits their hand of cards.
The current situation over fees was not sought by the Scottish universities. I wish to stress that. There were some who hinted that the Scots were desperate to charge the Sassenachs et cetera large fees. This was not sought by the Scottish universities. Like the members of the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament, this was imposed on them.
My reckoning is that this year approximately £28 million to £30 million will be withheld from the Scottish universities grant. That money has to be found by the universities if they are to continue functioning. It will be withheld on the assumption that they can charge students from RUK, as they call it—the rest of the United Kingdom—fees that will fill that gap. That is just the start. The estimate is that the figure will be for just the first year. Over another four years, by 2015, the reduction in funding for Scottish universities from the Scottish Government might be £120 million. This is surely not something with which we can rest content.
By negotiation and ingenuity, the Scottish universities have avoided having an inadequate level for rest-of-UK students imposed on them. This was a risk for them. They have the power to vary their fees, charging up to £9,000 a year. Clearly, several of them will do this. I say to them, “Well done”. At that stage, I would have done the same but why did we get to that stage? The horse has already bolted through the stable door with the first £30 million: the Scottish Government have withdrawn this funding. As realistic chief executives, they did not have much choice other than to enter into a negotiation with which I suspect none of them is particularly happy.
The universities have also done well in devising bursary arrangements, for which I pay tribute to them. I know about the situation in the University of Edinburgh, my former university, in detail. It has done well and has the best bursary scheme anywhere in the UK for students in need. Some of the universities down here could take a look at that; it might help with some of their problems of recruitment.
Scottish universities also have a legitimate fear that, if this amendment were to be passed in its current form, without the following amendment, it would cause chaos if it were imposed for 2012-13. There may have been a hint of that earlier but this amendment does not imply imposing these new procedures for next year. Of course there would be chaos. However, we can deal with that—I will come back to it in a moment. I would not support an amendment that caused such chaos to the intake of students preparing for entry in 2012. That is common ground between all those who have put their names to the amendment. These are short-term consequences and we can deal with them. I completely understand that the short-term consequence would be to cause chaos now but we can deal with it by setting the date back.
However, there are longer-term consequences and implications. This is what I can only call another example of “devo drift” by practice, rather than by legislation. It inserts a further series of divisions, in this case between the young people of the rest of the UK and those of Scotland. This “devo drift” will not, I hope, be subject to another negotiated deal with the Government in Scotland. Are there any pegs that should be put in place? For example, if the next step gave Scotland a capacity in relation to research councils, which is a reserved business at the moment, it would be absolutely horrendous for Scottish universities. I see nothing in current attitudes to suggest that it might not be the next stage along the way. The Scottish universities would then have to decide whether negotiation was a wise practice.
That is all very easy to criticise but how do we proceed? In its briefing note, of which I was eventually given a copy by indirect means, Universities Scotland suggests that everything had been done to raise the question of the European demand that European Union students should not be charged fees. Indeed, the briefing note claims that the Education Secretary in Scotland,
“has actively pursued this issue in Europe and UK support for this issue, including voices within the Lords, would be welcome”.
I support him on that issue. Now what will he do about it? There is a question there to be looked at and we need a bit of time.
More importantly, I suggest that there is a way forward, and we need a bit of time for that. There should be a call for a UK-wide discussion, with all regions—all the rest of the UK—and Westminster, with the relevant Secretaries of State sitting down together and setting a quarter of places for RUK students in Scotland, an equivalent quota for EU students in Scotland, and a quota for Scottish students who go to universities in the rest of the UK. Within that, there may be room for financial manoeuvre because the Scottish students who take places in English universities displace England-based students for whom the Government here would have to make some provision, albeit that they would be charged fees.
Baroness Brinton
Does the noble Lord accept that under Article 24, paragraph 1 of directive 2004, it is not possible to provide quotas for EU students, because of the issue of free movement?
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I am prepared to take expert opinion on that. That does not rule out the possibility of the Administrations from Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland sitting down with the Westminster Government and working out a quota system for within the UK. It is a broader question how the European Union behaves itself on this matter, and there may be alternative views.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Is it not the position that in practice because the Scottish Government set a budget for the number of Scottish and EU students that they will fund—that is how they operate—all the noble Lord is saying is that there should be a budget for the English, Welsh and Northern Ireland-based students who attend?
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
Certainly the Scottish universities funding council sets an overall budget which will pay for students who, as it turns out now, are resident both in Scotland and in the rest of the European Union. I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth.
The force of what I have to say is that there needs to be discussion—I suspect it has been rather absent—between the funding councils and those who instruct them to see whether there is a way of removing this anomaly that none of us likes. How did we get here? By a slow process of change that has not had good consequences.
It would be unfair and unjust to discriminate only against the rest of the UK students, and if that is a principle that this House accepts, I hope that it will support the amendment.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, for spelling out how we got into what I can only call an unholy mess. Before we turn to the amendments, let me say that I fully support what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd, said at the start of this debate. In fact, I marvelled at his moderation. It is appalling that we are attempting—I hope we are not attempting—to deal with this on Report in the time that has been allotted at present. We have not only got the debate in the dinner hour, but we also have a Statement coming up which will take another 40 minutes out of the time. It is intolerable. It is the kind of thing that, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth hinted, we used to object to in the Commons. Scottish business of very serious import is being debated here—this is only one of many issues we are supposed to be discussing in the next few hours—and it should not be dealt with in this rushed way. I hope we will be told, when the Whip—or whoever deals with this on the Front Bench—proposes the break for the dinner hour, what is going to happen, and when we are going to sit to give this proper consideration.
I find myself in some difficulty because when I read Amendment 1A, in conjunction with the letter I received from the vice-chancellor of Heriot-Watt University, I sympathised with the universities possibly finding themselves being bereft of revenue they were expecting. That is why I warmly support Amendment 59, which the noble Lord has just spoken to, and to which four distinguished Members of this House have put their names.
By giving at least a year to all the authorities—the funding councils, the two Governments—they should be able to sort this out. The anomaly is intolerable, and we cannot allow this simply to drift on. Here is our legislative chance to put it right, and we should do that by accepting Amendment 59.
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke
My Lords, I will speak briefly. It is no secret that I am most unhappy with the fact that we are continuing with this Bill when it has been so comprehensively overtaken by events. There is a sense that “We’ve started so we’ll finish”. Partly because it has had the gestation period of an elephant, we seem to be debating it at a time when the whole constitutional discussion in Scotland has moved on.
I regret to say that it seems that the business managers of the House share my view of the Bill. I can think of no other reason for the way that it has been treated, and indeed the way that those noble Members who have taken an intense interest in it have been treated, in the course of its process. When I first went to the other place I complained that Scottish legislation was usually done after everyone else had gone home to bed. It seems as though that procedure is now being copied in this House.
However, we can redeem the situation by getting one issue up and live in the debate. There are no two ways about it: what has happened with tuition fees for students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland is so unfair as to shame all of us Scots who have benefited from a Scottish education. Perhaps it needs those of us who have a clear and distinct Scottish accent to say so.
I have not been lobbied by vice-chancellors. That could be because I was a Scottish Education Minister, and maybe they are feart. However, even if I had been I would still take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that it is important to seize an opportunity now to resolve this matter. There is a sound educational argument for ensuring that we continue to have the maximum number possible of English, Welsh and Northern Irish students in our universities. One of the secrets of a good Scottish education is the nature of the diversity of the experience. That is being denied.
I will make one other point briefly, because I am conscious of the time. Rich English students can continue to come to Scottish universities, either because their parents can afford to pay the fees or because they own an island or a hunting estate or a lovely Georgian house in Edinburgh and so can easily establish residency. Someone who, like me, is a bus driver’s daughter, frankly has no chance whatever.
I will make an appeal to the noble and learned Lord, whom I do not blame for one minute for the difficulties that have been encountered in passing this Bill—if ever there was a Minister who ended up with the short straw, it is the noble and learned Lord. I appeal to him to take this back, having listened to the representations made tonight and in other places, and seek a resolution to this manifest unfairness that—I repeat—shames Scotland.
Lord Vallance of Tummel
My Lords, I declare an interest as the chairman of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, which as a higher education institution would be directly affected by the amendment if it were agreed. I will not take up much of your Lordships’ time, but I feel that I should draw attention to the chaotic practical consequences that the amendment would have on the Scottish universities and other higher education institutions, which have been levying modest fixed fees on students resident elsewhere in the UK, without controversy, since 2001, in part to manage the flow of students into Scotland.
The decision made here in London to introduce market-based, variable fees up to £9,000 per annum in English, Welsh and Northern Irish universities, changed the game radically. It demanded a response if there were not to be a veritable tsunami of applications from students south of the border for far less expensive places at Scottish universities, with clear consequences for potential students resident in Scotland, and for funding by the Scottish Government. That Government’s decision, on which I pass no judgment one way or the other, was to withdraw funding for students resident elsewhere in the UK, and to allow the Scottish universities to apply the same market-based, variable-fee regime for such students as they would have enjoyed, if that is the right word, had they stayed at home.
Some, including Universities Scotland—the representative body for all the higher education institutions—would say that that was entirely reasonable in a UK context. However, it is also anomalous, particularly as regards the rest of the European Union. However, anomalies of one kind or another are almost inevitable in areas where competence has been devolved to Scotland. Various practical problems stemming from the legitimate pursuit of widely different policies on either side of the border will have to be addressed. In the case of higher education, the EU requirement to give preferential treatment to students resident elsewhere in Europe, as against those from other foreign countries, simply compounds the anomaly.
The substantive issue is how best to deal with such anomalies. The amendment, although on the face of it eminently reasonable in seeking to give European Union benchmarks pride of place, would not only unnecessarily and indefinitely constrain the scope for manoeuvre here in the United Kingdom but would create a major and immediate practical problem for Scottish Universities, for the simple reason that the new fee regime has already been implemented, as we have already learnt.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Surely Amendment 59 deals with the problem that the noble Lord outlined.
Lord Vallance of Tummel
I am coming to that. For the next academic year and for the years beyond, places have already been offered to and readily accepted by students who are resident south of the border. Bursary and scholarship arrangements have been substantially modified to help them. Indeed, the financial basis and plans of Scottish universities for the years ahead are dependent on those arrangements, which, as of today, are quite legitimate under the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998. I appreciate the willingness of my noble friend Lord Forsyth to delay implementation, but the question is for how long. A year is simply not long enough.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
If the Scottish Government had their way and Scotland became independent, they would have to do this anyway. Given that we are going to have a referendum on independence, does the noble Lord not accept that the uncertainty arises from the Scottish Government’s own policy?
Lord Vallance of Tummel
I share entirely my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s willingness and desire to keep the United Kingdom united. We should not discuss here the circumstances of a hypothesis in which we are no longer a United Kingdom.
To alter the provisions of the 1998 Act now would outlaw arrangements already in place and would throw into considerable disarray the Scottish universities’ administrative and financial arrangements not just for the next academic year but for succeeding years as well. I cannot imagine that this is an outcome that your Lordships would wish to endorse.
Rather than constraining ourselves through legislation that prays in aid European Union regulation, and in so doing simply shifts the locus of the problem within the UK, we should surely retain as much scope as we can to sort out United Kingdom issues in a UK context and to find practical measures between good neighbours for dealing with the problems thrown up by the inevitable anomalies that flow from devolution—as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, said.
I will paraphrase the remarks of the Abbess of Crewe in Muriel Spark’s novel of the same name. A problem you solve; an anomaly you live with.
Lord Morgan
I intervene very briefly, not as a member of the Labour Party but as a former vice-chancellor. The present situation is deeply harmful to the very concept of a university. Universities are founded on the ethic of equality, whereby all students should be treated the same. We have legislation to deal with some of the more harmful aspects of discrimination—with regard to racial matters, for example—but the current situation is a fundamental breach of that principle. The situation is harmful in two respects. There is a divisive principle at work, whereby students doing the same work in the same institution are not treated the same.
Lord Vallance of Tummel
Such divisiveness already occurs as regards international students. The only foreign students who are treated differently are other European Union students.
Lord Morgan
That was not my experience as vice-chancellor, and I reject that argument. The situation is divisive and is more extreme than in Wales. I regret what has happened there, but at least Welsh-origin students have to pay something. In a sense, they all suffer because there is top-slicing of the grant for higher education. In that sense, the situation in Scotland is more extreme than in Wales.
The other concern is that the Scottish situation works against one of the fundamental principles of universities, which is that they should not be politically instrumental or be the agents of political discrimination. That is precisely what is happening and it is not only at total variance with the spirit of universities in this country—including the great universities of Scotland that are the famous cradles of the democratic intellect—but hostile to the spirit and ethic of universities everywhere. It will get worse. University policy and finance is deeply fluid. The situation is not static. The unfairness will grow. There will be a growing gulf in claims on students of Scottish origin and those from elsewhere in the UK. For the sake of universities and for the sake of Scottish universities—the great institutions—we should not found our university higher education policy on these extremely bad and unfair principles.
Lord Wilson of Tillyorn
My Lords, I will speak briefly. I declare an interest as a chancellor of one of the Scottish universities. I seem to be one of the very few people who has not received a briefing from Universities UK, Universities Scotland or anyone else.
There is no doubt that Scottish universities benefit enormously from having students from outwith Scotland. Whether they are from the rest of the UK, Europe or the rest of the world, they are very beneficial. There is also no doubt that it is uncomfortable to have students from, say, Northern Ireland, sitting next to students from the Republic of Ireland who pay different fees. It is not a happy situation. However, the reality is that the financing of universities in Scotland is a matter devolved to the Scottish Government. I cannot believe, even though I hope for the day when the situation is evened out, that it is right or practical for your Lordships’ House to legislate to change the financial structure of Scottish universities. I hope that the situation will be resolved over time, but I cannot believe that it would be right for us to legislate, and I would feel obliged to vote against the amendment.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
We are not legislating to alter in any way the devolved responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament. All that we are doing is requiring it to treat people from the United Kingdom in the same way as those from Europe. The amendment does not refer to tuition fees or universities; it simply states that you cannot discriminate against students within the United Kingdom but must treat them in the same way as you treat all other EU students. The amendment does not in any way unravel the devolution settlement.
Lord Wilson of Tillyorn
I understand what the noble Lord is saying, but the amendment would change the current way in which financial arrangements are made for Scottish universities.
Lord Selkirk of Douglas
My Lords, I wish to ask a question in the context of the amendment. I seem to remember that when the Scotland Act was passed, discrimination issues were reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament. That was certainly the case as far as the Equal Opportunities Commission was concerned and, in a sense, this is an extension of the commission’s argument. My question is as follows: why cannot provision for English students to be treated on the same basis as other European students be earmarked in the block grant? Most of us who follow history are aware that when a large number of Scots descended on Scotland after the Act of Union, discrimination was not unknown. That would have been condemned by Scottish parliamentarians at the time, and it is extremely difficult to justify an element of discrimination against students from elsewhere in the United Kingdom. I hope that the Government can come up with a solution.
There are two principles at stake. One is whether discrimination is wrong and the other is whether this should be treated solely as a devolution issue. It comes down to whether the principle of outlawing discrimination is one that comes under the United Kingdom Parliament and should be enforced throughout the United Kingdom, or whether it should be treated primarily as a devolution issue. It is very hard to justify the existence of discrimination against those who come from elsewhere in the United Kingdom. If discrimination is tolerated in one case, it will be tolerated in another case. As a Parliament, we should do everything within our power to prevent this anomaly continuing.
Lord Sewel
My Lords, perhaps because of my previous interest in Scottish higher education, I have been somewhat targeted by universities in Scotland. I must say, from the start, that I find myself in the difficult position of being in opposition to the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, who was my chancellor. I was targeted for making what have been called “unhelpful comments” in Committee. I quite like making unhelpful comments in Committee. Of all the representations that I have received, not one adequately addressed the EU anomaly. They were silent on that. They were, of course, concerned, institution by institution, with the need to protect their income but that is ultimately a matter for the Scottish Government, not for this Parliament. The Scottish Government could easily devise a funding formula that enabled English domiciled students to be supported at Scottish universities.
The other thing that I have found offensive—I use the word carefully, but I do use it—is the argument that if there is not this discrimination, Scottish universities will be swamped by English students. That has something akin to the ring of ethnic cleansing about it. I say that as someone who has, fortunately, had the great privilege of being educated in an English, a Welsh and a Scottish university. As my noble friend Lord Morgan said, anything that turns away from that great value just does not understand the nature of higher education as a universal good.
Let us come down to the grubbiness of it. When I was a Scottish Office Minister I was in charge of the first comprehensive spending review. As we developed the argument, I asked the simple question: what would happen if Scottish universities were funded out of the block grant on the basis of Scottish students? My officials turned to me and said: “Minister, we would at least have to close one Scottish medical school. The best card we have up our sleeve to defend the Barnett formula is that we educate English students out of the Scottish block”. Just think what the implications for higher education would be if that became the reality: much more than the problem of solving English students being properly financed to attend Scottish universities.
That is in the past. Issues like this can usually be reduced to very simple propositions. The simple proposition here is that what is intended is deeply and grossly unfair and nothing that I have read or heard persuades me otherwise.
Lord Stephen
None of this is simple. The Scottish Parliament came forward with some very practical and pragmatic solutions to try its very best to tackle this problem. Back in 2000, when we first looked at the problem, the big issue was how we treated Scots attending universities outside Scotland, because they, too, are prejudiced—in terms of some of the quite extreme language which has been used at times in this debate. For them, there is a system that is different from that for students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland when they choose to study at a university outside Scotland. I referred to the legal advice that we received that day when I said in the Scottish Parliament:
“We wished to treat all Scots the same, but a significant problem was drawn to our attention. Members have asked for the legal advice and I will try to be helpful on that point … Article 12 of the Treaty on European Union prohibits discrimination on the ground of nationality against nationals of other EU states. The imposition of fees on students who are students of other member states as a condition of access would amount to discrimination if the fees were not imposed on nationals of the host member state … We had to consider whether we, in Scotland, as part of the UK member state, could provide that Scots—who for this purpose would be regarded as UK nationals—did not pay tuition fees in the rest of the UK. Given the risks of challenge by other EU nationals and based on the best advice available, we produced the proposals that are before us today”.
In other words, if we had funded Scottish students to attend universities in England, Wales or Northern Ireland without payment of tuition fees, to put them on a level playing field with other students in Scotland, the Scottish Government could have been held liable to fund the tuition fees of all EU nationals from outside the rest of the UK who attended universities in the rest of the UK. This is a complex and difficult problem created, in many ways, by the EU legislation. “Change your lawyers”, I hear from the Bench in front in me, but we were given that advice by some very senior lawyers, one of whom is present on the Opposition Bench today—a noble and learned lawyer. We came up with what were called the Quigley principles—how many people remember them? It was all about creating some sort of level playing field. I am not going to get into the rather offensive language of ethnic cleansing or use the word “swamping”. We simply wanted to stop a surge in demand—a disruption of the system that currently allows over 20,000 students from the rest of the UK to study in Scotland. That is a significant number of students, it has been a pretty stable number of students and it has only stayed stable because we have managed to maintain a level playing field. We were given legal advice that this was the only legal way to do it—that quotas would not be acceptable.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Did the noble Lord think of looking at what happens in Ireland? Ireland has free tuition fees; students cross the border from Northern Ireland to attend Irish universities and are treated in exactly the same way. What is the difficulty with replicating exactly that with Scotland?
Lord Stephen
I can only repeat that we were given very clear legal advice that that would not be possible. As I understand it, that was the best legal advice of the UK Civil Service. If that advice has changed, I am sure that Ministers in both London and Scotland would be interested to receive it.
Baroness Brinton
Perhaps I may assist my noble friend by reminding the Chamber that the EU advice is about a member state. Under the definition of a member state, Eire, Ireland, is one state; Northern Ireland is different. That is why the rules are different.
Lord Stephen
Based on the legal advice we were given, we had to come forward with a pragmatic solution. That was to increase the fees to students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland but not above what students were paying to attend their own universities. It was to maintain the principle of equality among those students, if you like to look upon it that way. That is a very different situation from that which has been described this evening.
It all started in 2000 and was introduced in 2001. When fees went up due to the decision of the then Government in 2006, we had to introduce a different system. My colleague at the time, the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, and I were First Minister and Deputy First Minister respectively. There was pretty much cross-party consensus that that was the right thing to do. English, Welsh and Northern Ireland students pay their fees personally, normally through the Student Loans Company or through local authority funding arrangements. However, an important point that has not been mentioned this evening is that payment for tuition in Scotland has, until now, been topped up by the Scottish Government to the tune of about £5,000 per annum for each and every English, Welsh and Northern Ireland student attending university in Scotland.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
The noble Lord assures us that there was interparty discussion within Scotland about these things. Was there any intergovernmental discussion and, if not, why not? I fear that that is what is lacking at the moment.
Lord Stephen
I agree with the noble Lord. The answer is that there was not enough intergovernmental discussion because the UK Government were entirely hostile to the notion that tuition fees should be removed for Scottish students. Their hostility was made known to us on more than one occasion. They were unhappy with what was proposed in Scotland.
Scottish students had their fees paid by the Student Awards Agency for Scotland and then, separately, the £5,000 payment from the funding council was given for their tuition. In other words, until now, English, Welsh and Northern Ireland students were part of the cap as well as Scottish students. It is important to make that point.
We introduced that pragmatic solution to a potentially major problem, which could have scuppered the proposal to get rid of tuition fees in Scotland. I have to say that many of my colleagues in the Labour Party, my friends whom I worked with in coalition, subsequently said that it was one of their proudest boasts, their proudest achievements through the Scottish Parliament to get rid of tuition fees in Scotland. It was certainly one of mine. As I said, back in 2000, we were disappointed with the legal advice that we were given at the time and wished that it were different. If it can be changed, let us change it.
The bigger question, in my view, is the one mooted by more than one noble Lord this evening: if Scotland were to be independent, how would the Scottish Government tackle the legal situation? It would be difficult to understand how they could legally respond to the challenges I have described. Free tuition would then have to be offered to all EU students, including those from Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the rest of Europe. We have not heard a response from the SNP on that issue.
The situation now is that English, Welsh and Northern Ireland students are being moved outside the cap. That is another important point. The funding from students will now be sufficient to remove the need for a contribution from the funding council. Why is that? Self-evidently, because fees in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have been allowed to increase so much. There will now be the £9,000 per year limit, so English, Welsh and Northern Ireland students will be in the same position as international students, who have always been discriminated against—if that is the language we wish to use. They will be put in the same position as international students, but with a cap of £9,000 per year.
In my view, the preferred solution would be to remove tuition fees across the whole of the UK. That would work equally well in tackling the problem— removing it, to use a political phrase, at a stroke. The policy was never to fund all EU students. That is not what we wished to do; that was what the legal advice drove us to do.
Lord Sewel
The noble Lord has given us a detailed exposition of the funding difficulties. Perhaps he could carry that a little further in terms of what he thinks the effect on the Barnett formula would be if the Scottish Funding Council funded only Scottish-domiciled students.
Lord Stephen
As I understand it, there would be no effect on the Barnett formula, so the £85 million per year currently spent on the English, Welsh and Northern Ireland students to attend universities in Scotland would become available to the Scottish Government as those funding arrangements changed. The noble Lord, Lord Sewel, looks incredulous at that, but that is my understanding.
To finish, different policies for different parts of the UK so that different people, including students, can be treated differently sounds to me pretty much what decentralising power, devolution, is all about. It is surely the responsibility of those elected to the Scottish Parliament to introduce new ideas and new policies. What we found deeply uncomfortable was the notion that you could discriminate within a member state but not between member states. That seems nonsense, but I know of no other way to tackle it based on the legal advice and the pragmatic solution that we have chosen. Let us be honest, this is hardly a burning issue of major importance in the reaction of students and families across the UK, because we still have ready access through our pragmatic solutions for English, Welsh and Northern Ireland students to universities in Scotland and we continue to have Scots attending universities outside Scotland.
Lord Flight
Does the noble Lord agree that among those English students who are at Scottish universities and who are having to borrow money and build up their loans, there is quite a degree of resentment that their Scottish friends do not have that burden? To argue that this has no impact is candidly wrong.
Lord Stephen
I would argue very strongly that the difference is based on the different policy approaches that the UK Government and the Scottish Government have introduced to the funding of students and tuition fees. I repeat: I do not see that an English, Welsh or Northern Ireland student studying in Scotland is in a different position from that same student studying in their home country. To that extent, they are treated broadly equally.
I would much prefer that we had no tuition fees in universities across the UK, but, in conclusion, I am very pleased that there continue to be no tuition fees for Scottish students in Scotland.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
There seems to be a new Scottish excuse running around. It seems to affect Rangers Football Club, the Scottish Football Association and the noble Lord, Lord Stephen: “That was the legal advice we got and it seemed all right at the time”. We as Scots have enjoyed a degree of financial support for a variety of reasons through the Barnett formula from the whole of the United Kingdom. It can be argued that from some of the nations of the United Kingdom there has been a degree of grudging of those payments, but the grudging might well have been set alongside the gratitude for having opportunities to benefit from Scottish institutions—in the case of this evening’s debate, not art galleries, such as the superb ones we now enjoy in Edinburgh and Glasgow, but the universities, which are just as important a part of our social and cultural heritage in the United Kingdom as a whole.
It must be recognised that we are talking here about something that is fundamental to the unity of the United Kingdom. There is access to institutions of higher education on the basis that it is available to all—although financially no longer free, which is an argument for another day. However, three sections of the United Kingdom are being discriminated against, yet the taxpayers within those parts of the United Kingdom are contributing to these institutions.
We have been told this evening of a tsunami of English students coming to Scottish universities—the word “tsunami” sometimes slips far too easily off the tongue; sometimes you forget that it has a “t” at the beginning—but that is probably unlikely. However, we might have a slightly different social composition of the youngsters who would be coming up to Scotland. This is because of the fact that they have to pay fees and that they have to pay what are almost the equivalent of London rental prices for student accommodation in a city such as Edinburgh, where there is tremendous pressure. In addition, as has been suggested, some parents are able to achieve Scottish domiciliary status by a bit of shrewd property investment, which, by the end of the four years their kids have been at the university, will more than repay them for the outlays that they made four years previously.
There is a degree of naivety here. We know that Scottish universities will have to face financial problems. Some of us might have known more about this had we been sent briefing notes, but, perhaps because of some of the speeches that we made in Committee, we were regarded as lost causes and it was decided that we were therefore not to benefit from them. We know that there are financial costs, but these are problems that, were there to be Scottish independence, which I do not want, would have to be confronted the first moment that the union jack came down and whatever it would be for Scotland—whether the lion rampant or the saltire—went up. Of course, this is why the silence from Salmond is so deafening, because he knows that this is the kind of issue that will have to be dealt with. What is more, our great Scottish institutions, which would suffer financially, are suffering already because of the manner in which the funding arrangements have been arrived at. We know that they are not getting the resources that they require.
If this were just a question of finance, resource and discrimination, we could have debates about that, but there is an irony here. Not every youngster who is Scottish and pursuing a degree-level course gets free education. If a youngster attends a further education college and is doing a level 5 or 6 technical qualification, which is to all intents and purposes equivalent to a degree, they have to pay their fees. Their fees are not paid from the largesse of the Scottish Government. There is no social justice to people having to pay to pursue vocational courses that, as some would argue, are even more valuable for the lifeblood of the Scottish economy than perhaps some other courses that are rather more interesting but not necessarily more economically relevant in the immediate short term.
I make that point because there is an inconsistency here—inconsistencies have been identified in a number of categories this evening. We may simply accept the argument that this is an example of gross discrimination, which is basically unfair and which is unsettling for the United Kingdom, and that it would be in everyone’s interests to look towards a renegotiation of the settlement. We are not arguing that universities be bankrupted overnight. We are not suggesting that they be swamped with students coming northward—students who, from what we can gather, would be coming not in buses but in their own sports cars and the like. All we are saying is that we have an opportunity this evening to confront an issue that threatens the unity of this kingdom. It requires us to look afresh and to use far more ingenuity rather than bureaucratic complaints or concerns about legal advice that may or may not have been appropriate at the time. We now have to recognise that within a different political context we need to have a degree of agility that involves negotiation and understanding on both sides. This amendment this evening would go no small way towards trying to achieve that.
Lord Empey
My Lords, in many respects it is a pity that the legislation to which this amendment applies this evening is not a UK-wide piece of legislation, because that, quite frankly, is the only way that we will fix this. We are suffering from the fact that we forwent some time ago a unitary state with a central Government. I have to declare that I was responsible for, among other things, further and higher education for three and a half years until 18 months ago and was therefore very much aware of these issues. The Scottish Government and Parliament, in their wisdom, decided to have free tuition fees. In Northern Ireland, we had the same rate as applied in England. However, the new Assembly has decided to depart from that parity arrangement and now students coming to Northern Ireland from England and other parts of the United Kingdom will pay the higher fee. I regret that; had I remained in post it would not have been my intention to have kept that arrangement, but nevertheless that is where it is. I understand that there are similar arrangements in Wales, whereby the Welsh, too, have frozen their fee or have a lower fee than would be applicable in England.
For me, the issue concerning devolution is this. We already see anomalies. Prescription charges are one, higher education is another and of course there are others, and there will be more. However, what sticks in the craw in this case is the fact that somebody from Bratislava can come in but somebody from Scunthorpe cannot—or at least they cannot get the same treatment. I have no difficulty with devolved regions being entitled to pursue their own policies when Whitehall and this Parliament give them the authority to spend their block grant as they see fit within the law. I speak as someone who for many years had that opportunity and spent money in different departments, and I am sure that many statues of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, will be erected in towns and villages all over the place. The Barnett formula worked; we were permitted to spend the money and that was the whole point of devolution. However, the issue for me is the severe difficulty faced by 25 per cent of our students who have to leave Northern Ireland because there are no places for them. We have sent thousands of students to Scotland. In fact, at the peak the number of students involved was effectively sufficient to keep a university going. Therefore, this is something that we feel acutely.
In Northern Ireland I implemented the MaSN—maximum annual student number—cap as a way of controlling higher education expenditure. We set a limit on the number of students that our budget would allow us to support, and that MaSN cap would be altered from to time if we were able to find more money. We did that on several occasions to raise the number of students whom we could accommodate.
This Bill is not the vehicle to resolve this problem but it does perhaps provide us with an opportunity to send a signal. When he replies, I should like the Minister to say whether he is going to consult his ministerial colleagues in government to establish whether they will be able to deal with this discrimination in the United Kingdom. It is very hard to cope with the fact that somebody from Dublin goes to a university within the United Kingdom and is treated in one way but somebody from Belfast going to the same university is treated differently. That is the issue for me.
I fully support the right of a devolved Administration in Edinburgh to choose its higher education policy. I did it, so I cannot deny the opportunity to others. However, the question is how we deal with this conundrum. The noble Lord, Lord Stephen, mentioned the legal advice that he was given, and I understand the rationale behind that. We had difficulties with students coming across the border for further education. We had to ensure that they did not pay higher fees than our indigenous students, so we experienced almost a reversal of this situation. It is perfectly proper for devolved regions to choose their policies in areas such as the payment of prescription fees—if that is how they spend their money, that is fine—but the question for me is whether it is right and proper to treat an EU citizen from England differently from an EU citizen from Scotland. That is the basic question, but it will not be entirely resolved by this amendment because it is a UK-wide issue.
Foreign students are a totally different ball game. They are cultivated because they can pay their fees, and all universities run after them to get the money and keep their coffers topped up, but the fact is that foreign students are not UK taxpayers. That is the big difference. They make no contribution whatever to the building up or long-term maintenance of our institutions, whereas UK taxpayers will continue to do so. Therefore, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, that I understand the difference of opinion that he has with the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, and he is probably right in many respects because there is a difference, but people accept it because foreign students do not contribute to our taxes. The Government need to deal with this matter at a UK level. I should be very interested to know whether the Minister is going to discuss it with his colleagues, what discussions they have had already and what long-term solutions he envisages.
Lord McFall of Alcluith
My Lords, as a predecessor of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, as Minister for Education in Northern Ireland, I was very aware of the number of Northern Ireland students who went to Scotland for their education and, indeed, stayed in Scotland or in the UK generally as a result. I was left with the lasting impression that education is a UK-wide initiative. In a globalised world where the transfer of wealth and economic power is going from west to east, we have to keep the integrity of the UK education system, but I fear that we are losing it with the current situation in Scotland.
The noble Lord, Lord Vallance, and Scottish universities have made the point about the stability of the system. In particular, cross-border student flow is given at 24,000 students from England applying to Scottish universities, which could cause chaos for 2013. That is a legitimate argument, but the main issue here is the actions of the Scottish Funding Council, which in a letter in December last year said that £27.8 million was going to be taken off Scottish universities. In the next four years, the sum will be more than £100 million. That is not a capricious act on the part of the Scottish Funding Council; it is because the Scottish Government have stated that that is the case. That will decrease the teaching grants as well as the quality of student experience at Scottish universities.
We are facing a crisis at the present time and it is appropriate for us to debate this. If we were only debating Amendment 1A, then I would not be supporting the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and others. However, we have Amendment 59, which is giving us a year’s grace. Frankly, the Scottish Government are having their cake and eating it. This amendment should be saying to them: “You cannot have your cake and eat it. If you want to provide quality education, then you have to be honest about it”. A dishonest conversation has taken place in Scotland and there is a narrow, introspective approach to education where there should be an inclusive, global approach. If we are making a plea for anything tonight, it is to be honest in our debate and ensure that we will look at the UK as a whole and keep the integrity of the UK education system, so that we have a more prosperous country with increased skills which can accept and face up to the challenges of globalisation in the years ahead. We should not run backwards, as, sadly, I think is happening in Scotland at the moment.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, in opening my contribution to this debate, I am tempted to repeat what other Members have said and express my frustration and disappointment that, once again in dealing with this Bill, we have been deprived of a substantial amount of the time that was planned for debating it. In the interest of time, however, I do not intend to go into that in too much detail, other than to say that the frustration that all noble Lords feel about this, and have repeated almost every day of the Bill’s deliberations, is exacerbated by the fact that it now appears that it was all unnecessary because we have managed to add a week to the Recess.
We understood that this was because time was limited and we would lose the Bill if we did not do certain things before certain dates. Managing that against the challenge of trying to find time for the Government to make their position clear about the way forward on a referendum for Scotland, and allowing that to feed into our deliberations, caused me to go along with some of that inconvenience. Now we discover that it was all unnecessary because we can add a week to our Recess. Much of this could have been done on the other side of the Recess. I say that with deep regret. I excuse, once again, the noble and learned Lord from any responsibility for this because I suspect that it came as much of a surprise to him as it did to the rest of us that we could have an extra week’s Recess and that this week was not precious and necessary for the conclusion of the Government’s business. The reason for that is that the decision about the Recess dates is entirely within the gift of the Government and was not, and cannot be, discussed in the usual channels. I deeply regret that we are in this position because it appears it was all unnecessary.
I turn to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. We had the advantage of debating at length a similar amendment on the second day in Committee. I intend, by reference to that debate, to shorten my remarks. I support devolution. I even support the asymmetric devolution we have in the United Kingdom; I am not a federalist in that sense. Devolution is an incomplete process and it is for the people of the regions of England to decide when they are ready for it. There is quite significant devolution across these islands, including substantial devolution to those who run this great city of London. Of course, one of the consequences of devolution is that there will be different policies and different consequences as a result of those policies across the United Kingdom. If that makes people feel uncomfortable, they should not support devolution. However, those of us who support it are prepared to live with that.
When we debated this last time we established that, with the possible exception of rights of audience for the legal profession, there is only one example of the practice of discrimination as a consequence of separate policies, and that is the issue which is concentrating our minds today. The practice of discrimination appears to apply only to the funding of higher education student fees. It is for that reason that this is such a significant issue and why it has attracted the interest of the House. The need for a resolution to it appears to have captured the imagination of noble Lords. In Committee we had the benefit of a contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, which he has augmented today. Also, the Minister set out in detail the history of how differential fees came about and how long they have been in existence.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
That is the point: it has got worse. It has got worse now after 11 years and the answer appears to be that we will impose a solution by amending the Scotland Bill because we have the Scotland Bill before us. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, shakes his head. I am sure that is not what he intends but that is what we are doing. From what I can gather having listened carefully to what noble Lords have contributed, those who were involved in decision-making and those who have been party to the process, we are doing this without any attempt to try to get what a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and others, have called for, which is a discussion across the United Kingdom to see if we can resolve this issue. Everyone’s briefing appears to be that we have been put into this position because of the activities of others and these are the consequences.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
The noble Lord, Lord Stephen, made an important point in his speech which I do not think is appreciated. We have been using the term fees but there are two issues here: one is fees and the other is the teaching grant. The fees have been of the order of £1,800 per head; the teaching grant has been £5,800. I understand the noble Lord’s problem in that he feels that his colleagues may have played a part, but when the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, and his Labour colleagues decided on this, the issue was the fees of £1,800. The £5,800 per place taken by rest of UK students has been paid every year up until now. It is only next year that that money is being taken away. That is the £28 million that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, is discussing.
The Scottish Government have changed the position and the numbers are very much larger. They have used opportunistically the position where students are going to have to pay high fees in England to turn the rest of the UK students into a cash cow for the universities. That is where the change has occurred and why my noble friend Lord Steel says it has got much worse.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I appreciate that it has got much worse but the catalyst was a similar action by the coalition Government in that in England they transferred the burden from the public purse to the student. It was a similar action. This is not the place to debate whether student fees in a particular place are right. In the context of devolution, the debate is about whether it is appropriate for your Lordships’ House to impose on the Scottish Parliament an obligation, or a restriction, on a power that they have been exercising in a particular way for the best part of 10 years, when no attempt has been made to have a serious cross-UK discussion about the situation to see whether it can be resolved.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I am not going to argue that ultimately this Parliament can decide anything it wishes in relation to any part of the United Kingdom. I certainly would not argue that because I respect devolution and was a great advocate for it. Could my noble friend deal with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk of Douglas, about discrimination. Discrimination is still a matter for the United Kingdom Parliament—it is a reserved area—and is it not overwhelmingly an issue of discrimination that has been raised today?
Lord Browne of Ladyton
I am happy to deal with that point, but I will deal with it directly by responding to my noble friend on this issue. My noble friend was a Member of the Scottish Parliament for four years, during all of which time the Executive of that Parliament had the differential fee. I am not aware of my noble friend at any stage during his time in that Parliament raising this issue as one of discrimination against students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland or suggesting that something should be done—where the power lay, and where it was created.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I shall answer my noble friend’s question and I hope that he will answer mine. It never came up specifically as an issue. My noble friend needs to take account of the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, that we are talking about an issue entirely different in scale. As the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan, said in relation to the National Gallery of Scotland—can you imagine that gallery saying, “Are you Scottish? You can come in free”. If the gallery had then asked an English person to pay £1, they might have said, “Okay, it’s only £1”. But imagine that they were asked for £10, £20 or £30—that is the kind of scale that we are talking about. It would be entirely wrong, and this is the same principle. It is discrimination.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
It is discrimination, but I do not think that a little discrimination is any better than a lot of discrimination. The fact of the matter is that there has been discrimination for 10 years, and we have established in this debate that no serious attempt has been made across the United Kingdom to deal with it.
I will deal directly with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk. There is an argument, and I am attracted by it, that we reserved to this Parliament the right to deal with issues of discrimination and that, as a matter of law, we can deal with it here. I am not learned enough in the law in this area to know whether that is so, but as a matter of law, in terms of devolution, we can deal with anything; we are the sovereign Parliament. We do not need to rely on the reserved area to claim our right to deal with it—we can deal with anything.
This is politics and we are doing this in the context of probably the greatest challenge that the union of the United Kingdom has faced in any of our lifetimes. Those of us who believe in this union are trying to manage a difficult political situation in which all of the parties represented in the Scottish Parliament have their DNA in this discrimination to some extent. I exclude the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, from that. We now decide in an entirely opportunistic way—encouraged, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, points out, by the nature and the scale of the discrimination—to deal with it by imposing these conditions.
And when do we do it? We do it at a time when a Government Minister can come to the Dispatch Box and say that they have just negotiated a legislative consent motion to deliver this Scotland Bill, which is the policy of all our parties after weeks if not months of negotiation. We are just at the point where we can do something that can ensure that all the negotiations and discussions are wasted. We are back to square one again, back into confrontation and back into giving those who lead the Scottish Government the script that they want: that the unelected House of Lords has told the people of Scotland what they can do. They will say, “They give us devolution with one hand and then take it away. They let us use it for 10 years and then, when we use it in a way that they don’t like, they take it away. That is exactly why we need to be independent of these people”. This is bad politics in my view.
There is a way forward. We should accept all of our responsibilities for the situation that has been created by the actions and the interactions of the Government at the UK level with the history that was left to the nationalists when they became the Scottish Government and the challenge that they faced in terms of university funding. We should sit down together and try to resolve the situation—not in the interests of whether we have the right to impose this but in the interests of the young people whom we want to live, work and be educated together for the benefit of the United Kingdom. That seems a much more sensible way of dealing with the situation, rather than trooping through the Lobbies tonight and making a point which will be to the detriment of the issue that most of us feel passionately about—the preservation of the union.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I wonder if my noble friend could explain why I got a text saying, “Whip off”.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My noble friend is an experienced Member of this House and has been a Member of other parliaments. I understand this position, and I think that he should understand the position, too. The Opposition Benches are voting against this amendment. He is not obliged to vote.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, once again, as we did in Committee, we have had a passionate debate. As I think the noble Lord, Lord Browne, said in his closing comments, it has been a debate where clearly there is a strong emotional sense that what happens at the moment is not right. I want to salute my noble friend Lord Forsyth for the tenacity with which he has pursued this issue. I indicated in Committee that I certainly would reflect on the strong views expressed then. As I said, my officials and I have engaged with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and indeed with Universities Scotland. These are discussions to see if we could identify some way to resolve this problem rather than just accept an anomaly that we must live with, as my noble friend Lord Vallance said.
Lord Gilbert
My Lords, I realise that it is normal to intervene towards the end of a Minister’s remarks, but I think on this occasion it is rather more helpful to intervene at the beginning. What I would like to know is: when are we going to have the dinner break?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I probably share the noble Lord’s feelings on this. For that reason, I think it is only right that I do proper justice to the many comments that have been made; but I will try to do so as concisely as possible so that we can proceed. I accept and I have heard again the strictures that have been made about the timing.
As was expressed very clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, today we are debating an issue caused by the fact that higher education is devolved across the United Kingdom.
This UK Parliament is responsible for higher education in England, in Scotland the Scottish Government are responsible, in Wales the Welsh Assembly has responsibility and in Northern Ireland the Northern Ireland Executive has responsibility. All four countries in the UK have chosen to fund higher education in different ways. Because of EU law, and my noble friends Lord Stephen and Lady Brinton have both explained the limitations of what is permitted under EU law, non-UK EU students in universities in the UK are entitled to the same financial support regarding tuition fees as local students. We recognise, and perhaps this is common ground, that our challenge is to ensure access to university education and to ensure the quality of that education.
A point that I should make at the beginning, and I will deal with this in a little more detail as I proceed, is that English students attending Scottish universities should be no worse off than English students attending English universities as a result of the present arrangements. The latest figures from UCAS at 21 February this year, compared with the same date a year earlier, show that as a proportion of the total number of applicants so far, prospective English students have not been put off from applying to Scottish universities. In both years, 5 per cent of the total population of applicants have applied to a Scottish university. That is a circumstance where the English students are aware that they would be no worse off if they choose to attend a university in Scotland than if they went to a university in another part of the UK.
I do not want to open this up into a wider debate on tuition fees but the noble Lord, Lord Browne, indicated that part of the Scottish Government’s response to the UK Government deciding that, to ensure the long-term sustainability of higher education, tuition fees were to be increased was that the Scottish Government had decided to fund undergraduate tuition fees for Scottish students and directly fund Scottish universities, which are therefore able to charge students from the rest of the UK up to £9,000 a year. This means that attending university in Scotland, as I have said, should be no more expensive per year for an English student than for an English student attending a university in England. Indeed, as university courses in Scotland are typically four years long, many Scottish universities have committed to charging students from the rest of the UK a maximum of £27,000 for a four-year course—the same as the maximum fee that students would pay for a three-year course in England.
The fee, however, is only one part of the equation of student finance. The universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews, which have not capped for a four-year course, have both committed to providing generous bursaries to students from the rest of the UK. Little has been said in today’s debates about that aspect of student finance. Edinburgh University is offering bursaries of up to £7,000 a year to the least well-off English students, which they can use either to reduce their fees or to help them with their living costs. St Andrews University will be topping up support for all English students who qualify for a maintenance grant so that they will receive no less than £7,500 a year in total government and bursary support.
That is why I do not recognise what the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, said about only the very rich paying up-front fees. It is not a question of up-front fees; for English students in England or Scotland, the loans that cover the fees do not start to be repaid until they are earning at least £21,000 a year.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
How many students are likely to benefit from these awards? The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, has already made the point about the generosity of the Edinburgh settlement, but what we have not heard today is how many students will be eligible to apply and therefore benefit from such a generous scheme, which I freely acknowledge it is.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I cannot give the full figures at the moment but the position is that all Scottish universities have announced their proposed fees for the rest of the United Kingdom, and the average per annum is £6,841. Work undertaken by Universities Scotland and accepted by NUS Scotland shows that this drops to an estimated £6,270 fee after means-tested bursary support is accounted for. In England, the average per-annum fee is £8,470, dropping to £7,815 when fee waivers, bursaries and student support are taken into account. Over the totality, the average in Scotland is certainly less. Universities Scotland has indicated that the average fee paid by students in receipt of means-tested bursaries—an estimated 4,281 students based on current populations—would be £4,262. Many will pay significantly less than this, with around 25 per cent of all English students studying in Scotland expected to benefit. That is an indication of the average. When one takes bursaries and fee waivers into account for English students studying in Scotland, it would be less than would be the case for English students studying in England.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
I am grateful to the Minister for the breadth of his answer. But he did not actually answer the question I wanted: the number of students. It is 25 per cent of how many? I realise that it is a considerable improvement and a generous offer, but we still need to know what the numbers are. We know that three times as many students coming to Scotland will not be getting any of these generous endowments, but the other 75 per cent do not need them.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I am afraid that I do not have the figures for each university institution. One does not really know until the applications are in and turned into acceptances. However, I hope that I have indicated that the average will be less in Scotland, taking into account bursaries. It is also important to point out that the United Kingdom Government provide support to English students. Some may say that it is more generous than the support provided to Scottish students by the Scottish Government in terms of living support. In that situation, English students are entitled to a loan for the full cost of their tuition fees, regardless of where in the United Kingdom they study. This loan is not repayable until students have left university and are earning over £21,000, and even then, at only 9 per cent of earnings over £21,000.
To help with living costs, English students are also entitled to a maintenance loan of up to £5,500 and a grant of up to £3,250. All students are entitled to a loan of at least £3,575 regardless of their household income; and English students will receive a larger amount of maintenance grant compared to Scottish students with the same household income. So if one accepts my noble friend’s amendment in terms of fees, the concern would be that you can equalise fees, but would still have a considerable disparity in student finance and funding. That is because of the more generous arrangements that the United Kingdom Government have made for English students as compared with the arrangements the Scottish Government have made for Scottish students.
My noble friend Lord Forsyth said that students from England would be burdened by substantial debts because they came to a Scottish university. However, the truth is that they would have no greater debt—and arguably a lesser debt—coming to a Scottish university than they would if they went to one in England. That is a relevant point. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, acknowledged the fact that bursaries had been made available.
We have tried to look at the possible outcomes of my noble friend’s amendment and we have identified three. First, Scottish universities could begin charging tuition fees to European Union students. We believe that this would be a breach of European Union law and could place the United Kingdom, as a member state, in danger of infraction proceedings. Secondly, Scottish universities could charge Scottish students and therefore also EU students, tuition fees. Thirdly, Scottish universities could stop charging tuition fees to students from the rest of the United Kingdom.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My noble friend has indicated which one of the three he favours. I do not think that anyone has actually suggested that we breach European Union law, although the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said that at the heart of that is where the problem lies. If one accepts a devolution settlement across the United Kingdom, it will produce different outcomes in different places.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Is the noble and learned Lord aware that there is no way, under European treaties, that a country can be forced to pay a European Union fine?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I am not going to embark on a lengthy debate on the pros and cons of the European Union. As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said—as did many noble Lords who have contributed to this debate—the problem is that if a student comes from Scunthorpe they are charged a fee; if they come from Bratislava they are not. I am certainly prepared to look at whether that European Union problem can be addressed, but I do not to wish to raise any expectation or hope that it can be. It is a piece of legislation that is very firmly in the European Union rules and directives. The Scottish Government have indicated they want to examine it and I am sure we would be prepared to examine it along with them, but I say that without offering a hope that it is likely to be changed.
My noble friend clearly indicated that his preference would be for Scottish universities not to charge students from any part of the United Kingdom. It is our view that that would not be financially sustainable. My noble friend suggested that it would be £24 million in the first year, but of course as one year succeeded another that would be a cumulative amount. The United Kingdom Government have come to the decision that in order to guarantee the long-term financial stability of universities, it is necessary to require students to make a greater contribution to the cost of their higher education. It would be unreasonable and unrealistic to expect the Scottish Government to fund free higher education for students from all parts of the United Kingdom, and in the long term it would be damaging to Scottish universities and their ability to compete with other universities in the UK and worldwide, which potentially have much greater financial resources available to them.
Lord Empey
As I said earlier, the issue for me is not the minutiae of the individual operation of devolution in each region—even though we are on the Scotland Bill and the amendment specifically applies to Scotland—it is that there is a difference in treatment between a non-UK EU citizen and a UK EU citizen. Will the Minister give the House an undertaking that he will speak to his ministerial colleagues and perhaps come back to us at a later stage? The issue of how many bursaries we are getting and so on is missing the point. We are not here to examine the entrails of higher education funding in the regions; we are trying to deal with the feeling in the House that we do not like this idea of UK students being treated in this way as opposed to EU students, when UK students are UK students. That is the issue.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I hope that I represented what the noble Lord said, that that is the point, and that is why there is such concern. It is a point that my noble friend Lord Stephen made with regard to the strong misgivings that the Scottish Executive had back in 2000 in having to go down this course. It had to acknowledge that if we went down this course of free tuition fees for Scottish-domiciled students attending Scottish universities, the consequence would be that students from European Union countries attending Scottish universities would have to be treated on the same basis. In Committee, I said that I was then a Member of the Scottish Government and that although it was not something we particularly wanted to do, it was a consequence that we had to accept, however reluctantly, if we wished to bring in a policy of free tuition for Scottish-domiciled students.
I indicated that I am more than willing to look at whether there is a way of resolving this at a European Union level but I do not wish to mislead the noble Lord or the House into believing that there is a realistic prospect of that happening, certainly before Third Reading. It is something that is so deep within the relevant directive that it would be a significant mountain to climb—although I know my noble friend Lord Forsyth is quite good at climbing significant mountains.
Lord Empey
I was not expecting to resolve it at an EU level. I am asking whether we can try to resolve it at a UK level. It is in the UK that this differential has arisen.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I apologise if I misunderstood the point. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, also made the point about some sort of pan-UK discussion on this. I will ensure that that proposal is taken up by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. We will certainly relay it to the department, which will undoubtedly be in contact on an official level on a number of issues with those who deal with higher education in the devolved Administrations. Again, however, I should flag up the scale of the challenge of making progress if there is even one Administration who want free tuition and say that they will not change that until the rocks “melt with the sun”—I think that that was the quote. It is a reasonable request that that pan-UK discussion should take place.
Lord Wills
My Lords, as an Englishman, I was not going to contribute to this debate. However, having listened to it all, and listened to the Minister’s response, I wonder if he could give the House an indication of whether he understands the damage that this situation is doing to the union. Does he understand that that is perhaps the most fundamental challenge at stake here?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I understand that there is a serious issue here. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, indicated, if we end up telling the Scottish Parliament what to do—my noble friend Lord Forsyth says that that is not what his amendment says but I think that, de facto, that is what it would lead to—that would be a serious position for the union, and it would undermine the whole devolution settlement. That is why I find this a difficult issue.
I think that my noble friend has, as the noble Lord said, totally underestimated the number of students who would seek to apply to Scottish universities. It only stands to reason that if you can get free tuition at the St Andrews university but would have to pay £9,000 at Durham, you are more likely to apply to St Andrews. The notion of quotas has never been particularly welcomed.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
I wonder whether the Minister remembers when this argument was last put forward. On that occasion we were, perhaps unusually, on opposite sides of the argument. I was recommending a form of care for the elderly, wrongly categorised as free, and one of the counterarguments was that there would be a—they did not use the word then—tsunami of pensioners crossing the border to Scotland. I think that it would have been more of a steady trickle which grew. It did not happen, although it was claimed that it would.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, it is too easy to dismiss the possibility of it happening. It is probably much easier for a student to choose which university he or she would wish to attend than for a pensioner completely to up sticks and settle in a different part of the United Kingdom. I think, with respect, that the noble Lord is not comparing like with like. However, I do recall that when tuition fees were first significantly increased by the then United Kingdom Government, around 2003 or 2004, the then Scottish Government had to respond to it. There were very clear signs that if the Scottish Parliament did not respond to it—and my noble friend Lord Stephen has indicated that it happened again in 2006—there would be an increase.
I should like to make it clear to the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, that I strongly believe that part of the richness of university education—one of its great pluses—is that it includes people from all different backgrounds. Universities in Scotland would certainly take the view that it is important that there should continue to be students not just from other parts of the United Kingdom but from other parts of the European Union and from around the world. That adds to the richness of a university education. They seek to achieve a manageable flow of students from the rest of the United Kingdom which would ensure the long-term stability of universities in Scotland.
Lord Sewel
I thank the Minister for giving way. I put it to him that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, has spoken for virtually the whole House in explaining the deep bitterness that people feel about the EU anomaly. In discussions with the First Minister, has the Minister or any of his colleagues pointed out to the First Minister that if he was successful in achieving his primary political policy objective, which is independence, then all these arguments would fall away? There would be the opportunity for English domiciled students to go to Scotland and there would be no way in which a Scottish Parliament would be able to impose a differential fee. Has the Minister pointed that out to the First Minister?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I have not pointed it out personally but, frankly, it is not the best argument for the case that the noble Lord has been prosecuting. He certainly does not wish to see an independent Scotland; neither does my noble friend Lord Forsyth or anyone who has spoken in this debate. The argument that this will all be the consequence of an independent Scotland is perhaps one argument for why we should resist an independent Scotland.
Lord Sewel
I just hoped that there was at least the glimmer and possibility of consistency.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I am not sure that I follow that. What about the consistency of Mr Salmond’s position? I have to answer for a number of things in your Lordships’ House but, fortunately, I do not have to answer for Mr Salmond.
I agree with the comment that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, has encapsulated what the problem is. There are differential solutions around the United Kingdom—Northern Ireland charges £9,000—so simply to adopt this amendment would not solve the problem across the country. I do not believe that the Bill is the right place to address this. I have indicated that we are prepared to look at the European Union dimension and that we are more than willing to engage with the different Administrations. I just do not want to suggest to your Lordships’ House that this matter can be resolved easily; it would be wrong to suggest that. Even if one does not accept the word “tsunami”, the consequences, which could include a complete disruption of the Scottish higher education system, are sufficiently uncertain for it not to be a risk that we can take. Even allowing for one year’s grace, the problems would still arise in subsequent years. Therefore, I urge my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I am most grateful to everyone who has spoken in a very interesting debate. Given the lateness of the hour, I am sure noble Lords do not want me to respond to all the points or to repeat any of the arguments. I am very impressed by the argument from the Labour Party’s Front Bench that if something has been going on for 10 years, you should keep it. That seems a very conservative point of view to me.
In all the arguments about the practicalities and difficulties, all of which can be addressed and overcome, the overriding issue here is one of fairness. Why did I table this amendment? I spent a week at St Andrews. I went there nearly 40 years ago and I have to say that the students now are much harder working and much more focused than they were in my day. They are absolutely outraged by what is happening to them. Those students have a much tougher time ahead of them than any of us in this House had when we left university. We owe it to them to address this problem.
I was not sure whether I would have to press this matter to a vote tonight. However, I have to say to my noble and learned friend that we debated this in Committee, when I urged him to raise it with the Prime Minister and his colleagues. Perhaps this was said in confidence and I should not repeat it, but one of his ministerial colleagues in the Scottish Office called me today to say, “How can we help you with the Scotland Bill?”. I said, “You can help me by accepting my amendment, or at least giving some commitment. What is your position on student fees?”. He said, “We’re waiting to see what the strength of opinion is”. On that basis, I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, I beg to move that further consideration on Report be now adjourned. In doing so, may I tell the House that we shall not be having the Statement and suggest that Report should begin again not earlier than 10.25 pm?
Lord Steel of Aikwood
My Lords, I would like to protest at what is being proposed. It is quite ridiculous that on a Bill of this importance we should be asked to come back. We now have the debate of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, which will take us to nearly 10.30 pm. It cannot seriously be proposed that we should continue from 10.30 pm until we get to Amendment 26, as it says on the Order Paper, from 10.30 pm. I gave notice that I was going to object when this Motion was moved. I gave notice several hours ago that we wanted to hear from the Government about what they proposed to do with the rest of Report.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, something has clearly gone wrong in the transmission because I was not aware that my noble friend was going to make that comment. I know that all those taking part in debate on the Scotland Bill consider it important, as does the rest of the House that may be listening to it. It is a usual channels agreement that the Bill will be concluded by the end of Wednesday evening. We discussed this earlier and that commitment remains. There will be a discussion later among the usual channels about what progress should be made tonight. I am aware that we have just taken two hours on one amendment. That was an amendment very dear to the hearts of those who took part in it, but the overall time allocated to Report was agreed and the intention is to keep to the agreement that Report should be concluded at the end of the Wednesday sitting. As I say, we will shortly be discussing in the usual channels what the last amendment to be considered tonight shall be.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, this Bill has been treated abominably at all stages. On one occasion all of us sat around all day—afternoon and evening—while the welfare Bill went on and on and on. We were led to believe by the government Chief Whip that the Scotland Bill would be taken that day. Then we were told summarily: “You can go, off you go”, as if it was of little concern that the Bill was being dealt with in such a way. It is outrageous. We were then told that we would have the day’s debate today. When did we start? Not until the evening, after a very substantial, albeit important, debate. I am not saying that the debates that took place earlier were not important—but so is the Scotland Bill. It is outrageous that we should be dealt with in such a way.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the noble Lord is good at perorations. I will simply keep to the facts. I had intended that the Scotland Bill should start today, as first business. The Opposition decided that they wished to have the other debates before it. The House therefore had those debates. I agree that the Scotland Bill was very much disaccommodated by this. It might be convenient if the House were able to listen to me. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, likes interventions, but I wish to conclude what I am saying, which is that it was very difficult on the first day for those waiting for the Scotland Bill because of the time taken by the Welfare Reform Bill. I object to the implication—the clear indication, in fact—that I cared nothing for the Scotland Bill that day. I did care, and we found another date for the Scotland Bill. It is the view of the usual channels that we should continue with this. If the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, wishes to say more he can, but it is a courtesy in this House to let one Member finish speaking before the next gets up.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
The government Chief Whip says that I like interventions. It was I who was speaking and she who intervened. This is the way that we have been treated all the way through the Bill. Over the weekend, I found out that we were going to have an extra week of recess. In that week we could have carried out proper consideration of the Bill. As was pointed out earlier, we did not have the proper time between Committee and Report. We are being treated abominably and it is absolutely disgraceful. The government Chief Whip should realise that it is not the Opposition's responsibility to programme business in this House; it is the Government’s responsibility and it is her responsibility, and she should take the blame as well as the credit.
Baroness Deech
My Lords, I suggest that the valuable time of the House would be better used by allowing me to have my dinner break debate and then using such time as is left at noble Lords’ discretion.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I certainly do not want to impose on the patience of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. I must say to my noble friend the Chief Whip that her treatment of Members of this House is becoming very difficult to defend. I watch noble Lords’ facial expressions. We were promised a full day on Report after Committee finished in the middle of last week. We had to struggle to table amendments. We were promised a full day today and a full day on Wednesday.
The next amendment, Amendment 2, is mine, which I am expected to speak to at 10.20 pm. If we are to get to Amendment 26, we will be here until the early hours of the morning. There is plenty of time on Wednesday to debate these matters, which are serious matters and deserve to be properly debated. It is true that we had a long debate on the previous set of amendments, but that was because many Members who had not been following our proceedings came in to speak because it affects their interests all over the United Kingdom. My noble friend is treating us very harshly indeed, and I do not believe that that is the best way to get the Government’s business on to the statute book.
Terezin Declaration: Holocaust Era Assets
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Deech
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to ensure that fellow signatories to the Terezin Declaration on Holocaust Era Assets fulfil the obligations of the Declaration in relation to the restitution of wrongfully seized property.
Baroness Deech
My Lords, I start with a quote from Bazyler:
“Holocaust restitution is not about money. It is about victims. It is about individuals who have waited for over 60 years for something. Of course, it is not about perfect justice, but it is about waiting for some recognition to validate the misdeeds that have been perpetrated. . . Holocaust restitution is not only about the victims. It is also about those who victimized. It is about satisfying the need for a moral accounting regarding the horrific events of the second world war and some of the communist depradations thereafter”.
The trauma of human loss was so great that no discussion of material loss occurred for decades after the war. Only the Germans made reparations for about 50 years from 1945, to their credit. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communist regimes, not only did walls fall, but doors were opened to memories, to archives, to litigation and legislation, to honest property titles supported by law, to negotiation and to the facing up to the unresolved issues of the past. There is unfinished business, and sadly those most affected, the survivors, are now in their 90s, and for decades have been frustrated in their relatively modest aims. I feel a personal responsibility for them and for those for whom it is too late, and I declare an interest as a descendant of those from whom property was taken, although I am uncertain about title and the possibilities of claim because I have no way to ascertain ownership and sale.
There has been a series of conferences on restitution, culminating in the conference that resulted in the Terezin declaration, the 2009 Prague conference on holocaust era assets. Adopted by 47 countries, including the UK, the declaration called for participating states to meet the social and medical needs of the half a million survivors, of whom half are on the poverty line; it called for the restitution of wrongful property seizures, forced sales and sales under duress in the Nazi period; it called for the identification and restitution of cultural property seized by the Nazis; and it called for open access to archival material, the preservation of memorials and for measures to combat anti-Semitism.
In 2010, there was a follow-up conference, which produced guidelines relating to best practice in property restitution, the most intractable problem. Solution would remove the cloud that hangs over the title to many properties in eastern Europe. The guidelines apply to communal and personal property and state that the compensation process should be accessible, simple, expeditious, avoid residency and other onerous requirements, and be of low cost. States should open their archives to assist in the proof of title, which should not be too onerous, while respecting the occupancy rights of those who are current residents in good faith. Poland, which attended the Terezin conference, did not sign up to the guidelines.
The achievements in this field, even before Terezin, are considerable. There have been settlements of the issues relating to dormant bank accounts in Switzerland, and to unclaimed insurance benefits. There have been payments to former slave labourers, and there has been some restoration of communal religious property. The Czech Government have established the European Shoah Legacy Institute in Prague to supervise follow-up.
Some countries which had formerly neglected the topic have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, legislation for the return of or compensation for stolen property—they are Turkey, Latvia, Hungary, and Lithuania. The UK, to its great credit, enacted the Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Act 2009, and the significant contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Janner, in taking this forward must be recognised. The checking of the provenance of artworks which might have changed hands in the Nazi period is now routine. The UK has also appointed the first envoy for post-Holocaust issues, the distinguished diplomat Sir Andrew Burns. In addition, the Wiener Library in London hosts, from 2011, the International Tracing Service, a digital record of 17.5 million people of the Holocaust. All those involved are deeply grateful to the UK for this move.
The Government of Israel were previously reluctant to get involved, and many of the survivors there felt that to accept any tainted money, as they saw it, was immoral. But they have now set up a database of half a million pieces of stolen property called Project Heart. The list was compiled from European archives, and the plan is to move to legal and public action to stimulate the co-operation of countries that have not done the right thing so far.
However, problems remain. Too many states only allow claims for property taken in too narrow a time band, require current citizenship, or place impossible evidentiary burdens on claimants, when of course they must know that those who were killed or fled did not preserve title deeds. The pursuit of legal action inside a foreign country is prohibitively difficult, and the European Court of Human Rights too slow.
The worst offender, however, is Poland. It remains the only major country in the former Soviet bloc and now in Europe that has no law providing for restitution or compensation for private property stolen during the Holocaust. Poland was home to 3.3 million Jews before the war, of whom 90 per cent were destroyed, leaving behind their homes. On 13 occasions there has been Polish draft legislation, the most recent abandoned this year. Restitution had been made a condition of Polish entry to the EU, but was dropped at the last minute due to the country’s economic conditions. However, Poland is now one of the few European countries to have avoided the recession, and had a 4.3 per cent growth in GDP last year. This year Poland also abrogated the mechanism to facilitate the return of communal property seized by Nazi and communist decrees, before the work was finished.
We call on the UK Government to persuade Poland to participate in the 2012 conference on this topic, to disregard communist nationalisation of property seized by the Nazis, to assist in the creation and operation of a restitution mechanism, and to support the USA in its approaches to Poland.
The model restitution programme is that of Austria, which in 1938 forced Jewish property sales and forced Jews out of the professions. In 2001 Austria established a General Settlement Fund to resolve all remaining issues. The Austrian Government set up a three-person claims committee to receive claims, using relaxed standards of proof—for example, the 1938 property records, witness statements and birth certificates. The Austrians put $210 million into the fund, with extra for insurance claims. Claimants no longer had to take legal action at their own cost. The committee dealt with 20,000 claims relating to 240,000 individuals before closing its work. This model should be promoted by the UK Government for all outstanding eastern European issues. Archives need to be opened and an office has to help the elderly claimants with their research. I trust that this will be the UK’s programme when it attends the conference this year.
Sharansky said that the Holocaust was not only genocide but the greatest theft in history. Justice is in sight if the UK will use its good offices to ensure the implementation of the Terezin declaration.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has so eloquently introduced this short debate on the restitution of property in claims arising from the Holocaust. The House will probably be aware that I have no direct interest in this matter, having neither Jewish faith nor heritage, but partly because of that position of disinterest I have involved myself over the years in a number of issues concerning anti-Semitism. Sadly, because of the diffuse nature of that discourse, one suspects that issues of that old evil tend to return, even in cases where, as the noble Baroness has reminded us, it is not simply Jewish property but other property that has been looted.
It could be argued that the wicked legacy of Nazism is not just the Holocaust, with the slaughter of 6 million Jews and other minorities who were not acceptable to the Hitler Government. It is of course never easy, and perhaps may not be tasteful, to put in the same frame crimes against people and crimes against property, but the Nazi era saw not jut mass slaughter but also mass confiscation. It is never possible to restore lives which have been lost or lives which have been spoiled for ever by the suffering that has been endured. However, it is possible to make some amends, however inadequate, for property which has been looted.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and as direct memories and survivors of the Holocaust have passed from the scene, we are beginning to take an interest, or renew and intensify our interest, in these property issues. We know now that there is looted property in many countries—whether documented or not and whether under the control of the official authorities or other communities—which could in principle still be restored to the families of those from whom it was taken, whether they are Jewish or gentile. It is our duty in the modern world, if we claim to be based on liberal and modern values, to discharge this commitment.
Of course, survivors may be poor and they and often their families of that generation are bound to be frail, but, frankly, there is not very much time for our courts and bureaucracies to make acts of restitution in accordance with, for example, the Council of Europe resolution which bears directly on this for all member states. The noble Baroness reminded the House that in 2009 Britain signed the Terezin declaration, which reflected this new interest, passion and sense of urgency in getting the matter dealt with. Britain has acted on it and so, too, have other states which are in one sense perhaps more intimately concerned with this matter. Austria, for example, has set a standard of good practice. Others, frankly, have been more dilatory. I joined the noble Baroness and others recently in making representations to the Polish ambassador. We had a constructive, but not wholly satisfactory, discussion. I believe that that country—which did, of course, attend the Terezin conference—needs to do more than simply rely on individuals pursuing their own cases through the courts, elderly as many of them are. In a country with, sadly, so many property claims—by no means all of them arising from Jewish backgrounds—they need to provide for the systematic availability of their archives and for an office to pursue collective claims and, if possible, bring them to a conclusion.
We, in turn, as co-signatories to the Terezin declaration, need to undertake our own obligations. This is a matter of closure; it is a matter by which we can at least slightly mitigate one of the most disastrous chapters in history.
Lord Wills
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on securing this debate on a subject that summons up the pain and tragedy endured by so many millions in Europe for so many years in the last century. The Terezin declaration by 46 European countries was an important step in healing wounds that remained from those terrible years. I speak as someone whose father lost close family in the Holocaust in Austria and in what was then Czechoslovakia. Nothing can undo the evil that was done, but restitution does at least recognise that evil was done. As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said, it is not so much the material recovery of property that matters as the recognition of—the bearing of witness to—the fact that such evil was done. Without it, it is difficult to see how there can be any closing of the books or any defining atonement.
Of course, the restitution of assets is not the only way for such recognition to take place. The German artist Gunter Demnig, for example, created the idea of Stolpersteine: small memorials positioned in places associated with victims of Nazism. There are now hundreds of them in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and other European countries commemorating not just Jewish victims but Romany, homosexual and Christian victims of the Nazis, and many others as well.
Notwithstanding that, the restitution of assets has a crucial part to play in this process—and not just for the victims of the Nazis. The people of central and eastern Europe suffered not only from their tyranny but also from that of the communists. This country has a special relationship with Poland, which lies at the centre of this debate tonight; 35,000 Polish service personnel fought gallantly alongside us in the Second World War. More recently, thousands of Polish men and women have come to work in our service and manufacturing industries, making a significant contribution to economic growth in this country. It is regrettable that Poland appears to be the only post-communist European nation without legislation on the restitution of assets stolen by the Nazis and expropriated by the communists.
I am sure that everyone in your Lordships’ House understands the suffering that Poland endured in the 20th century and how complex and difficult these issues are. Of course, we all recognise the economic problems with which Poland is struggling, along with every other country in Europe. However, when the Terezin declaration was made, all the signatories recognised such difficulties and other signatories have made progress with implementation despite experiencing problems similar to those in Poland. We must hope that Poland, too, can now finally make some real progress on this matter.
Her Majesty’s Government showed the importance that they attach to these issues when nearly two years ago they appointed Sir Andrew Burns as the first envoy for post-Holocaust issues. I would be grateful if the Minister could update the House on the work that Sir Andrew has been doing since then. I would also be grateful if the Minister could set out what steps Her Majesty’s Government are taking to encourage the implementation of the Terezin declaration by all signatories before the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two in 2015. I understand that the Minister, as he has on previous occasions when this subject has come up in your Lordships’ House, may well choose to withhold substantive comment until after the review conference on the declaration that is to be held later this year, but perhaps he could undertake now to report back to your Lordships’ House on the outcome of that conference and set out what further steps Her Majesty’s Government may think will then be necessary to ensure that all the signatories to the Terezin declaration implement its provisions by 2015.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, before my noble friend Lord Palmer rises to speak, since this is a self-regulating House and we may sometimes adopt different procedures, I can say that a great deal of understanding has broken out over the procedure to be adopted on the Scotland Bill. The usual channels have had a brief meeting and we have discussed these matters with the relevant Back-Benchers of both the Opposition and the Conservative Party who have a great interest in the amendments that they have tabled to the Bill. There is an understanding between the usual channels and interested Back-Bench Peers that we will conclude the whole of the Report stage of the Scotland Bill on Wednesday, and there is an agreement that that can be done without the need to return to the Bill tonight. This may be of assistance to noble Lords and to the staff of the House. I apologise to my noble friend Lord Palmer.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, I will not take that as an invitation to speak for longer than I had originally intended. I want to make the important point that the restitution of wrongfully seized property is in no way a recompense for imprisonment, loss of life or genocide. Like other noble Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for tabling this debate and for summarising all that has happened and what it is hoped will happen.
Poland is the only major European country that has no law for the restitution of private property stolen during the Holocaust. Poland was part of the Terezin conference, although it did not sign the declaration. Before the war, there were 3 million Jews in Poland and afterwards only 300,000 were left. My late mother was one of the lucky ones. She and her brother sought sanctuary in Britain, coming here between the two great wars. My mother married a Geordie and was saved by the welcome that she received in this country. However, her mother, my maternal grandmother, and my aunt were never heard of again after 1944. They were part of that tragedy.
The family had been bakers in the town of Szrensk, which is between Warsaw and Gdansk, and I imagine that assets of some sort would have been lost by my family. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I have no records whatever. To me, that is all ancient history. I along with many others have made my way in this country, which many people here sadly take for granted. I do not look for monetary restitution. In fact, when I look back at those wars, I think more of my late father’s British war service, attached to the Eighth Army, and of my uncle, who was killed while serving with the Middlesex Regiment. However, there are those who rightly believe that they need and are entitled to restitution. Many survivors and their offspring live in straitened circumstances.
There are approximately 90,000 surviving claimants to property in Poland. The majority are non-Jewish, as has been mentioned by my noble friend Lord Boswell and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. In some cases the confiscators were the Nazis, while in others they were the communists. Listening to other noble Lords, I thought that it might be useful to give one example. It is that of the Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski, who was on the run from the Gestapo. He was sheltered for months on a country estate owned by the Sawa family. Karski was eventually smuggled out of occupied Poland. Sadly, the Sawa family did not get out of the country and Karski later learnt that the entire family had been arrested by the Nazis, tortured and executed. The point of relevance to this debate is that the property of that non-Jewish family was added to the vast horde of loot stolen by the Nazis and never returned.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, mentioned, there are at least 13 occasions when Poland has drafted legislation and then stuck it back on the shelf. The European Parliament, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the US Senate and Congress have all called on Poland to resolve the claims. Now it must be our turn in the UK to urge the Polish Government to ease the onerous conditions imposed on potential claimants who have to go to law, to give them access to records, to allow them to set up a modest central fund to resolve claims for religious and communal property and, lastly, to participate in the 2012 conference on Holocaust-era assets.
Lord Gold
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for bringing forward this dinner break debate, although I would have preferred it if we had not been running to Spanish dinner times. The Terezin conference was the last of a series of conferences convened to consider the issue of restitution following seizure by Nazi Germany of so much property in Europe. Forty-three countries drafted non-binding guidelines relating to best practice in property restitution. These guidelines provided the basis for international, intergovernment negotiations. Governments were required to act swiftly to enact laws to create new restitution rules and regulations to assist claimants to retrieve property or obtain compensation.
In the case of heirless property where the family members had been wiped out, states were requested to create solutions for restitution and compensation. They were charged with creating special funds to promote welfare for needy survivors, as well as to create memorials and commemorations of the Holocaust. The guidelines promoted the idea that resolving issues of restitution and title to property is no longer the sole interest of any one signatory country. All signatory nations are called upon to create procedures for restitution and to consult with each other—effectively to move things along and solve problems.
And so we come to Poland. As noble Lords have heard this evening, Poland is the only post-communist European country without restitution or compensation legislation. Poland has had a go—indeed, several goes—at drafting legislation, but it has come to nothing. Poland’s latest attempt at passing a law was earlier this year, when it was proposed that all restitution claims would go through the Polish courts, where claimants would have to prove land ownership in property registries burned down during the Second World War, or to procure testimony from witnesses who were no longer alive. What is more, claimants had to put up a guarantee of 3 per cent of the property value being claimed, which would be forfeited in the event that the claim was rejected. Not surprisingly, the proposed law received much criticism, and so far nothing has been done.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, last year’s excuse was an economic one. The economic climate was not conducive, we were told, to a restitutionary law being enacted. Bearing in mind, as we have heard, that Poland’s economic growth exceeded 4 per cent, the excuse no longer hangs together. Where do we go from here? As I said, the Terezin declaration calls for countries to work together to secure restitution or compensation. As the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, said, a lot of pressure has been put on Europe by the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and the US Senate and Congress. Indeed, restitution was to have been a condition of Poland’s entry to the EU, but that went by the wayside. More must be done, and if all European countries and the USA were to join together and put pressure on Poland, I am sure that progress could be made.
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, in answer to the Question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on 5 December last year, said that the Government took,
“the issue of property restitution very seriously”,
and would,
“continue to remind Poland of its stated intention to reinstate a restitution Bill, currently stalled, when its economic situation allows”.—[Official Report, 5/12/11; col. 499.]
I venture to suggest that growth of 4.3 per cent—if only we had that here—allows for restitution. I would ask the Minister once again to remind Poland, this time a bit more loudly, of its duty. If he can encourage some of our friends on both sides of the Atlantic to join in this noble cause, perhaps at last we will make some progress.
On joining the EU, Poland signed the European Convention on Human Rights, which holds that:
“No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law”.
No such law applied when the Nazis seized this property, and it is time for Poland to recognise this. Poland has a moral obligation, and we would like to see it deliver on that morality.
Viscount Hanworth
The enormity of the Holocaust places it in a category of its own, and a recognition of this is embodied in the Terezin agreement. The stated objectives of the Terezin accord have been pursued by the signatories with varying degrees of alacrity. The signatory that has faced the greatest practical task in identifying the victims and their inheritors and in making consequential actions is Poland. It was acknowledged by Nigel Ross, the principal British delegate to the conference, that although Poland had to a large extent dealt with the matter of communal restitution, it had made no real progress in the matter of personal restitution. It is undeniable that there have also been acts of bad faith. There are now very few survivors who have had a direct experience of the Holocaust, so the issue here is the restitution of properties to inheritors of Holocaust victims. Surely the reason why so little has been forthcoming from the Poles in that respect is that they fear that by making such restitutions they will encourage a much greater number of claims from other parties. There was a considerable displacement of Germans from Poland at the end of the war and they and their descendants must surely be encouraged to make claims, if other claims were allowed.
There are many more recent cases to contend with that have arisen from the post-war communist period. In a fragile post-communist era, the Poles have preferred to let sleeping dogs lie, instead of addressing the abuses of the previous era. One such abuse has left an erstwhile dictator in control of a vast estate that was expropriated under his regime. I am reasonably familiar with Poland, and, in particular, with the city of Lodz, which I have visited on three occasions and to which I will return in May. The city was a textile manufacturing town that was built mainly in the 40 years from 1840 to 1880. During that period, it accumulated a mixed population of Poles, Germans, Russians and Jews. I first visited Lodz in the 1980s; in the Polish winter, it was a dank and grizzled place. No one thought of showing me its former splendours. The stucco of its architectural adornments had, in main, become unstuck. The city was undifferentiated in its misery and decay.
On my last visit, two years ago, I was astonished to see the city renewed. It had become self-conscious in its beauty. The huge textile manufacturing complex of Israel Posnansky, referred to simply as Manufaktura, has been restored to its former glory as a huge shopping centre and leisure complex. Its four-storey workshops have become hotels, museums and art galleries. The population of the city is becoming increasingly heterogeneous, comprising Poles, Germans, Baltic people and Russians. One former element that is missing is a Jewish population. The city is still derelict in some quarters, indeed it is increasingly so. One such area, which is adjacent to Manufaktura, once housed a predominantly Jewish population. The buildings are in decay because the rights to the properties are undecided. Perhaps if the intentions were fulfilled, the Terezin declaration would serve to establish the rights of ownership of the descendants of those who vacated these properties under duress. However, the properties have surely lost their value. Calculated at present values and diminished by at least two rounds of death duties, they would amount to a paltry inheritance.
I should hesitate to make recommendations regarding other people’s inheritance, but I do have a suggestion to offer. A statute of limitations should be negotiated, with certain strong provisos. It should be agreed that the titles to the properties in question should revert to the municipality. The provisos are that this should happen only if the municipality would undertake the restoration of the properties, and a prominent acknowledgement should be made of their provenance and of the generosity of those who have relinquished their entitlements.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for securing this evening’s debate. I have learnt much, and I have been touched by the personal stories that we have heard. In particular, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for her long-standing dedication to the cause of encouraging all nations to recognise their obligations to pay reparations for objects looted during one of the darkest periods of the world’s history.
Restitution is indeed about victims and the need for moral accounting. No matter how many times one hears the horrific statistics relating to the Holocaust, it is deeply shocking, and I trust that that sense of horror and shock will continue. As the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said, crimes against property cannot equate to crimes against humanity; but even inadequate amends for property that has been looted ensures, in part, that moral accounting. My noble friend Lord Wills spoke of the sense of healing and the bearing of witness that evil has been done.
During the Holocaust, property was stolen, homes were looted, valuables and paintings were pillaged, wedding rings were melted down and, as we know, even the gold teeth of Holocaust victims were removed and transformed into gold use. It has been estimated that by the end of the war the Germans had looted in the region of £550 million.
Like all noble Lords who have spoken, my party, when in government, fully supported Holocaust asset restitution, and we continue to see the issue of restitution as morally important as well as legally and culturally vital to honour. That is why, following the 1998 Washington conference on Holocaust-era assets and the endorsement of the Washington declaration on Nazi-confiscated art, the Labour Government established the Spoliation Advisory Panel. This small panel of experts makes an important contribution and reaches carefully considered conclusions to claims for restitution, and its work is rightly appreciated for being fair. The panel by no means always finds in favour of the claimants. Labour in government issued a consultation paper, Restitution of Objects Spoliated in the Nazi-Era, that concluded in favour of removing statutory restrictions on the return of assets. My Government facilitated legislation to enable the de-accession of cultural items from museums, and we signed the UK up to the Terezin declaration that we are discussing this evening.
From these Benches we endorse the Terezin principles and strongly encourage the Government to use diplomatic efforts to encourage other states to sign up to and honour what the declaration called for. As we have heard in today’s debate, there is particular concern that Poland has yet to become a signatory to Terezin. I believe that Poland has a moral duty to sign up to the declaration and to honour it. As we have heard, poor survivors of the genocide need and deserve restitution.
It is important that efforts to secure just and fair solutions regarding cultural property such as those outlined in the Terezin declaration are sustained. This evening’s debate will encourage the Government to keep up the pressure. My party favours a power of permission, not compulsion. We feel that there is a moral imperative behind restitution but acknowledge difficulties in forcing current trustees to return looted goods. In acknowledging the need for permissive legislation to facilitate restitution, my Government gave our full support to the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Bill, a Private Member’s Bill, in 2009; and, like the noble Baroness, I, too, pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Janner for what he did in securing that legislation. As a result of the legislation, the boards of trustees of the British Museum, the British Library, the Natural History Museum, the Tate galleries and many more may transfer an object from their collections if so advised.
The Terezin declaration goes further than calling for the restitution of cultural objects and wrongfully seized personal property. It calls for Holocaust education, remembrance and the preservation of memorials. We fought hard for multilateral support to educate, research and remember such a terrible event, and signed the Stockholm declaration in 2000. The first Holocaust Memorial Day took place soon afterwards in 2001. Our support has never wavered, and neither has the support of Members of this House.
It is important that measures are taken to remember, restore and respect, and I welcome the opportunity in this House to do just that today. I urge the Government to do whatever they can to ensure that Poland signs up to the Terezin declaration.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness very much for this debate and the opportunity to discuss this delicate and deeply emotional subject. I thank her for her kind words about the efforts that the British Government have been making and continue to make in this area.
The 46 states that signed the Terezin declaration in 2009 made a landmark moral commitment to address some of the injustices related to the Holocaust, including the wrongful seizure of property from families and individuals across our continent, particularly in the eastern part. The declaration set out the principles and measures for the signatories to implement not just in the field of immovable property, which we are focusing on today, but also looted art, Judaica, social welfare for Holocaust survivors, open archives and Holocaust remembrance and research. The guidelines on best practice for property restitution that were adopted by individual signatories were intended to be turned into law and practice.
Like many noble Lords gathered in the House today, the Government are frustrated with the lack of real progress since that declaration was signed. The Government, the noble Baroness and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Janner, played a significant role in the original discussions, and we will again be one of the main actors in the review conference later this year to move its implementation forward. The review conference can provide much needed renewed momentum for property and art restitution across Europe. We are actively involved in preparatory meetings, pressing for practical and meaningful outcomes at the conference. We have suggested case studies from those states that have made good progress and practical seminars with lawyers and financing experts, designed to help member states tackle some of the commonly raised issues.
In researching this speech, I was fascinated and moved by the history of the recovery by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, of some of her family silver. One gets a sense of the importance of history, identity and continuity that that can provide, and the difficulty of being able to re-establish it. It is a wonderful story and I recommend to others that they look into it. Some of the family silver had been hurriedly given to a Polish neighbour who had buried it in their garden, and who discovered only when he read the story of the noble Baroness’s search for the remains of her family property that there was a link and he could at last find someone to whom he could restore it.
We are all conscious of the complexities and, I should say, the agonies of Polish history. Two summers ago I read Timothy Snyder’s book Bloodlands on what happened to all the peoples between Germany and Russia—all the many Jews who lived in that area but also Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians and others. I note that the family of the wife of Norman Davies, who assisted in the recovery and return of the noble Baroness’s silver, lost their property in what is now Ukraine and were forced to move into other vacant property in what is now Poland—everyone has been forced to push west, of course—that for all they knew might well have been confiscated from Jewish Poles.
The status of Polish property records compared with the Austrian ones, which the noble Baroness rightly holds up as a model, are rather less good than they should be, for fairly obvious reasons—the amount of destruction that Poland suffered during the war. The Polish archives are gradually being digitised but there is still a long way to go. In many parts of Poland, with the boundaries having been shifted so sharply, the layers of claims to ownership are extremely complex and contested.
I also recommend the memoir written by the current Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, about his family’s attempt to buy and restore a house in western Poland. As they began to restore it, there were occasions when others came and looked at it and expressed an interest in re-establishing their property ownership—quite often people from Germany or elsewhere. We all understand that Poland has enormous difficulty in establishing who owned what and when; and the years of Nazi, then communist, ownership have made this extremely difficult.
We are focusing on Poland, but Ukraine, whether or not you regard it as a post-communist country, is another case in point. It failed to attend the conference or sign the declaration, as did Russia. Without naming names, it is fair to say that other states that signed up to the declaration have a patchy record in implementing it.
Several Peers touched on the question of what restitution is intended to restore. The noble Baroness said that Holocaust restitution was not about money but victims. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said that we were talking about moral accounting. As some noble Lords may know, the Austrian central fund has restored a small percentage of the estimated value of the property. In the Polish case, part of our concern we have is that the Polish Government are extremely worried about how large the bill would be once the claims were presented—not only by Jewish former owners but by the much larger number of Polish former owners, many of them no longer living in Poland.
I note from a story in the Jewish Chronicle in summer 2009 that the estimate of the total value of property lost in Poland during the war was around £15.5 billion. It is thought that 80 per cent of it came not from Jews but from Poles who lost land. As the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, suggested, it is quite clear that such large sums simply could not be restored. There is a conversation to be had with the Polish Government about levels of financial restitution, as well as about moral closure, which is what we are all most interested in.
I was asked what activities Sir Andrew Burns, the UK Government’s special representative, is currently engaged in. I found him extremely helpful on several occasions in briefing me on this. He is actively involved in working with the other parties to the Terezin declaration to ensure that this November’s review conference produces some concrete deliverables. He will participate in two preparatory meetings in Prague before November’s conference, and co-hosted a meeting with his American opposite number in London two weeks ago to discuss the November review conference. He is also active in recruiting a new director for the International Tracing Service, which the noble Baroness spoke about, and will lead the British delegation to the 2012 review conference, which will also include members of NGOs and other UK experts.
The noble Lord, Lord Gold, asked whether Poland still had a programme for the restitution of communal property. It does not have legislation for the restitution of private immovable property, but the draft legislation on private property has not been passed because of the EU’s public debt rule. Again, the issue is how far the Polish Government, under their somewhat constrained circumstances, are willing to take on substantial financial obligations to people who, largely, live outside Poland under their somewhat constrained circumstances. The forecast for economic growth in 2012 is 2.5 per cent, after last year’s satisfactory growth of 4 per cent. If Poland adopted the draft legislation on private property, it would breach current EU rules on financial discipline.
We very much welcome this debate, and we clearly need to continue working on this issue. We will be doing our utmost actively to make sure that the November review conference is a great success. I certainly commit, on behalf of the Government, to report back in the most suitable fashion on the developments at the review conference.
Perhaps I might add briefly that Lodz has often been described to me as the Polish Bradford, that it is very much the same sort of city. When I heard that the city was still derelict in some places, I was thinking about some parts of Bradford, in which I was delivering leaflets on Saturday, which need a little bit of restoration still. All of us who know Poland know there are some very beautiful parts that have escaped the rigours of the war. Warsaw, where I am going on Friday, did not escape the rigours of the war and was largely destroyed. Of course, part of the emotional intensity of this on both sides is that the Poles feel that they suffered a great deal in the war and that the rest of the world does not always understand how much they suffered.
I thank everyone for their participation in this debate and the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for the vigour with which she continues to pursue this set of issues. Her Majesty’s Government remain actively engaged in this and we will be taking a very active part in November’s review conference.