House of Lords Act 1999 (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 9th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My ancestor was given a title. I cannot remember quite what it was for; I did not talk to him about it. It was 500 or so years ago. That is why I want to get rid of us—but I also want to get rid of the life Peers as well.

Let me continue. The important quote from 1999 is that,

“the House … will be the stronger, the more independent of patronage and the better”,

and:

“I believe without equivocation … that the House of Lords will be better for the 92”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/11/99; cols. 1200-01.]

Those words were spoken by my now noble friend Lord Cormack, who clearly does not now believe that.

He is not the only former MP to change his mind about this House. On Monday, we heard a very good speech from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who admitted that when he was in the House of Commons he was totally ignorant about this House and did not pay any attention to it. I totally concur with that. When I was a Minister in the 1980s, I found that my Secretaries of State were not very conversant with the procedures of this House and found us an irritation—there were then far more hereditaries—but subsequently changed their mind.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)]

Will the noble Earl assist me? I wish to listen to all the arguments. Has he just regrouped the amendments in front of us? He has spoken to a later amendment. It would be helpful to the House if such groupings were made more formal.

[The Earl of Caithness]

I certainly apologise to the House for not grouping the amendment. I put the amendment down yesterday, which was rather later than I should have put it down. It came to my mind as a result of the debate we had on Monday.

As I said, my noble friend Lord Cormack is not the only one to have changed his mind about this House. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, when he was leader of the Liberal Party, carried the Asquith banner for the abolition of the House of Lords. When he came here, he had the chance to fulfil that, and we all hoped he would. The next leader, Mr Clegg, scuppered the next attempt to reform the House almost single-handedly. It was a great shame.

I warned the Lord Speaker—he is no longer my noble friend because he is the Lord Speaker—that I would refer to him. He quite rightly suggested when he took his position that the House of Lords was a little large. He was in favour of an elected House in 1999. He said so in the debate. He also voted for and against the amendment in the same year. It was at different times: one was February or March of 1999 and the other was in November. My noble friend Lord Hailsham voted against the amendment in 1999—but he stood for election as a hereditary Peer, so he obviously thought it was quite a good idea.

As my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said, the debate on Monday has brought a sort of consensus that all these areas need to be looked at. I remain of the opinion that keeping the hereditaries here will bring about a speedier and more radical reform of the House of Lords, which I firmly believe is needed.

Parliament and Central Government: Relocation

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

Absolutely. The whole point about the northern powerhouse is that it considers everything in the round—businesses, artistic initiatives and tourism. It is meant to bring financial stability to the country in the round for all interested parties.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister please stop referring to devolution when it comes to the northern and western English regions? All this Government have done is to transfer responsibility for carrying out government budget decisions. When will London and the south-east and its representatives here in Parliament stop micromanaging the rest of England, where we would like genuine devolution?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I am surprised the noble Baroness says that. That is what we are doing with devolution. We are not interfering. That is the whole point: for it to go out into the communities for them to be in charge of what they want.

General Elections: Peers’ Exclusion from Voting

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, under the 1999 Act, hereditary Peers who are excluded from this House—not including the 92 who are here—are allowed to vote.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has been asked about reform of Parliament and the situation of a bicameral reformed Parliament. Would he agree that, de facto, we now have a unicameral system in which the House of Commons, by legislative right, ultimately gets its way? Who would arbitrate if there were two equal Chambers in Parliament?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I would not agree with that, but I think that the noble Baroness and I had better have a long conversation with an authority such as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, on the subject.

Public Services: Private Sector Companies

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, one of the reasons why the Government are attempting to encourage more mutuals in this area is that there is considerable evidence that people who work for mutuals have a much stronger sense of service, job satisfaction and co-operative working.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister referred to one of the earlier questions as familiar. Does he accept that questions would become less familiar on the Order Paper if they were answered?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Yes.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, yes, we need to be careful with the powder keg, and the question before us is whether an ingredient of that powder keg is going to be chemical weapons and gas. There is one mistake that we make with baleful constancy when we consider warfare action, and that is always to judge what we do in the next war by the lessons we thought we learnt from the last. That is almost always wrong. I well remember trying to persuade Parliament that we needed to intervene in Bosnia. The shadow that hung over us then was that of Vietnam, and I was constantly told, “We can’t do this. What we’ll get is body bags”. And so it is now. We are living under the shadow, sadly, of Iraq, but this is not Iraq. We are not putting boots on the ground, we are not invading, we are not seeking to govern someone else’s country, and above all this is not George W Bush, this is Barack Obama. You need only to look at what this American President has done to see how nervous, hesitant and cautious he is about taking action. Of all the arguments that are used, particularly the one that the Americans are hell bent on expanding this into some new war in the Middle East, every piece of evidence that we have about the current American Administration points in the opposite direction. That is simply an irrational argument.

This matter turns on a single question: do you take more of a risk through acting or do you run a greater risk through lack of action? That is the central question, and it was asked not least by the noble Lord who spoke previously. The aim is easily stated: it is to act as a bulwark for international law, and above all to protect one of the few pillars of international law that has been in existence for 100 years and more—against the use of chemical weapons and gas—and to act in support of international law while at the same time seeking to diminish the capacity of President Assad to continue to use such weapons. That is the aim.

So what is the strategy? It is the same as the aim. If you have a law against murder and you enforce it, you enforce it in order to reduce murder. Do you remove the possibility of murder completely? Of course not; it will continue to be committed. However, the question is: if you did not enforce it—if that law had become a dead letter—would murder increase in frequency? Of course it would. So that is the aim, and that is the strategy.

I heard the noble Lord, Lord West, talk about uncertainties. Of course there are uncertainties. You cannot take actions without having uncertainties. I would have thought that as a man who made his career in the armed services he would understand that. Every action that you take has consequences. Some of those consequences are predictable, some of them are rationally likely, some you do not know. If you do not accept that as a judgment, you do not have Armed Forces, you do not launch ships, you do not fire torpedoes, you do not drop bombs. You cannot tell exactly what is going to happen. You cannot have certainty in this, you have to have judgment. It seems to me that that is the central question here.

I cannot give certainty that this will achieve what we want. I cannot even give certainty that it will not have a widening effect. I cannot give certainty that it will not do anything—it probably will—to increase the possibility, which the noble Lord, Lord Wright, described, of a widening religious war in the Middle East. I do not think that that is stoppable now. We might be able to make sure that the damage caused to the local citizens and to the world by such a war is not increased by allowing chemical weapons to be in commonplace usage. That is what it is possible to achieve.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords—

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

If you will excuse me, my time is very limited.

I come back to the central proposition. Yes, you can have certainty about the outcome. Uncertainty is attached to this, but if you want certainty you can have it. Take no action. You will then have the certainty that this chemical convention and the laws behind it will become a dead letter. You will have the certainty that chemical weapons have been used once with impunity and can go on being used again with impunity. You will have the certainty that this will happen in the other conflicts that are about to rage, and are raging, in the Middle East. You will have the certainty that in due course that will be delivered to us too. Yes, we have an interest in this. If those are the certainties you wish, then by all means take no action. If, on the other hand, you want to take some action that is best calculated to produce a better outcome, to support international law and to make sure that we will not tolerate the use of these weapons in the best way that we can, we should pursue the action proposed by the Government.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, talked about action and said that action should be taken, but not once did he describe in any way, shape or form how that action should be taken or how it could be contained.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, I am extending beyond my time. I do not believe that it is up to politicians to act as armchair generals —I never have and I never will. The Government have defined what they need to achieve by this action. It needs to be limited, defined, targeted, proportional and within international law. Those are the conditions of the action before us. It is up to the military to decide how the Government can pursue that.

Extension of Franchise (House of Lords) Bill [HL]

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Friday 5th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said to me in the corridor the other day, “I hope you won’t disappoint me”. I am very sorry to say that I have to disappoint him on a number of grounds. In his opening speech, he said that this measure has nothing to do with Lords reform, so it is a non-Lords-reform Lords reform, if I understand what he is putting forward. Of course it has a great deal to do with Lords reform. It is one of many small items that we might consider if we go to a smaller package of Lords reform in what is being discussed within Her Majesty’s Government and outside as “a number of housekeeping measures” for both Houses that might be introduced next Session.

For the best of reasons, the noble Lord wishes to cherry-pick one of the changes that would carry through on Lords reform without accepting some of the others. I say this particularly because he remarked that Bishops in the House of Lords can vote without remarking that that is because they do not have permanent membership of your Lordships’ House. They retire at 70, well before the onset of statutory senility. Had the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, linked regaining the right to vote with a statutory retirement age, the Government might perhaps, I think, have looked on this rather more, although it would be very interesting to know what retirement age noble Lords would have accepted—whether it would have been 70, 75, 80, 85 or perhaps 95.

The argument for noble Lords not having the right to vote has partly been that we are permanent Members of your Lordships’ House. I recall that when we were discussing the major House of Lords Reform Bill last year a number of Labour Peers—and I am looking at one or two of them—were arguing in the corridors that they sit in the Lords by royal summons and by right of the sovereign’s appointment and that means that they are not entitled to retire. That is part of our medieval, fundamentally illogical constitution, which is part of what we are here for.

The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, talked about citizenship. Of course, in the British constitution under which we all sit here in this wonderfully illogical House, we are subjects of the Crown. It is the Crown that appoints us, so it is as subjects that we sit here. That is one of the many reasons why the citizenship debates in Britain still have a degree of weakness because we have not quite worked out what that splendidly republican concept “citizenship” should mean for all of us.

The noble Lord also advanced the argument that logic should play some part in this. If we were to redesign the British constitution on logical grounds, we would have a very different British constitution. Some noble Lords will have noted that the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, and other noble Lords signed a letter in the Times the other day which was a passionate defence of the tradition of common law and its conventions and traditions against the threat of logical, rational, Roman law from across the channel, institutionalised in Brussels and Strasbourg. There is a sense that there is an existential threat to our tradition of Englishness through the logical, rational principles of Roman law which come from across the channel, although many people do not recognise that they are also there in Scotland. So many people who talk about the defence of distinctive British institutions appear to forget that Scotland is a central part of the United Kingdom.

If we are to introduce common sense rather than common law, we are moving into a fairly radical change in the way the British constitution works.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

The Minister referred to the fact that we are already Members of Parliament. Does he accept that in certain areas defined by law this is a unicameral system in that we are excluded from areas of activity that are for the Commons? Throughout history, there have been quite a lot of battles about no taxation without representation. That is an area in this House that could be looked at. I suspect that if my noble friend began the argument a different way, your Lordships’ Chamber would be packed and the Press Gallery would be full, because he could have argued that given that we have no say on taxation, and therefore do not have representation, we should not be taxed. I think that would incite the public much more.

My noble friend could instead argue that we regain equality of powers with the House of Commons. That would have Members of the House of Commons up in the Gallery. The noble Lord is, I think, being a little less clear than is his usual practice.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I do not accept that we are in any sense a unicameral Parliament. This is one of the more influential second Chambers around the world. The fact that we are now definitely the second Chamber and that there are areas in which we have very much less influence than the House of Commons is one of the things that makes this clearly a second Chamber, but some of the other second Chambers, as I note, very definitely have less influence over the breadth of legislation.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

I would be grateful if after the debate on the Second Reading, which I hope will be granted, the Minister would write to me giving examples of where this Chamber has insisted to the point of the House of Commons backing down on legislation over the past few years.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am happy to promise to write to the noble Baroness on that. I think the record is that a full 40% of amendments moved in this House are accepted by the Government, but I will check the figure and come back to her.

I do not wish to detain the House for too long. I have made the point that the permanence of Lords membership has to be linked with the right to vote. On Lords reform, we have to look at a package. Last year, we presented a large-scale package to the House, and the House, for many diverse reasons, did not like it. The Government are considering whether to present a more modest housekeeping package.

House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill [HL]

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Friday 29th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think it is entirely clear. As now, some will receive more than others. The question of how many will be here every day will evolve with the new Chamber.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, will the Minister clarify the point that he made? I understood him to say, “not a lot of constituency work”. I understand that the intention behind the Bill that was produced this week is that Members of this Chamber, whatever they are called, will not do constituency work. I have yet to meet anyone who, faced with a problem, does not go to the person who they think is most likely to take up their case and fight it. However, I understand that the Bill is predicated on Members not having constituency work.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That understanding is entirely correct. The common understanding is that many of us here do a number of activities outside the House that might be considered constituency work. It is not constituency casework, although since becoming a Member of this House I have often received letters and e-mails that would be regarded as constituency casework, to which I have, by and large, said, “Not me”. However, in Bradford, York and Leeds, I frequently see Labour Members of this House, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, at meetings to discuss regional issues. Many of us will rightly continue to discuss regional issues. I meet the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and others who come from my part of the world. I wish there were more Members of this House who, like the noble Baroness, come from outside the south-east of England and naturally spend their weekends going around areas other than the south-east of England, picking up what is going on and feeding back what they have learnt—as part of their relevant and continuing expertise—into the House. If that is regarded as constituency work, it is perhaps something that we will naturally continue to do. However, constituency casework does not seem to us to be a necessary part of this House.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

Allow me, my Lords; the noble Baroness’s proposition is that, if you want to have democratic reform of this place, you must first have a written constitution. If we had a Bill before us for a written constitution, I would vote for it. However, we do not; we have a Bill for democratisation of the House of Lords. Perhaps I may make this point to the noble Baroness: if the past great reformers of this country took those risks, going out and leading the world from the basis of an unwritten constitution to change the powers of the monarch of this place and of the Commons, why should it not happen again? What is the basis on which it will not happen again?

I have taken up a good deal of the House’s time—

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

I agree with the noble Lord, especially because of his allegiance to the principle of a bicameral system, but surely he agrees that in a bicameral system the relationship between the two Chambers needs to be understood by people if it is put to them in a referendum. The noble Lord appears to be speaking in favour not of the draft Bill but of the Bill that he wishes it were. When I spoke to people in Lancashire, they said, “If it’s to be democratic, why elect once for 15 years? I would have no control over you, Josie”. That is what people said in my locality. Why is the noble Lord not arguing for what he believes in?

Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Tuesday 1st May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

The noble Baroness misunderstands the position. I am totally relaxed about a post-legislative referendum, which is how we have undertaken referendums in the main in the past in this country. I will certainly support one when the time comes.

More people are in favour of the abolition of your Lordships’ House—three or four times more—than in retaining a fully appointed House. I hope that Members will recognise that that is a real danger ahead of us. Going back to the noble Lord’s question, that is why, if this House resists clear public pressure for reform, there will come an opportunity for the public to have their say. The longer Members of your Lordships’ House seek to obstruct the public, the more the will of the public will have to be given an opportunity.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords—

[Lord Tyler]

I am trying to keep within my time. I have already been interrupted on a number of occasions and other Members managed to go beyond their time. I am personally very relaxed about referendums. I very much hope that the time will come when the public will be able, as they did 100 years ago, to express their fears about the way in which this House has become so undemocratic.

As I said, I was here for all the speeches yesterday, bar two or three, right through until past midnight. This debate has been notable for the small number of courageous Peers who have stuck to the promises that they have campaigned on for so long. I hope that, when the time comes, they will stick to their principles, too.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

Was the question put to the public for a mandate to serve on a similar term to that in the Commons or for Peers to be elected for 15 years and then be unable to stand again? To me, that is not democratic accountability; it is an appointment for someone to say whatever they like for the next 15 years.

[Lord Tyler]

I am sorry that the noble Baroness did not feel able to speak during the debate yesterday; she could have made that point. I will happily discuss with her the four major polls that have been undertaken and that clearly demonstrate support for the evolution of the democratic principle as the basis of representation in this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Many of those who most admire the House as it is are among those who have been here for a relatively short time. In the 16 years that I have been in this House, I have been struck by how much it has changed. I remind those who were here that a deal was struck in 1999 by Lord Cranborne and the then Prime Minister against the strongly held views of the majority of Peers and against the consensus of those within the House. Then, however, it was still a courteous and polite House. It was extremely rare for any Peer to attempt to interrupt or intervene on another, and the overall tone of debate was far less partisan than it is now. Many Members have remarked on the increase in lobbying of us over the past 10 years and the increase in the volume of our mail and e-mails. I would also remark on the rougher, much more partisan and far more aggressive atmosphere. It is not at all obvious that an elected House would be more partisan than we have now become. On the other hand, we have become a more diligent House, meeting for longer hours and scrutinising more of the nooks and crannies of government.

The House as at present constituted was intended to be a temporary House. The 1999 Cranborne/Blair agreement was another way station on the long road towards—I quote from the preamble to the Parliament Act 1911—

“a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis”,

something to which the infant Labour Party within the then government coalition was committed.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, I think that the number of interventions on members of the Government is noticed more by those who are in government than by those who constitute other Members of your Lordships’ House. I can remember when, for example, my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland was intervened upon 10 times on one particular issue. I remember not always enjoying the interventions of the much missed Lord Onslow when I was in the noble Lord’s position. I think that if he checks back he will see that the behaviour in your Lordships’ House is not worse; it is just that he is more on the receiving end.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we will agree to differ and I shall check back. I think that we have changed a great deal since 1999.

Our current position is not sustainable as numbers creep up and habits in the Chamber mutate. If noble Lords were to carry out some of the threats that have been uttered in this debate to wreck the rest of the Government’s legislative programme in order to sabotage proposed reform, then not just the sustainability but perhaps the reputation of this House would be weakened further. We cannot preserve the current House in aspic; it will continue to change and evolve. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said that very few of us believe we can remain as we are; the question is which direction we go in terms of reform.

The current proposals have not emerged from nowhere. Since the 1999 changes, Parliament has already devoted more than 140 hours to debating further reform. Shelves of reports—from Wakeham to Cunningham, Mackay of Clashfern and Hunt of Kings Heath—and a succession of Green Papers and White Papers have been produced. Very few arguments have been put forward in this debate which are not already familiar to most of us, and we will return to the topic again in 10 days’ time, when we will be discussing constitutional reform in one form or another in our debate on the Queen’s Speech.

Last week, in addition to reading the Richard report and the alternative report, I reread, for the first time in 40 years, the classic study of academic procrastination, Francis Cornford’s Microcosmographia Academica. This is the volume which first set out the principle of unripe time, the principles of the wedge and the dangerous precedent, and the determination of opponents to die in the last ditch. It was written of course to explain why the Cambridge University Senate so determinedly resisted all proposals for university reform. It says that the most effective means of obstruction is the alternative proposal. It continues:

“This is a form of Red Herring. As soon as three or more alternatives are in the field, there is pretty sure to be a majority against any one of them, and nothing will be done”.

The speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, was an excellent example of the principle of unripe time—that the proposal before us may be right but now is not the right time to accept it. She argued that an elected House is in principle at some point a good thing but only after the economy has recovered, the Scottish issue has been resolved, the relationship between the two Houses clarified and a constitutional convention held. The time was never ripe in the boom years of Labour’s third term in government either, although it might have been thought to be an appropriate time. As Francis Cornford remarked,

“Time, by the way, is like the medlar: it has a trick of going rotten before it is ripe”.

The principle of the wedge has also been used by many.

Elections: Registration

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the localism agenda—and, indeed, reviving local democracy—is clearly one very important part of getting young people re-involved in democratic politics, because it is easier to understand how they interact with local politics. I have to say to all Members of the House that the way in which we handle the issue of constitutional reform over the next year will send a signal to young people about how responsible we are, at Westminster, in reacting to constitutional reform issues.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, the Minister seemed to indicate earlier in reply to my noble friend’s question that it has taken until now, three months later, to discuss within the department or the Government the issue that my noble friend raised. How much longer do we have to wait for it to become an all-party, cross-party discussion that might lead to the sort of positive results that the Minister seems to want?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I welcome the noble Baroness’s commitment to cross-party approaches to all aspects of political and constitutional reform. On the question of motivating people under the age of 25 to be involved in politics, we very much need an all-party approach, and that is one of the areas in which we all need to take a rather more responsible attitude than the circus of Westminster sometimes provides.