House of Lords
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Barnett Formula
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much has been allocated to the Scottish Government in Barnett consequentials in the last year.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, the Barnett formula was applied in the usual way to changes in departmental spending at both Budget 2014 and Autumn Statement 2014. The Scottish Government received £301 million in extra allocations as a consequence of spending decisions taken by the UK Government.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that Barnett provides secure funding for the Scottish Government and if they had relied on oil revenues they would not have produced the £7 billion that was in the SNP White Paper, but just over £1 billion, and that an independent Scotland would now be bankrupt? Is it not a good job that we voted no in the referendum?
Lord Newby
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to agree with the noble Lord. It is, however, worth underlining the point that he has just made. There would be a £6 billion deficit compared to the figures in the Scottish Government’s November 2013 White Paper in respect of oil revenues, which would mean that for that reason alone the Scottish deficit in 2016-17 would be more than 6% of GDP, one of the biggest in the developed world.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, as the progress of Scotland towards independence seems to be almost inexorable, should we not be getting them used to the idea of doing without English money and phasing out the Barnett formula over a period of years?
Lord Newby
Well, my Lords, that is exactly what we are doing. The transfer of tax revenue to the Scottish Government means that the block grant, the element to which the Barnett formula applies, is falling by two-thirds from approximately £30 billion to £10 billion.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that the comments he has just made about phasing out the Barnett formula will be noted with considerable interest in Wales? Does he understand that on the formula that Scotland is receiving at the moment, adjusted for population, Wales is getting £1.2 billion less than we would if it was calculated on the Scottish basis? When are the Government going to phase in a new arrangement for Wales so that we get a fair deal out of the Treasury?
Lord Newby
My Lords, the noble Lord knows that this year Welsh spending will be at a level which Gerry Holtham has said is the appropriate level for Wales.
Lord Stephen (LD)
My Lords, can my noble friend first confirm that the preservation of the Barnett formula was one of the key elements of the vow given by all the main party leaders from this Parliament in the run-up to the referendum? Secondly, can he confirm that there would be no Barnett formula whatever if there had been an independent Scotland, and thirdly, that as a consequence the finances of Scotland would be in tatters and the country facing financial ruin if there had been a positive referendum vote in favour of independence?
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
Does the Minister recognise that whatever new constitutional arrangements may be made, there will be no stable union of the nations of the United Kingdom as long as the distribution of public funding between them is fundamentally inequitable?
Lord Newby
My Lords, there are many different views about where equity lies in this respect. The effect of the transfer of fiscal responsibility means that, going forward, the extent to which Scotland has money to spend will depend increasingly on the success of the Scottish economy and therefore very much upon the effectiveness of the Scottish Administration.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, will my noble friend reflect on the fact that if it is the Government’s policy that the Scottish Parliament should be more responsible for the money it spends and should raise that money, the corollary is that the grant should be done on a needs basis and not on the basis of a formula that dates back to the 1970s, which clearly disadvantages the north of England, Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom? Why have the Government set their face against the report of the Select Committee of this House on the Barnett formula which spelled this out very clearly?
Lord Newby
My Lords, apart from the fact that the parties have supported the Barnett formula, the effect of the changes being made is that the relevance of the Barnett formula going forward is being cut by two-thirds and therefore any disparity that it might bring about will be reduced by an equivalent proportion.
Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that this exchange reinforces the view that we must have a constitutional convention and that a core part of that must be to address the relationship between the four parts of the United Kingdom? If we do not do that, we will lose the union, and I for one would deeply regret that.
Lord Newby
My Lords, it is absolutely clear that a consequence of the Scottish referendum is that a raft of issues around the way the union operates, not least the way in which power works in the Commons and in England, needs to be revisited. All the parties are setting out proposals at the moment about how they propose to do that.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
Does the Minister accept that the solemn undertaking given by the Prime Minister on Welsh devolution—that Wales should be at the very heart of devolution—means that as regards the Barnett formula, Wales should be on a par with Scotland in relation to that subvention?
Lord Newby
My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, all-party talks are going on at the moment about future constitutional and other developments in Wales, and funding is one of the items.
Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)
The Minister referred to the Holtham commission. Is he aware that last October all four parties in the Welsh Assembly agreed that in conjunction with the UK Government Holtham should be looked at again? What is the current situation?
Lord Newby
My Lords, in terms of what is happening on the ground in Wales, the level of expenditure which Holtham suggested would be appropriate if there was to be a fair allocation is actually being spent.
Lord Richard (Lab)
The Minister said that the Barnett formula is becoming less relevant to Scotland. That may be so, but does he recognise that it is deeply relevant to Wales? The committee of this House in relation to the Barnett formula, which I had the honour of chairing, was crystal clear: it is unfair. It should be changed, but the Government have set their face against that. I do not for the life of me understand why. It ought to be based on needs and not upon some mathematical formula being applied to a block grant system which has been out of date for 40 years.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I am well aware of the noble Lord’s views. The Secretary of State for Wales is considering the devolution settlement at the moment and is aiming to reach a cross-party agreement by 1 March.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, will my noble friend tell the House whether he thinks that, as a consequence of the policies which are being pursued by the coalition Government in Scotland, there will be a great wave of support for Liberal Democrat candidates in Scotland?
Lord Newby
My Lords, I am extremely confident about the electoral prospects of my colleagues in Scotland.
Welfare Assistance Schemes
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what has been the response to their consultation on the future financing of local welfare assistance schemes.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, local authorities can continue to offer local welfare assistance alongside a range of other services in 2015-16 if they judge it to be a local priority. To assist them with this, we have identified an amount in each upper-tier authority’s general grant totalling £129.6 million nationally. In response to consultation representations, we have also allocated an additional £74 million to assist them in dealing with pressures on local welfare, health and social care.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the response to the consultation, but we are still talking about a cut in funding. Without ring-fencing or even any monitoring requirements, how will central government ensure that hard-pressed local authorities spend the allocated money on meeting the needs of vulnerable groups such as women fleeing domestic violence, homeless people or care leavers, as we were promised during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, it is for local authorities to set their priorities; I am sure that all will do so in a responsible way. On the issue of vulnerable women, she will know that, from this very Dispatch Box, I announced an additional £10 million for victims of abuse and women’s refuges up and down the country. This will be available to up to 100 local authorities and will benefit the women most in need.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will be pleased to know that my own council—Kirklees, in West Yorkshire—has allocated for the coming year £1 million to help people in crisis. However, I am also sure that he would be willing to support the notion that, on occasion, additional financial support is always very welcome.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I agree with my noble friend; that is why we have announced an extra £74 million.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester
My Lords, the Minister might be aware that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro has secured a debate on this issue this evening, which I welcome. In the mean time, in the absence of ring-fencing, will the Minister undertake to write to local authorities to highlight the £129 million allocation for local welfare provisions within the local government settlement, and the additional £74 million to which reference has been made, to ensure that local authorities have the resources they need to assist those most in need, and to encourage them to use them?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
In response to the right reverend Prelate, as I said earlier, I am of course aware of the debate and look forward to that later today. It is for local authorities to set their priorities, and we have been responding directly to local authorities; it was part of the consultation after the initial settlement. I myself met with several local authorities. The issue of welfare provision was high on their list, and the Government have responded accordingly.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
Are the Government proud of the fact that they had to be dragged through the courts on behalf of some of the most disadvantaged people in our country before they reconsidered their decision to cease funding for local welfare provision?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I will respond in the words of Matthew Reed, chief executive of the Children’s Society, who said of the announcement of the additional money:
“The big winners from this announcement will be the hundreds of thousands of children living in poverty who will now be given a better chance of a fair start in life”.
The Government have responded according to local authorities’ wishes, and that should be welcome.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, while I welcome the funding and have confidence in local authorities, the Minister must agree that this is a postcode lottery. It will depend on the attitude of the local authority and where you live. Can the Minister say what is going to be done to monitor this, and whether there will be any information as to how different local authorities use the funding?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
As I said, local authorities—and I served on a local authority myself for 10 years—deal with their budgets in a responsible fashion. The Government are committed to ensuring that there is greater welfare provision at local level. Taking the example of the better care fund, in addition to the allocation originally made, there has been an additional 39% of voluntary top-ups, and we already have 146 plans in place. Local authorities are responsible and they are responding accordingly.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, as my noble friend Lady Lister said, none the less there is an overall cut in this funding, and it is not ring-fenced. How, then, does the Minister expect local authorities and local people to cope, given that his department and his Government are cutting discretionary housing payments next year by £40 million, thus increasing the number of people—families and disabled people—who will have rent arrears and will face eviction, and will need to turn to a fund that is smaller than it has been in the past?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I am disappointed. Certainly, on this side of the House, we believe in localism, and this is about devolving responsibility to local authorities. On the issue of discretionary housing payments, £445 million of flexible housing funding between 2011 and 2015, and £125 million in 2015-16, has been made available so that local authorities can support vulnerable households through welfare reform.
Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)
Does my noble friend the Minister not agree with me that the disparaging term “postcode lottery” is just a way of saying that local governments have autonomy and so there are therefore bound to be differences? Those who disparage postcode lotteries should come out in the open and say that they wish to see the abolition of local government.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
It is always a pleasure to agree with my noble friend.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister is right in supporting the principle of local autonomy, but was he present when his noble friend Lord Newby, in answer to an earlier question, referred to the fact that the north of England loses out financially, as do the Welsh, because of government allocation of funding and resources? I asked the Minister a question yesterday as to whether these funds were being cut in total or not. Is the answer yes or no?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Local authorities have to take the burden, as does everyone else in government. We inherited, as we all know—it is well documented—an economy that was failing, but we should now celebrate the fact that unemployment is down, employment is up, and inflation is down. Do you know what? We believe in local authority autonomy; that is what we are doing, and the maximum cut received by any local authority across the country is 6.4%.
Syria
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to investigate breaches of international law by state and non-state actors in Syria with regard to sexual and gender-based violence and persecution of minorities.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, we are appalled by all violations of international law in Syria. The situation should be referred to the International Criminal Court. We support non-governmental organisations and Syrian activists documenting human rights abuses, including sexual violence and minority persecution, for use in a future accountability process. Through our humanitarian partners, we have provided wide-ranging support for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Syria and the region.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, there is evidence that all parties to the Syrian conflict have perpetrated crimes against women and children, including rape and terrible sexual violence, and such brutality has often been directed at minorities. The majority of such crimes constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity, and it is alleged that thousands of instances of crimes of this sort have been committed by Syrian Government forces, by ISIS, by the al-Nusra Front and the Free Syrian Army.
Crimes against women and children are often forgotten in the fog of war. What steps are being taken to train people properly to evidence-gather so that there can be prosecutions in future for those crimes? If such training is available, is it sensitive to the social pressure and taboos that are experienced by rape survivors, particularly in that part of the world?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
The noble Baroness is right to point to the importance of ensuring that impunity does not prevail in these circumstances and that people on all sides of the conflict need to abide by international law. However, it is clear that it is Assad and his forces who are committing the vast majority of the offences that appal humanity.
With regard to investigating allegations of war crimes, the UK, together with the US, the EU, Germany and Norway are funding the Commission for International Justice and Accountability to develop documented legal case files, with named defendants, on regime and opposition—including ISIL—war crimes in Syria. So far, all this work has recovered about 1 million regime documents and archived 500,000 videos as a result of UK-trained and equipped investigators.
Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)
My Lords, in view of the Minister’s very powerful response to the Question from the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, will she consider the rather surprising interview given by the President of Syria this morning, in which he implied that he knew nothing at all about barrel bombs, weapons which have been specifically condemned by the United Nations as never to be used in populous areas? Given that, will the Government consider inviting the Syrian ambassador to explain what his President meant and whether he agrees that barrel bombs should not be used in heavily populated areas? Does the Minister agree that there should also be mention of the bitter, cruel effects of barrel bombs, which are often filled with shrapnel, nails or devices intended to do great damage to children and women?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the Government speak out regularly on these matters and I am delighted to hear my noble friend put them in such a context. Today, President Assad showed that he is divorced from reality if he has ignored the fact that he has not only allowed but clearly encouraged his forces to barrel-bomb his own people. Only he has the capacity to deliver barrel bombs. There has certainly been evidence of the result—literally the impact—on the ground and a spokesman for OCHA, on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, has made it clear that there is evidence of barrel-bombing and aerial shelling of populated areas by the regime.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the use of chlorine-filled barrel bombs is, in itself, a breach of international law? If so, what are the Government doing to put in the public domain the evidence that chlorine has been used in this way by the regime, thus contradicting the not very believable remarks made by the President of Syria this morning?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, raises an important point about the work that has been done in recent months and years on removing chemical weapons from Assad. His use of these has been documented, and the use of chlorine in barrel bombs would come within that category. Syria’s declared chemical weapons stockpile has now been removed from the country and the bulk of it destroyed. However, it is imperative that Syria now addresses its obligation, under the Chemical Weapons Convention, to destroy its chemical weapons production facilities. If it does not, removing what it did have will not prevent the creation of more in the future.
Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend has done the House a service by raising this important issue. In her Question, she referred to the persecution of minorities. Christians, in the Middle East and elsewhere, are being deliberately attacked and targeted because of their faith. What are Her Majesty’s Government doing to counter these outrageous attacks? Will they use the UK’s place on the UN Human Rights Council, from March onwards, to speak out for religious freedom and against the persecution of Christians?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I entirely agree with the sentiments behind the noble Lord’s question. The behaviour of Assad’s regime and ISIL in the area in targeting and attacking minorities, particularly Christians, is inhumane. They appear to be taking action that would strip out some minorities, including Christians, from that area. The noble Lord is right: the Human Rights Council sits in March. Pending the decision of my noble friend the Chief Whip, I hope to be able to attend and make the representations that the noble Lord invites me to make.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in her initial reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, the Minister said that she wanted these issues referred to the International Criminal Court. Does she recall that, last August, the commission of inquiry established by the United Nations called for a referral to that court? It has carried out 480 interviews and drawn up confidential lists of those who ought to be prosecuted. Where have we reached in the judicial process?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I regret to say that, with regard to the judicial process through the ICC, reference to the ICC by the United Nations Security Council was blocked by two members of the 15-strong Security Council: Russia and China. It is indefensible that Russia and China prevented us and the rest of the members of the United Nations referring this matter to the ICC.
Ukraine
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Horam
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to enhance international support for the government of Ukraine.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, we are working closely with partners and allies to exert maximum pressure on Russia to de-escalate the situation in eastern Ukraine. In parallel, we are pushing hard for an additional IMF-led financial package to help stabilise the Ukrainian economy. We have also provided £19 million to strengthen the OSCE special monitoring mission, support the international humanitarian response and provide technical assistance to support economic and governance reforms in Ukraine.
Lord Horam (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend for her Answer. Does she not agree that, whatever does or does not happen in Minsk tomorrow, we still need a formidable economic package, given the financial state of Ukraine? That must be given priority and I am glad to hear that it is being worked on. Does she also not agree—again, whatever does or does not happen in Minsk—that we need to keep firmly on the table an option to supply Ukraine with defensive military equipment?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, first, with regard to aid, the IMF has indeed been carrying out investigations as to the measure of the gap between what Ukraine has, what it needs and what may need to be provided for it. In fact, the next IMF review reports in the middle of this month and will identify the need for further macroeconomic support. At that stage we will be able to judge what our contribution should continue to be. With regard to defensive materiel, my right honourable friend has made it clear in another place that that is something that every NATO country has the right to consider. At this stage, we are not considering supplying or selling defensive materiel to the Ukrainians, who are defending themselves against Russian-supported assault. It is important that pressure is kept up on Mr Putin to do the right thing.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, so far the EU consensus has held remarkably well but, for the sanctions package to be renewed, I believe that there has to be unanimous support in the EU Council and that vote will be in July. Given the close relationship between the new Greek Government and the Russian Government, and between Prime Minister Tsipras and President Putin, what are the realistic prospects of that consensus maintaining?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, since the election of the new Greek Government, there have been two occasions on which sanctions have been discussed at a European level. On each of those occasions, the Greek Government have agreed with the consensus of the EU-wide view that it is important to continue these sanctions. Yesterday, in the European Affairs Council, when the next tranche in ramping up sanctions was discussed further, it was decided to postpone their implementation until 16 February to give the diplomatic discussions this week a chance. There was consensus and it is important for all of us that consensus remains.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that Russia’s disregard for international law, and disregard for the rule of law at home, can best be challenged through democracy and freedom within Russia? Is she aware of the anti-war rally on 1 March, organised by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Grigory Yavlinsky and Alexei Navalny, the champions of freedom and democracy in Russia? What talks are being held with civil society within Russia to try to bring about an end to the belligerence that Russia poses to its neighbours?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, my noble friend is right to draw attention again to the way in which Mr Putin has manipulated or prevented the ability of Russian people to speak out and what should be an elected Government with some freedom of expression. It is important that we all liaise with NGOs that have the ability to express their opinions. The difficulty is, as my noble friend pointed out in her debate last October, Mr Putin has been passing legislation to shut them down, if not shut them up.
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, will the Government press for the earliest possible complete exchange of prisoners? Would this not be a huge benefit to the families and create a good atmosphere for negotiations?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, exchange of prisoners is not a straightforward matter, if ever there were such a thing. It would involve exchanging prisoners between Ukraine and the separatists and indeed the separatists and the Russians who are in east Ukraine with Russia. I am sure the noble Lord will be aware of the predicament of the Ukrainian pilot, Nadiya Savchenko, who is being held in Russia. We have raised these matters with the Russian Government. An exchange is not a one-off straightforward matter.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, we are just about to have a Statement on the same topic when there will be 20 minutes for Back-Bench contributions. It is actually the turn of the Labour Benches.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Does the Minister agree that it would play into President Putin’s hands to supply arms to the Ukrainian Government and make his position in Russia and his thesis about Western conspiracy more credible to the Russian people?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, that is precisely one of the political judgments that would need to be taken by each and every member of NATO before they took such an action.
Public Bodies (Abolition of the Library Advisory Council for England) Order 2014
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Jolly
That the draft order laid before the House on 4 November 2014 be approved.
Relevant documents: 13th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, 15th and 21st Reports from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 4 February.
Fishing Boats (Satellite-Tracking Devices and Electronic Reporting) (England) (Amendment) Scheme 2014
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord De Mauley
That the scheme, draft order and draft regulations laid before the House on 6 January and on 2, 15 and 17 December 2014 be approved.
Relevant documents: 16th, 17th, 18th and 20th Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, 19th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 4 February.
Ukraine
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary.
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on the situation in Ukraine.
The past month has seen an escalation of violence in the eastern regions of Ukraine. Fighting has been intense around the town of Debaltseve, a strategically important rail and road hub between the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. The Ukrainians have suffered indiscriminate missile attacks on buses in Donetsk and Volnovakha and on the port city of Mariupol. What is happening on the ground now resembles, to all intents and purposes, a small-scale conventional war. Over 5,000 people are estimated to have been killed since the crisis began last spring, and over 1.5 million people have been displaced from their homes.
In recent weeks, Russia has aggravated the effects of its initial incursion by stepping up the military support it provides to its proxies. It has transferred hundreds of heavy weapons, including rocket launchers, heavy artillery, tanks and armoured vehicles; and it maintains hundreds of regular soldiers, including special forces, in Ukraine, as well as command and control elements, air defence systems, UAVs, and electronic warfare systems. The Russian army is also the source of ex-regulars, who resign their posts in the Russian army to fight in Donbass as ‘volunteers’. The recent escalation in fighting would not be possible without the military support and strategic direction that Russia provides.
In these circumstances, it is vital that all those countries that have a stake in the rules-based international system remain clear and united against Russian aggression. In Normandy last summer, we agreed with the US and our European partners that the most effective channel of communication with the Kremlin would be through a small group. This is known as the Normandy format, comprising Germany, France as the host of the Normandy meeting, Ukraine and Russia.
Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande met President Poroshenko in Kiev last Thursday, and President Putin in the Kremlin on Friday. On Saturday, in Munich, I held meetings with Secretary of State Kerry and German Foreign Minister Steinmeier to assess the prospects for a diplomatic resolution of the crisis. On Sunday, the German Chancellor and the French President held a conference call with Poroshenko and Putin, agreeing to meet in the Normandy format in Minsk on Wednesday. Their aim is to reach agreement on an implementation plan for the Minsk ceasefire agreements that the Russians entered into last September, updated, as they need to be, to reflect subsequent changes on the ground.
The UK welcomes efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution of the situation in eastern Ukraine, while remaining sceptical of Russian commitment to such a resolution. It is clear that Putin respects strength, so Britain’s focus has been, and will continue to be, on ensuring that the EU remains robust, resolved and united on the maintenance of economic sanctions, and closely aligned with the United States.
The consensus within the European Union that Russia must pay a price for its disregard of the international rules-based system remains strong. Equally, there is a clear consensus that the European Union does not, and will not, recognise Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. The emergency EU Foreign Affairs Council on 29 January agreed to roll over all Crimea-related sanctions against individuals and companies—the tier 2 sanctions. This is another clear sign that the EU remains united in its response to Russian action in Ukraine.
The package of economic sanctions which the European Union and the US have imposed on Russia, coupled with the catastrophic impact on the Russian economy of the decline in the oil price, is a critical element of the pressure on President Putin to change his behaviour. Britain was and remains at the forefront of the successful effort to build and maintain an EU-wide consensus on a sanctions regime on Russia, to the evident surprise and dismay of the Kremlin. Yesterday in Brussels I represented the UK at the European Union Foreign Affairs Council, which discussed Ukraine and reconfirmed its decision to apply additional sanctions, but, at the suggestion of the Ukrainian Foreign Minister and as a gesture of support for the political process, decided to delay their entry into force until next Monday. The informal European Council of Heads of State and Government will have further discussions on Ukraine when it meets on Thursday.
The crisis has inflicted substantial damage on Ukraine’s economy. The World Bank estimates that it shrunk 8.2% in 2014. Public debt has risen sharply, foreign exchange reserves have fallen and the currency has lost nearly half its value against the US dollar. Ukraine clearly needs support from international partners to stabilise the economy, in return for which it must pursue the reforms to which it has committed under the association agreement with the European Union and the IMF programme. Britain is providing £10 million in technical assistance to support economic and governance reforms and the humanitarian effort. The EU will make a substantial contribution to the immediate estimated $15 billion financing needs of the country, the majority of which will be provided through an IMF-led package.
We shall also continue to work through NATO to offer technical support to the Ukrainian armed forces and reassurance to our eastern NATO allies. At the NATO Wales summit last September, NATO allies sent a strong message to Russia, agreeing to maintain NATO’s long-standing capacity building work in Ukraine by setting up five dedicated trust funds for Ukraine, one of which will be co-led by the United Kingdom.
The Wales summit also agreed a readiness action plan to reassure our eastern allies. As part of the package, NATO allies agreed to a new spearhead unit—the very high readiness joint task force—within the NATO response force, which, supported by the newly created forward integration units in the Baltic and eastern European states, will be able to deploy at very short notice whenever they are needed.
On 5 February, NATO Defence Ministers agreed the size and scope of that mission. My right honourable friend the Defence Secretary has announced that the UK will lead the force in 2017 and on a rotational basis thereafter. The UK has also committed to contribute to headquarters in Poland and Romania and the six NATO forward integration unit headquarters in the Baltic states, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. In addition, the UK will contribute four RAF Typhoons to operate alongside Norway in support of the Baltic air policing mission.
The UK also remains a strong supporter of the OSCE’s monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine. We have provided funding of over £2 million, the second largest number of monitors and 10 armoured vehicles to allow monitors to move around dangerous areas in a more secure manner.
Our policy since the start of the crisis has been to supply non-lethal assistance to Ukrainian armed forces, in line with our assessment that there must be a political solution to this crisis. We have increased our defence engagement with Ukraine and are providing additional support on crisis management, anti-corruption, defence reform and strategic communications.
We have also offered three members of the Ukrainian armed forces wounded in the Donbass life-changing specialist medical assistance in the form of reconstructive surgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. We are providing a substantial package of non-lethal equipment to Ukraine, comprising medical kits, winter clothing and equipment, body armour, helmets and fuel. The package is focused on reducing fatalities and casualties among members of the Ukrainian armed forces.
It is a national decision for each country in the NATO alliance to decide whether to supply lethal aid to Ukraine. The UK is not planning to do so, but we reserve the right to keep this position under review. Different members of the alliance take nuanced positions on this question, and are entitled to do so. However, we share a clear understanding that while there is no military solution to this conflict, we could not allow the Ukrainian armed forces to collapse.
By its illegal annexation of Crimea and its destabilising activities in eastern Ukraine, including its direct military support to the separatists, Russia has demonstrated its disregard for international law. It is clear that President Putin respects only strength, and by standing united, using our combined economic muscle to impose significant economic costs on Russia, the international community has shown its determination to rebuff Russia’s anachronistic behaviour.
The ball is now firmly in Russia’s court. Until we see Russia complying with the terms of the Minsk agreement on the ground—withdrawing troops, stopping the flow of weapons and closing the border—there must be no let-up in the pressure. Fine words in a declaration tomorrow will, of course, be welcome, but we have seen them before. The proof of the pudding will be in actions on the ground. We will monitor the situation carefully, and we will agree to a relaxation of the pressure only when we see clear evidence of changed Russian behaviour and a systematic compliance with Russia’s obligations under the original Minsk agreement.
Meanwhile, there will be no let-up in our efforts—with the US, in the EU and through NATO—to ensure that Mr Putin hears a clear and consistent message: civilised nations do not behave in the way Russia under Putin has behaved towards Ukraine, and those of us who live by the rules-based international system will be steadfast in defending it against such aggression. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, on behalf of the House, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made by the Foreign Secretary in another place earlier today. The conflict in Ukraine is clearly a major geopolitical crisis, but it is also a conflict of profound civilian suffering. As the Statement made clear, 5,000 lives and more have already been lost; some 5 million civilians are living in conflict-affected areas; and nearly 1 million people are internally displaced as a result of the fighting.
Parliament was united in welcoming the Minsk agreement last year. But even after the agreement was reached, although the fighting briefly subsided, it did not stop. As we have all seen on our television screens every night, the situation has yet again deteriorated, with over 200 civilians killed in the last week of January alone. But President Putin appears to have miscalculated the sustained commitment of the West to forceful economic diplomacy. So long as the Russian Government refuse to change course, we have to continue with a robust and united international response. With the collapse in the oil price in recent months, we believe that sanctions still hold out the prospect of altering the calculus of risk in President Putin’s mind regarding Russian actions in eastern Ukraine.
The Foreign Secretary made it clear that at the request of the Ukrainian Foreign Minister a decision was taken yesterday to delay the implementation of a further set of EU restrictive measures, and we support that approach. While credible negotiations are ongoing, all efforts have to be focused on ensuring that they are successful. But in the absence of a deal agreed later this week, do the Minister and the Government believe that new EU restrictive measures—as opposed to simply an extension of the existing measures—should be on the table at the EU Council meeting to be held shortly? More specifically, will the Minister tell us whether, in the absence of meaningful progress this week, the Prime Minister will be calling for new tier 2 or tier 3 sanctions to be discussed by EU leaders?
On the question of sending lethal arms to the Ukrainian army, we welcome the Government's reassurance that the UK will continue to work through NATO to offer technical support to the Ukrainian armed forces. This weekend, the Foreign Secretary said:
“The UK is not planning to supply lethal aid”.
That was repeated in the Statement read to the House, but does the Minister agree that a unified approach to economic diplomacy has been fundamental to the pressure exerted on Russia? Is it therefore sensible for every European member state to take decisions separately about arming the Ukrainian Government in the absence of any co-ordinated EU position? Again, I quote the Foreign Secretary, who said:
“Ukrainians can’t beat the Russian army”.
He went on to say that the policy remains under review by the UK Government. Given those two statements, will the Minister explain to the House in what context her Majesty’s Government envisage that Britain could decide to export lethal arms to the Ukrainians?
Of course, we welcome the recent German and French initiative to try to broker an agreement between President Putin and President Poroshenko. Talks in Moscow with Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany were held alongside US Secretary of State Kerry’s visit to Kiev and were followed up by Chancellor Merkel’s important visit to Washington yesterday. The House knows about the talks scheduled in Minsk for tomorrow. Of course, the ultimate test is whether these talks are successful in ending the conflict.
It is in exactly this spirit that I ask the Minister about the extent of British engagement in these matters. Does she agree with us that, given this country’s unique assets and alliances, we could have a key contribution to make, helping ensure that this diplomatic effort is successful? If she does, can she explain to the House today why our country seems to have chosen to take something of a back seat in trying to resolve this crisis?
The Government do not need to take our word for it. As General Sir Richard Shirreff, the distinguished top commander in NATO until last year, warned, the Prime Minister is a “foreign policy irrelevance” and a “bit player” on the world stage. Sir Richard is not alone. Other commentators have recently seemed to agree, including, the other day, the authors of an important leader in the Times—not a newspaper that is obviously opposed to this Government generally.
Under past Governments of all complexions, Britain has taken a leading role in diplomatic negotiations of this sort and, in particular, in efforts at conflict resolution of this kind. When the Minister replies, therefore, can she offer any more hope that Britain in the weeks and months ahead will be an active, engaged and influential part of efforts to resolve this crisis?
The accelerating military and diplomatic pace threatens to weaken the united front previously displayed by the West, yet of course the mounting death toll and the continuing crisis should strengthen, not weaken, our resolve. Our priority, surely, going forward, must be to remain on guard against Russia’s efforts to find and exploit weaknesses among its European neighbours, but it is always important to remember that the EU must continue to make it clear to the Russian Government that we continue to recognise our long-term underlying shared interest in co-operation rather than conflict. This is a crucial moment in a very serious crisis that affects us all, and we continue, as a responsible Opposition, to support Her Majesty’s Government’s approach.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I am grateful for the measure of support which the noble Lord has given on behalf of the Opposition. It may be the better approach to begin with the last question, which is, “Do we expect to take part in an active manner in the resolution of this crisis?”. We intend to do so because that is what we have been doing. We intend to continue in our resolute way in the diplomacy in which we have engaged in leading first of all, of course, as the world has seen, in applying pressure in Europe with regard to sanctions—a matter that is directly related to Mr Putin’s decision to be brought to the table.
The noble Lord referred to the fact that we have not been a person at the table specifically in the Normandy format, but I did report to the House on 10 January this year about the Normandy format talks, which I had hoped were going to take place the next week in Astana, and made it clear who the participants were. The fact that the meeting did not take place at that particular time was simply because the Russians failed to come forward with a sensible approach to negotiations. Noble Lords will remember that it was the time of the appalling attacks in Paris on innocent people, so other matters intervened.
The Normandy process was born last summer, and has borne fruit. It deserves to be given that continued support by us. It has our support. Clearly, after the discussions yesterday with Mr Obama, it has his support, too. It is crucial, above all, that we do not allow Mr Putin to divide the allies who seek to enforce international law. It is what he is about and it is why we can see that, since the beginning of this year, the level of violence in eastern Ukraine has increased. It is also presumably why—I am making a guess here, but I hope it might be a vaguely educated one—he is trying to put the eastern separatists, with his help, in the strongest position possible in any redrawing of a ceasefire line, having tried to take over even more land.
We are playing and have played a leading role in the EU and NATO and fully support the Normandy process. Of course, one could open that up to other people: if it was opened to us, and to the United States, why should other colleagues in the European Union not also seek to be part of it?
I will quickly answer the noble Lord’s other questions. He referred to the fact that a unified approach to economic diplomacy had been crucial. I most certainly agree. I hope that I have made that clear both in this reply and during the Question a wee bit earlier. He also asked, in particular, whether it was sensible for each NATO country to make its own decision with regard to defensive weapons. The fact is that they can, so whether it is sensible or not shifts to the fact that each country must be sensible and sensitive in the decision it takes. Clearly, our allies in NATO will exercise that degree of moderation and sensitivity before they take action—if any is taken at all.
However, it must be made clear to Mr Putin that we are not going to rule out action. The noble Lord asked in what kind of crisis the UK would supply defensive weapons. I am not going to give Mr Putin the pleasure of knowing what any plans might be. Let him come to the table with proper resolve tomorrow and then put the declaration which I hope may be achieved into practice. Then we might be able to have more sensible talks with him. We will continue to have business with Mr Putin—of course one does—but it is not business as usual.
Working backwards, I will deal lastly with the first question that the noble Lord asked, on whether new EU sanctions would be considered if no deal were to be reached tomorrow. That is the natural outcome of the delay of yesterday’s decision about sanctions until 16 February. Mr Putin should be in no doubt as to the resolve of the European Union as a whole.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we have 20 minutes for questions. I remind noble Lords that your Lordships should make brief interventions in the form of questions—this is not a debate.
Lord Spicer (Con)
My Lords, I wanted to ask this question some time ago. I am sure my noble friend is aware that we are entering a very serious phase in all this and therefore that we ought to be absolutely clear as a country what our role and position is. If it is to be the broker between Germany, the Europeans and the Americans, would it not help if we had a posture which combined negotiations with raising our military position and strength at the same time? She herself said in the Statement that the Russians understand threats above all.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I give the same answer to my noble friend as I gave in January. We are not considering rearming ourselves and increasing our own armed position to launch any form of military action in Ukraine. That is simply not something that would be considered at this stage or, I would hope, in any event. That is not on the table. What we are considering is how best to continue the strong pressure on Mr Putin to ensure that the discussions tomorrow bear fruit and then to hold him to the results of that.
We have a strong part to play in all the continuing negotiations, and the diplomatic airwaves, both face to face and over the internet and telephone, have been a-buzzing this last week, as all noble Lords would expect. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary had meetings in Munich on Saturday with Mr Kerry, Secretary of State of the United States, and Herr Steinmeier, the German Foreign Secretary. There are talks a-plenty between all the key players. That is why the consensus can be maintained.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, I commend the Government on the robust tone of their Statement, but, as it says, words do not get very far with Mr Putin, and even sanctions have not so far had the effect that we had hoped.
Does the noble Baroness agree that the only physical obstacle to the further advance of Russian special forces, Russian separatists and Russian so-called volunteers have been the brave men and women of the Ukrainian armed forces, who have been fighting with inadequate weapons? Nothing is more devastating for the morale of any fighter than knowing that he or she is less well armed than his or her opponents. If there is not a convincing settlement in Minsk tomorrow and no real evidence for believing that the ceasefire terms will in future be observed, are we not getting to the point when it would be right for the Government to take the lead within the European Union in indicating that we would be prepared to sell defensive weapons, including lethal ones, to the Ukrainian armed forces?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the noble Lord raises questions that I know colleagues have been discussing and about which they are deeply concerned. I know that he raises them with his background as a Minister in the MoD and has experience of the kinds of difficulty that surround dealing with someone such as Mr Putin.
Briefly, I agree that the courage of the Ukrainians who are trying to resist the separatists being fuelled by up-to-date materiel has been remarkable. There are allegations that they have carried out atrocities. One hopes that those allegations will be disproved, but if they have committed atrocities, that is wrong. The majority have been committed by the separatists.
We have had a long-term relationship in providing non-weapons-based help and support, supplying training and advice more generally as well as the non-defensive materiel that can assist them. Any further step would be one that no Government would wish to rehearse in public, unless there were the need. The important thing is to ensure that there is never that need and that we hold Mr Putin to account, slippery and careful in creating smoke and mirrors as he is.
Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)
My Lords, there have been many crimes committed during this terrible set of events. Can the Minister inform the House on the progress of the investigation into the most obvious of them, which was the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner? That was a war crime beyond normal war crimes and I wonder whether she could assist the House.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lord, that crime was clearly visible to all of us. I can only congratulate those who have persisted in the most difficult task of carrying out investigations against all the attempts by the separatists to prevent access to the crash site. Those investigations are ongoing.
More broadly, with regard to human rights abuses we are determined not to allow impunity. We are concerned by recent reports of the use of cluster munitions in eastern Ukraine. The noble Lord referred to a specific event, but the issue is broader than that. It is important that all of us, and those who work in NGOs, with all the contacts that they have, can insist that those gathering evidence bring to book those responsible for human rights abuses. Impunity must not succeed.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
Does my noble friend accept that in the unlikely circumstance that we have progress in Minsk tomorrow and that Mr Putin sticks to his word perhaps for more than an hour or two, or even a day or week or two, the holding of any ceasefire is contingent on the verifiable force of peacekeepers? Does she agree that the OSCE effort, valiant though it has been, is perhaps now inadequate? What conversations is it having with the relevant UN agencies to explore the possibility of UN peacekeepers being the basis of verification of any ceasefire agreement?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My noble friend raises a very important point. The OSCE plays a great part in such matters, not only in Ukraine but across Europe, and we are a strong supporter of it. We will continue to suggest that it should play an active role in monitoring any ceasefire agreement. I am aware that there were reports in the press—as yet unsubstantiated, I think—that Mr Putin is said to have commented that he might well agree that the OSCE, and indeed the United Nations, could monitor. But those are unsubstantiated reports so I would not wish to go further than that.
The central premise of my noble friend’s question is right. If there is, as we hope there will be, a decision in Minsk tomorrow that leads to some form of ceasefire and a development that is peaceful, there will need to be an agreement to have verification on the ground, which can have the confidence of not only the European Union but, of course, the Ukrainians. It is for them on Thursday then to consider any proposals that may come out of tomorrow.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, the actions of the separatists and the Russian Government are, of course, utterly deplorable. But will the Government press the Government of the Ukraine to curb the activities of the extreme right-wing nationalist and anti-Semitic elements which actually constitute a propaganda gift to Mr Putin and Russia?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, it is important that throughout Europe and beyond people do not use any activity to undermine the right of minorities to express their own views or indeed to practise their own faiths. If they do so, whether they be separatists, Ukrainians or any groups in any other European country, they are a gift to any person who wishes to show that they have a right to act. Mr Putin, in particular, would of course seize on an opportunity to point to what he alleges to be Nazism where no Nazism actually exists.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, no one wants to precipitate a wider war in Ukraine—no one sensible, anyway—but my noble friend spoke about technical support to the Kiev government forces and strategic communications equipment. Can she indicate to us whether that includes—or at least does not rule out—the provision of cybertechnology and advanced electronic equipment to neutralise the very sophisticated Russian weaponry that has been supplied to the rebels and the sophisticated communications equipment that is giving them a considerable advantage at the moment?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I think if I asked I would be advised that it is not a good thing to mention what our cyberactivity might or might not be. Indeed, I have always been informed by other Ministers that Russia has very good methods of its own to find out what other people’s cybercapabilities are. I can say to my noble friend that we have been providing additional support on defence reform and strategic communications. In addition, this year we plan to provide further support, including with regard to logistics. We are actively considering what more we are able to do. I think that is coded language for saying that we are seeing what we can assist with.
All this has to be based around the fact that tomorrow we will see an attempt by our colleagues to come to an agreement in Minsk. Of course, the Normandy format could be extended to others. We have said that that is not the right way forward because it would render it too wide a group, incapable of coming to a negotiated agreement. But the scene is set whereby tomorrow the Normandy format will, we hope, come to proposals which would then be put to the Ukrainians on Thursday. There is a process in place. Underneath all that is a determination to keep the pressure up on Russia. One part of that determination is indeed to ensure that we give what assistance is proper to the Ukrainians.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, there is time. We will take Labour and then the Liberal Democrats.
Lord Judd
My Lords, while obviously the firm action by the Government deserves full support from all parts of the House, does the Minister not agree that ultimately a solution to the intractable problems of Ukraine cannot be imposed—it has to have the confidence and support of the entire Ukrainian population—and that this would involve reconciliation, bridge-building, peace-building and confidence-building? Is it not therefore absolutely essential in the midst of all our firm action to leave nobody in any doubt that we recognise that there is a Russian population in Ukraine which has real anxieties—well founded or not, and certainly ruthlessly and cynically exploited by the Russians—and a real concern about its identity and future in Ukraine, and that we must not use language that seems to obliterate that reality?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the noble Lord is right to point to the fact that opinion can be manipulated, and Mr Putin is very clever at doing that. It is, of course, right to say that there must be people in the area of eastern Ukraine—I would assume, because I do not know and have no evidence of it—who consider themselves to be Russian or Russian-aligned and who have anxieties. There are other ways of assisting them than having Russia send in its materiel and troops effectively to create an unstable and violent situation. I agree, however, that if there are anxieties they must be addressed. We must also remember that Russia illegally annexed Crimea and I have a concern, as others do, for the Crimean Tartars, where the news is not good and disappearances continue. My goodness, my Lords, the Crimean Tartars have anxieties.
Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)
My Lords, I declare an old interest as having been for some years a former member of the advisory council to the Rada of Ukraine, along with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon. I completely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, that we must uphold the rule of law; that is essential for the interests of the whole European continent. However, I share with the noble Lord, Lord Judd, a concern to make sure that Russia knows exactly where it stands. In particular, it might be very helpful if we indicated to the Ukrainian Government that there is no immediate or close possibility of Ukraine joining NATO. I know Russia well, and a very striking thing there is the level of paranoia about any kind of invasion of Russia. It is a ludicrous idea but it is strongly held. Does the noble Baroness therefore agree that it is important to indicate our understanding of some of Russia’s concerns, albeit that the country must obey the rule of law, and that that means that we have no aggressive intentions? We know that we have no such intentions, but in the case of Ukraine it is vital to keep saying so.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I would say to my noble friend that Ukraine is, of course, a sovereign country, and all European democracies are entitled to pursue NATO membership. However, I am sure she knows better than I that it would be necessary for Ukraine to achieve the standards expected of an ally, and to be able to undertake the commitments and obligations of membership before being invited to join the alliance. Given the situation in eastern Ukraine we would expect this process to take many years.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, in repeating the Statement, referred to President Putin responding to strength—indeed I think “force” was the word used—and she may well be right in that. It is widely said that should the talks in Minsk fail, war is the next step. Does she agree with that, and if so who exactly is going to be declaring war on whom? Finally, with the President of Russia arming one side and the President of America possibly arming the other, what would a victory look like?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the noble Lord tempts me to paint a picture of Armageddon, which is not my wont. When we go forward in diplomacy with the next-steps talks tomorrow, their results will clearly be discussed with the Ukrainians on Thursday. I would not want to predict the outcome of those talks. I always go into these matters in a determined and positive way, and I am sure that given the characters of those involved in the Normandy format, they are far more determined and knowledgeable than I could be. I do not wish to go down the route of predicting whether there would be all-out war because it is the job of us all to stop that happening. That is where we must not end up, and the route being taken by the negotiators is one which does not have on it a signpost to war.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, in agreeing with what my noble friend has just said, could we try to cool the rhetoric all around? Invoking the spirit of Munich and talking about a new cold war, let alone a hot one, helps no one. If, sadly, the Minsk dialogue does not result in success, could we consider convening a conference here in London and taking a leading role, which we would be well fitted to take, to bring all the parties together? A future Europe that is at peace and in harmony needs a stable, prosperous Russia and a free Ukraine as much as it needs everything else.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, none of us in the European Union is seeking a confrontation with Russia; it is the Russians who have sought confrontation with Ukraine and others. We need to work within those parameters. That is why I say that it is not business as usual with Russia, but it is business. We talk to the Russians—and indeed tomorrow the Normandy format will show that there is negotiation—but do not let us underestimate the determination of Mr Putin to try to drive a wedge between us. That must not succeed.
Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the fact that this debate has been much more detailed than in the past and I am grateful for that. I also welcome the recognition that this is a profoundly dangerous situation. However, I say to the Minister that it is not new. If we read President Putin’s statements and speeches over the years, as I have done, it is clear that he is looking for a re-ordering of Europe. He uses phrases such “spheres of influence” and “near neighbours” over and over again, which go against the United Nations rules on those very things. So we have a crisis that will grow, and getting it under control in some way will be profoundly difficult. Some of the suggestions which have been made today, including that of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, may be useful in time, but we should be under no illusions and we should be reading President Putin’s statements because they tell us an awful lot.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the last sentence uttered by the noble Lord is one that we should all take away with us. I agree with him.
Recall of MPs Bill
(9 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
16:10 - Division on Amendment 1 - Ayes: 195 / Noes: 213 - Amendment 1 disagreed.
“( ) In this Act the signing of a recall petition constitutes a public act and the information of each person who signs a recall petition will be accessible in a marked electoral register, if requested.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I shall also speak to Amendment 15. Together these amendments, tabled by me and my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark, would enshrine in the Bill that a recall petition is a public act—an open declaration of one’s wish to recall an MP. We have moved to this position since Committee, in the belief that there is an urgent need for clarity on this issue.
At Second Reading and in Committee, we discussed whether signing a recall petition is to be secret or a public act. If it were the latter, we noted that people must be aware before they sign that their identity could become known in due course. We then waited for the Government to decide whether to attempt to keep this a secret act, and therefore bring in different rules from those for general elections regarding access to the marked register, or to acknowledge that secrecy cannot be maintained and therefore to make it clear that signing a petition would be, as with any other petition, a public statement.
Alas, the Government are still all over the place. In response to our Constitution Committee, they say they will set out in regulations—which we have not yet seen—how to address the issue of keeping names secret, yet they must surely realise that, at the very least, the MP and the agent are bound to have access to the marked register, as is anyone who thinks someone may have signed in their place. Little thought seems to have been given to how in this respect a recall petition differs from elections, and from referendums—that is, where signing is only a one-way act—and its implications for the rest of the process.
Nor have the Government consulted stakeholders on this issue, be they local government, the Electoral Commission, political parties, the Electoral Reform Society or the Association of Electoral Administrators. Even in the briefing yesterday, the Electoral Commission still did not told us whether it advised the Government that it should be open or secret.
Instead of consultation, the Government have simply tried to cut and paste bits from the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act and the Representation of the People Act without thinking through the implications of what they are proposing. A recall petition is neither an election nor a referendum, as in both cases the choice is indicated by the voter rather than being a one-way act. If we consider the history and character of petitions, we would see the difference from normal elections. Take the rules on public petitions in the other place. There are three requirements of signatories of petitions. They must openly declare their name, the petition must be signed by them and they must state their address. There is no doubt that, as our Constitution Committee said,
“signing a recall petition is a public act”.
Even the Government conceded that,
“whereas at an election the way in which a person has voted remains secret, this secrecy cannot be maintained absolutely through the process of signing this petition as there is only one way in which a person may sign”.
The Government’s almost unbelievable suggestion that people should apply to sign by post to maintain their confidentiality is not only flawed in practice—because of the marked register—but, importantly, it is flawed in principle. Postal votes were never designed to safeguard the secret ballot but to enable those who, for whatever reason, cannot make it to the polling station. The unavoidable truth is that, for a petition, going into a polling station, or returning a postal petition, immediately identifies your intentions. The Minister said in Committee that the Government were,
“considering what limitations there should be on access to the marked register”.—[Official Report, 19/1/15; col. 1113.]
However placing restrictions on the normal access is probably impossible, as the police and others must have access to check on allegations of double or improper signing. Therefore, the consequent openness of the marked register must be reflected in communication with potential signatories. It must be clear from the start, on the notification sent to constituents, that this is different from elections or referendums, and that the fact they have called for recall may become public.
Indeed, it is not simply a question of the marked register, but of all the staff at signing places over eight weeks, party reps standing outside such places, journalists and their cameras hanging around, scrutineers and polling clerks. Are they all to be bound to secrecy? Of course that is not possible.
It is our view is that it is crucial that a clear decision is taken by Parliament so that everyone understands the position. Furthermore, we have come to realise that the only way forward is for it to be a public petition. It is too important a part of the recall process for this decision to be left to regulation or to the next Parliament, or—even worse—to those having to administer the first ever such petition. Our amendments remove any ambiguity, and would make it clear to potential signatories, to petition officers and their staff, and to campaigners that calling for recall is a public act.
The first amendment therefore asserts that a petition will be entirely open. Amendment 15 would require a petition officer to make the marked register available as normal, if requested, at the end of the process. It would also ensure that potential signatories are made aware that this is an open process, with a notice on the petition card warning that the fact that an elector had signed could become available on the marked register.
Without our amendments, we would be left with considerable uncertainty because of the Government’s inability to make up their mind about a fundamental aspect of the Bill. Recall is different from a choice between competing parties or competing views on European membership or devolution, where one can vote yes or no. The fact of signing means that one has voted only one way. If it cannot be kept secret that someone has signed—and our belief is that such secrecy could not be maintained—that must be clear to one and all. It is Parliament that must decide on this vital issue. I beg to move.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, it is the job of Parliament and this House to be clear in our language as far as possible. I was wondering whether I had time to rush out and check a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. In all my years in public life, the word “petition” has always involved collecting names and presenting them on a list to whoever you are petitioning. That was certainly the case in the other place, and I assume it is in this House, although I have no experience of it. Should the Government not be minded to accept this amendment, it would involve a redefinition of the word “petition”. A petition involves petitioners, and petitioners are not anonymous people who cannot be traced.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I have been a little confused by this as well. I imagined that when people signed the petition, they would be crossed off the electoral roll—that would be the proof that they had signed. There would be no question of checking the signatures; it would be a question of checking the electoral roll. I would be grateful if my noble friend could fill us in on that.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I am sorry to delay my noble friend; I shall not do so for more than a moment or two. I made it quite plain in Committee that I thought this was a dreadful Bill, unimprovable and really unamendable. That remains my position. I could not take exception to the extremely cogent speech of the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench. This is a terrible Bill that the Commons are inflicting upon themselves. I wish they were not. It betrays a lack of self-confidence in a great institution that is superior to any other in this country. Recall is the process that goes on at a general election. That is where I rest my case, and that is why I shall not put myself in either Division Lobby tonight.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for that very brief Second Reading speech, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for the meticulousness with which she has pursued this delicate issue—although perhaps not for some of her slightly ungenerous little comments in moving her amendment.
There are a number of difficult issues here. There are issues of potential intimidation and certainly issues of electoral fraud that require that a marked register be assembled and is available to those who want to check against impersonation—so we are conscious both that this cannot be an entirely secret process and that there are arguments that it should not be an entirely public process. The Government have considered this and consider that we can designate a process that guards against impersonation but which also provides some safeguards against intimidation.
As I said in Committee, signing a petition, particularly in person, is unavoidably, to a degree, a public act. However, that does not go so far as sanctioning the publication of the full list of those who have signed the petition—the marked register—as is implied by the Opposition’s amendment. I agree that regulations should specify—
Baroness Corston (Lab)
I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way. I think he just said that there were safeguards: can he say what they are?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I hope that I will be able to explain, as I continue, what some of the safeguards against intimidation might be.
The regulations should specify that the marked register will be available for inspection, although, as at elections, that will be dependent on certain restrictions and an application to the petition officer. There are also some protections we can provide, such as choosing not to mirror the provision at elections where the marked register can be requested as a document for campaigning purposes by political parties and candidates. There is a good argument here that inspection should be allowed for reasons of preventing personation, but that the document itself should be kept securely and used only to test whether or not personation has been attempted.
Furthermore, the wording of the amendments implies a degree of ease of access to, and publicity of, the marked register, which does not exist even at elections. Those who wish to view the marked register must justify to the returning officer, or the Chief Electoral Officer in Northern Ireland, where problems of intimidation exist very clearly, why they need to inspect the marked register itself and could not glean sufficient information from the full register. Inspection is under supervision and the law specifies that, although handwritten notes are permitted, portions of, or indeed the whole of, the marked register may not be copied down.
I hope that this provides the assurance needed. There is only a small amount of space between the Government’s intentions for the regulations and the spirit of the noble Baroness’s amendments. There will be a marked register and it will be a document which can be made available for inspection—although, as I have said, there will be controls mirroring those at elections and, in some respects, further controls in that the Government do not intend that copies should be made available for campaigning purposes, for the very evident reasons given. I also accept that signing is, to a degree, a public act, although there will be those who prefer to sign by post and avoid attending a signing place; that is their choice to make. I also see the merit in the petition notice card making clear the degree to which signing is an open process; it will therefore ensure that suitable wording is included before it is user tested.
However, I believe that the regulation-making powers in the Bill are sufficient to deliver the policy outcomes under discussion. I therefore thank the noble Baroness for the care that she has taken to ensure that we address this delicate and difficult issue. I hope that we have satisfied her and, on that basis, I hope that she will be able to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)
My Lords, I am puzzled by what the Minister just said: that signing a petition is somehow—what was the word he used?—“delicate” or “difficult”. I am astonished. My understanding is that, once the election is past, the marked register is available to be purchased by election agents and political parties. He talked about the marked register being a campaigning tool. We are obviously all totally against names being made available while the petition period is going on, but surely to goodness, if a citizen of this country is asked to determine the fate of a Member of Parliament, he or she should not sign that petition carelessly, without thought to the possible repercussions. I really think that the Minister is quite wrong on the attempted secrecy of the marked register. I hope he will reflect, because he is not doing democracy any good whatever.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I thank those who contributed to this short, but very important, debate. The Minister responded only on one bit of it, in respect of possible intimidation. There is another issue, which is the openness of this new democratic process. He has not really addressed that. He has not addressed whether journalists standing outside a council office where there is a signing will be able to write in the newspaper the names of the people who have signed, or whether they are all suddenly meant to be unable to report what they have seen.
Somebody who is known could go in to sign. The journalist could say, “I saw Hayter going in to sign”, and presumably that would be completely legal. The Minister seems unworried by that. It is not just the marked register. Either this is open or it is not—and that is something that Parliament must decide. I may not have put it down the right way—perhaps I should have had an “either/or” approach, which is not here, asking whether we want it open or closed. As the Government have left it, it will effectively be open. If that is the case, that should be in the Bill, and I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Tyler
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 3 in my name and those of my noble friends Lord Lexden and Lord Norton and the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Our purpose throughout as a cross-party group has been to try to answer the very powerful point made by the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House about the second trigger in the Bill concerning suspensions by the Standards Committee. I will remind the House briefly of that very important comment:
“the provision that an MP should be subject to recall where he or she is suspended from the House for ten sittings days or more means that it will be MPs themselves, rather than voters, who under this scenario determine whether the recall process can be triggered. The constitutional purpose of recall is to increase MPs’ direct accountability to their electorates: it is questionable whether that purpose is achieved when the trigger is put in the hands of MPs rather than constituents. There is also a possibility that decisions taken either by the House of Commons Committee on Standards or by the House itself may become skewed by knowledge of the ten-day trigger”.
The Government have now responded to this criticism with two important contentions. First,
“The Government believes that it is important to be careful to respect the disciplinary arrangements of the House of Commons”.
I had some difficulty in squaring that view with the purpose of the Bill, which is to increase direct accountability of MPs to voters. Deference to MPs’ own preferences about the regulation of standards created in a quite different environment and for a quite different purpose cannot be squared with direct accountability to the public. The second of the Government’s contentions in relation to the Constitution Committee’s concerns is that:
“It will be for the standards committee and for the House of Commons to judge how they wish to respond to the introduction of a recall mechanism”.
No one can disagree with that; they will have to work out how to respond.
However, lo and behold, I discovered this very morning this report published by the Standards Committee. In over 100 pages it sets out in extreme detail and with great relevance to this part of the Bill a whole set of proposals for the future of that committee. It comes from a sub-committee chaired by one of the lay members but comprising six very respected Members of that House and that committee. The proposals have huge significance in terms of the committee’s composition, its role and the way in which it could operate in the future. Nothing could have more salience for this part of the Bill and, indeed, to our amendments. It beggars belief that the Government’s response to the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House, sent to the committee just a few days ago by Mr Sam Gyimah, made no reference whatever to the imminence of this report. It is also, incidentally, very relevant to Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours.
I simply do not know Mr Gyimah, as he entered the Commons in 2010 and by that time I had retired. I cannot imagine that a Minister of the Crown actually intended to mislead either our Constitution Committee or your Lordships’ House, but he must surely have been very badly advised or informed not to make any reference to this extremely important report. What were his officials thinking? I can imagine only that he may have been persuaded to be disingenuous, since surely he would not wish to have been thought naive. Either way, these are very unsatisfactory circumstances.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, I wish to retain the second trigger, and it is only on that matter that I part company from the position taken by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I wish to speak to Amendment 6 in my name. It is very much about House of Commons business in that it relates, again, to the structure of the Standards Committee.
The House has now been made aware of the very significant report that has been produced this morning, which was prepared by the sub-committee of the Standards Committee, established to deal with the issue of structure. I have been able to read that report in its entirety today, and it deals comprehensively with the future of the lay membership. It is an excellent report and analysis, although I depart from some of its conclusions.
I should make it clear that I have also read the entirety of the proceedings on this Bill at Second Reading, in Committee and on Report in the Commons. I take on board comments on the value of lay membership of the committee, which is currently three members, a development introduced after I left the committee in 2001. My own experience over the years I spent on the Standards and Privileges Committee and its predecessor drove me inexorably in favour of an independent element, which turned out to be the appointed lay membership. Amendment 6 deals with the independent element and that lay membership.
I have listened very carefully to the ideas proposed by the Liberal Democrats and their colleagues, and I have talked on the phone on a number of occasions to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler; I agree with him very often on constitutional reform and linked issues, but I cannot accept the external processes that he advocates. He is moving the process of inquiry away from Parliament to an outside body, and I simply do not believe that it will work.
I have to confess that my views are tempered by the IPSA experience, which has proved disastrous for Parliament, although that is not my only consideration. I have other considerations such as the handling of the Woolas case, interaction with the Bill of Rights, the role of the CPS, and the total absence of parliamentary experience among those required to make judgments on parliamentary misdemeanours. I want to build on the model already in place, which includes three lay members.
I am informed that the lay membership has been successful and has greatly helped the House of Commons membership of the committee both during deliberation and in the formulation of judgments. I therefore propose an alternative revised Standards Committee model, with a substantial increase in the independent lay membership as an alternative to the model being advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler.
The current membership of the committee stands at 10 elected and three lay members. The three lay members are all people of distinction, but they have no vote, although they are free to express dissent over a committee report. I would reduce the committee to 10, comprising seven lay and three elected members—three MPs. In dealing with a complaint, the whole committee of 10 would be engaged in the consideration of commissioners’ reports, the questioning of witnesses were necessary, and deliberation, including discussion of amendments to committee reports. However, on the completion of the whole committee’s discussion on reports and their amendments—the committee meeting in its entirety—the elected three members would withdraw from the committee and the lay membership would then further their deliberations and they would vote on amendments, approve the report and decide on their recommendation of penalty, including suspension. The lay members would vote in the absence of the elected members.
That brings me to the status of the lay-approved report, which is at the heart of the approach. The lay report as approved in reality is no more a proceeding in Parliament than is the commissioner’s report. It is at the time of lay approval no more than private deliberation. It has no parliamentary status. It acquires parliamentary status only when it has been considered and reported by the three parliamentarians on the committee. In my view, it is they and only they who can give it the imprimatur of Parliament, so the committee reconvenes with the three MPs and they do precisely that. They decide on whether they wish to approve or reject the lay report. In my view, it is inconceivable that three elected politicians would choose to overturn the collective decisions of the seven distinguished lay members. Only in exceptional circumstances, which I cannot foresee—although they may exist—would a report be overturned, as to do so would inevitably provoke considerable backlash in the media.
The advantages of my proposal are that they bring independent decision-taking in judgments to the whole process. The process is simple. It is a development of existing practice. It avoids complicated arguments over parliamentary privilege and the Bill of Rights. It makes it far more difficult for the House as a whole to overturn a Standards Committee decision without provoking public concern and perhaps anger. It would avoid the prospects of an election court coming into conflict with Parliament. It is potentially cheap to manage, although the report today referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, shows some substantial figures in the funding of the lay membership, which could perhaps be re-profiled at some stage in the future. Many outside would regard it as a great honour to be appointed to a lay committee of the House of Commons. Finally, it ensures that the voice and experience of MPs is taken into account when judgments and penalties are decided on. My amendment emphasises the need for the lay membership to recognise this part of the process.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendments 2 and 3, to which, as my noble friend said, I am a signatory. They are designed to remove discretion by judges and politicians. I appreciate the arguments advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. I understand the case he is making, but I think the arguments for Amendments 2 and 3 are more persuasive.
It is important to remember, as my noble friend mentioned in moving the amendment, what the Bill is designed to achieve—it is to restore, or at least create, confidence in Parliament. I cannot see how the existing provisions of the Bill achieve that. A judge or members of the Standards Committee may be conscious that what they decide may render an MP eligible for a recall petition. It may or may not be a factor. However, the crucial point is not whether it is a factor but that members of the public may believe that it has been.
If an MP is suspended for eight or nine sitting days, there may be a good reason for selecting that period, but it may well give rise to suspicion that the number was chosen in order to avoid the MP being eligible for a recall petition. A judge torn between whether or not to sentence a Member to a period of imprisonment may err on the side of leniency, but, in so doing, may be accused of being overly lenient, ensuring that the MP is neither incarcerated nor subject to a recall petition. Electors may not share the judge’s view, but there is nothing they can do about it other than feel that the system has let them down.
These amendments take out the element of discretion. There is simplicity, there is objectivity. If an MP is convicted of an offence, any offence, he or she becomes eligible for a recall petition. The issue is simply one of innocence or guilt. If the Member is found guilty, it is then up to the electors whether to begin a petition to recall the Member. If it is a minor offence, as my noble friend Lord Tyler mentioned, they are not likely to take action, but it is up to them. There is no intermediary between the MP committing some wrongdoing and the electors.
In short, these amendments create conditions which electors will understand, and it is then up to them. I suspect they are more likely to feel strongly about MPs who break the law than those who offend against the rules of the House of Commons. If an MP accepts money for raising issues in Parliament, then that should perhaps no longer be a matter for disciplinary action by the House but for a change in the law.
As I argued at Second Reading, this is an imperfect Bill. These amendments are designed to render it less imperfect. I hope, even at this late stage, that the Government see, if not the light, at least a chink between the curtains.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, Amendments 2 and 3, which have been spoken to by the noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord Norton, have the combined effect of making the provisions of the Bill even more severe than they now are and of weakening the capacity of the House of Commons to discipline its Members itself. That seems to me to be an unhappy combination.
The noble Lords believe that a Member of Parliament found guilty by a court of any offence—not necessarily an imprisonable offence, but any offence—ought to become subject to the recall petition process. As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, suggested, a minor motoring offence could expose the Member of Parliament to that process. He was optimistic that constituents would have the moderation and kindliness not to take advantage of that, but it does seem to me that a lot of politics could quickly come into this and that an opportunity might well be seized by those who wanted to see a Member of Parliament of a certain party displaced. Perhaps more seriously, a Member of Parliament who was found guilty in a court of some offence of obstruction during the course of protesting against proposals for fracking or wind turbines—or perhaps the tripling of tuition fees—would, again, be subject to the recall process.
This means that the Member of Parliament, instead of being subject to the rounded judgment of all his constituents in due course at the general election, becomes immediately subject to the wrath of all the Mrs Grundys in his constituency and of the censorious minority—only a small minority, 10% of registered electors, need to sign the petition to trigger the process. Members of Parliament will have to be paragons of virtue and constantly on their best behaviour. Those of us who know the character of the House of Commons well may think that pressures in that direction are not likely to be very positively productive.
The amendments would mean that suspension by the Standards Committee was irrelevant—that would be struck out as a trigger. Even if the amendment would not mark the formal abandonment of attempts by the House of Commons to regulate itself—I acknowledge that the rather substantial volume that the Committee on Standards has released today indicates that it has not given up on that process—it would certainly seriously undermine the capacity of the House of Commons to police itself.
The noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord Lexden, made much in Committee of paragraph 13 of the report of the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House. However, that report does not recommend removing the jurisdiction of the Standards Committee. What it does is to point to an inconsistency in the Bill, between its desire to increase the direct accountability of Members of Parliament to electors and its desire to retain a significant role for the Committee on Standards. There is a tension and a contradiction there, but for those of us who believe that it is grievously misguided to introduce this recall procedure, that tension or contradiction is something of a mitigating factor. I certainly do not think that the noble Lords can pray in aid the Constitution Committee as endorsing what they are seeking to do. They have decided that it stated a very important problem and that it is a problem that they want to solve.
Amendment 6, in the name of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, takes us, as he has explained, only a small part of the distance that he wishes to travel. While I deeply respect his knowledge of the ways of the Standards Committee, on which he served for many years, I profoundly disagree with him. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, has reminded us that the stated purpose of the legislation is to restore the reputation of MPs and Parliament. The way for Parliament to restore its reputation is to demonstrate to the public that it has found better ways to handle, discipline and organise itself.
I am against what has already begun to happen. I am against the introduction of lay members. There is everything to be said for the availability of high-quality advice. I am much in favour of the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards but, as a famous parliamentarian once said, expertise should be on tap, not on top. It is for the House of Commons itself to find more convincing ways to regulate itself and demonstrate to the public that it is doing so.
Some people may ask what all this has to do with us in the House of Lords. I simply reply that we are a House of Parliament. We have a particularly close interest in the good functioning of Parliament, as do all the people of this country. I think that it is legitimate for us to offer advice. I agree that the House of Commons will surely wish to consider this important report from the Committee on Standards. That may mean some delay before we reach Third Reading, if matters are to be properly and decently conducted. There is no doubt that we are entitled to take a view on these matters. However, I disagree with noble Lords who have proposed these various amendments.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I will speak briefly on this. I think that it is a mistake to play off these conditions against each other, as if you were to ditch one and get a quid pro quo strength in another. In principle, one should take and look at each condition on its own merit and principle. I do not want to refer to the second condition, as I do not quite understand the dynamics of what happens in the other place; other Members will understand.
The first recall condition needs to have about it a certain level of trigger. Simply to be convicted of any offence and then potentially to find this juggernaut or sledgehammer process kicking in seems wrong. As we all know, when these processes begin, the issues to which they are supposed to refer are not those on which they are fought. At the moment in our political system you need to get only 10% of the electors to agree to recall the MP and have a by-election. It would be easy for people to use a minor indiscretion that leads to a criminal conviction to generate this rather costly and unfortunate process. I believe in the Bill in principle, but there should be a healthy trigger. As set out, the trigger requiring that a conviction leads to a sentence of imprisonment, which I assume also includes a suspended sentence, seems about right.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
I will briefly comment on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Norton. I may be mistaken but he seemed to be painting an idyllic picture of what life is in the real world outside, in which the decision taken to discipline the Member of Parliament for whatever reason will be looked at with great objectivity by those reading the newspapers, listening to the radio and watching the television—you can imagine someone saying over their breakfast cereal, “I wonder what this is all about. What should we do? What considerations should we take into account?”. It does not work like that.
My noble friend mentioned the “f” word. We are not supposed to use the “f” word in your Lordships’ House. He mentioned fracking. The other “f” word I would like to use is fluoride. As the House will know, fluoride is a chemical which, put in the water supply, can bring immense dental benefits. For those who support it, it is a wonderful thing. For those who oppose it, it is responsible for every ill known to mankind and beyond. I know from personal experience how once the issue of fluoride comes up, all sorts of judgments come into play. The resources that people put into this are enormous. We know the facts of the modern world—Twitter and Facebook and all that sort of thing—of which, I regret to say, I know little indeed, except that I occasionally get them and delete them straightaway.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
As ever, my noble friend Lord Maxton is complimentary to me. But, immediately recall becomes a remote possibility, the influence of the press and the media will be enormous. I really do not think that removing any sort of mitigating intermediary between the offence of an MP and a recall petition is the right way to go about it.
We speak lovingly about the need to restore the reputation of Parliament. We speak lovingly and meaningfully about how it is necessary for the highest standards to prevail. If we say constantly that the House of Commons is not fit to control itself, and that it needs people from outside looking in on it to put it right, that does nothing whatever to produce the effect we desire.
I will say just one other thing in passing. When the expenses scandal started—and it was a scandal—it was said that the administration of expenses should be taken out of the control of Parliament itself. So we got IPSA—is it called?—to do that. Has that done anything whatever to improve the issue? All that happened was the press turned on IPSA and said, “You’re worse than the MPs were”. There is no easy answer to this. To imagine that this sort of Bill, especially in its dreadful form, will do anything whatever to improve the standards of Parliament and how it is viewed by people outside is totally mistaken. The only way for that to happen is for MPs to stop the nonsense of accepting that when they get petitions they must say yes to them. They are afraid, apparently, to have any independent views. I accept that as a former Member of Parliament I was subject to the Whips and I would never have been a Member of Parliament without being a member of the Labour Party. I understand the constrictions there are in that. Nevertheless, if we remove entirely any possibility of MPs speaking out for themselves about what may be unpopular causes, that may damage democracy irrevocably.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I was glad to add my name to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Tyler. As my noble friend has made clear, these important amendments differ significantly from those he brought forward in Committee. My noble friend and the cross-party group that supports him have reflected and reconsidered. Our proposals have been revised, cut back and simplified. They have been discussed at some length with my noble friends Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Gardiner of Kimble. We await the Government’s response to them with interest, though not with unbounded optimism.
In their current form, the amendments are straightforward and uncomplicated. They seek above all to relate the process of recall more fully and directly to those for whom this legislation, whether we like it or not, has been devised—the electors of this country. The amendments would enable electors to exercise their judgment about the case for recall following a decision in the courts. In any worthwhile system of recall, electors should surely occupy the central position, as my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, the Conservative Party’s leading authority on the constitution, emphasised so powerfully at Second Reading and repeated today. The famous watchwords of Tory democracy spring at once to mind—“Trust the people”—sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill but in fact coined by his extraordinarily combative and pugnacious father, Lord Randolph, in 1884.
As I have mentioned before, and as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, recalled, my support for my noble friend Lord Tyler’s carefully researched and constructive initiative stems from the work done on the Bill by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, of which I am a member. The committee’s report has featured quite prominently in our debates. Its central point, as far as these amendments are concerned, is that it expressed considerable scepticism about the wisdom of placing a recall trigger in the hands of the Standards Committee. I repeat the key passage of the report:
“The constitutional purpose of recall is to increase MPs’ direct accountability to their electorates: it is questionable whether that purpose is achieved when the trigger is put in the hands of MPs rather than constituents”.
I would add this question: do we not need to guard against the possibility that the existence of such a trigger might create dissatisfaction and disillusion among electors? If that should occur, the Bill—the purpose of which is to strengthen the electorate’s trust in the political system—could end up exacerbating the very problem it is designed to alleviate.
The committee’s report was published on 15 December. The Government’s response, received a few days ago, states that,
“it is important to be careful to respect the disciplinary arrangements of the House of Commons”.
That, of course, is a sound and overwhelmingly important principle of the internal arrangements of the House. It is not, however, obvious or self-evident that the principle should be applied to the procedures that will trigger recall, not least because of the acute danger that decisions relating to those procedures would be unduly politicised, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, argued so strongly at Second Reading.
Is there not a case for asking the House of Commons to reconsider these issues, which bear so directly and powerfully on the workings of democracy in our country, particularly in view of the new report, to which attention has been drawn this afternoon?
Lord Campbell-Savours
I am sorry to intervene on the noble Lord. He may not have the answer to my question—I perfectly understand that—but he might be helped by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I should really have intervened on the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. What does the noble Lord think would happen in the case of a non-declaration of interest, where there had been a repeated non-declaration of a major pecuniary interest, over a number of years, by a Member? Which committee would now decide on that matter, and to what extent does he think that that committee might be able to impose any penalty?
Lord Lexden
As the noble Lord suggested, I will leave that to my noble friend Lord Tyler, as a former Member of the House of Commons. However, the case for asking the House of Commons to reconsider the issues that these amendments highlight is strong. I incline to that view, and for that reason I support these amendments.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I, too, am a signatory to these amendments. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lords, Lord Lexden, Lord Norton and Lord Tyler. I think that in the part of the country that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, comes from they have a saying: “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”.
I sympathise with some points of view expressed by noble Lords on the opposition Benches. I am not an enthusiast for this legislation; I would rather it was not before us for a variety of reasons. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said earlier about the climate that IPSA has created and the difficulties that have arisen because of a loss of confidence. However, as the right honourable Member for Blackburn, Jack Straw, said in evidence to the committee to which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred, and which reported only today:
“It is important that we do not get ourselves into a gloom about this. Politicians have never been trusted. In a sense, in a democracy that is quite healthy … In the middle of the [Second World] war, Gallup surveyed public trust in politicians and it was pretty low”.
I am not indifferent to that: I think it is very important that people should have a high view of politics and politicians. However, as Jack Straw said, it has always been thus. I worry that the solutions that we have put in place will not deal with some of the endemic problems of a lack of trust, not just in politics or politicians, but in our institutions throughout this country, where there has been a considerable decline in public trust across the piece.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, I was grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Gardiner, for meeting us to discuss our reservations about the Bill. However, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, recognised, these are genuine attempts to try to make the Bill better, even if one does not agree with them. That is why I am happy to be a signatory to these amendments, not least because of the experience that I had when I served in another place and was a member of what was then the Privileges Committee—the Standards Committee’s predecessor.
I was a member of that committee when we had to deal with the so-called cash for questions scandal, when two Members of the House of Commons had received significant sums of money for tabling parliamentary questions. The end of that process brought to mind something which I think the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said at Second Reading: that the real mechanism for people to decide whether to recall an MP, which is in place, is of course a general election. I was very struck that, at the end of that process, when two Members of Parliament were found guilty of those offences, in one case the constituents in the constituency where they lived decided not to return that Member of Parliament, but in the identical other case they did return that Member of Parliament. He continues to serve in another place. We had to look at some difficult cases but we were certainly not asked routinely to provoke potential by-elections. That is the issue that most concerns me and which I want to address in speaking to this amendment.
I was always impressed by the genuine desire of members of that Committee on Privileges, from whichever part of the House they were drawn, to maintain the reputation of the House of Commons and get to the truth. I did not sense any narrow partisanship; I worry that we are risking that by putting this mechanism in place. The fact is that Standards Committee Motions are also amendable on the Floor of the House of Commons. I hope that the Minister will address both the pressure that will be placed on members of that committee of a partisan nature in the future and what can then happen on the Floor of the House. Will he say in his response whether that possibility of amendable Motions on the Floor of the House of Commons will continue in this new situation? If so, could a partisan majority not be used to trigger a recall process by increasing a suspension to 10 days, even where the Standards Committee had decided against it?
I want to say a word about the Government’s response to the Constitution Committee, which talks of the Standards Committee taking judgments. The benefit of these amendments is that we would take those subjective judgments out of the process. I particularly agreed with the description that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, gave. He talked about simplicity and objectivity being at the heart of what these amendments seek to do. In particular, Amendment 3 would make the trigger incredibly simple. If you are convicted of an offence, the electors would get to determine whether they wish to keep you. Incidentally, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said a few moments ago about the danger of vexatiousness creeping into the system with groups of people, for whatever motive, trying to undermine good Members of Parliament.
As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, it is extraordinary that we are having this debate this afternoon, after this report of more than 100 pages was published this morning. Although I have obviously not been able to read it in any great detail yet, I was struck that the report said on page 5:
“The subcommittee heard from a number of witnesses who were concerned about the extent to which the current system was fair to those members subject to it. While we believe the system is broadly fair, it is clear that MPs do not feel well supported”.
The report also reflected on the Standards Committee itself on page 6, saying:
“The Committee does an essential but sometimes unpopular task”.
That is certainly true; I know from the expressions on the faces of one or two noble Lords who served on that committee in another place that they would agree. The report went on to say that,
“if the House fails to engage with the Committee’s proposals it undermines the Committee’s position but, more importantly, the House’s own standards”.
We have to take those points seriously and I hope that between now and Third Reading, we will have the chance to do that.
By contrast the Government’s second trigger, as it stands, gives Members of Parliament the whip hand. That cannot be in the spirit of what the Government themselves say that the Bill is about. The Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House made that clear weeks ago but the Government’s response is, to say the least, wanting. In answering, it really would have had to demand that this matter be considered further, before Third Reading in any event. Now that the Standards Committee has published these proposals, that case for better and further consideration of the Bill and its impact on the committee must surely be even more compelling.
There are just six weeks left of this Parliament. We are not yet into the wash-up. We are not yet into purdah. We can, in the time remaining, amend the Bill and put in place a recall arrangement that would command public support—something simple, more objective and more easily understood, which avoids the perception that MPs will be able to make friendly interventions to prevent their own errant colleagues being subject to the process. In that six weeks, we can also look properly at the issues raised by the Standards Committee’s own report. Addressing the issue of lay members—a point that has been referred to by noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Howarth—including their number and force, would go a long way towards dealing with some of the issues that I have been raising. Either way, it is not enough for the Government to dismiss such serious and widely expressed concerns out of hand. I hope we will hear a clear commitment from the Minister to come back to this question at Third Reading.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, it is always fun to watch the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, having a go at his own side and at one of the Government Ministers. Apart from that, I think it has been an interesting and useful debate, particularly on Amendment 2 about widening the kind of behaviour which could trigger a by-election. As an old campaigner on drinking and driving, this warmed the cockles of my heart and I thought it would have a great impact on the leisure behaviour of MPs, but maybe that is looking at it slightly too narrowly.
I really do not think that having just any criminal conviction is what our manifestos, the coalition agreement, the Government or indeed the House of Commons intended when they brought forward the recall Bill. Nor do I think it is what the public expected—and I was a member of the public rather than in your Lordships’ House when the misdemeanours that we have talked about happened—of the promise that where MPs were found guilty of deliberately falsifying their expenses claims or were sentenced to imprisonment, they should no longer automatically return to work after their sentence. Rather, I think recall was seen as a chance for the MP to explain himself or herself, to apologise or to ask for forbearance, and for the chance for voters to decide whether, despite the sentence, the MP was fit to continue to represent them in Parliament. Lowering the bar so that it covers any conviction risks a rush of petitions, perhaps over quite minor issues, which would take MPs away from their duties in the House for months. It would involve large sums of money, and importantly it would devalue the serious nature of a recall petition.
Incidentally, given that it is JPs—magistrates—who deal with 90% of crime, it is likely to be them rather than judges who will be dealing with these sorts of offences. As my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport reminds us, the recall thus triggered could easily become a vote of confidence in the Government or a referendum on fracking rather than actually seeking the electorate’s opinion of their MP’s behaviour, which was the purpose of this Bill and the reason that we support it. There has to be a sensible balance as to what can constitute a trigger. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester suggests, being sentenced to prison, whether suspended or not, seems to be the right place to draw that line.
Amendment 3 would remove any role for Parliament via its Standards Committee and a subsequent vote in the Commons to trigger a recall petition. This seems very hard to support. It does two things. First, it would absolve MPs in the Commons from a role in self-regulation and from any responsibility for policing the behaviour of their own colleagues. That is something which I do not think is right either in principle or in practice. Secondly, it would leave only criminal convictions and not gross unparliamentary behaviour such as breaches of the Code of Conduct or a failure to undertake democratic duties as the trigger for potential recall. The other place may need to make changes to its Standards Committee in order to build public trust, but that is probably not a matter for the Recall of MPs Bill. I know that my Labour colleagues in the other place support a radical overhaul of the committee, in particular to remove the government majority and to increase the role and authority of its lay members. Indeed, Labour has proposed considering whether with at least half the members being lay, there should also be a chair who is no longer an MP.
However, improving the way this trigger would act is different from removing the trigger. It was clearly the will of the Commons to include this trigger, which gives the Commons a role in the Bill, and we should respect that decision for its willingness to accept some collective responsibility for the behaviour of its Members. Furthermore, we should remember that without the second trigger, a number of non-criminal offences could occur without MPs having to face a possible recall, such as cash for questions or the failure to declare serious conflicts of interest. It would be a very radical suggestion to delete an entire trigger from the clause at this stage in the Bill when it was overwhelmingly agreed at the other end, and it would possibly go beyond our normal role of scrutinising legislation. However, that is not my reason for opposing it. I do so because it must surely be right that Members of the Commons should take some responsibility for their own behaviour and that of their colleagues and they should not wash their hands of their role in this.
Amendment 6 has been tabled by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, and we happily support it. We have encouraged the inclusion of lay members on the committee. Indeed, as I have said, we floated the idea of one of them being the chair and of lay members being the majority. While the Government may not feel that this is a matter for the Bill, we hope they will join us in supporting the principle and commit themselves to further moves in the direction I have outlined.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this debate has ranged very widely. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for raising the Bill of Rights. I was thinking about it last week when looking at Magna Carta and how these various things pull together. The British constitution has parliamentary privilege as one of its core elements, and we recognise that in this Bill we are walking a delicate line between the maintenance of parliamentary privilege and the inclusion of a greater degree of popular sovereignty alongside parliamentary sovereignty. It is a delicate balance that we all wish to maintain.
Perhaps I may say what a pleasure it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, again. He told me in the corridor that he had been lying in his hospital bed at two o’clock in the morning watching Lords debates on his iPad. What he did not tell me was whether they kept him awake or provided him with a cure for insomnia.
As I understand the Standards Committee report, which I have not had a chance to read in full yet, it takes us rather closer towards the model which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, would like than we have been before. It is a progression to move from a lay minority to an equal proportion of lay members and MPs, which is probably what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, would regard as moving in the right direction. It is a progression but not a reversal; it is not a radical overhaul of the entire Bill.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The report does not suggest that they should have a vote.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Page 6 of the report states:
“We believe self-regulation, with external input, is the appropriate system”.
As someone who recognises that parliamentary privilege is not something we wish to throw out of the window, I agree strongly with that sentiment.
We have also touched on the question of how far we restore popular trust in Parliament and the political system, or indeed how far any of us can ever restore trust in Parliament or our political system. I think we all recognise that this Bill is intended to assist in that process, but none of us has any illusion that it will solve the problem. It is much broader than that.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, asked whether the process of amending Motions to report recommendations to the Standards Committee on the Floor of the other House will continue. That is a matter for the other place. It is a matter of its procedures into which the Bill and this House will not wish to intrude. In introducing the amendments, my noble friend Lord Tyler said that this quite radical proposal would remove two of the three triggers, thus radically changing the basis of the Bill, which has been through the scrutiny of the other House and a good deal of other scrutiny besides. I thank my noble friend for the very constructive conversation we have had since Committee and for his active engagement in discussions about the most appropriate triggers for recall petitions.
The Government considered a number of options and came to the conclusion that a custodial sentence was one of the appropriate levels for a trigger. It is of course difficult to know exactly what line one wishes to draw, but we have concerns, which have been expressed by a number of noble Lords in this debate, that lowering the threshold to include all convictions would risk MPs having to face recall in circumstances where it was not appropriate: for example, for minor traffic offences or for offences of strict liability where no criminal intention needed to be proven. The Government’s intention for the Bill is that the recall process should be there as a safeguard which does not, we hope, need to be used very often in an atmosphere of generally good behaviour. My noble friend Lord Tyler’s amendments might well lead to recall becoming a quite frequent procedure, one which a very large number of people would not regard as justified.
I understand my noble friend is concerned that the second trigger for recall petitions relies on recommendations of the Standards Committee, and he is doubtful about that. We all recognise many of these problems, but we do not see his solution of removing two of the three triggers from the Bill as being the answer. I understand my noble friend’s concern about politicising the Standards Committee and also about MPs themselves being involved in the triggering of recall. However, I do not think the answer is to take away from a constituent the ability to recall their MP for wrongdoing that might be serious enough for them to question whether they want their MP to represent them. Collapsing the three triggers into one would drive a coach and horses through the Bill.
This brings me to Amendment 6, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, which would add to the definition of the Standards Committee in Clause 1. I simply say that we will consider the Standards Committee report and whether there needs to be anything in the Bill that relates to the report or whether, on the basis that things are moving in the direction in which the noble Lord wishes, we should leave well alone and leave out matters that are not central to the Bill. We will consider that between now and Third Reading.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Will the Government provide their response to the Standards Committee’s report before they proceed to the Third Reading in this House?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I will certainly take that back and see what the Government can do. I hope that I have provided constructive answers to a very constructive debate, and I urge my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Tyler
May I ask my noble friend, with his very important noble friends on the Front Bench, to give the House an assurance that there will be no accelerated process towards Third Reading until these matters are properly discussed and resolved both in this House and in the other place?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we intend to proceed to Third Reading with all deliberate speed. The House will, of course, be in recess next week.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I am grateful to all Members who have contributed to this debate. I wish that we had had a general debate of this nature rather earlier in the process on this Bill. The central point is that my noble friend has just said that he does not agree with our solution. He does not appear to agree with that of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, either, but he seems to recognise that some solution is necessary. That leaves us in a most extraordinary situation. The Government agree that this is unfinished business, yet they have produced no solution. I am afraid that that is an unsatisfactory situation.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, for her preparedness to take on my amendment during my absence in hospital. I have always held her in high respect for her contributions on many issues, which is why I asked her to propose my amendment.
I hesitate to repeat the case made at Second Reading and in Committee, apart from drawing attention to my 15 years’ experience as a member of the Commons Privileges Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, was a member of that committee during the critical period that led up to the Nolan reforms.
I have supported recall for nearly 30 years. So what is the argument all about? I shall put it briefly. The Government’s original Bill, as presented to the Commons, required a suspension of a Member of Parliament of more than four weeks before the second trigger provoked a petition and a possible by-election. The Labour Opposition Front Bench moved its amendment on Report reducing the period of suspension from more than 20 days to 10 days or more. Having read the whole report of Committee in the Commons, I found almost no reference to this amendment in debate apart from speeches by Mr Docherty speaking from our Front Bench and the Minister replying on behalf of the Government. Furthermore, my approaches to a number of MPs who voted for the amendment revealed that they were totally unaware of its content. Only one MP whom I contacted knew of the amendment—Mr Kevan Jones, the Member for North Durham. Only two members of the Standards Committee and the Privileges Committee voted at Committee stage; the chairman and three members abstained and four members voted against. They opposed the 10-day amendment. The Conservative Benches in the Commons voted on a free vote in favour of 20 days—that is to say, they took my position today, which is to have a free vote. The truth is that there was no proper consideration of this 10-day amendment.
In my view, the amendment moved by my honourable friends and may well come back to haunt the Commons in the future. The effect of it will be to concentrate the mind of the Standards Committee’s membership not on the nature of a breach of the code of conduct and the appropriateness of any penalty imposed but on whether a suspension of more than 10 days could trigger a petition; the substantial expenditure by the local authorities on the petition process; a possible by-election with substantial expenditure by the local authorities and political parties, running into hundreds of thousands of pounds; and considerable political manpower being poured into constituencies as part of the campaigns. But, perhaps most importantly, a 10-day plus suspension could trigger political advantage or even disadvantage, which may well end up in the mind of a committee member. That latter consideration, among others, will transform a quasi-judicial committee into a political and politicised committee, and it is utterly inevitable—let there be no doubt of that. As I say, I say that as a former member.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, after the debates at Second Reading, asked me privately while we were seated what the difference is between 10 and 20 days. Surely, he said, the same principle applies. I want to answer that, because it is an important question. First, some cases need more than 10 days’ penalty, but not a by-election. The committee needs the flexibility to introduce longer suspensions without triggering a by-election. Ten days may well be too short a suspension period for some breaches of the code. If the appropriate suspensions are to be imposed under the 10-day rule, we may end up with an excessive number of petitions and a wholly discredited process. Finally, cases of more than 20 days are now few and far between, but such cases may involve major breaches and clearly warrant the petition procedure.
So how have my noble friends and my honourable friends on the Front Benches of both Houses sought to justify the 10-day amendment? Mr Docherty put it this way:
“According to the excellent research services of the House of Commons Library, it appears that that threshold would have been met on only two occasions over the past two decades, and that no one found guilty during the cash for questions scandal received a sufficiently long suspension to meet the Government’s proposed threshold”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/10/2014; cols. 69-70.]
That has been at the heart of the argument that they have used against us but, with respect to the very erudite Mr Docherty, that is an inadvertent misrepresentation of where we were at the time.
Both those cases took place prior to the expenses scandal. The first involved Michael Trend—I have read in its entirety the third report of February 2003—who was suspended for 14 days. His case turned on the dishonest designation of a house of a friend as his main home and claims for additional cost, when in fact he stayed there infrequently and, when he did stay, it was rent-free. The penalty today would be substantially higher—therefore, it is irrelevant.
The second case was that of Mr Derek Conway, on whom there were two reports—the fourth report of May 2007 and the third report of January 2009. Again, I have read them in their entirety. He was suspended for a total of 10 days, so he would have met the trigger, as it appears here. His case turned on improper payments to his sons, Freddie and Henry. Repayments were made to the Fees Office.
Both these cases would have incurred substantially higher penalties under the conditions that are currently in place. It is now inconceivable that such breaches would command penalties of only 10 and 14 days. If by any chance they were not the subject of criminal charges under Section 10 of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, under trigger three, they would certainly trigger in excess of four weeks as a penalty under trigger two. That fact alone, and those two cases, destroys the Official Opposition’s case. I hope that when my noble friend deals with this debate from the Dispatch Box she is not tempted to use those two cases, because they are at the heart of the argument that I have been having with colleagues on the Front Bench in the House of Commons who support the amendment.
The second and final justification for the amendment is more credible. During meetings with Mr Docherty, we were told that Labour was considering longer-term plans for the reconstruction of the Committee on Standards and Privileges. That follows upon the decision taken by the committee to establish a sub-committee and the report which everybody knew was being prepared. Obviously, other political parties have been involved in establishing their position and deciding how they wish to respond to the report. However, the setting up of the committee followed two recent reports, one on Mr Peter Lilley and the other on Maria Miller. Having read both of these, I recognise why the committee took the decisions it did on Peter Lilley. I confess to having some difficulty over the Maria Miller case, but that is not a matter for us. Recognising the need for reform from both Front Benches, the Standards Review sub-committee, established to consider the future structure, is suggesting that the legislation we are dealing with today may well be further amended when it is considered at a later stage in the House of Lords. It says that the,
“system is likely to be affected by any Act resulting from the Recall Bill, currently passing through Parliament, which proposes to allow an MP’s constituents, in certain circumstances, to institute a petition for his or her recall. At present this will apply if an MP is suspended from the House for more than ten days. The Bill has not yet completed its passage and this may change”.
The people on the sub-committee recognise the dilemma. They were not going to comment on legislation going through the House but it is quite clear that they do not agree with what is in this Bill and they hope for some further amendment to be made at this stage or a later one.
That report makes a great number of recommendations, some of which I support and some, as I have already said, I oppose. Whatever the final recommendations are, they have not yet been approved by Parliament. This brings me to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. Why are we dealing with this now, without having heard the final position taken by the Committee for Privileges and a decision by the House of Commons on the structure of these committees? We have no guarantee that a reformed structure would command the support of MPs in the new Parliament. It would certainly have to pass the privilege test set by Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg in Committee on 27 October, as reported in col. 73. One could argue that the trigger provisions in the legislation should await reform of the committee.
We know that if the recall Bill, as currently drafted, is enacted, the new structure will still have to surmount the hurdle of the 10-day trigger. An increase in lay membership will not remove the problem because a controversial 10-day trigger petition and by-election could influence the deliberations and future decisions of a committee comprising a greater lay membership. A controversial by-election, called on a 10-day penalty, exploited by the media and with all the political ramifications being felt by the lay membership of a lay-dominated committee could, over time, enter the collective mind of the committee and meddle with its thinking on 10-day judgments. The lay members, and Members of Parliament on the committee, would be placed in a totally impossible position.
All roads lead back to the 10-day trigger. It has to go. The question is at what stage is it going to go.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours spoke compellingly on this issue at Second Reading and he has done so again today. He is right that the House of Commons made a mistake in reducing the minimum requirement for a trigger for the recall process from 20 to 10 days’ suspension from the service of the House. He has explained very powerfully why that was a mistake and suggested convincingly that the House of Commons inflicted this error on itself without having adequately considered what it was doing. It is surely essential that the Standards Committee is enabled to retain a sufficient scope and flexibility and a sufficient range of penalties and sanctions to be able to temper its judgments to the particularities of the individual case before it. If a 10-day suspension automatically triggers the recall process then the Standards Committee has become excessively constrained. As my noble friend has just described, the political consequences are very major indeed. The committee should not be boxed into a position where it very often has little alternative but to precipitate a by-election, with all the political and personal implications that follow from that.
Nor should this legislation diminish the standing of the Standards Committee. Part of the motive of those who voted in favour of the reduction from 20 days to 10 was that they had given up on the Standards Committee. They actually believe that it has ceased to be a useful instrument of parliamentary self-government. As I said in the previous debate, I, by contrast, believe profoundly that one of the ways in which the House of Commons can help to restore its reputation and public credibility is to be seen to strengthen its capacity for self-regulation and self-discipline, not the reverse.
To go back to a 20-day minimum suspension period triggering the recall process is not to eliminate the political difficulty that the existence of recall will introduce into the proceedings of the Standards Committee. It may be said that there is, in principle, no particular difference between nine days not precipitating recall and 10 days doing so and between 19 days not precipitating recall and 20 days doing so. However, it does diminish the difficulty because it will reduce the frequency of the occasions when the committee feels under inexorable pressure to pronounce or make a recommendation to the whole House that the suspension period should be 10 days or more. It therefore diminishes the force of that politicising pressure on the committee and that is very important. I am grateful to my noble friend for his exhaustive and courageous examination of these issues. He has given wise advice and this House should, in turn, give wise advice to the other place.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, perhaps I may briefly intervene. It seems extraordinary that in rising to support the Government in their original position, I am rising to support an amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. They had got it right when they originally specified 20 days. In the 18th century, one was hung for stealing a cabbage, or for murdering your wife. If you committed any offence, you might as well get rid of any witnesses in order to avoid being hung for stealing the cabbage. We are rather in that position here.
If the provision is about persuading the outside world that the House of Commons takes bad behaviour seriously, I point out that most people would think that losing your pay for 10 days was not a particularly serious sanction. I therefore think that the nought to 10-day spectrum is far too narrow, and that nought to 20 days would be considerably more just and avoid the problem of the kind of political pressure that the noble Lord referred to.
The more that I, as a former Member, read and listen to the debates on the Bill, the more I believe that the House of Commons has lost confidence in itself. It is a bit like the situation at the moment: whenever there is a difficult problem there is a tendency to set up a public inquiry rather than actually address the issue. The public inquiry then goes on for ever, costs a lot of money and people feel, in the case of some inquiries, that no one has been held to account and it has all taken so long that the situation has moved on. That all adds to the sense of irritation on the part of the public.
What the noble Lord is proposing is eminently sensible and I am really looking forward to hearing the Minister’s response as to how he is going to explain how what I assume was a carefully considered Bill was presented to Parliament and amended in this way. We have almost gone into a competition to, sort of, wear the hair shirt—against the interests of Parliament. I am not being critical of the Opposition and I understand why they have done that, but it is a route that will lead to the destruction of the House of Commons in people’s eyes. If the House of Commons does not believe in itself and if it does not trust itself, how on earth can one expect the outside world to trust it if it demonstrates that it does not have the confidence to carry out its own sanctions?
It is a long time since I left it in 1997 but in the House of Commons that I remember, there is political partisanship—of course there is, which is why the point about the 10 days is important—but, on the whole, the House has a sense of its own worth and of its relationship with the public. It can be trusted to take the decisions that we are talking about and the amendment is immensely sensible. I hope that my noble friend will revert to the Government’s previous position and accept it.
Lord Soley (Lab)
It is entirely right that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has drawn attention to the real problem underlying all this—the lack of self-confidence within the House of Commons. It is rather tragic that we have the Bill before us. I am slightly worried at his reminding people that one could be hung for various things. A number of people would like to hang MPs, and I remind him that when I was chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party and it was heard that I might come to this place, one member of the PLP said that they had the ideal reform for the House of Lords, with one Peer for every lamp-post. I do not use that example too often.
However, I intervene briefly and seriously. My noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Howarth both made a strong case on this issue. My view is, and remains, that the Bill is a mess and should not have been brought forward but, precisely because of the nature of the mess here and the report to which my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours referred, the Government ought to say that they will take this issue away, look at it in some detail and come back with a proposal involving a return to the 20-day period. I would sign up to that. The Bill is not in a coherent state. It would be bad news for the House of Commons, and I suspect that it is unlikely to be used or be used very much. It is undesirable to have legislation in a mess such as this, especially when there is a report of the type that has been referred to that indicates why we ought to have the 20-day solution. The Government have a duty to this House and the other place to say that they will go back, consult and come back with a proposal that is more likely to work in a coherent way.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, your Lordships will not be surprised that we do not support these amendments for the reasons given by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours—well, no, actually, not for the reasons given by him. The amendments would reverse the very changes that Labour won with wholehearted—or should I say widespread?—support in the Commons.
The coalition Government had proposed what my noble friend now wants, which is that MPs would need to be suspended for more than four sitting weeks for the threshold to trigger a recall petition. However, no matter how much we cut that period, only rarely would that trigger be reached. Importantly, it would mean that some serious offences in the House would virtually never trigger a recall petition, which may be the intention of the amendment—or not; but that would be its effect. It would emasculate the role of the Commons in regulating its Members.
We believe that the House of Commons decision to suspend a Member should be able to act as a trigger and that four weeks’ suspension is simply too long. It makes the trigger too high for what constituents would expect. When all this was happening, I was not in Parliament; I was outside. If one asked now how serious an offence should be before someone should face a recall, I should say that being suspended for two weeks is about the right amount. We would not want the threshold to be so lowered that it would allow mischievous claims to be made in the other place. We also recognise that parliamentary dissent is part of our democratic heritage, and that an MP standing up for their beliefs in the other place should not find their right peacefully to protest compromised by unnecessary recall petitions. There is a balance to be struck. However, none of those suspended for protesting would be caught by the new threshold, which was agreed overwhelmingly in the Commons by 210 to 124 votes. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, if we are to trust the House of Commons, that vote is one that we should hear.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Can the noble Baroness explain where the other half of MPs were?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Obviously, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, will not appreciate that on a one-line Whip an awful lot of them disappear, as he has never been in the House of Commons.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
It was a joke. It is called irony. It does not work in Hansard; maybe it could use italics. I was explaining that I have never been there. Forget it.
Lord Howarth of Newport
While my noble friend is celebrating the virtues of House of Commons procedure, will she recognise that there is much merit in a one-line Whip or a free vote on matters that refer to the governance of the House? On matters of parliamentary organisation, the Government always ought to be deferential and accept that these are matters for parliamentarians to decide, not under the pressure of a three-line Whip.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I really do not think it is for me to tell the House of Commons how best to call its votes. What I do say is that if we are to trust the House of Commons then hearing that it agreed this by 203 votes to 124 on a one-line Whip is a fairly ringing endorsement of its decision. However, I am concerned about the discussion of this amendment rather than the wording of it. Some of the discussion has been more about the pressure on the decision-makers involved—be that the Standards Committee as it is or as it is going to be—than whether the number of days is correct and whether the electorate should be able to petition following the wrongdoing of a Member of the House of Commons. I do not think pressure on decision-makers ought to be higher in our minds than the rights of electors. I say this as someone who has been a magistrate, has had to send people to prison and has sat as a lay adjudicator on all sorts of disputes in other professions when they have lay members in, including removing people completely from their profession. I have been in those sorts of positions. Noble Lords, particularly those on the Cross Benches who have been judges, have taken even bigger decisions than I have. People have backbones and I do not believe that the worry of the pressures on these good people should be uppermost, over and above the rights of the electors to take an opinion on their MP where they have obviously done something serious enough to be suspended by their colleagues in the other place.
The Bill as it stands strikes the right balance on this issue. It strengthens the right of constituents to consider recall without jeopardising parliamentary democracy. I think the other place got it right and we should support it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, triggering the opening of a recall after a 10-day suspension rather than 20 or 21 days certainly means there is the potential for petitions to open in a wider range of circumstances. My calculation, which I hope I got correct, of what would have happened over the past 15 years during all the rumbling expenses scandal is that on a 10-day suspension trigger some seven Members of the House of Commons in 15 years would have come under it and on a 20-day suspension only two.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The noble Lord is missing the point of my contribution. The climate has completely changed. Do not go by what has happened in the past. Punishments, suspensions, fines or whatever in the past are irrelevant. It is about what happens in the future. That is why all these arguments about the past are totally irrelevant.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I take on board the noble Lord’s deep concern for the strain on the members of the Standards Committee but the Standards Committee is evolving. The committee is likely to be up to the task it faces. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said in Committee, Members who have committed wrongdoings sufficiently serious to attract a suspension of 10 sitting days ought to be held to account by their constituents. That is what the other place decided and we should hesitate to suggest that it is our duty to save the other place from itself, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is getting close to saying.
The noble Lord has expressed fears that this would politicise the Standards Committee on decisions regarding suspension and would affect its decision as to how long to suspend a Member. Of course there is always a degree of political sensitivity to the suspension of a Member of Parliament. The Standards Committee and the House of Commons have exercised their discretion in the past over the suspension of Members and I am confident that they will continue to do so effectively when looking at future cases. Members of the other place have amended the Bill so that a recall petition will open where the House of Commons has agreed to suspend an MP for 10 days or more. One of the reasons for that was the consideration of previous cases where an MP was suspended for less than 21 days but their behaviour was such that they ought to have faced recall if it had existed at the time. Since this Bill relates only to Members of the other place, we should reflect very carefully before seeking to overturn what the other place has decided. I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I have had a rather difficult few weeks. I have had all sorts of discussions with colleagues about what we should do and whether we should divide the House. Until about 10 minutes ago I was going to divide the House. Having heard the intervention from my noble friend Lord Soley appealing, even now there are those who want me to divide the House. Surely something can be done before Third Reading. Can there not be consultations with people in the Commons about what is happening? Can the noble Lord not say something to suggest a basis on which the Government could return at Third Reading? My noble friend Lady Hayter from the Front Bench is shaking her head because she is wedded to this principle, while on the Back Benches, both in the House of Commons and here, there are people who desperately want to get rid of this 10-day trigger.
Lord Soley
I again ask the Minister to think this through. The House of Commons has produced a report that has only just come to light and which affects the Bill now. The Government did not know about it until yesterday—
Lord Soley
It is not a desirable principle to proceed on legislation in conflict with that. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is right to say “Think carefully before you throw something back to the House of Commons”, but we have a duty to advise and warn when information has come to light from the other House. I am sorry for a long intervention. I hope it helps.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I welcome interventions on my wind-up, although I do not want to delay the House. I appeal to Ministers to go away and ask around. This is wrong. It is a mistake. Everybody I talk to in the Commons knows it is a mistake. No one knew what they were doing at the time. The House was fairly empty; you can tell by the vote. It was all done on a free vote, so a lot of people had gone home. It is only here where I understand there are some Whips in operation to make sure that this nonsense amendment is not interfered with. Regretfully—I know I am upsetting some of my noble friends—I beg leave to withdraw my amendment but I do so with a very heavy heart.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, Amendments 7 and 8 make a small change to Clause 3, which details the appeal period that must expire before a petition can open following an appeal by an MP against a criminal conviction or sentence that has met the first or third recall conditions. The Bill makes provision for the recall process not to begin until the appeal period has expired, which ensures that the MP has the opportunity to bring an appeal. In addition, an MP may bring a second appeal, including bringing a judicial review to the High Court, against a decision of a lower court in England and Wales, and also in Northern Ireland. The usual time limit for requesting a judicial review in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is three months. Judicial review is not available in Scotland in relation to a criminal law conviction. Such reviews are rare but the possibility that an MP may wish to bring a judicial review against the initial appeal would prevent the recall process starting until a further three-month period had expired, starting with the date the initial appeal is disposed of. This is the case even if no judicial review is brought. The recall process would be unable to start earlier even if the MP in question indicated that he or she did not intend to bring a judicial review, as the MP would have the right to change his or her mind.
Although the right of appeal is important, and an MP subject to the process must be guaranteed a fair hearing, the recall process must also meet constituents’ expectations. This amendment would ensure that the recall process could begin in good time once the initial appeal had been disposed of by limiting the period in which a second appeal could be brought to a maximum of 28 days or the usual period for an appeal to be brought, whichever was the shorter. Other, more common types of further appeal would, in any event, have to be brought within the 28-day period in order to be “in-time” appeals. I should note that all relevant appeals in Scotland have a time limit of 28 days or less.
The amendment does not preclude a judicial review being brought as a second appeal but simply limits the timeframe in which bringing a judicial review for a second appeal will stop the recall petition commencing. If that time passes without an appeal being brought, the recall process will begin. In the unlikely event that a judicial review was brought following an initial appeal and after the 28-day limit, it would not stop the recall petition process commencing. If the court overturned the conviction, the Speaker would have to order the early termination of the process under the provisions in Clause 13.
Amendment 9 would alter Clause 4 to remove the requirement for the court to inform the Speaker that a former MP had been convicted and sentenced after the person had ceased to be a Member of Parliament. As drafted, the Bill requires the court to inform the Speaker if it convicts an MP and sentences the MP to be imprisoned, or if it convicts the MP of an expenses-related offence under the third trigger. This requirement stands, however, even if the MP has vacated the seat in the mean time, or after being convicted and before the appeal is heard, and is therefore no longer a Member of Parliament. That is an unintended consequence of the original drafting and would not serve a practical purpose. First, the Speaker would already know that the MP had vacated their seat and, secondly, the conviction would of course be irrelevant to the Speaker and the recall process. The amendment addresses that by clarifying that the court is not required to inform the Speaker where the person in question has ceased to be an MP. I beg to move.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
“( ) A court is not required under this section to notify the Speaker if, at any time since the application of the section, the MP’s seat has been vacated (whether by the MP’s disqualification or death, or otherwise).”
“Election courts: recall
Within 2 years of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a report assessing the merits and feasibility of granting election courts the discretion of initiating a recall petition process.”
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, we debated an amendment in Committee to deal with this matter. Put simply, the problem is this: if the Bill becomes law, we will have two different systems running in parallel. We will have the system as envisaged in the Bill and a separate, older system, which is the election court. As I said in the previous discussion, it is possible for an election court to punish a Member of Parliament, deprive him or her of their seat and not allow them to stand for a number of years in any by-election for a lesser offence than that covered by the Bill. Clause 1(11) states:
“The loss by an MP of his or her seat under this Act as a result of a recall petition does not prevent him or her standing in the resulting by-election”.
That is very clear, yet the election court has the power—and used it in the case of Phil Woolas in 2010—to prevent a Member of Parliament standing in any by-election for a number of years. That seems to me, at the very least, inconsistent and potentially unfair. After all, under this Bill an MP could be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of up to a year, yet he would still be subject to the Bill and would be able to stand at the by-election. In the case of Phil Woolas and the election court, he was not sentenced to imprisonment but he lost his seat. I am not talking about the merits or demerits of what he did; I am talking about what the election court did to him, which was at variance with the purpose of the Bill.
Therefore, the amendment is very simple. It is much milder than the amendment we debated in Committee, so I hope that the Government will find it fairly easy to accept. It says:
“Within 2 years … the Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a report assessing the merits and feasibility of granting election courts the discretion of initiating a recall petition process”.
We are not making a dramatic change; we are saying that, if the Government are so minded, they can take steps to ensure that in future an election court can say, “No, we don’t want to do what we did to Phil Woolas. We want to subject him to the provisions of this particular Bill”. It seems a very reasonable and mild amendment, and the Government can surely say yes to it. I beg to move.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment, which is milder than the one we considered in Committee. It is a reasonable, moderate and sensible amendment, and therefore I tend to fear that the Government may not look at it very favourably.
The principle seems crystal clear. One of the few good things in the Bill, which otherwise I dislike intensely, is that it gives the final word to the electorate, which is where it should be. That is what I think is at fault with so much of the rest of the Bill: it has all sorts of complicated procedures that intervene between an MP and his or her constituents. Quite properly, a judgment is made every five years at a general election and, in my view, that is the way it should have rested. There are numerous other mechanisms within parties’ own disciplinary procedures which could enable most of the evils that it is alleged are identified by the Bill to be addressed.
However, as I said, the one good thing in the Bill is that it allows a Member of Parliament, even after a recall petition has been carried, to at least stand in his or her own defence in a by-election. That option does not exist following decisions of the election court. The MP—all too easily, it seems to me—is not only thrown out of Parliament but prevented from asking the electorate to give their judgment on the merits or otherwise of their having been thrown out of Parliament. It may well be that the electorate will endorse the decision of the court—in this case, the election court—and say, “Yes, you are right. It is wrong for this person to continue as the Member of Parliament”, but at least they should be given the option. When you introduce, as the Bill effectively does, a new sanction on Members of Parliament who misbehave, or are deemed to have misbehaved—that is, the recall system and the recall petition—then it seems to be a matter of common sense, if not common fairness, that we should consider whether this new mechanism is applicable to existing disciplinary offences or other existing offences. That is the point.
Therefore, this very moderate amendment simply says that, in future, within a period of two years a Secretary of State should be able to consider and report to Parliament whether this new recall petition procedure should be available to the election court as part of its machinery of penalties. If not, all sorts of anomalies might arise. If you bring in a new penalty for a similar category of offence, clearly consideration should be given to whether it should be introduced for older offences and older penalty mechanisms.
Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes (Con)
Does the noble Lord agree that the power of the electorate has already been pre-empted in the first place? What he said is perfectly right, in my view, but it has happened too late to bring constituents back in again with a vote or with an opinion, because their power has been pre-empted.
Lord Grocott
What the noble Baroness said is right to the extent that the whole mechanism of this Bill is doing as she said. But I suppose I am looking for some mechanism whereby it could be made a little fairer and across the board. I am not even doing that; I am saying that the Secretary of State should report to Parliament so that it can judge whether these offences, as determined by the electoral court, should have available to them the penalty of a recall system, which Parliament appears determined to impose. That is all that is being asked by this amendment, and my noble friend put it very well. I rest my case.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I have considerable sympathy with this amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has come up with an ingenious way of bringing it forward. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, indicated, it raises an important issue of principle, which is the freedom of choice of the electors. This is something to which I keep referring and it is why I opposed attempts to ban dual mandate. My view is that if electors wish to put somebody into assemblies, it is entirely a matter for the electors. It might be impractical, but that is not for us to say. It is for us to allow electors to do that. So I agree with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, made. It may be that the court says, “You have committed an offence”, but if the electors feel it is important that that person should be returned to represent them, then it is entirely a matter for them.
We keep bringing forward rules that restrict the freedom of electors. We should be looking at it the other way, trying to open up our process as much as possible and leaving it up to electors. If they want somebody to represent them, that is a matter for them. Leave it to the electors. Do not impose restrictions on them. For that reason, I have considerable sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is trying to achieve. Certainly, I am all in favour of reviewing that provision and perhaps even widening it, for the reasons I have given, to look more broadly at how we can protect electors in making the choice that they wish to make, having whom they wish to elect and not being restricted in that.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, as my noble friends have spelt out, the Bill raises the interesting question not just of the interplay between this process and that of the election court but also of what I think is the Government's slap-dash drafting of the Bill, with their cut-and-paste from other legislation, without actually thinking through the best way of dealing with allegations of wrongdoing. As I have said, and as the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, has echoed, we do not want ever to see this Bill used. We hope that MPs will never find themselves in the position of triggering a recall petition. However, if it happens, we need to be sure that the most appropriate mechanisms and penalties are available to suit the particular misconduct. We may have it in this Bill, but we may not; it may not be right. Indeed, on the reverse side, it might be much better for other misconduct to trigger a recall petition rather than straight expulsion, as my noble friend Lord Dubs suggested. The proposal of a report to consider this in the round and come forward with proposals on that basis seems eminently sensible. I hope that the Government will support this amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, behind this issue are some large questions about the role of election courts and the seriousness of electoral offences such as electoral fraud. The role of election courts is to assess whether electoral fraud has taken place and to determine whether it has had a material impact on the outcome of an election. I know that what happened to Phil Woolas preoccupies a number of noble Lords on the Labour Benches. I went back and looked at that sad history and I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, suggested in Committee that he be acquitted on appeal. He was indeed acquitted of one of the three offences but the other two were affirmed.
Electoral fraud is a serious business. I can think of other potential occasions where we could find ourselves with contested results of elections. We had a contested issue in east London in local elections where the severity of what is pled or what might perhaps have happened is not—as I think is being suggested here—something less serious than other potential misconduct. I understand the noble Lord’s intentions in tabling his amendment but I am not persuaded that, after two years, a particular fact will have come to light which would necessarily cause the Government of the day to reappraise the role of election courts, which is what this is really about.
I am also concerned that granting election courts the discretion to initiate a recall petition risks sending a confused message about the seriousness of electoral fraud as such. At present, there is a public expectation that those who commit offences that breach electoral law should face the appropriate penalty and that the appropriate penalty is set. Those offences are particularly relevant to the MP’s democratic mandate, and they are intended to affect the MP’s democratic mandate because, thankfully in this country, we have a very low level of electoral misconduct during campaigns and of electoral fraud; but we are conscious that the potential is always there. In the event that fraud has been committed by a sitting MP, his or her constituents might be confused if they were asked to sign a recall petition, knowing that an election court had already identified proven wrongdoing on the MP’s part.
The Government do not consider that this Bill should be a vehicle for the election court’s functions to be adapted, or for the consequences of established electoral offences to be altered; that is a different and other serious set of issues. There is also a risk that an MP, having been subjected to a recall petition by the election court, could then be prosecuted and sentenced in the criminal courts for an offence of which the election court had found him or her guilty. If the MP had held on to his or her seat following the first recall petition and were then sentenced to a period of imprisonment of 12 months or less, this could trigger another recall petition under the first recall condition.
There are some complicated issues here, but I end where I started. Election fraud or an election offence during a campaign that materially affects the outcome of that election are serious offences. That is the role of election courts. However, the Government are not persuaded that we should now downgrade the severity of that offence.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I am disappointed in the Minister’s reply because he has not really faced the point that we were seeking to make in this amendment—and I thank noble Lords who gave their support to it. What happens now, under the Government’s present Bill, is that a Member of Parliament can be sentenced to six or nine months’ imprisonment, yet he would still be subject to the recall procedure and he could stand again. It seems to me that a sentence of six to nine months’ imprisonment is pretty serious, yet the Government, in their wisdom, have a Bill that says, “Yes, but you can be subject to the recall procedure and you might well be re-elected”. Indeed, in our history, Members of Parliament who have been refused their seats have stood again and have got re-elected—so that is up to the voters. The whole point of this amendment is that we must trust the local voters to make the right decision, and they can decide one way or the other.
On the subject of severity, I do not have all the details of the Phil Woolas case in front of me, and I do not think that I said in Committee that he had been acquitted. What I am saying is that the electoral court proceedings lost him his seat, but there was no further sanction in terms of imprisonment. Imprisonment is serious, yet under the Bill an MP can be imprisoned and can still be subject to the recall procedure. So the position is entirely inconsistent; it does not make any sense. The amendment simply proposes that the Secretary of State assess the merits and feasibility of granting election courts this discretion. If it is too difficult, the feasibility study would say, “No: it is too difficult”, for the reasons the Minister gave. We are asking only for the Government to have a more detailed look at this than the Minister suggested in reply.
We have been debating for quite a long time and there are further amendments to come. Part of me is tempted to test the opinion of the House. I will not do that, but I wish that the Government could be a little more flexible. Frankly, they have lost the argument. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, this amendment would increase the number of signing places that a petition officer can designate in their constituency from a maximum of four to a maximum of 10. Noble Lords may recall that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee recommended that there should be a maximum of four signing places, and it is for this reason that the Bill included it as a maximum. That said, the Government have listened to the concerns expressed both in the other place and in this House during debates about the potential difficulties that a cap of four signing places could pose in certain circumstances, such as in constituencies that have a large number of population centres or are far flung and where it could be difficult for some constituents to attend a signing place in person.
Indeed, during the debate in Committee on the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, which sought to introduce a minimum of four signing places, we heard how some electors in the noble Baroness’s home constituency of Brecon and Radnor could face a round trip of an hour or more by car and up to half a day by public transport if they wished to sign the petition in person. These concerns were shared by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who reminded us that constituencies such as Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles are made up of a number of islands served by ferries, which makes the choice as to where to designate signing places particularly important to those who live there. Having listened carefully to these arguments, the Government accept that, in some circumstances, petition officers may wish to designate more than four signing places.
In reaching the decision to increase the maximum number from four to 10, the Government have consulted those returning officers whose constituencies could benefit most from raising the cap. I am particularly grateful to the Electoral Management Board for Scotland, which provided views on the subject, and, through them, the returning officers for the Western Isles and for Argyll and Bute. They were clear that a limit of four could pose particular challenges in large rural constituencies or those with a number of islands, and felt that a raised limit would afford them helpful flexibility.
We do not propose to make this an open-ended provision whereby petition officers can designate a considerably higher number of signing places, and nor do we propose to impose a minimum number of signing places that is greater than one. As we said in previous debates on the subject, the petition will be open for eight weeks and there will be an option to sign by post. In some constituencies, it may be that one or two signing places will be sufficient, as has been argued by the Association of Electoral Administrators and the Electoral Commission. I am of the view that we must ensure that petition officers can take a proportionate approach to the provision of signing places.
I recognise the need to ensure that there is enough flexibility to ensure reasonable access for constituents, especially in larger constituencies or those with particular geography. The Government believe that increasing the maximum number of signing places that can be designated to a maximum of 10 allows petition officers to designate the appropriate number of signing places based on the characteristics of their constituency. I also note that the Electoral Commission has stated in its briefing for this debate that it welcomes the change provided for by this amendment to allow greater flexibility for petition officers. I thank those noble Lords who participated in the earlier debates. We have reached a sound conclusion and I beg to move.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I am delighted to see that my noble friends have been able to respond to the views expressed right across the House on this issue in Committee. Geography, scale and lack of public transport were certainly features in my former constituency of North Cornwall, as I referred to in Committee. But I am even more delighted to witness the fact that my noble friends on the Front Bench seem to be listening a little to what has been said in the House on this Bill—just a tiny little bit. I hope that between now and Third Reading we see some more evidence of flexibility from my noble friends.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I, too, very much welcome this amendment. It is a step in the right direction. I have just one question for my noble friend. Why was the consultation to which he referred not undertaken before the Bill was introduced?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I am going to be a little more generous than the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and thank the Minister for listening to the debate on the amendment that we moved in Committee. He will not be surprised that we are delighted with this. Not only is it the right answer in itself, but I also think that it will reduce the demand for postal votes. That will save the resources of the petition officer—their time, their staff and their money—because there will be less need for people to apply for postal votes. So we are very happy to support this government amendment.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I am most grateful for the generous comments that have been made. As I said, this has come forward because it makes practical sense. If there is an unfortunate instance of recall, it is important that constituents, wherever they are from—the islands or the large constituencies—have the ability to sign if they so wish. So far as my noble friend Lord Norton is concerned, as I said at the beginning, our basis for the maximum of four signing places was because that was what the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee had recommended. If I have further particulars on that, I will of course write to him, but that was the basis for four. However, what has happened in the other place and in your Lordships’ House has ensured that sense has prevailed, so I commend the amendment to your Lordships.
Lord Howarth of Newport
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, Amendment 12 would reduce the signing period from eight weeks to three weeks. It is intended to minimise the period of the petition—to shorten as far as possible the period in which there can be campaigns on both sides and, in particular, campaigns to secure names for the petition to unseat a Member of Parliament. Three weeks would be amply sufficient for this process. Three weeks allows plenty of time for constituents to make their way to one of up to 10 signing places, thanks to the amendment moved just now by the Minister, which was welcomed by the House. It is also plenty of time in which to organise postal votes to arrange for people to be able to sign the petition by post.
Imagine the situation that will prevail. The Member of Parliament has already been found guilty of serious wrongdoing by a court or by the Standards Committee. Already, he or she has been publicly disgraced. They have been shamed at length before their colleagues, their constituents and the nation. There will have been quantities of media coverage, much of it vindictive and gloating, in the period leading up to the judgment and at the moment when that judgment was made. Local media and social media will all have ensured that the Member of Parliament’s constituents are fully aware of the issue. What virtue is there in dragging out the period of the petition? Why do we wish to create this modern form of trial by ordeal? Why in this year of grace, 2015, are we legislating to provide that a political corpse shall twist in the wind and decompose for up to eight weeks? If by any chance there is still any life in that corpse—that politician—a by-election may follow, during which there will be more weeks of media sport, with the media pack baying for blood, and of accusation and counteraccusation; all of it highly unedifying and tending to give politics a bad name.
Some noble Lords may have read an article in last Saturday’s Guardian by the Reverend Giles Fraser, who described how, in the days when we burnt heretics and witches in this country, sellers of cherries would offer their wares to the spectators who had come to witness the public execution. This euphemistically termed “recall Bill” is in fact a process of public torment of a disgraced MP. I do not want to be excessively melodramatic, but I suggest that it is tantamount to political sadism. The market gardeners will be there, out and about in the constituency, selling their cherries. The local Mesdames Defarges will be knitting outside the signing places.
I do not in any way condone or mitigate the seriousness of serious wrongdoing, but it seems that this legislation, and this petition process in particular, is a gesture of self-abasement and of gratification of an angry public on the part of a traumatised and scared political class. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, spoke of the lack of self-confidence in the House of Commons, and I agree very much with what he said. It is right that the House of Commons should have made its apologies. It is right that there should have been contrition on the part of the political class. It is right to take steps to reform the culture of Parliament and to improve its disciplinary processes. But it is not right to do so by tossing miscreants to the crowd for ritual humiliation.
The political leaders, however, and Members of the House of Commons, in their wisdom—it seems to me a somewhat primitive wisdom—have approved the process that is provided for in the Bill. Should we not, however, be aiming to minimise the nastiness in politics, starting, perhaps, with the weekly cage fight at Prime Minister’s Questions in the other place?
I have been struck that noble Lords on all sides of this House who are former Members of the House of Commons have made the case that we do not need this recall procedure at all. The House of Commons has the power to expel a Member of Parliament who disgraces himself or herself and the House. If the Member of Parliament does not resign voluntarily—I will give way.
Lord Soley
My noble friend has been talking about MPs who have disgraced themselves. Clearly, that is the origin of the Bill but, as I pointed out, and others have pointed out, in a number of cases the danger is that this Bill will be used where there is a political aspect to the case. We need only think of the Irish Members who in the past have been in conflict or, in the example I gave, if we look forward, of perhaps a Muslim MP going to fight in Syria—not for ISIL, but for one of the other groups—and yet being arrested and perhaps sent to prison. I think we should not fall into the trap of assuming that this will be used only against MPs who have clearly done wrong, because it has more dangerous implications.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I agree with my noble friend. The process provided for in the Bill would allow for the intrusion of all kinds of extraneous factors, such as the ones he describes. If we return to the question of whether a Member of Parliament has committed serious wrongdoing in the terms that the Bill envisages, of course, if that MP chooses not to resign voluntarily, the parties have their means of persuading the Member of Parliament to resign. The parties can remove their endorsement. The matter can thereby be dealt with cleanly and quickly.
Lethal injection is one thing. But hanging, drawing and quartering over eight weeks is quite another. If we must have this petition process, let us make it as short as possible. I propose that three weeks would be amply sufficient, but some noble Lords may consider that, for practical reasons, we might need four weeks, conceivably even five weeks. I would not be dogmatic on that. The principle that I wish to put forward in this amendment is that we should keep the petition process to the minimum of time in which it can be performed as satisfactorily as possible. Eight weeks, it seems to me, is altogether excessive. There is also a consideration that if we are to have 10 signing places staffed for eight weeks on end, it will be very expensive. However, that is not my argument. My argument is about mitigating or minimising the gratuitous unpleasantness that is inherent in this process.
I hope that noble Lords will agree with my point of view. I hope that Ministers may feel that there is scope for them to respond flexibly and perhaps adjust the period of eight weeks to three, possibly four. I beg to move.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, my observation is simply on the practicalities of this. I do not know what would happen in these signing places, the number of which we have just agreed should be extended to a maximum of 10. What would actually happen to them in weeks two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight? Surely, the overwhelming evidence shows that, with the kind of build-up that is being described by my noble friend Lord Howarth, anyone who wanted to sign this petition would, I imagine, have built up to a sufficient level of frenzy that they would be virtually queuing at the station where the petition could be signed. Certainly, they would have dealt with it by week two or week three. There is an idea, somehow, that we need to keep these stations open for 10 weeks. For heaven’s sake, consider a general election campaign, until this dreaded Fixed-term Parliaments Act came along, about which I have expressed opinions in the past. Normally, there were five or six weeks of intense campaigning, which constituted a general election campaign. That was more than enough for most of us, I think. As far as I was concerned, I found it exhausting.
We know, from the evidence, about postal voting. Experts such as my noble friend Lord Kennedy on the Front Bench will no doubt know more about this than I do. Is not the evidence overwhelming that people either cast their postal vote within a day or two of receiving the ballot or they do not do it at all? I think exactly the same principle would apply to this. I think it most unlikely that this Act, as it will become, will come into operation very often, if at all, which makes the whole operation seem rather a waste of time. Assuming, however, that it comes into operation, I would safely predict that the poll clerks in these up to 10 signing places would be sitting there reading newspapers for weeks 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. I can see no conceivable practical reason, let alone in the arguments that my noble friend has advanced, why we need such a long period for signing.
Lord Soley
I want to emphasise what I said in my intervention. Bear in mind that when Bobby Sands starved himself to death, there were constant displays outside all sorts of places relating to government in Northern Ireland and southern Ireland. If we have this, there will be something similar. It will not, I hope, ever be as dreadful as that period again, but do bear in mind a very important point: people get sentenced for offences as a result of a political situation.
I shall give another example, which has been given here in the past and concerns the First World War and conscientious objectors. There is a whole range of issues on which, in the past, Members of Parliament have committed offences which are illegal and get them into trouble with the law. Under this legislation, it would result in their losing their seats. If you want to look at a situation, of course it is easy to identify ones where MPs fiddled their expenses. That is the easy option. However, when they are linked into a political-style offence, it is a very different ball game and there are all sorts of dangers. To my mind, that is a much bigger danger in the whole of this Bill, not just this individual question of three or eight weeks.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
My Lords, I do not wish to detain the House for long, but would the Minister like to say exactly why eight weeks was chosen? In all our debates, I have never heard—I may have missed it—a precise definition of how that was arrived at. Why eight weeks? There must have been some reason for choosing eight weeks. Was some sort of scientific study done? Or was eight weeks simply plucked out of the air as a good idea? Of course, the shortest time would be one day, but that is clearly impracticable. We would not want it to be a sort of side-show to be done in one day.
I simply throw this into the ring. It may be that the eight weeks that is provided to give people the maximum amount of time to make up their minds and to vote actually has the opposite effect. By the end of these eight weeks, people may be so fed up with it that they will not bother going to sign the petition, which would be counterproductive. The other side of that is that when you ask people to sign the petition, they might ask, “When do we have to sign by?”. If you say, “Eight weeks from now—two months”, they will say “I’ll do it tomorrow”. Some of my noble friends will, like me, remember knocking on people’s doors asking them to go the poll and them saying, “Can we come and do it tomorrow?”. That is absolutely true. I imagine that people will say, “Well, we’ll put it off”.
Although I am one of those who is, if you like, a sort of prophet of doom in the sense of fearing that a huge frenzy will build up in the media, even the media cannot sustain things much beyond three weeks. Even the most lurid cases disappear after three weeks, because the media have moved on to something else. I am not sure that even the media would be prepared to commit the resources to get the petition signed for, in totality, beyond two or three days.
Apart from that, the timing is far too long. A decision must be arrived at, although whether three weeks is the right length of time or not, I really do not know. My noble friend has not said why it should be three weeks; he said that perhaps it could be three or four. We should be flexible on this, in the sense that neither the coalition Government nor we should say it has to be three weeks and nothing more or nothing less. The Government are wrong in thinking they have to stick by eight weeks. If the Minister cannot accept three weeks, I hope he will understand that this is not an attempt to wreck the Bill or anything like that. Whatever its faults, we have to try to make the Bill as sensible and workable as possible. Why eight weeks? Why not four weeks? Would that not be a much better way and a much better use of resources?
Lord Tyler
I was enormously impressed with the noble Lord’s very dramatic introduction of his amendment. Perhaps he has been over-Mantelled recently and has been watching too much “Wolf Hall”. However, in these circumstances, he has a perfectly valid point.
My questions follow on from the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes. Who advised Ministers that it should be eight weeks? Most significantly, there is the very important cross-reference with the number of signing places, which my noble friend Lord Norton and I referred to in Committee. If there are only two signing places, perhaps you do need longer; but if there are 10, you should obviously review that situation. Has whoever gave advice to Ministers on the number of weeks, on the original basis of a maximum of four signing places, been asked to review that advice in the light of the Government’s now much more flexible attitude? That is something we need to be told now, otherwise it seems to me that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has huge merit, at least in making the Government think again about the very new circumstances that their own flexibility has now created.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I, too, support this amendment for the reasons we discussed in Committee. I argued then that the number of signing places should be expanded and the period of time in which you can sign reduced. The Government have got half way there, so I hope that they will now go the rest of the way as well, for the reasons that have been well advanced.
Like other noble Lords, I cannot understand the rationale for eight weeks. As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said, it is much longer than an election campaign. In the case of one election, the Prime Minister announced it and it took place four weeks to the day after that. However, here we are saying that twice as long should be available for people to reflect on whether they should sign a petition—eight weeks. Why on earth should anyone take eight weeks to think about whether they should sign a petition or not? The news about the Member being eligible will be out quickly. It will be in the news and, as has been touched on, it will then cease to be newsworthy after a matter of days, if that. Why are we going to linger for weeks with people sat at polling stations twiddling their thumbs waiting for people to turn up and sign? I can see no argument for that length of time. It is not even as if we are still in the period where it took days for news to reach people and they then had to rely on some slow means of transport to get somewhere to actually sign something. Even if we were in that period, they could do it in less than eight weeks. Why nowadays, with instant communication and the ability to get to one of potentially 10 places to sign fairly quickly, do we need as long as eight weeks? It may be an arbitrary figure, but why eight rather than, say, six?
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said that he is flexible and that it could be four or five weeks. I thought he was, if anything, generous in saying three weeks. Why on earth would you need three weeks to reflect? Are you going to call the family together to hold great deliberations about whether you should sign it or not? Once you know about it, you think about it and then you decide whether you are going to make the effort to go and sign the petition—you go and sign and that is it. That could be quite easily achieved within a period of three weeks and, to be honest, one could achieve it with a much shorter period.
As I said, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is being quite generous in putting down that figure. Had he not put down his amendment, I would have put one down to reduce the period and would probably have chosen an even shorter period. The argument for his amendment is eminently rational. It does not raise any serious issue of principle in terms of recall per se, so I see no reason why the Government, having moved on the number of places where signing can take place, could not be moved just as easily on this. It makes perfect sense. There is also the practical point that was touched on about people having to staff the places at which signing can take place. There is a cost to the public purse, and we should not lose sight of that.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport has made a good case for considering whether and why eight weeks is somehow the perfect period for the petition to run. We remain unclear on the question that my noble friend Lord Hughes raised as to why the Government chose this period—a question to which they never gave a clear answer in Committee. As I said before, two weeks, as it was then, did seem too short a period if it was to include the run-up to the signing period—in other words, the time to get the signing issues out and for everyone to get to know about them as well as the signing period itself.
The Electoral Commission thinks eight weeks is, in its words, a relatively “long signing period”. Certainly, in democratic terms, two months is a long period for an MP to be effectively out of the Commons and fighting to retain his or her seat. However, the period does have to be sufficient for people to know about it, to hear the debate and to come to a view, and three weeks probably is too short if it is to cover the whole of the public awareness period—I do not like the word campaign—as well as the actual signing period. Amendment 12, as it stands, might not be the right one, but it will be very interesting to hear whether the Government can give us any reason why they chose eight weeks and, even more interestingly, whether they are willing to consider some movement on this.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for tabling this amendment; we have had a very interesting debate. I appreciate that an eight-week period may seem lengthy, but the main reason why it was considered appropriate is that we thought it was important that constituents are given sufficient time to consider any available information from the Member of Parliament or from those concerned with the petition. I very much hope, as I said before, that we do not have these recall petitions. I hope and expect that the behaviour of Members of Parliament will be of the highest standard, and that this will not happen.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
Does the Minister accept that one of the problems of an eight-week period is that someone who signs in the first two or three days might well reflect after five, six or seven days that he or she has made a mistake? There is no provision if someone changes their mind. For the process to work properly, if it can work at all, the shorter the period in which people make up their minds, the better.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Another interpretation is that if you have too rushed an arrangement and want to vote by post, along with the problems that I have outlined about three weeks, this will be a serious and rare event. In replying to the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, I think that there should be a time in which mature reflection is permitted. If someone knows that they have a decent length of time either to send their vote back by post or to go to the signing place, this encourages them rather than causing in them a knee-jerk reaction from the last thing they read in the press. Because this is a serious move, a period of calm is required and would be provided.
If it was all to be condensed into a very short period, we could possibly have the hiatus and the cherries and the Madame Defarge scenario, whereas we want this to be taken seriously by Parliament; and if that happens, we want it also to be taken seriously by electors who will not in my view feel rushed by the arguments of one or the other side. They should have some time in which to reflect properly on the matter.
While I understand the kind and good intentions that the noble Lord has portrayed in not wanting to seek an unattractive scenario, I think that the eight weeks provide the calm reflection that I hope there would be abroad for this very serious matter, and so I ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I am very grateful to everybody who has spoken and certainly to all who have expressed support for the principle of what I was trying to achieve in putting this amendment forward.
Even at this stage, I hope that I can persuade the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, who has been conciliatory and flexible on the number of signing places, to be equally conciliatory and flexible on the matter of the duration of the signing period. As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, put it so strongly and effectively, there should be an interaction between these two factors. The Government have helpfully and constructively moved on the one, but so far the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, has given us only half a loaf. If he is prepared to reflect on it he will see that there ought to be an interaction between these two considerations.
I have not at any point sought to suggest that we should so abbreviate the signing period that it becomes in practical terms impossible to conduct its administration properly. I also do not think that these decisions about recall should be taken hastily—far from it, because I agree with everybody who has stressed just how important these decisions are. Equally, we do not want to be dilatory about this process, partly for the reasons that I developed as I moved the amendment. We run a risk of some extended, gratuitous unpleasantness that is bad for political life and for our country. I know that the Minister fully understands the significance of that.
There are other factors. There is cost. These are stringent times. How can it possibly be justified to keep these signing places open, staffed by paid officials, for more weeks than they are genuinely needed? My noble friend Lady Hayter made another important point for which I am most grateful. She drew attention to the fact that if the petition signing period runs for eight weeks, and should there not be the 10% of registered voters signing the petition, the Member of Parliament whose future is in question will be absent from the service of his or her constituents, and absent from the House of Commons, for the whole of that period. That seems to be a very important case.
The Minister has expressed in very general terms the desirability of people not being made to rush their judgment in this matter. I think there is realistic scope for a compromise to reduce the period of eight weeks to what would be the necessary minimum to enable constituents to reflect adequately on the important decision they have to take and to implement that decision by way of signing the petition, whether directly or by post. Is the Minister willing, between now and Third Reading, to think further about it and perhaps meet us to discuss it? I hope that he will not be as adamant as the first part of his remarks just now seemed to suggest. I invite him to tell us now whether he sees an opportunity for some further consideration of this—which, it seems to be agreed all around the Chamber, it is desirable to do—to reduce the signing period to the necessary minimum and no longer. Is the Minister willing to give us that undertaking?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I do not think I am in a position to give an undertaking. The truth is that thought should be given towards any stage in your Lordships’ House. But I cannot promise to bring anything further back because, for the reasons I have outlined, the Government are of the view that three weeks is not sufficient and they think that eight weeks is the right length for mature discussion. Of course, I am always very happy to see the noble Lord, but I am not in a position to promise that I would be able to support anything beyond the Government’s current position.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I completely understand that the noble Lord is not in a position to give a solid undertaking that he will introduce an amendment that changes the signing period. But I take it from what he has just said that he is willing to enter into a discussion with his ministerial colleagues. He has said that he is willing to talk to some of us about this. That would be genuinely desirable. I think that somewhere between three weeks and eight weeks, we can arrive at a better span of time which should be agreeable to everybody. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, Amendments 13 and 14 are in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town. I moved similar amendments in Committee. Amendment 13 removes the petition wording from the Bill, and Amendment 14 makes provision for the wording to be agreed following consultation with both the Electoral Commission and the Welsh Language Commissioner.
At present we have words in the Bill that have not been user-tested. The Electoral Commission has given some advice, but unlike the referendums in Wales and Scotland, it will not be involved in the user-testing. According to its briefing, it seems quite content with that, which in itself is a bit odd. In Committee I asked the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, which organisation would be undertaking the user-testing of the wording. He was not able to answer me then but agreed to write to me, which he has done and I am most grateful to him for that.
I would like to understand why the Cabinet Office launched a tender exercise on user-testing rather than asking the Electoral Commission to do the work. What was the discussion in government that came up with that decision? The Government have not been clear on that so far and it is not referred to in the briefing note from the Electoral Commission either, but discussion on this issue must have taken place. This is all very rushed and not a good way to undertake an important exercise. Putting untested petition words in the Bill, although they can be amended by regulation, is not the most satisfactory way to go about this.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, as I hope he will confirm the involvement of the Welsh Language Commissioner in the process but, as I said, it should be done in a much better way. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, should reconsider the position he took in Committee. This is not a very encouraging way to move forward and I think it is a bad case of putting the cart before the horse. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, it seems to me that the horse is actually before the cart. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, suggested—I thought rather unkindly—that there was a lot of cut and paste in the Bill. Actually, we have followed wherever possible agreed and established rules in comparable cases of electoral law. That seems to be an entirely appropriate way to do it.
Our decision to include the specified wording in the Bill mirrors the position for UK parliamentary elections where the form of the ballot paper appears in primary legislation but may be amended through regulations. As I said in Committee, a modest but worthwhile advantage of the appearance of the signing sheet’s wording in the Bill is that any future changes made to it will then be reflected in the text of the parent Act, which helps to make the law as clear as possible for petition administrators, parties and campaigners.
I agree that it is important to check that the wording is fit for purpose. That is why we have committed to user-test it with input from the Electoral Commission on the user-testing specification. If changes are identified, these can be made through regulations which require the approval of both Houses. We currently have a tender out for a supplier to undertake this work in consultation with the Electoral Commission.
On the question of consultation with the Welsh Language Commissioner, I can reaffirm that the Government will prepare a Welsh translation of the wording in secondary legislation, as is the practice at other statutory polls, using a power and following a principle established in the Welsh Language Act 1993. This translation will be subject to user-testing in the same way as the English version, and we will consult the Electoral Commission’s Welsh language experts to ensure that the translation is accurate and user- friendly.
The Welsh Language Commissioner has no formal statutory role in assessing electoral forms and notices. I am in favour of those with an interest in the process being involved in and aware of user-testing, although it would be unusual to provide a statutory role for the commissioner here and not in respect of other polls. In summary, I believe it is important that the wording of the petition appears in the Bill, and that it is user-tested and commented on to ensure that any improvements which are identified can be made. With those reassurances that we are following established practice in both respects, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the noble Lord for his response. I still think it is an odd way to be moving forward. I am not sure that the Government have thought this through particularly well. We are trying to help the Government with these matters, but at this stage I am prepared to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“( ) The petition officer must not make public a running total of signatories to the recall petition during the signing period.”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, the two amendments in this group are in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town. Amendment 16 mirrors an amendment tabled in Committee by my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside.
I disagree with both the Government and the Electoral Commission on whether, when the recall provisions have been triggered, it will be a local event with a local feel. It would be a grave error for a running total to be published throughout the eight-week signing period. It will be a national event and a potential media circus, with different outlets reporting daily on the number of people who have signed the petition. If the noble Lord is not minded to accept my amendment, I hope that he will confirm very clearly to your Lordships’ House that this will not be allowed to happen and that in the regulations that will be issued it will be explicit that the number of people who have signed the petition cannot be released under any circumstances during the signing period.
Amendment 18 requires the petition officer to make public the number of people on the electoral register at the cut-off period before the petition process opens. This will enable everyone to be clear on the number of signatures needed to trigger the recall process. It is very important that everyone involved in the process is clear on the number of signatures needed to have a Member of Parliament recalled, and for there to be no doubt about what that figure is.
Again, if the Minister is not minded to accept my amendment, I hope that in responding he will give a clear assurance to the House that this will be explicit in the regulations he issues. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am very happy to confirm that the Government’s intention is that the regulations will require the petition officer to make public the number of eligible electors in the constituency—as has been suggested—and that the regulations would not sanction the issuing of a running total during the petition process itself.
As I said in Committee, the Bill does not specify whether a running total should be published, but further detail would be a matter for the conduct regulations. It would not be consistent with the level of detail in the Bill to specify these matters here but I can assure the noble Lord that we have heard and understood his arguments, that we agree with them and that they will be adequately covered in the regulations. On that basis I again hope that he is sufficiently reassured to be able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the Minister for his response. I am reassured and am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“( ) Any persons wishing to apply to vote by post, who are not interested to do so before the Speaker’s notice is given or on the cut-off day, must do so no later than the end of the fifth week of the signing period.”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, Amendments 17, 19 and 20 again are in my name and the name of my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town.
Amendment 17 would bring in a deadline of the end of the fifth week to be able to apply to sign the petition by post. At both Committee stage and in the memorandum which outlines the draft regulation, the only information provided by the Government on the limitations on signing the petition by post was that the procedures for elections and referendums would not be appropriate for the recall process. However, a letter to my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside stated that the Government intended to maintain the same time limits. So can the Minister tell the House why 11 days is deemed appropriate? Who has been consulted on this?
Even with the Government’s commitment to increase the number of signing places from four to 10—which is welcome—it is reasonable to believe that there will be a greater demand to sign the petition by post. Given all that, does the Minister think that 11 working days will be long enough to check—and double-check—all the applications that may be received? Our amendment allows for a longer period to check that everything is okay. It enhances security and enables greater vigilance to be deployed by petition officers, as they will have more time to undertake their work.
Amendments 19 and 20 are the same as those I moved in Committee. They raise the penalty for double signing from an illegal practice to a corrupt one. I was disappointed that the Minister did not accept those amendments then. I have had some discussions with him outside the Chamber and I would be interested to hear careful words from him that clearly state that the reasons for double signing will not necessarily be the same and that therefore on some occasions prosecutions in the corrupt band would be necessary, while in others they would be in the illegal band.
As I said in Committee, a corrupt practice at an election includes things such as impersonating another individual to use their vote, signing and submitting a false election expense return or attempting to bribe, treat or use undue influence on a voter, whereas an illegal practice includes not putting an imprint on your leaflet. The noble Lord must surely accept that the former offences are more in keeping with the double signing offence than are the latter. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to this and other points I have raised. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for again raising these issues, which we have discussed in Committee. As I stated in Committee, the detail of how postal and proxy signing will operate will be dealt with in the regulations made under Clause 18. This again mirrors the approach made at UK parliamentary elections, where the rules for absent voting appear in secondary legislation.
Therefore, the Bill itself does not set a deadline by which postal signature sheet applications must be received. At an election this is usually the 11th working day before the poll, which allows applications received in the days just before and up to the deadline to be processed and postal ballot packs issued to electors for them to complete and return in time for the close of poll.
As I previously stated, for a petition it is possible to set a deadline during the petition signing period itself. The last day of the period is, in effect, analogous to polling day at an election, so there needs to be a cut-off point. I therefore have some sympathy with the policy suggestion made by this amendment, and can confirm our intention that the regulations will set a deadline. However, the amendment is not necessary, as the regulation powers in the Bill are sufficient to enable a deadline for applications to be set.
It would be prudent to ensure that the rules about postal and proxy signing are set out clearly in a single place for the benefit of practitioners and campaigners, and in this sense it is not helpful to specify the deadline for only postal signature sheet applications in the Bill. So the regulations will set out regulations for both postal and proxy voting.
Amendments 19 and 20 would modify the nature of the offence in the Bill for signing the petition twice, making it a corrupt rather than an illegal practice. It does this by amending provisions in the Representation of the People Act 1983 that apply to the offence of double voting. These amendments were originally tabled in Committee.
Clause 12 makes it an offence for two or more signatures to be added to the petition by or on behalf of any individual elector, just as in elections it is an offence for two or more votes to be cast by or on behalf of an individual elector. As was noted in Committee, Clause 12 mirrors the offence of double voting in electoral law in terms of the maximum penalties that apply upon conviction. First, a person guilty of the offence is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, which is up to £5,000—a not inconsiderable sum. Secondly, a person convicted of the offence is incapable for a period of three years of being registered as an elector or voting in parliamentary elections and local government elections in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, being an MP or holding a local government elective office in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. The sentencing court has the option partially or wholly to waive these incapacities.
The amendments proposed would modify the first of these two aspects, with the result that a person convicted of double signing would be liable on conviction to a prison sentence of up to two years. In this respect, the amendments treat the offence like an even more seriously corrupt practice in electoral law such as personation, either by impersonation or via an absent vote.
I read through all this with great fascination. My wife votes twice, and has voted twice for some time, holding a proxy as she does for our son, who has been working in the United States for some time. One of the greatest delights in the past week is that he has just accepted a post at Edinburgh University—so her second proxy vote will be removed as he returns to this country.
The amendments do not amend the second aspect: the duration of the incapacity to vote or stand in an election. The three-year bar is retained, and replaced by a five-year bar for corrupt practices such as personation.
The Government’s view is that the penalties for illegal practices are adequate for the offence of double signing, and that the penalties for corrupt practice are more appropriate for these even more severe offences. Our consideration is—again given the existing law covering electoral offences—that it would be inappropriate to arrange for a different set of standards for petition elections than holds for other forms of election. I hope that that is clear. We are attempting to be consistent here and I hope that on that basis I have again reassured the noble Lord. His knowledge of electoral law is—I am well aware—deeper than mine, but I hope that he will be able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the Minister for his response. I hope that outside the Chamber we may be able to have some discussions about the question of the signing period for applying for a petition vote. There is some issue about the 11 days and the sheer amount of pressure on returning officers to deal with that, so I hope that we can do that. The offence of double signing, if proven in a court of law, would sit more comfortably with corrupt rather than illegal practice. However, at this stage, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Welfare Assistance Schemes
(9 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Lord Bishop of Truro
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that local welfare assistance schemes provide effective support to people in crisis and will continue to be able to do so.
The Lord Bishop of Truro
My Lords, I am very grateful indeed for this opportunity to raise a very important issue by putting some questions to the Government on, and raising matters relating to, local welfare assistance schemes. In doing so, I declare my interest that I am chair of the Children’s Society, a national charity which has conducted quite a lot of research in this area and to which I shall refer.
I begin by welcoming the government decision to make visible within the local government settlement £129.6 million for funding for local welfare provision. This funding provides a vital safety net for families and children, and vulnerable residents, in a crisis. The additional allocation of £74 million to local authorities, coming on the back of campaigns run by the Children’s Society and others and announced last week by the Government, is also a welcome, necessary and vital step in ensuring that all local authorities up and down the country have the resources available to put in place local welfare schemes.
The level of public support for the reinstatement of funding for local welfare provision has been significant. I am sorry that I was not in the Chamber earlier to hear the Question asked on this matter. More than 5,000 campaigners from the Children’s Society and Shelter responded to the government consultation in November on the future of local welfare provision, calling for funding to be provided in addition to the core grant funding made available to local authorities. The consultation on the provisional settlement, held in January, received an even greater number of responses, with more than 12,500 answering the specific question on local welfare provision—and all calling for the funding to be reinstated at the level available for the current financial year. In fact, since 2010, spending on the discretionary Social Fund has been reduced by £150 million in real terms, so this emergency support has faced significant funding cuts in the last five years.
The need for an effective safety net of last resort is vital to provide emergency help to very vulnerable families and children in crisis situations. This is especially necessary given the growing struggles that many families are facing, as evidenced in particular through the growing use of food banks and other emergency food aid provisions. The growth in these also shows the growing need for such crisis support. In addition, the combined proportion of household incomes spent on food, housing and utilities for households in the bottom income decile rose from 31% in 2003 to 40% in 2012, as we made clear in the report Feeding Britain, produced in December. On the back of this public support and calls from councils and the voluntary sector, I am pleased with the announcement that a visible funding line will be available for local welfare provision and that additional money will be made available to local authorities to ensure that these schemes are in place.
The vulnerability of claimants to local welfare schemes, and previously to community care grants and crisis loans through the discretionary Social Fund, is clear. Over half of community care grants awarded in the final year of the discretionary Social Fund, prior to localisation, were made to families in a crisis. Research shortly to be published from the Children’s Society found that over a third of local authorities used their local welfare assistance schemes as one of the only ways in which they could support young homeless people aged between 16 and 20. Many local authorities up and down the country have put in place innovative local schemes to help vulnerable residents, while evidence from local authority returns to the Department for Work and Pensions review found that 86% of funding allocated to local authorities was projected to be spent in 2014-15.
The Children’s Society has worked closely with a number of councils seeking to improve and continually evaluate their local schemes. However, there is undoubtedly a mixed picture up and down the country; the quality of schemes varies enormously. Following additional money being made available by central government to support local authorities with local welfare provision, there is the opportunity to provide guidance—or a clear steer from Ministers—that this funding should be spent protecting the most vulnerable. It would be really useful to hear tonight from the Government their plans in this regard.
We know from the information currently available that information gathered about local schemes varies hugely. Monitoring the effectiveness of local schemes is therefore a significant challenge for local charities, service providers and central government departments in taking decisions on the future funding of such schemes. I point the Minister to the Children’s Society’s report Nowhere to Turn?, which has recommendations for local schemes. These include, first, ensuring that low-income working families are able to access local schemes by ensuring that eligibility criteria are not restricted to those in receipt of out-of-work benefits. Evidence has found that a quarter of schemes require claimants to be in receipt of out-of-work benefits, with only 9% of schemes explicitly stating that they allow claimants in receipt of working tax credits or work benefits to apply for emergency support. We know that approximately six in 10 children in poverty now live in low-income working families, making this requirement extremely important to ensure that families have somewhere to turn in an emergency.
Secondly, not requiring applicants to the scheme to access other sources of consumer credit before applying to their local welfare scheme is another suggestion from the report. Forcing families further into a debt trap will not help those who are struggling. This should not be a requirement for accessing your local scheme in an emergency. Thirdly, the report recommends ensuring that local schemes do not have restrictive and overly long residency criteria, prohibiting many families in a crisis from accessing their local schemes. Half of all schemes require claimants to be resident; a further 13% require claimants to have lived in the area for more than six months.
If local schemes are cut and vulnerable people have nowhere to turn, we are likely to see a number of additional and more expensive costs to the public purse. This will motivate councils to maintain schemes but central government will also bear costs, and so should be motivated to ensure that local schemes are maintained.
Since the provisional local government settlement for 2015-16 was published in December 2013, schemes up and down the country have been hampered by uncertainty over funding. This uncertainty has caused some councils to restrict access to schemes, in the hope of being able to roll over underspend to future years and ensure that they do not have to cut back a service which they are no longer able to fund. I therefore suggest that greater certainty over funding going into 2016-17 would enable councils to design schemes to meet the needs of residents now, and in the longer term. There has also been a lack of clarity on how funding levels are decided. Even if it is not currently possible to commit to levels of future funding, which I would of course understand, the Government should be able to provide clarity on the process that they will undertake to make this decision.
I believe that it is possible to monitor local schemes effectively. The Scottish Welfare Fund, for example, is administered locally with information gathered centrally. This includes information about whether the applicant has children or a disability, and the reason for the application. People with disabilities are particularly likely to be overrepresented among recipients. In the last year of the Social Fund, 32% of community care grants expenditure and 19% of crisis loan expenditure was for people with disabilities. In Scotland, where we can still see a clear picture of the characteristics of recipients, two out of every five recipients of the Scottish scheme claimed ESA.
Alongside the more effective monitoring and evaluation of local schemes, putting funding on a more sustainable future footing is required, as I have said, to ensure that this vital safety net continues into the future. As I end my speech, I will therefore ask some questions of the Minister and I hope that other people will support the idea that we need to find ways to ensure that these local welfare schemes are firmly put within local authorities and used for the purposes for which they are set.
Will the Minister consider issuing guidance or best practice on local welfare assistance schemes to help local authorities implement effective schemes in their local area? Children are a key beneficiary of local welfare schemes. Will the Minister explain where families will be able to turn in an emergency should their local authority not provide a local welfare assistance scheme?
What steps, I wonder, will the Minister take should schemes be completely abolished in a minority of local authority areas, and how will he address this circumstance? Will he outline how the additional funding amount of £74 million was decided upon and why the full allocation for 2014-15 was not provided in addition to the core government grants, as called for by many members of the public, charities and local authorities? Does the Minister agree that the next comprehensive spending review will provide an ideal opportunity to ensure that longer-term funding for local welfare provision is available over the course of the next Parliament? I look forward to answers to some of these questions.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, I wish to thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro for securing this debate, which gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to his commitment to social justice issues and those in need, and also to thank him for his leadership, together with Frank Field, of the all-party parliamentary inquiry into hunger. He and I travelled to Birkenhead and South Shields together to listen to local evidence and I was particularly sorry to miss the inquiry session which he helped to organise in Looe, as I know that great work, much of it done by local churches, is taking place in Cornwall.
I would like to start by quoting from the right reverend Prelate’s introduction to the inquiry’s report published in December last year in which he acknowledged that these are complex issues. For those who have not read the report and his thoughtful comments, I take this opportunity to recommend it. He wrote:
“We are living at a time of difficult financial circumstances. The Government has to make hard choices with limited resources”.
He went on to set the increasing need for food banks in the context of,
“a deeper problem in our society; the ‘glue’ that used to be there is no longer there in many instances”.
But this social glue is precisely what localising welfare assistance can help to create and nurture and he and I have seen many great examples of it. It is vital that national government continue to fund local authorities to deliver effective schemes. Indeed one recommendation of the inquiry’s report was that the Government should continue to protect local welfare assistance funding and not allow it to be wholly incorporated into the local government finance settlement.
Everyone in this Chamber today knows how much pressure every local authority is under and we were concerned that assistance for vulnerable working-age adults and financially needy families would fall by the wayside if forced to compete with statutory duties. Like the right reverend Prelate, I welcome the fact that the DCLG has earmarked £74 million in response. The inquiry also recommended that DCLG monitor take-up rates for local welfare assistance within each local authority and work with those where registration is inexplicably low. Eighty per cent of authorities are not spending the whole of the allocated funds. Where this is due to potential applicants’ low awareness of availability, a range of agencies, including Jobcentre Plus, must ensure that those who need it are finding their way to accessing it. Yet the focus cannot simply be on meeting need with cash. Where severe financial need is partly due to inability to access and progress in work, serious personal debt, drug or alcohol problems, domestic abuse or other profound relationship problems—all of which can be a driver and effect of mental illness—these root causes must also be addressed.
I want to focus my remarks on a couple of the many local welfare assistance schemes that are doing just that and I wish time allowed me to acknowledge more of the organisations working in this field. The individuals delivering them are, if I may say, evidence that social glue, which can perhaps be defined as love for fellow human beings, is by no means absent. Indeed it is flourishing where the state is acknowledging that the human-scale, whole-person approach on which many local grassroots organisations operate will very often be more effective than top-down, one-size-fits-all approaches. The DCLG could help to increase the effectiveness of its funding by showcasing superb practice, as I am about to do, by drawing on examples which we heard about during the inquiry into hunger.
The Matthew Tree Project in Bristol is so much more than a simple food bank in terms of its early intervention and prevention approach. Its 400 volunteers offer advice, support and love—that word again—to help people develop skills to make life healthy and sustainable. For some that means becoming work-ready while others need help with budgeting and other advice. A couple of weeks ago a group of us, including the Members of Parliament for Birkenhead and for South Shields, visited in West Norwood the first community shop to be up and running on the lines of a social supermarket model. It is an entirely replicable, self-funding social enterprise. We came away inspired and enthused and I would encourage other noble Lords to visit and see for themselves.
I could spend the whole of my time today talking about it, but will save that for another day because I also want to mention the Centre for Social Justice Alliance of over 300 grass-roots charities working at the coalface of poverty as another source of inspiring good practice. Furniture Now in Brighton is an innovative community waste, reuse and training charity which recycles unwanted furniture and white goods and sells them on either at very low prices to homeless families, others in sudden crisis and those receiving benefits or to other customers who pay a full second-hand cost. The organisation provides free training and employment skills for those who are not in education, employment or training, have mental health difficulties, or have struggled with drug and alcohol dependency. All of its more than 60 volunteers are from vulnerable groups—those with mild learning difficulties, those in drug, alcohol, mental health or domestic abuse recovery and ex-offenders—enabling them to contribute meaningfully to society.
These welfare society foot soldiers are, however, rarely funded by local welfare assistance money and it is important to consider if and why they are missing out in local authority commissioning practices. In a survey, 91% of the CSJ Alliance said they did not feel there was a level playing field for small organisations providing public services and two-thirds were not consulted by local government about the design of services relevant to their work. It is to be hoped that the current review by the noble Lord, Lord Young, of the Public Services (Social Value) Act for the Government will consider whether those best equipped to help people transform their lives and circumstances are getting a fair crack of the whip when it comes to commissioning.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for initiating this important and timely debate. I also thank the Government for the welcome concessions they have made following two rounds of consultations. I should perhaps declare an interest as the honorary president of the Child Poverty Action Group, which was instrumental in the test case that led to the consultation—an example of the threat of judicial review bringing real benefit to some of the most deprived members of our society.
However, the new money available is also intended to ease pressures on health and social care and the total allocation represents a cut of around £100 million on the previous year, which itself represented a cut in funding, as the right reverend Prelate has already noted. The statement underlined that there would be no ring-fencing or monitoring of its use. I hope the right reverend Prelate will forgive a Biblical allusion when I say that this smacks of the Pontius Pilate approach to policy-making—central government washing its hands of all responsibility for what happens to the money it has earmarked to meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable members of society.
It is important to put these schemes in context and remember that they are not some new addition to the welfare firmament but replace long-standing social safety net provisions within the social assistance scheme. Some of us recall when discretionary exceptional needs payments were replaced by regulated single payments. These were described at the time by the Social Security Advisory Committee as an “essential part” of the social assistance scheme,
“providing a cushion against particular one-off events which cannot be provided for from within a very basic weekly income”.
This is still the case, as minimum income standards research highlights. Regulated payments were of course then quickly replaced by the discretionary Social Fund.
Given this history, it really is essential that central government does not wash its hands of all responsibility for the allocated funds. At a minimum it needs to establish basic monitoring requirements so it is possible to evaluate how well the schemes are meeting needs and also so that local authorities operating less effective schemes can learn from those operating more effective ones. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, highlighted some of them.
The Department for Work and Pensions review of the first 18 months of operation included very little information on those seeking help. This means, among other things, that, as the equality statement on the 2015-16 funding allocation acknowledges, it is difficult to predict the full impact on protected groups because the Government do not nationally collect data on who has benefited from existing local schemes. Yet it also acknowledges that it is reasonable to consider that a number of protected groups could be impacted by any decisions. This is simply not good enough, especially as the Scottish Government have shown that it is possible to monitor local schemes effectively, revealing, for example, that people with disabilities are particularly reliant on the scheme, as the right reverend Prelate has already observed. In its report on localisation issues in welfare reform, the Work and Pensions Select Committee recommended that central government should monitor the use of the funds until the new arrangements had bedded in, suggesting a period of five years, which seems very reasonable. Interestingly, I noted that it has moved from its initial position of not supporting ring-fencing and is now recommending that the money should be ring-fenced.
I am making a very modest request, which is that the Government review their position on monitoring and accept that they still have a responsibility to ensure that the money earmarked to meet the needs of vulnerable groups, such as homeless people and care leavers, is used effectively for the purposes intended. Simply intoning that local authorities will act responsibly, as the Minister did earlier today, is no answer. I am not accusing local authorities of acting irresponsibly. I am simply asking for accountability.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, as always it is a great pleasure to follow my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. I share her concern. This is a very risky area of policy to continue in the current vein. I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for drawing this important matter to the attention of the House.
The first point I want to make is that these are not local welfare services; these are local crisis and emergency services. When the right reverend Prelate went into his speech, he lapsed out of the jargon into crisis and emergency services. He is absolutely right about that. I hate the word “welfare” because it is so pejorative and indicative of a patronising and wholly inappropriate way of treating people in emergencies. Language and approach are all-important in this.
I absolutely agree that it is not good enough to say that £74 million is better than a slap in the face with a cold fish. We need this to be put on an ongoing basis, and it is incumbent on the Government to do so. Of course they cannot commit future Governments—I will be interested in what the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, who is also my friend, says about what the future might hold. It is no good saying, “We’ll put this in place and see what happens”. This is the safety net, the last resort. People have nowhere else to go and there is no other port of call. Leaving this to local authorities and not ring-fencing the money is taking a huge risk. The five questions that the right reverend Prelate asked are interesting. If the Minister has not got time to deal with them adequately, I hope he will write to the right reverend Prelate and the rest of us to give us some comfort because all these questions are absolutely appropriate and need an answer.
The context for all this has changed quite dramatically. We underestimate the level of household debt being experienced by the lowest one or two deciles of household income distribution. People are now using credit cards to pay for weekly day-to-day expenditure. I have been as interested as my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in all this for more than 35 years. I have never known a situation such as now where households are making ends meet by borrowing money. You cannot do that indefinitely. We are storing up trouble for ourselves if we do not understand that.
Emergency and crisis provision takes no account of the ability to enter into any kind of preventive and advisory support and sustaining services. I do not think local authorities should provide them; central government needs to do it. We might be doing some of that with universal credit—if it works, when it works. Universal credit’s so-called local delivery, the support system which is applied to claimants at their universal credit application point, is something we need to work on to make sure that it dovetails with what is being provided by local authorities.
Coming from Scotland, you might expect me to say this, and everybody else has said it so I do not want to be left out: Scotland does some of these things better. The national monitoring framework is an essential tool that must be put in place in the future to make sure that things get done right. In the old days, there used to be systems of appeal. There used to be a Social Fund commissioner whose responsibility it was year on year to produce a report for Parliament saying what he thought was being done with the increased money that used to be available. Now we have nothing of that kind. There are no appeals and there is no guarantee that people have any certainty about where they can go if their applications for so-called local welfare provision payments fail.
I endorse everything that has been said so far, but I want to make two extra points. First, DCLG will need to accept responsibility, and I hope the Minister will, for the co-ordination of all the agencies that are now involved in this area of public policy, not just DWP and the LGA but including the devolved Administrations and civil society. Somebody has to co-ordinate things. Secondly, I hear on the grapevine that Northern Ireland has just agreed a settlement that gives discretionary grants for community distribution. I do not know how much money is involved, but I would be very pleased to hear whether that is a bit of best practice which might be considered for sharing in the future. I hope that DCLG and the ministerial team involved in this will look carefully at these things. I hope we will get some answers to these important questions. I am much less happy about getting £74 million because I do not think it is enough.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank the right reverend Prelate for securing this debate and for his very powerful speech. As a district councillor, I have seen many instances where local assistance schemes have kept the wolf of hunger, want and need from the door while families gained a breathing space to enable them to cope. There are numerous reasons why individuals and families require emergency relief. They may have been evicted from their home for non-payment of the mortgage due to the main earner losing their job. Having been evicted, they may have lost their furniture and personal belongings because they had nowhere to store them. They may have been in temporary accommodation provided by the local council and are now being offered a permanent rented home. They may have been able, through friends or charity shops, to gather together the basics of beds, chairs and a small table, but they have no cooker or perhaps no fridge. They may not have been able to make their money stretch and have run out of credit for their electricity pre-payment meter. They may have no food with which to feed their children, again having not been able to make their money stretch. In cases such as these, referrals to the local assistance scheme have provided them with the vital necessities to enable them to rebuild their family life.
Let no one be in any doubt that every one of the cases helped by the local assistance scheme is totally justifiable. The people assisted are not scroungers but are desperate, with their backs against the wall. In Somerset, local citizens advice bureaux administer the scheme on behalf of the county council. They receive referrals from social services, housing associations, district councils, the voluntary sector, GP surgeries, the faith communities and many other sources. No cash ever changes hands. There are some who turn up thinking that they will get cash, and when they find that the help on offer is in the form of a voucher, they often go away and look elsewhere for help. Sometimes they will go to a loan shark. Perhaps their child’s class at school is due to go on an outing that has to be paid for: most parents would not want their child to be the one left behind. Many schools will have funds to help children from families struggling to make their money stretch, but often there is a reluctance on the part of parents to identify themselves to the school as being in this category. It is less embarrassing to go to the anonymous citizens advice bureaux and sometimes easier to fall victim to a loan shark who does not ask questions about what they want the money for.
However, the local scheme does help a large number of people and families by providing vouchers for white goods that can be exchanged at specified outlets; vouchers for furniture exchanged at Furnicare, the local charity that takes in unwanted furniture, refurbishes it and passes it on; vouchers that can be exchanged for a top-up of their electricity key meter, and—often the most used facility—a referral to the local food bank. As I said earlier, the reasons for needing emergency help are many. Some are claimants and have been sanctioned, but do not realise that until the money does not arrive; some have very limited budgeting skills. However, local citizens advice bureaux are able to refer these people to skills courses where help is available not only with budgeting but also with basic literacy and IT skills.
Like other noble Lords, I was extremely concerned when I realised that the local assistance schemes were coming to an end. I am delighted that, due to the considerable efforts of my friends the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right honourable Danny Alexander, and the honourable Stephen Williams, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, additional money has been provided, although not enough, according to many noble Lords. I welcome the £74 million that will go to upper-tier authorities to help them meet the needs covered by the local schemes and to deal with the additional pressures on social care. While this money is not ring-fenced, it is an identifiable line in the budget. I feel certain that these authorities—perhaps I am being optimistic—will distribute the money wisely, where a very small amount of resource can make the most difference to the lives of their residents. I look forward to witnessing a positive impact on the lives of the most vulnerable in our communities and to hearing the reassurances sought by the right reverend Prelate.
The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth
My Lords, I intervene briefly in the gap to emphasise two matters that would support the encouragement, advice, steer, or even the requirement on local authorities to distribute local welfare provision, recently enhanced by a further £74 million. As other noble Lords have said, this is vital crisis support—genuinely a safety net—that is needed and should be used.
First, I want to request that attention be given to the stability of this provision and funding going forward. Despite the political uncertainties of the coming months, we can be clear of the need for local welfare provision beyond this year. That unfortunately is certain. Allocations that are made in a piecemeal fashion, as has happened recently, are less than helpful; consistency from year to year would be preferable. Some local authorities seem to have rationed this year’s funding while provision for the coming year was uncertain. An undertaking to maintain this notional provision, or at least a process that did not demand last-minute substantial representations, would increase the likelihood of local councils adopting best practice. I hope that the Government will consider this.
Secondly, I emphasise that there is an economic case for local welfare provision. The review by Portsmouth City Council, my own see city, of this provision concluded that modest expenditure saved costs elsewhere. Failing to grant a little often increases the demand for mental health services, children’s social care, temporary accommodation provision and debt advice. Preventing a tenancy breakdown, for example, saves an authority nearly £7,000 per eviction. I trust that local authorities will heed that and the Government will encourage, steer, advise and even ask for undertakings about the spending of this vital provision.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
My Lords, like all others who have spoken, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro for the opportunity to focus on local welfare assistance schemes in this short debate. I draw attention to my interest in the register as a trustee of NOAH Enterprises—that stands for “new opportunities and horizons”, rather than the boat—which is a Luton-based charity supporting disadvantaged individuals.
Like others, I begin with the good news, and recognise that the Government did, by consent order in the judicial review proceedings in September last year, agree to conduct a consultation, conclude their review of local welfare provision and review their funding for 2015-16. As we have heard, this led to additional funding being allocated for that year, but it was to cover health and social care as well as local welfare. This is a real advance on where things were heading when the announcement was made that there was to be no funding from 2015, without formal consultation or consideration of the equality duty. Sadly, this was an insight into the mind of the Government of what they were hoping to get away with.
It might be worth recapping how we got to local welfare assistance schemes. It was the Welfare Reform Act 2012 that paved the way with the abolition of key components of the discretionary Social Fund, namely community care grants and crisis loans. This funding was described then as the ultimate safety net for the most vulnerable—enabling, for example, women and children fleeing domestic violence to clothe themselves and furnish their homes. Funding under the new arrangements was to be channelled to local authorities and devolved Administrations for them to provide assistance as they saw fit. This funding, as we have heard, was not to be ring-fenced—a bone of contention at the time which was, from recollection, vigorously pursued by my noble friend Lady Lister. The best we could get was an agreement that the funding allocated was to be set out in the settlement letter that accompanied the local government finance settlement. However, concern was about not only the lack of ring-fencing but the lack of any new duties to provide support for the most vulnerable.
Although the Government claim to have passed through programme funding levels previously available to the Social Fund, that was after the Government had set about “managing” demand of the latter down, back to its pre-2006 levels. They did this by no longer paying crisis loans for such items as cookers and beds and cutting back the rate paid for living expenses to 60% of the benefit rate. The problem was not the devolving of responsibilities for providing this support to local authorities; it was the nature of the funding regime into which it was devolved.
Although it might be said that it is early days, work done by the LGA and the DWP suggests that councils are creating schemes which better meet the underlying needs of applicants because they have a good understanding of their local community and its demography. This is to be welcomed. The DWP, in its November 2014 review, instances a range of approaches as to who are supported and how they are chosen. The survey of local authorities showed a common list of provision—with food being on the top—but differing restrictions or limitations on what was provided. It showed some good practice on aligning funding with existing services, but overall the picture was of the limited provision of the most basic components of daily living for those in crisis: patchy provision, as the right reverend Prelate said. There seem as yet limited attempts to monitor outcomes.
There are concerns that even this provision is not sustainable, which is why, before the recent announcements of some additional funding, LGA research showed that as many as three-quarters of local welfare schemes would be scaled back or scrapped, a deeply worrying prospect. Of course, the model is familiar. Government devolves responsibility to local authorities, fails to adequately provide starting funding, fails to ring-fence what funding is available, continues to cut local authority support, and does so in a way which takes proportionately more from the most disadvantaged, and it leaves local government with the awful choices of which discretionary budgets to access to fulfil the statutory obligations in adult and children’s services.
The Minister may tell us that a majority of councils did not spend the whole of their allocated funds in 2013-14. That is not altogether surprising, given the time to get processes up and running and the then understanding that the council would have to fund the service from 2015-16, a point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth. Over half of local authorities forecast spending all of the funding in 2014-15 but, again, some plan to carry forward some to support the subsequent year. It is in part the uncertainty of what is going to happen in future that engenders caution on behalf of local authorities and, of course, the price is paid by those who miss out on current support because the criteria are too restrictive.
The question may be asked—indeed, it was asked—about what the Labour Party would do should government come our way. We are committed to a fairer allocation of resources between councils and, in that context, would review the operation of local welfare assistance schemes.
We debate this in terms of budgets, allocations and resources, but it is really about people. What commitment are we in this rich but still unequal country to make to those down on their luck, hitting a crisis, or in need of support? Above all, I suggest, we need to see them as human beings, like you and me, and not just as the poor.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, first, I join other noble Lords in thanking the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro for securing this debate and, in doing so, pay tribute to his work on the hunger inquiry, with which my noble friend Lady Jenkin also engaged and was involved. I have not been asked a question on that specifically, but the Government welcome the report, which is a serious contribution to discussions. As the right reverend Prelate and my noble friend may know, we convened a meeting with representatives from food retailers, manufacturers, trade associations and the food distribution charity sector on 20 January to discuss how more surplus food can be put to good use, including the vital and incredible work done by local charities.
In 2012, the Government replaced the national community care grants and crisis loan schemes with localised funding so that local authorities could tailor and deliver support to vulnerable people as part of their existing services to their communities, depending on local need. This followed criticism from the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee that the national schemes had become complex to administer and were poorly targeted and open to abuse.
Local authorities responded in different ways. Some set up new schemes, while others upped resources to in-house or partner services to ensure fit with local needs and existing services. This support is often called “local welfare provision”—an umbrella term, or shorthand, used to describe the variety of local schemes and responses.
On funding, we have heard figures cited—and, of course, I welcome the support, albeit somewhat qualified, for the additional funding that the Government have found in the current settlement for this important issue. We feel that local authorities could spend as much or little of the funding as they wanted, depending on their local priorities. However, the fact that the Government, in making these announcements, flag up the fact that this is related to welfare spend should give an indication of the Government’s intent for how this money should be utilised. However, we feel, as many local authorities will also feel, that they are better placed to determine their local priorities.
On local provision, the Department for Work and Pensions published a review of the new localised provision last November. It found that local authorities have used their funding to help people experiencing an unexpected emergency or crisis, or those who need help and support to live independently in the community, by providing emergency support for vulnerable adults to move into or remain in the community; helping families under exceptional pressure to stay together; and providing household goods to people fleeing domestic violence, care leavers or those who had previously been homeless. My noble friend Lord Kirkwood talked about the use of emergency support in that respect. It is important to reflect that sometimes Governments are accused of U-turns when what they have done is to reflect on certain elements, such as the issue of vulnerable women, particularly those who have suffered domestic violence. As noble Lords will be aware, the Government have allocated an additional £10 million to women’s refuges in a direct response to need. I am sure that that is well received, not just across this Chamber but across the country as well.
Different local approaches have been taken. Many local authorities work in partnership with other agencies and have aligned support with existing services—the local glue of which my noble friend Lady Jenkin spoke so eloquently—for example, with local credit unions, homeless charities, or domestic violence charities. This has led to the establishment of wide-ranging models of delivery—wholly in-house using internal teams, wholly by external providers, and others, or a combination of the above.
Local authorities have also developed many methods to facilitate payment or provision. Some use cash-based systems for both grants and loans, with payments being made electronically to a bank account or a kiosk in a local shop. Others offer pre-paid cards, vouchers, travel cards, provision of furniture or equipment and food parcels. My noble friend Lady Jenkin talked of innovative schemes. When I was a local councillor in the London Borough of Merton, we partnered with the Vine Project, providing grant letters for applicants to take to the project to exchange for recycled furniture or kitchen appliances that had been donated and were available at affordable prices. In addition, the local authority innovated further to ensure that the Vine Project also offers training and employment opportunities to the local community, including those who have been referred by the council. The right reverend Prelate and my noble friend quoted other examples and there are other great schemes up and down the country.
I turn to the better care fund. Local welfare is not the only service that works better when local areas set their own priorities and join up services for the benefit of those who use them. We know that many people with complex health and care needs often find it frustrating when health and social care services do not talk to each other and they have repeatedly to tell their story. It is welcome that the £5.3 billion better care fund requires every clinical commissioning group and local authority to pool budgets and to work more closely together. The vast majority of the better care fund is being spent on social care and community health services designed to keep people well in the community and prevent them ending up in hospital or residential care.
The troubled families programme has also been enormously successful at turning around the lives of some of our most troubled families, through an integrated, whole-family approach. I have often been asked what turning around a family means. It means that children are back in school, youth crime and anti-social behaviour are significantly reduced and adults are off benefits and in work. As some noble Lords may know, the programme is bang on track. Almost 118,000 families have been identified and more than 117,000 are being worked with. More than 85,000 of these have already been turned around, and more than 8,000 adults have been helped into continuous employment. These are good examples of how welfare provision and support is working at a local level.
The right reverend Prelate asked a specific question about what happens if local authorities close schemes or people are turned down. My noble friend Lord Kirkwood also referred to this. Other support schemes are available. There is the benefit system as a whole, including short-term benefit advances and budgeting loans for those on benefits. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, spoke about discretionary housing payments. Some £445 million of flexible housing funding was made available between 2011 and 2015, and £125 million in 2015-16. Local authorities can do exactly what noble Lords have said this evening: help the most vulnerable households through welfare reform. Credit unions, to which I referred earlier, have also been supported by £38 million of government investment, providing affordable alternatives to high-cost credit. DWP hardship funds are available in certain circumstances. The Government’s aim is to incentivise work and tackle root causes of poverty. I am sure noble Lords share this sentiment.
I turn to the provisional local government finance settlement. As with the better care fund and the troubled families programme, councils know how best to support local welfare needs. What might be right for Merton will not necessarily be right for Macclesfield. So from 2015-16, councils can continue to provide local assistance to take on board local priorities funded from within their general grant rather than a specific one. A clear theme in responses to our consultation was that there should be more guidance on possible spend in this area, based on the review of provision to date. This is why we identified £129.6 million within the upper-tier local authority budgets for local welfare provision funding.
The right reverend Prelate asked about the £74 million. I repeat that Governments are often accused of not listening but we listened to representations on the financial pressures faced by councils and many welcomed this. I met the London Borough of Enfield and Havering Council as part of the ministerial engagement on this issue. My ministerial colleagues and I also met a large number of local authorities and the Local Government Minister held a phone-in with more than 100 authorities. The consultation also received numerous written responses from a wide range of organisations from both local government and the voluntary and community sector. The representations predominantly called for additional funding to be made available to maintain schemes and prevent costs increasing in other services, including preventing homelessness. They also highlighted financial pressures more broadly, in particular the costs of providing social care services.
I pay tribute to the Local Government Minister responsible for this, my honourable friend Kris Hopkins, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State who, with other ministerial colleagues, have listened to these representations. As a result, the Government announced an additional £74 million to assist them in dealing with pressures on local welfare and health and social care. This will further help councils as they develop localised arrangements and enable them to continue to provide assistance to the most vulnerable people in their communities and maintain their front-line services. The Government continue to believe that the £129.6 million relating to local welfare within the settlement is appropriate. I have been asked about local authorities being given the freedom and flexibility to respond to the needs of their own communities. We have announced that this money will not be ring-fenced and we will not be placing any additional monitoring requirements on it. However, I note that good practice will be shared, and the 2016-17 financing in this regard will, of course, form part of the next spending review.
My noble friend Lady Jenkin and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth also talked about this element of sharing good practice. The Department for Work and Pensions has published a review, which contains many examples of good practice. I welcome other organisations such as the Children’s Society, in which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro is involved, helping local areas to develop their schemes. Indeed, I know that the society particularly welcomed the recent announcement.
Other questions were asked about guidance, by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, among others. I recognise that there is a strong desire to share good practice. The Government, as I have said, have done this through the DWP review, which included many examples. However, it is right that one should reflect on what has been said in this Chamber, and I will certainly reflect on those comments and on the points that have been made across the board about local schemes, which my noble friend Lady Bakewell and others mentioned. I will also take back the comments made in this debate to see how the Government can do more to facilitate sharing good practice at a local level. I speak from experience in this respect, and maintain that local authorities remain best placed to run local schemes, but the ultimate objective is helping local residents most effectively, particularly the most vulnerable. I hope that, in at least part of what I have said, I have given noble Lords—indeed, the right reverend Prelate—some assurance in this regard.
I take this opportunity to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short but extremely important debate. If questions remain, I shall of course write to noble Lords in more detail. However, for now, I thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions, which I will take back to see how the Government can continue to improve their aim to support local authorities in providing for the most vulnerable within our communities.
Recall of MPs Bill
(9 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
21:07 - Division on Amendment 21 - Ayes: 45 / Noes: 99 - Amendment 21 disagreed.
“( ) A donation in relation to a recall petition may only be made by a permissible donor.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 21, I will speak to Amendments 22 and 23 as well. Amendment 21, in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, is an extremely important amendment. Amendments 21 and 22 together would restrict donations to all campaigners in the recall process to our normal rules. Thus it would forbid non-permitted—essentially foreign—donors flooding a constituency with money that they would be banned from giving to political parties. These amendments are not an attempt to restrict the activity of non-accredited campaigners who could have an important role to play in a recall but to ensure that this group of campaigners does not have access to funds from individuals or companies not domiciled here, funds which, quite rightly, are barred to MPs and political parties. Amendment 21 would ensure that all donations to both accredited and non-accredited campaigners are allowed only from permissible donors as defined in Schedule 4 Part 1 of the Bill. Amendment 22 would ensure that donations to non-accredited campaigns are treated the same as for accredited campaigns and covered by PPERA.
In Committee the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, stated that all campaigners will be subject to rules on the content of their literature, including imprints, as well as rules on acting in concert, notional petition expenses and pre-election expenses. We welcome this but it leaves the key matter of donations unregulated. Let me paint a picture for noble Lords and indeed the Electoral Commission, which in a rather odd briefing to us yesterday said:
“It is not clear what … benefit there would be to control the source of donations over £500 to campaigners who are only allowed to spend up to £500 on a petition”.
It must have read the amendment wrong because Amendment 21 would control all donations, not just those over £500. I shall explain why this amendment is needed. As the Bill stands, 20 separate donations of £500 could be given to individuals or campaigns all from foreign donors completely under the radar, equating to the same amount that could be spent by the one accredited campaign of the MP concerned who, of course, can take no such money.
In Committee the Minister indicated that he did not want overburdensome regulations for smaller, non-accredited campaigns. While I appreciate this, I think the Government have gone too far the other way by allowing these campaigns to spend up to £500 without any restriction on the source of their funds, possibly all of which could come from non-permissible donations. Stopping money from abroad is important in itself, while reporting the source of donations should surely be expected of all campaigners during such an important democratic process that the Government have said they want to be open and transparent. I hope that the Government will therefore accept the amendment to rule out the possibility of donations which would not be allowed during a general election, or indeed at any other time, being suddenly allowed during this significant period—the petition to sack an MP. The Electoral Commission somehow has bought, without query, the Government’s assumption that a petition would not,
“attract significant amounts of spending”.
Neither it nor the Government seem concerned that perhaps that assumption is misguided. The lack of control over donations is a glaring omission from the Bill, which we seek to rectify.
Amendment 23 is about fairness. It would take big money out of the equation and have just two accredited campaigns—one in favour of recall and one against. It would create a level playing field for the two sides, allowing voters to hold their MP to account while allowing that MP to make the case for remaining their representative. The wording of the amendment, which would limit the number of accredited campaigns to two—a pro and an anti-recall—is modelled on legislation governing the Scottish referendum. In that case, which we are not seeking to repeat, an equal monetary amount was prescribed for each side. That we regard as entirely sensible and fair, and it should be replicated during a recall—not the giving of money to both sides but ensuring an equality of arms between them so that they can each make their case: one for a by-election and one against. There are just two sides to the argument and they should be equally matched. There can be no case, on the grounds of fairness, against that.
Without Amendment 23 there is no limit on the number of pro-recall accredited campaigns, each of which could spend £10,000, against the MP’s single £10,000, so that one side could outspend the other five or even 10 times over. For example, an MP in a three or four-way marginal could face the three or more parties defeated at the previous election, each of them able to spend £10,000 to force a by-election, and that is before any local or national group decided to take an interest in the matter. We surely have to regulate against this, otherwise the reasons behind a recall being triggered will be thrown out of the window and the issue will become one of asking, “Do we want a by-election?”. If it is a marginal seat or if the Government have a majority of one, the answer will be driven by that and not by the behaviour of the incumbent MP. Therefore, voters will not be signing to hold their representative to account for his or her actions but it will be a referendum on the popularity of the Government, the surge of support for a new, emergent party, a campaign on fracking or whatever. Money and broader politics will count, not the record of the MP concerned.
A recall petition will have been triggered by a single event—say, a sentence of imprisonment or 10 days’ suspension from the House. However, multiple groups could then run individual campaigns on grounds entirely different from the reasons behind the recall. These could be the voting record or beliefs of the MP, or the availability of a national platform to launch a campaign on some topical issue—Europe comes to mind, should a promised referendum not materialise. Without a limit on the pro-by-election campaign, myriad groups could make their case, each spending £10,000 on the back of their MP’s misbehaviour.
I note that the Electoral Commission, in its briefing, does not feel that it,
“should be given the responsibility of registering campaigners at an event that is confined to only one constituency”.
I do not think that it is for the commission to decide whether it is up to it, but if Parliament accepts the fairness of this amendment then either the Electoral Commission should do this to ensure that our politics are kept clean of big money or we can ask some other body to do so.
We support the recall process, as it follows a finding about an MP’s behaviour and gives the local electorate the chance to decide whether, in the light of that conduct, they still want the MP to be their representative in Parliament. However, that process must be fair. Our amendment would introduce a crucial element of fairness, an equality of arms and a top limit on the total expenditure permitted in the constituency during this process. It would also make sure that we had control over foreign money coming in during the recall process. I beg to move.
Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. At an early stage this evening, the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, said that he thought and hoped that the recall process would be effective and be conducted politely in a civilised manner. I wish that that were the case. I think that what divides us across the Chamber throughout this Bill is not so much the principle—I think we all agree with the principle—but how it will be approached. Some people may think there has been exaggeration of how bodies coming from outside the constituency to fight against the MP are calling for recall on issues unconnected with his or her particular misdemeanour; the fact is that that is what happens.
I will refer to something that happened a long time ago about how foreign Governments and parties can become involved in a British political event. When I was a councillor in the city of Aberdeen, I persuaded the town council to have a contract compliance clause in which no South African goods would be accepted. It was purely symbolic. If you bought a bottle of sherry a year, you were doing very well. It was an issue of principle. That clause went through. Unbeknown to me, the local shipyard had a contract to build two trawlers for a South African company. The next thing that happened was that on the scene came an organisation called the South Africa Foundation. I should say that the South Africa Foundation of the 1960s is quite different from any South African foundations today, which serve good, charitable purposes, so let there be no misunderstanding. At that time, the foundation said that unless the council rescinded that decision, it would have the contract cancelled. Imagine what the local press thought of that. I went down to the shipyard and spoke to about 300 workers. They said that they were going to build the ships. I said, “I didn’t ask you not to build the ships”. They said, “But it will stop the contract”. I said that the South African company was bluffing, and that, in any event, the South Africa Foundation was simply a front organisation for the South African Government. I did not deny that the South Africa Foundation and the South African Government had reason to come and challenge the views of Aberdeen. That was fair enough; their interests were at stake. But that was quite a different matter from trying to unseat an MP in a competition based on something else.
In the event, although I declared the South Africa Foundation a front for the South African Government, and it threatened to sue—I must say, that gave me some sleepless nights—it abandoned that when I pointed out that the organisation had on its letter heading South African Railways and Harbours Board, South Africa Marine, Eskom and all the South African industries which, in those days, were publicly owned and called parastatals. So that was dropped. That was simply one example of how they could come in. Had they decided to come in, with a lot of money, to unseat an MP—I think they would have done—that could distort the whole purpose of this recall Bill.
Although I share the views of many in this House who have declared that the Bill is unworkable and inflexible, nevertheless, I accept the general principle that MPs should not be totally free to do what they like. That has never been my position, nor is it, I believe, the position of Members on this side of the House. So, on the issue of funding, if there were strict control of funding in the general election, there would have to be at least the same limit on funding and a recall petition. It is straightforward and simple. I cannot believe that the Government would oppose this amendment in any way, as it is perfectly sensible and reasonable. So I hope that your Lordships will not think that those of us who oppose the Bill are taking rather fanciful, overblown or overdramatic views of the situation. Having been at the coalface for 27 years, I know how different bodies can go at things.
I want to say something that has nothing whatever to do with the Bill. I see in the press that the coalition is considering devolving abortion matters to the Scottish Parliament. I beg the Government not to do so. It is the most divisive issue of all in Scotland. What we need in this case is unity and some sense of proportion. However, perhaps the Minister will draw that to the attention of his colleague, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Having got that off my chest, what we want to do—and we are all in favour of it—is to strengthen the House of Commons and Members of Parliament. We must try to regain—I was going to say the high regard that people had for MPs but I do not think people ever had a high regard for MPs. I think there was a misunderstanding. I think that MPs had some respect, which is a different matter altogether. We are reaching a stage in this Bill where, if we do not put this right, it will be a shambles. I hope that the Government accept this amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside and his wide-ranging speech. I am very glad that my noble friends on the Front Bench have tabled Amendments 21, 22 and 23.
What is provided for in this Bill is trial by petition. The petition process will be the trial of the suitability of a particular Member of Parliament to continue to represent his or her constituents in the House of Commons. A Member of Parliament thus placed on trial deserves a fair trial, just like anyone else who is arraigned.
The principle of fair trial goes all the way back in our history to Magna Carta. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, alluded to Magna Carta earlier today. Many of us have been very conscious, particularly in recent days, of how we should measure our democratic and political standards against the precepts and standards initiated in our history through Magna Carta. It derives from common law and the Bill of Rights, which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, also referred to this afternoon. It was most importantly articulated in recent decades in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The principle of equality of arms, which my noble friend Lady Hayter espoused, means that each party should be placed in a position in which they are able to present their case in a manner that does not put them at a disadvantage by comparison to their opponent. The process must be equitable and neither side should be privileged.
Of course, trial by petition is not trial in accordance with any known court procedures or court rules. There are no safeguards provided in the legislation to ensure that there is fairness for the MP whose conduct and future is in question in the process of recall. But we should, as long as possible, in designing these procedures seek to uphold the principle of fairness: it is fundamental to our democracy and the rule of law. It is extraordinary that the Government have presented us with the Bill in which, as I understand it—I am ready to be corrected by the Minister or any other noble Lord because the legislative drafting is often quite impenetrable—there is no limit to the number of accredited campaigns that can be run to seek to unseat the Member of Parliament. Each of them will be entitled to spend up to £10,000. There is no limit to the number of non-accredited campaigners who can be in the field, each of them entitled to spend up to £500, and there is no bar against funding to support the campaign against or indeed in favour of the Member of Parliament coming in from abroad. The system that Ministers are presenting to Parliament has been stacked against the incumbent MP who is having to defend themselves and whose future is in question. A system so weighted and inherently unjust must be unacceptable.
As my noble friend Lady Hayter pointed out, three or four political parties could join to try to unseat a Member of Parliament for the particular party that happens to hold the seat for the time being.
In our present fragmented condition of politics, three-way, four-way, even five-way marginals are part of the reality of life. There will be intense national interest. The amendments of my noble friends are right. They provide for equality of arms in terms of the capacity to spend for and against the petition. In the provision in the amendment on permissible donors, they would keep out foreign money, pretty largely. They will ensure that donations for and against the continuation of the Member of Parliament are aggregated, so it is essentially a yes/no binary campaign. There are just two campaigns.
I am puzzled—and I have not understood, from our previous proceedings—why, under this legislation, only donations of more than £500 are regulated. Unless I am mistaken, I think under election law donations of more than £50 in other contexts are regulated. I would be grateful to be advised on that. Possibly I have that wrong.
As I understand it, the definition of a permissible donor still allows donations from people living abroad but registered on an electoral register in the United Kingdom. They do not have to be registered on the electoral register in the constituency in question. Equally, businesses that are perhaps registered abroad, based abroad, carrying on the greater part of their business abroad but also carrying on some part of their business in this country are also eligible. They do not even have to be carrying on their business within the particular constituency.
The Electoral Commission offers us reassurance that these recall petitions and campaigns will be essentially local constituency affairs. I beg to differ. I think there will be not only intense national interest; I think there could even, in certain circumstances, be international interest. I think that we have to put in place the strongest safeguards we possibly can to ensure equality of arms and to ensure the process of petition campaigning is not inherently unjust because of the advantages it gives to one side against the other—that it gives to the petitioners against the Member of Parliament.
Although it may well be the case that these amendments do not do everything that we would ideally wish, I support them because they will go a long way to mitigate the worst inequities in this undesirable process.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, those who have been patient enough to watch these proceedings at Second Reading, in Committee and now on Report might have detected certain differences of opinion between the Opposition Front Bench and the Opposition Back Bench. Those noble Lords with forensic skills will have spotted that that is certainly true. The difference is that the Front Bench think it is a good Bill, and many of us on the Back Bench think it is a bad Bill but recognise that this is not the Chamber which throws Bills out, even were that possible.
However, on this issue of fairness of campaign funds between the two sides, there is absolute unity between the Front Bench and the Back Bench of the Opposition. I thought that that fact alone, given that we have been pretty frank about our divisions during the course of the passage of the Bill, might give a little pause for thought to the Government, as two groups of opposing views on this issue are united in what needs to be done. The reason is one of incredible simplicity, it seems to me: a petition campaign is a binary choice. There are only two options—you either sign the petition, or you do not. It is an absolutely fundamental principle of electoral fairness, the possibility of a just contest, a fair contest in our democracy for at least 100 years—I suppose since secret ballot times in the 1870s, or whenever it was—
Lord Hughes of Woodside
May I ask my noble friend about binary campaigns? It is not. It is a single-issue campaign. You can decide to sign the petition, which has an effect. But if you do not sign, you are not taking part at all.
Lord Grocott
I suppose the point I was making was that there are only two possible things that you can do in relation to someone asking you whether you will sign a petition.
I hope this is not really arguable from the Government, but if you have two sides in a democratic contest and one side has got colossally more money than the other, then you simply cannot have a fair contest. You see a lot of discussions where, much as we spell out our arguments, in private we might acknowledge that the other side has a bit of a case. I frankly admit that a lot of decisions in the Bill have been grey rather than black and white: for example, whether you have eight weeks or two weeks to sign the petition and whether there are 10 petition-signing locations or two or three. These are all gradations and grey areas. However, I cannot see a grey area that enables us to have a different opinion as to whether two sides in a two-sided contest should have anything other than broadly similar amounts of money that they can spend, with a clear limit on how much. That is all that needs to be said. I just hope that anyone who cares about democracy and democratic choice—which includes all noble Lords I can see, scanning round this House—should be able to acknowledge that that is something that the Government really must concede on, because it is a matter of simple justice.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, again, this debate has ranged fairly widely. I am happy to discuss further with the noble Lord, Lord Hughes of Woodside, the level at which abortion law should be dealt with. I remember that some years ago the most obscure protocol to the treaty of Rome was added to a revision negotiation by the Irish Government, which said, “Nothing in this treaty shall countermand Article 39”—I think it was—“of the Irish Constitution”, which meant “Keep off”. About six months later, the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow asked that this should be devolved. As soon as we are into multi-level government, the question of what level you do things at—at which level you decide that prisoners should have the vote, to take a hypothetical example—begins to be contested among the different levels. We now have several levels, and I am happy to talk about that further.
We discussed some of what we are discussing now, in not dissimilar terms, on the then Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, in which the Government were very much concerned in particular about the possibility of foreign money coming in through various umbrella groups and intervening in and influencing election campaigns. I recognise that there is a potential problem here, but we think it can be contained.
Here as elsewhere, in drafting the Bill, we employed the regulatory regime for campaign spending and donations drawn from existing electoral law. The proposed campaign rules for recall petitions follow those for referendums. In referendums, you have to report your spending at the £500 limit. In recall campaigns, £500 buys you a very small amount of activity. It does not seem to us that the image which the noble Baroness depicted almost, of a gentleman arriving from Switzerland with plastic bags with cash in them to distribute to various local householders, is a likely one; or, if it were to happen, that it would not appear in the Guardian or the Mail very quickly. We therefore think that £500 is the de minimis amount.
Lord Howarth of Newport
The noble Lord mentioned a situation in which a Member of Parliament might have been campaigning against certain practices by Hoffman-LaRoche—or indeed by a subsidiary of HSBC. There might be international interest in disposing of that Member of Parliament.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I was merely making the de minimis point. Above £500, you have to report. These amounts are then controlled and the question of what is a permissible donor comes into the existing corpus of electoral law. We are proceeding here in the same way as we have been proceeding in other cases. We have not diverged from the principles of regulation that have been proved to work and which are compatible, in our opinion, with the nature of campaigning. The de minimis is £500, and for accredited campaigners, those who are intending to spend over £500, only payments of over £500 are considered donations. These must be verified to confirm that they come from a permissible source and are reported as part of the recall petition return. The £500 limit for registration and reporting logically relates to the £500 limit below which payments do not have to be regarded as donations.
There has been some concern expressed that recall petitions will not be local events. We understand that we all prefer these to be local events. A recall petition is a question about who should be the representative of local issues at Westminster and therefore we wish local residents to have as much influence as possible. Our hesitation over designating one lead campaigner on both sides is partly because in those circumstances the likelihood of a national organisation being the first to come in to the arena and claim to be the accredited campaigner is part of the argument that we would resist. Incidentally, we do not assume, as I think that those who have spoken do, that there will be a huge imbalance on one side, with the poor MP left with only one sort of supporter gathered in his own campaign, and on the other side all the armies of Gideon arrayed around in different orders. An MP who has a justified case is likely to have a range of supporters on his or her side.
Lord Grocott
The Minister may or may not be right about the proportion on either side. The principle is surely that there should not be a massive disparity and that the legislation should provide for that. That is the point.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am merely talking about the difficulty of having one accredited lead campaigner on either side. That takes us too far into the referendum campaign. The question of how one gets towards agreeing one accredited campaigner will need, I suspect, a good deal more than eight weeks to sort out.
Lord Howarth of Newport
If it were accepted that there could be more than one accredited campaigner on each side, would there be any objection on the Minister’s part to aggregating the expenditure of the campaign’s pro and con, for and against the Member of Parliament, so that the totality of the funding available to the range of accredited campaigners was limited to £10,000 or whatever the appropriate limit would be?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I will have to take that one away and think about it. The Government have not considered this so far and it is therefore not within my current brief.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I hope—I think—that I understand him as saying that it is something he will be prepared to look at so that we could consider it again at Third Reading.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I cannot give that assurance at the moment. Between now and Third Reading we have some time, as he well knows. Of course we continue to consider all matters, but at the moment I am not persuaded.
We do not see the question on Amendment 23 as entirely justified. The argument for an accredited campaigner in a referendum, as was said before, is that they are then rewarded with a substantial government grant to support the campaign. That will not take place in this area.
Perhaps I may finally stress that permissible donations for accredited campaigns will also follow the same rules as others. They will be reported and controlled. If I may refer to Amendment 24, which we will discuss next, I see value in ensuring that the Electoral Commission in particular has access to the information necessary to assess the appropriateness of the spending and donation rules. We will be debating this in the next amendment. The question of how far in we pull the Electoral Commission is one to which the Government are live and sympathetic.
Lord Grocott
Before he sits down, I really need to have it from the Government’s mouth that the Minister’s fairly lengthy response is basically saying that the Government are relaxed about the possibility of one side in a two-horse race having vastly more expenditure than the other, and that they are not prepared to make any rules to prevent that happening. I just want to hear it from the Minister because this is a very serious point. If that is the Government’s position, it is his responsibility to the House to say it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I understand that. It is a one-horse race, of course. The other does not have a horse at all, so to speak. The Government are not prepared to designate a single lead campaigner on either side. We are not persuaded that an overall limit is practical or measurable, but that is one of the things we will come to in Amendment 24. There are several issues in this, as I well understand, including the question of foreign non-permissible donations, which we will come to in Amendment 24.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, it is interesting that it was the Minister himself who mentioned the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. Not everyone was here for that, but once charities go into a single campaign they have to take responsibility for the expenditure of others; they have to nominate a lead, and the expenditure of a small charity goes against the upper limit on what a big charity can spend. The Government were very happy to do that but somehow this is different.
This is really a nonsense. It is not about the MP having lots of people on their side. If it was a Labour person who had been kept out of the House for 10 days, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems, UKIP and the Greens would all be voting for a by-election. Each could spend £10,000 and the Minister is clearly content with that.
I am even more unhappy about the Minister’s complete acceptance that foreign money up to £500 can come in, not controlled in the way that we control donations —very sensibly and rightly—to the political process from those who have no skin in the game as far as our elections are concerned. We will have non-doms, tax evaders, anyone—all giving up to £500, and the Government are quite content with that. It is for that reason that I ask the Government to go through the Lobbies and vote for the continuation of this Bill, which will allow foreign money up to £500 to be given. I beg to test the opinion of the House so that people outside can see that that is what the Government are content with.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 24, which is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, would ensure that all returns by campaigners are subject to being checked by the Electoral Commission. Our amendment deletes the phrase “on request” from paragraph 8 of Schedule 5 and thereby requires a petition officer to deliver a copy of all the recall petition returns they have received.
This is a small but significant amendment and will require the Electoral Commission to take a greater role in the process than it currently seems prepared to do. I understand why it appears reluctant to do more. We hope that recall will never have to be used but if it is, it will be infrequent. Therefore, we do not believe there will be an overburdening of the Electoral Commission with vast amounts of additional work. As a former member of the Electoral Commission, I am confident that it has both the staff and financial resources to undertake this work, which will be required extremely infrequently. As I said in Committee, the Commission has recently looked at the returns and produced valuable advice, and I see no reason why it could do not it in this process as well.
At present there is no obligation on anybody to check the returns of campaigners. This is surely a ridiculous situation to be in. The petition officer has to record the receipt of returns but is not responsible for scrutiny of the financial dealings of campaigners. The returns of campaigners need to be checked to ensure confidence in the process for many of the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, mentioned in the previous discussion. I do not think many noble Lords will disagree with that and the Electoral Commission should be the organisation to do it, as it has the financial and staffing capacity and the expertise to do the work. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government are keen to encourage participation in recall petitions, but in allowing this freedom of participation it is vital that the rules governing campaigning are appropriate and are complied with. In what will, we hope—as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, suggested—be the very rare event of a recall petition being initiated, spending and donation returns will be subject to high levels of scrutiny. This is made possible by the transparency that the Bill affords. Recall petition returns are to be made publicly available for a period of two years. Any member of the public can review these and report any evidence of wrongdoing to the police, who will investigate the matter. If it is thought that there is substance to the allegations, the police can refer the matter to the CPS, which may launch a prosecution.
A person could also lodge a petition with the electoral court if they thought that the alleged breach of electoral law had affected the outcome of the petition. As the Bill stands, the Electoral Commission is also able to produce a report on a recall petition. This report would look at the administration of the campaign, how the rules on spending and donations actually worked and whether the limits set in the Bill are appropriate. The decision to produce this report lies with the Electoral Commission. The Government consider that providing the Electoral Commission with this reporting power is vital to ensuring confidence in the process and outcome of a recall petition.
To support this, the commission has been given the power to request recall petition returns from the petition officer. This amendment, which would require petition officers automatically to forward recall petition returns to the Electoral Commission, could further add confidence in the approach to regulation taken for recall petitions. So the Government recognise the merits behind this amendment and will consider this issue further before Third Reading. At this point, and with that assurance, I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the noble Lord for that. I am very pleased with the response of noble Lords and, on that basis, I am very happy to withdraw the amendment. I look forward to having a discussion between now and Third Reading.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, the proposed amendment would alter Clause 21 to remove the power for the Act to be amended through regulations relating to the conduct of the recall petition process. Noble Lords will recall that this recommendation was made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its report on the Bill, and an amendment to that effect was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, in Committee.
The power to amend the Act relates only to making regulations about the conduct of the recall petition process. It was originally included to allow for changes in other areas of electoral legislation, in particular the introduction of individual electoral registration. Now that such reforms have been made, we do not believe such a power is justified in this case.
The Government have since responded to the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, agreeing that such powers should be taken with care and that, in this instance, the power is no longer necessary. The Government have therefore tabled this amendment to remove the power to amend the Act through conduct regulations. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, Amendment 25 removes the words “including this Act” from the Bill. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee thought that these words would permit the infiltration of substantial and significant provisions into the Bill, and we agree. This is the amendment that my noble friend Lady Hayter moved in Committee, and I am delighted that the Government have listened to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Opposition in this respect. We agree with them that this was a step too far. I support the amendment.
Lord Norton of Louth
“Review
(1) The Prime Minister must make arrangements—
(a) for a committee to carry out a review of the operation of this Act and, if appropriate in consequence of its findings, to make recommendations for the repeal or amendment of this Act, and(b) for the publication of the committee’s findings and recommendations (if any).(2) A majority of the members of the committee are to be members of the House of Commons.
(3) Arrangements under this section are to be made at least five years after the day on which this Act is passed and no later than six years after the day on which this Act is passed.”
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, this amendment provides for a review of the Act five to six years after enactment. It follows debate in Committee when the noble Lord, Lord Soley, proposed a sunset clause, but raised as an alternative a review of the Act. I favour review. Debate on the Bill has demonstrated uncertainty about its effect. Throughout today’s debate on Report, most of the discussion on amendments made the case for this review. There is a clear degree of lack of knowledge of what the effect will be. It has not been thought through. We are totally unclear about what impact the Bill will have.
To reiterate what I have said on a number of occasions, the purpose of the Bill is to restore, or at least to enhance, trust in politics, so let us see after the experience of a whole Parliament whether it has made any difference. It may be that no recall petitions are started in the period. That does not mean that an MP has not become eligible for a petition to be raised. Even if there have been no MPs who have acted in such a way as to trigger eligibility for a recall petition, it would still be useful to review the situation. If no MPs have acted in such a way as to render themselves liable, it would be useful to examine whether that is a result of the provisions of the Bill. Has it had a deterrent effect, or does it appear to have been irrelevant? If one or more MPs have been eligible for a recall petition, have petitions been raised and, if so, with what effect? If they have been eligible but no petitions have been raised, what does that tell us about the Bill?
There is clearly a case for review. It may be that there is not that much to review, but that in itself is important to know, and it is important to examine why that is the case. The Bill will be subject to post-legislative review anyway but, given the nature of the measure, a formal review is necessary, not least given the degree of uncertainty demonstrated by our deliberations on the Bill. I think it will be helpful for Parliament, but it should be especially for the benefit of electors. It is designed for their benefit. Has it had the desired effect?
The Minister will recognise the wording of the amendment. It is taken in large part from the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. Parliament accepted the case for review of that Act. I think there is an equally compelling case for a review of this measure. I beg to move.
Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, I am sympathetic to this: as the noble Lord said, it follows on from my sunset clause proposal. I would prefer the sunset clause—having given it some thought since that original debate—mainly because I am hopeful that this Bill will not be used at all; and therefore, with a sunset clause, it would just have fallen, nobody would have noticed and the House of Commons could have got on with being what it ought to be: a very respected place in the eyes of the country. This is another attempt at that sort of approach, and I understand it. My only anxiety is that it actually raises the issue again, because it would have to be debated. That is my only issue with it, but otherwise it is probably better to have this than nothing. I would have preferred a sunset clause.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I agree that the sunset clause would have been preferable; but this could be helpful, although it may well be that there is insufficient experience after a period of five to six years to enable a satisfactory review. It might possibly have been preferable if the amendment had provided that, so long as the Act remained on the statute book, the Prime Minister had to arrange for a review to take place in the first year of each Parliament. I fear, however, that the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, could be unhelpful in that it risks stirring up Zac Goldsmith and others who think as he does and want constituents to be able to launch the process of recall between elections simply because they dislike the politics or the personality of their Member of Parliament. That would be an immensely dangerous thing for representative government. I am rather surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, should be giving his name to something that could prove so rabble-rousing. I am grateful to him none the less for putting forward this amendment.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the sentiments expressed by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. I very much hope that the Minister will perhaps, in this short debate, explain to us how the Government think this legislation should be reviewed, given the many potential traps within it that have been outlined during the various stages of our debate. A little earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, tried to entice me and others to support his amendment on the basis that the Labour Back Benches agreed with the Labour Front Bench. I have never found the proposition of the Labour Back Benches agreeing with their Front Bench automatically to be an enticement to support the arguments that they have put forward. In relation to this Bill, I have noted that, on occasions when the Opposition Front Bench and the Government Front Bench are agreed on a piece of legislation, but across all parts of the House great reservations are expressed about how the legislation might actually work in practice, as opposed to in the theory of the party leaders—who perhaps in haste have agreed to introduce measures such as this—we should keep that legislation under proper review. We always talk about the need for more post-legislative scrutiny, and I would very much like to hear from the Minister how the Government think that might be undertaken in this case.
Lord Grocott
I would have preferred the amendment of my noble friend Lord Soley, but this one is eminently sensible. The idea of a review after six years appeals to me. I put in an early bid to be a member of the reviewing committee, so that I could have the great pleasure of pointing out that the whole operation really was a waste of time, and being able to employ my favourite phrase: “I told you so”.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I am now trying to think what would tempt the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, to vote with us. It does not work when I say the same thing as our Back-Benchers; it does not work when I say the same as the Government. I am not sure that I am ever going to get him into our voting Lobby.
Lord Rennard
It presumably works when I agree with the noble Baroness’s arguments. Sadly, I may not on this amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
There may have been others when the noble Lord did.
As we said earlier, the idea of reviewing the Bill—in that case it was to see how it fitted with the cases taken to the electoral court—seems entirely sensible. It is a new part of our democratic structure and one that could impact both on how MPs see their role and how constituents view their ability to hold MPs to account. While the Act is new, we will need to see whether it achieves the aims set for it. We must also review whether, as we fear and as the House has heard, big money could enter the equation; or, failing that, whether local electors who participated in a recall feel empowered by it or cheated by it, or that it was not what they expected. Anyway, we think that all Bills should be subject to some post-legislative scrutiny to ensure that they solve whatever they were set up to meet, and we support a review once the process has been used.
What surprises me is that the noble Lords, Lord Norton and Lord Tyler, who is not in his place, should want a review in the hands of a committee with an in-built Commons majority. As my noble friend Lord Kennedy said just now, we foresee a bigger role for an independent organisation, the Electoral Commission, in reviewing the workings of the Act, should it ever be used. Therefore, I am particularly surprised that an eminent academic, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, does not want a more vigorous and independent look at the operation of the Act. I am equally surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who in Committee argued for an independent trigger out of the hands of MPs, now wants a review conducted by a Committee with a majority of MPs. Sadly, he is not here to explain himself.
Baroness Maddock (LD)
Can I please explain why my noble friend is not here? He has not been well of late, and he was advised that he should not stay late tonight.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I thank the noble Baroness for that. In return, I send our good wishes for his rapid return—not necessarily to voting, perhaps, as we never approve of the way in which he votes, but we like to hear his voice. He has our good wishes for a speedy recovery.
The principle of reviewing this new part of our democratic institution, which could be a significant part, is right. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will say something positive—although he never says anything positive to me—about the possibility of a proper review of this measure, once it has been put into use.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, the Government are fully persuaded of the merits of post-legislative scrutiny as a general principle. There are frequently valuable lessons to be learnt for the future, and the Government are always happy to listen to and consider recommendations arising from such reviews.
As noble Lords have said, the Government have included review clauses in several of their Acts this Parliament, including ones affecting constitutional or electoral matters. However, the Government have some reservations in this case. My noble friend’s amendment commits to a review after five years. That is a reasonable period in some respects, but it is of course by no means certain that there will have been a recall petition by that point. In fact, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, was getting very close to that. A review of an Act which has not had the opportunity to operate as intended would be severely limited in its usefulness. It would be unable to consider the operation of the recall process, and its conclusions would have to be to some extent hypothetical.
Recall does not have to be regularly used for the power to be a good addition to democracy. Indeed, as I have said before—and I hope noble Lords will understand my good intent—the Government fervently hope that no petition is triggered because Members’ conduct is of the highest standard expected. I am sure that noble Lords would not suggest that Parliament’s disciplinary powers should lapse simply because Members’ behaviour does not cause them to be used.
It is, of course, open to Parliament and to the Government of the day to review legislation on their own initiative, without a statutory requirement to do so. It would be entirely appropriate for a parliamentary committee to conduct its own post-legislative scrutiny at such a point as it felt that it would be useful to do so. I am sure that the Government of the day would be more than happy to reflect on any considerations that might be brought forward in that case.
I hope that we will not have a recall because the standards of Members of Parliament are very high, so will not need a review. The Government are not happy about my noble friend’s amendment and we ask him to withdraw it, because in this case we are not convinced that it would be of the use that we know he intends. If there has not been a trigger, it would not be the sort of valuable review that we would like were we to have reviews. I hope that he feels able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is clearly not familiar with my reputation. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, may find himself rather busy in five to six years because this will probably coincide with the review of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. I suspect he will be only too happy to volunteer to serve on that review as well and to reach similar conclusions on both. I may be able to allay the fears of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on the content of the amendment in terms of how the review would take place. This also relates to what my noble friend the Minister said. It stipulates a review but there will not necessarily be any action in the light of the committee’s investigation. It may find that it has had a deterrent effect and there is not too much to be done, which might be worth celebrating. It would not be in the scope of the amendment to cause more problems or give an opening to those who want to pursue a more radical measure. It would only be if the committee came up with recommendations for repeal or amendment of the Act as it stands. It does not necessarily open it up for everybody to come forward with alternatives.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that the underlying principle is the important point. The content of the amendment is not set in stone. I put it in its current form because the Government had already accepted it for the Fixed-term Parliaments Act and I thought this would make it a bit more difficult for them to say no to this. The arguments on both measures are identical. If you accept the arguments for the review of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act—which might be working wonderfully, so why do we need to review it?—those same arguments apply to this Bill. You either have some provision for both or neither. That was the reason I drafted it the way I did: to entice the Government in this direction rather than setting something in stone. I would be quite amenable, if it was felt appropriate, to coming back to this with a differently worded amendment to achieve review.
This will clearly be subject to post-legislative review by the relevant department after five or six years. It needed to be a wider review and be on record as more formal, as is the case with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. I have made the case for it and I hope the Government might reflect on it, even at this late stage. It does not undermine the principle of the Bill; it just makes a sensible provision that we should look at these things in terms of how they work out. They may not be working as intended but that does not mean they have gone completely belly up—which is when we tend to do something about it—but they might merit modification. However, I do not intend to pursue it further at this late stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.