Hereditary Peers: By-elections
Baroness Hayman Excerpts(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
My noble friend will know that that is a matter not for legislation but for the Standing Orders of the House. If the House wanted so to do, it could do that without the noble Lord’s Bill or any action by the Government. It is entirely a matter for the Standing Orders of the House, as my noble friend Lord Cope mentioned in one of our debates.
Noble Lords
Baroness Hayman
My Lords, this House is involved in very serious business at the moment. It was therefore very good to hear the Minister’s robust defence of the actions that this House has taken in scrutinising legislation and doing its constitutional duty of asking the other place to think again—if it thinks it should do that and it is appropriate. But it is subject to a great deal of criticism for doing that constitutional duty at the moment. Does that not make it much more important and urgent that, at this time, we take action against things that are indefensible, including both the size of the House and the nonsense of hereditary Peers’ by-elections?
Lord Young of Cookham
The Government are giving a fair wind to this Bill and I can say from the Dispatch Box that the Government have no plans to block it or obstruct it.
House of Lords: Membership
Baroness Hayman Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, looking beyond the issue of restraint at the current time, the conclusion of the report was:
“Our proposals would only work, though, if the Prime Minister (and her successors) undertook to appoint no more new members than there were vacancies, and to do so in the proportions implied by our recommendations”.
As has been said, the agreement of the Prime Minister is absolutely central to implementation of the report, and that was stressed throughout the debate. The Leader of the House was in listening mode during that debate. I ask the Minister: has the Leader had the opportunity to discuss the issues with the Prime Minister, and if she has not yet, will she do so in the very near future?
Lord Young of Cookham
As the noble Baroness said, my noble friend sat through nearly all the speeches in that debate. I can say that she will be having a discussion with the Prime Minister to discuss both the Burns report and the debate that we had in this House, and the Government’s recommendations or views will be known in due course. I hope the House will understand that there were only three sitting days after the debate on 19 December. We have been back after Christmas for only three days. The Prime Minister has had personnel matters on her mind in the meantime. So I think the Government are entitled to a little bit of time before they come out with their views.
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Hayman Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I had intended to be disciplined in my speech today and deal only with the famous, cryptic five words that other noble Lords have referred to. However, I can reduce what I was going to say because of the contributions from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Butler. I agreed with pretty well everything those three said, and they said it more eloquently than I would have done. So, I will allow myself a minute on another subject—women in the criminal justice system.
A great deal has been said about the proposals in the gracious Speech, but the issue of women prisoners has not been to the fore so far. I come to this from three pieces of experience. In the 1970s, I went with Joan Lester MP—a wonderful parliamentarian who was, sadly, only in this House for a short time—to visit the three mother and baby units that then existed in England. I saw for myself the cycle of deprivation that allowed one teenager expecting to give birth in Holloway to have Holloway Prison as the place of birth on her own birth certificate. If ever one needed an example of the cycle of deprivation, it was there. Nearly 20 years later, I chaired the trust of a local hospital where women came from Holloway to give birth, as they no longer gave birth in prison. They came in shackles, chained to a prison officer. That was prison and Home Office policy. We changed it, but only after many, many women had gone through that and because some brave midwives stood up and spoke out.
There was much that needed to be done and there is much that still needs to be done. Reference was made at Question Time to the current storyline in “The Archers”. I understand that the Lord Chancellor is, like me, an addict of the programme and is concerned about the description of what is now happening to a pregnant woman in the criminal justice system who is in prison. I hope that, in the reforms which have been outlined, particular attention will be paid to the situation of women, and women with children in particular.
I move on to the cryptic five words. I endorse what has been said: while the issue may be both the primacy of the Commons and secondary legislation, I agree with the conclusions of your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee that,
“the nature of secondary legislation is such that the key issue is not, as the Strathclyde Review suggests, the ‘primacy of the Commons’ but the role of Parliament in scrutinising and, where appropriate, challenging the Executive”.
The final say must go to the democratically elected House, but not the only say. At the moment, we do not have a satisfactory way of distributing responsibility for scrutiny between the two Houses and I endorse the suggestion to urgently set up a Joint Committee to look at how we can do this properly.
I have one more thing to say. It may be because we have talked so much about the prison system, but I think that the Strathclyde review was set up to administer a “short, sharp shock”. I first heard that phrase in relation to the young offenders’ estate. This time, it was about an old offenders’ estate—your Lordships’ House. The concern of the Government was not only this one defeat on secondary legislation. Its concern was a string of defeats on primary legislation, on amendments to Bills in an absolutely proper parliamentary way. This is because the Government have got themselves into a terrible state over the size of the House of Lords but are not addressing the issues of the inflated numbers in the Lords and how party representation is distributed. I would have been far happier if the gracious Speech had talked about addressing the issues of secondary legislation and proper parliamentary scrutiny as well as the size of this House, which is bringing it into disrepute.
House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]
Baroness Hayman Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Hayman
“(4) A resolution passed by virtue of subsection (1) must state that, in the opinion of the House of Lords, the conduct giving rise to the resolution—
(a) occurred after the coming into force of this Act, or(b) occurred before the coming into force of this Act and was not public knowledge before that time.”
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I will speak also to Amendments 2 and 3 in my name. I hope that I will not need to detain the House for very long.
At the outset, I will record my gratitude to the Minister and his officials—and I am delighted to see the Leader of the House in her place today. There have been a number of useful conversations—certainly useful from my point of view—which I hope have allowed us to end up with drafting in the Bill that meets the need for a more robust sanctions regime for the House but which also takes into account the necessity for this to be fair and balanced.
I also reiterate what I said about the Bill at Second Reading. This is an enabling Bill. The House will have the opportunity, when drafting standing orders under the Bill, to look very carefully at the processes that it wishes to put into place, were there to be, first, an investigations, then a report, and then a Motion in the House to bring sanctions against a Member under the terms of the Bill. So there are plenty of opportunities for ensuring that we get those processes absolutely right—but the original problem remains, unless we pass this Bill.
I turn to Amendment 1. In Committee, we debated and passed an amendment that dealt with the issue of retrospectivity in a blanket way. Many noble Lords would have been concerned that we could run the risk of double jeopardy and of reopening issues of conduct that had already been through the disciplinary processes of the House and been adjudicated on. However, there was a concern that, in so doing, we should not tie the hands of the House in circumstances where, for example, wrongdoing occurred today but did not come to public notice until after the passage of this Bill. We did not want to be left in the position of having no sanctions regime available at all to the House.
I have therefore taken the wording in the 2012 House of Lords Reform Bill, which had to consider exactly the same issues of retrospectivity. In this amendment, we would put those provisions into my Bill and ensure that any conduct that gave rise to proceedings under this Bill had either to take place after the Bill’s passage or to deal with issues that preceded the Bill’s coming into force but were not in any way in the public domain. That was considered to be an appropriate approach in the Bill on major House of Lords reform that did not proceed, and I hope that it will be considered appropriate in this Bill.
The other two amendments are of a technical nature. I am particularly grateful for the conversations that I had with officials, because I am not sure that I would have got there myself in understanding, in Amendment 2, the need to ensure that the interaction between the entitlement to receive the writ of summons, which is obviously a very important issue and one that stopped the House in the past being able to suspend Members beyond the lifetime of a single Parliament, and the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 should be made clear. Amendment 2, I am reliably informed, achieves that end and ensures that there is no lacuna between my Bill and the Act.
Equally, I attempted in my drafting to ensure that the effects of ceasing to be a Member in the case of expulsion should be the same under these provisions as they would be for expulsion under the provisions of the 2014 Act. I believe that the wording that we now have in Amendment 3 achieves that.
I hope that, if the House is minded to approve the amendments, we have now got the Bill into a form that is watertight and acceptable to the House and that achieves the ends for which there was so much support. I think that the Leader of the House recognised that in the strength of the contributions made from all over the House at Second Reading and in Committee.
As I said at the beginning, this is not a House of Lords reform Bill. It is not called that and it is not that in any way. It does not deal with composition. It deals with our internal disciplinary processes and, in that sense, may seem very minor. However, as I have said before, it also deals with a situation that those among the general public who are aware of it already find unacceptable and that, were it to come into the spotlight because a case arose, even more of them would find totally unacceptable. In my view, this issue concerns the reputation of this House and of Parliament more widely. That is why I hope very much that the Bill will make rapid progress not just today but in another place. I beg to move.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, very briefly, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for taking up the standard. I hope, as I know she does, that this Bill, when it becomes an Act, will never be needed. However, if it does not become an Act of Parliament, that would be very difficult to explain to anyone outside Parliament.
I am greatly comforted by the presence of my noble friend the Leader of the House on the Front Bench. I sincerely hope that the Bill can go through its remaining stage in this House and through another place in good time for the Dissolution of this Parliament, so that it is fully operational when we come back. There is no reason why that should not happen from the point of view of parliamentary timetables. I made that point at Second Reading and again in Committee. We are enormously indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, as we are to the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood. The Bill perfectly dovetails with, and in effect completes, what he and Mr Dan Byles sought to do. It has my total and complete support.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the important thing is to get all stages of the Bill through the House in good order. We entirely accept that the Bill is about Lords’ conduct and therefore their reputation. As such, it is a useful addition to the procedures available to the House, although—to repeat what has been said—we all hope that the powers will rarely, if ever, be needed.
The question of what happens in another place will, of course, have to be discussed. I have assurances that the Leader will be discussing that matter with others but, meanwhile, we welcome the clarity of these amendments. The Bill is now in good order and we should accept this as the Report stage.
Baroness Hayman
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to everyone who has spoken for their support for the amendments, which I believe have now struck the right balance, particularly on the issue of retrospectivity. I am very grateful to the Minister. He said that the important thing is to get the Bill through this House. That is an important thing. I think that the most important thing is now to get the Bill through another House. I know that the Government have made very clear that they will not stand in the way of the Bill. I hope that in willing the ends they may be able to move towards willing the means as well. I know that there has been real good faith from the Government Front Bench on this issue. I hope that we will see the fruits of that in the new year and that this small but important measure will become law before the general election.
Baroness Hayman
“Entitlement to receive writs of summons to attend House of Lords
In section 6 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 (interpretation), after subsection (2)(c) insert—“(d) section 1(3) of the House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015.””
Baroness Hayman
“Effect of ceasing to be a member
A person expelled in accordance with section 1 is to be treated as if that person had ceased to be a member in accordance with the House of Lords Reform Act 2014, for the purposes of section 4(2) to (8) of that Act.”
House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]
Baroness Hayman Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Hayman
“( ) Standing Orders under subsection (1) may only make provision in respect of conduct by a member which takes place after the coming into force of this Act.”
Baroness Hayman
My Lords, I hope that I will not have to detain the Committee at great length on this amendment or on the subsequent amendment, because, at Second Reading, I was enormously encouraged by the widespread support for the aims of this Bill that came from all sections of the House. I was encouraged, too, by the words of the Minister in his offer to discuss issues arising from the Bill. In Pollyanna mode, I decided that not having a settled view was a good thing and that we could perhaps move forward to a point where the Government had a settled view that this was a small but important measure that they would be able to support.
As I have said, this is a simple Bill; it is an enabling Bill; and no major concerns were raised at Second Reading. I think that Members of the House recognised that this was not a Bill about composition or reform of your Lordships’ House, although many people would have wished that it were so, but that it was dealing with a limited but very important issue, which was to ensure that the House had available to it, if the circumstances arose in which they were needed, sanctions and disciplinary measures that the public would expect us to have in those circumstances and which I think there is general agreement that we do not have at the moment.
My conversations have been mainly about the technical issues that arose from the Bill—that is Amendment 2, which we will come to in a moment—but also about whether there was a way in which we could do two things. The first was to clarify in the Bill that this is a Bill about conduct, not about composition. The other was to address the point raised in the debate: to ensure that no injustice should be done in respect of any Member of your Lordships’ House.
As I have said before, this is an enabling Bill, and it will be for the House to draw up Standing Orders to ensure that the powers that it has been given by the statute are appropriately, fairly and properly implemented and that the processes and procedures available in such circumstances should be of the highest standard. In proposing the amendment, I am happy to include one thing in the Bill: the issue of retrospectivity. The amendment makes it crystal clear that sanctions that came to pass because of Standing Orders made under the Bill may be made only in respect of,
“conduct by a member which takes place after the coming into force of this Act”.
Given what I have said about the amendment clarifying in the Bill that it is not intended in any way to be a retrospective measure but is about putting our House in order in future, it is profoundly to be hoped, as many noble Lords said at Second Reading, that these serious disciplinary measures will not be needed because conduct will not occur that calls them into action. However, forewarned is forearmed and, as I said at Second Reading, I believe that we have a dangerous lacuna in our disciplinary proceedings and the Bill sets out to fill it and protect the House in those circumstances. I beg to move.
Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)
I very much support the amendment, and apologise that I was unable to be in the House for Second Reading, but I also support the Bill. As some of your Lordships may recall, I was chairman of the Privileges Committee during the saga of the first suspensions to take place in the modern era. They were not as simple as all that, because a number of people thought that we should not have been able to suspend noble Lords from the service of the House. We found that we were, but we also found that we were unable to suspend noble Lords beyond the length of a Parliament. In other words, if someone was suspended today, they could be suspended for only five or six months or so, whereas if someone was suspended on 1 June, they could be suspended for five years. The press and the public were rightly unable to understand why we did not have the power to suspend for longer or, indeed, to expel. The Bill appears to deal with that matter extremely well, and I very much support it and the amendment.
Baroness Hayman
My Lords, I am very grateful to everyone who has spoken for their support for the general principle of the Bill and for their recognition that, although we quickly get on to wider issues when any of us in your Lordships’ House talks about the House itself, this is not a House of Lords reform Bill but a House of Lords disciplinary Bill.
I was particularly heartened by the Minister’s words because, as the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, will not be surprised to hear, some of the issues that he raised have also occurred to me. The issue of retrospectivity is one on which the House has very strong views. We have lost most of the lawyers who were taking part in the preceding business, but if they were here they would remind us of some recent examples of the fact that you cannot bring in sanctions that would be current today for offences that occurred in the past. We are talking basically about a sanctions regime. Equally, I do not think that anyone in the House would think it appropriate for there to be double jeopardy and, where someone had had disciplinary proceedings against them, been suspended and then had come back, for that to be reviewed. However, I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, and the Minister that there are some issues where conduct takes place before disciplinary proceedings, and that the interaction of that with the Bill is an important area.
I hope that the conversations we have will be fruitful and that the fair wind that the Government have given to the Bill in this House will enable us not only to pass these amendments today but to return to them on Report so that they can be improved appropriately. I should record now that I have been immensely grateful to the Leader of the House, the Minister and officials within the House for their support and help thus far in the Bill. They will understand when I pocket that help and support and ask for more, because I believe that we can get the Bill into perfect shape quite quickly in this House and that a fair wind transferred down the corridor could enable us to get it on to the statute book. That would be good not just for this House but for Parliament as a whole. I beg to move.
Baroness Hayman
Baroness Hayman
I suspect that we will not have the same level of debate on this technical amendment. It was pointed out to me that it would be helpful, in spelling out the consequences of expulsion under the Bill that are to mirror those under the “Byles Bill”—the House of Lords Reform Act 2014—if I referred not simply to Section 4 of that Act but also to subsections of that Act. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, here again the Government are sympathetic to the principle, but there are some technical issues about how the Bill refers to the 2014 Act and how one relates to the other. Again, the Government would be very glad to talk to the noble Baroness between Committee and Report to sort them out and perhaps come back with a different amendment on Report.
I read the latest Code of Conduct again this morning, thinking that we need to be sure what we are on about. One of the issues that perhaps we need to discuss informally off the Floor is how far this measure is intended to refer only to conduct that is mentioned in the Code of Conduct or to egregious conduct of other sorts conducted by Members of this House. However, that is a question that we need not have in the Bill itself, but it is certainly a question that the Committee for Privileges and Conduct and others will need to consider at a later stage. With the reassurance that we will be very happy to discuss how we remodel this amendment between now and Report, I hope that the noble Baroness is happy with the Government’s response.
Baroness Hayman
My Lords, one thing I would never claim as one of my core skills is parliamentary draftsmanship. Therefore, I am not just happy but very grateful to have the discussions that the Minister suggests.
I agree with the Minister that the heavy lifting about getting this right has to be done within the House, with the Committee for Privileges and Conduct looking at the code of conduct and Standing Orders and making sure that we have the appropriate procedures. This is an enabling Bill to allow us to get on and do that meticulous and careful work under its auspices.
House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]
Baroness Hayman Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill, has consented to place her prerogative and interest, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I express my gratitude to all noble Lords who are to speak in our debate today. Their commitment reflects the seriousness with which this House views the issues raised in the Bill. It is a brief and straightforward measure and I shall try to be brief and straightforward in what I say. But brevity does not mean that it is insignificant in its content.
I have brought the Bill before the House because I believe that by enacting its provisions we could complete the series of reforms that have been made to the House’s conduct, investigative and disciplinary systems since the events of 2008-09, and fill two important lacunae in the sanctions available to your Lordships’ House.
Noble Lords who were Members of the House at the time of the expenses and cash-for-questions scandals will remember all too well the public opprobrium heaped upon us—upon the House, its financial support systems, those who misuse those systems, often those who simply use those systems, and on the House’s enforcement and disciplinary processes. Some will also remember the conflict and confusion with which the House was faced over the existence or extent of powers to take action in the case of wrongdoing.
I am delighted to see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, in his place today; the whole House owes him a debt of gratitude for his crucial role at that time in clarifying that the House does indeed have powers to suspend Members found to be in breach of the Code of Conduct in particular circumstances, albeit for a limited period, and obviously it is that limited period with which the Bill deals.
Since those dark days, we have in fact made progress in a number of areas. The system of financial allowances has been radically overhauled and made simpler and more transparent. The Code of Conduct has been amended to make clearer the high standards of behaviour expected of Members. We have appointed an independent Commissioner for Standards to investigate cases of alleged wrongdoing. The role of the Committee for Privileges and Conduct has been clarified, and I am delighted that the chair of the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, is to speak in today’s debate. Lastly, the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 has itself made provision for the expulsion of Members who fail to attend the House for a Session or more, or who are convicted of a serious offence entailing a prison sentence of at least 12 months.
My Bill seeks to do two things that would, I contend, complete this raft of reforms. One relates to the issue of suspension. The limitation on the length of a suspension to the remainder of the Parliament in which it is in force is set out in the 2009 report of the Committee of Privileges. As I said, it was based very much on the advice of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. However, although it has proved helpful that that power exists, there remain problems. The basic problem is that a completely different range of sanctions are open to the House to impose at different stages of the parliamentary calendar. Were a Member to be found to have transgressed at the beginning of a Parliament they could in effect be suspended for four years or more. Were the same Member to commit the same transgression at this stage of this Parliament the possible sanction would be limited to four months or less. That is not logical, I contend, nor is it satisfactory for either the House or the person involved.
My Bill would empower the House to make Standing Orders to enable a suspension to be imposed that would run beyond the end of a Parliament and during that time the right to receive a Writ of Summons would be suspended. The House would also be given the power to enact in Standing Orders the ability to expel a Member in circumstances other than the narrow ones set out in the House of Lords Reform Act 2014—non-attendance or being subject to a prison sentence of more than a year.
Expulsion is obviously a hugely weighty and serious step. I profoundly hope that with this Bill on the statute book and the Standing Orders in place this provision would simply lie unused and there would never be conduct that would provoke the possibility of the House being asked to agree to expel a Member. However, it would be irresponsible not to have such a provision in place when all of us can envisage circumstances—it might be repeat offences against the Code or Conduct or sentences for criminal offences that were less than nine months or were suspended—where the House would wish at least to have the opportunity to consider expulsion and to decide whether it would be the right course of action. In such circumstances, I believe that not having that opportunity would provoke significant public disquiet and criticism of the House. That is not just a belief but based on experience. All noble Lords know that the House has come into disrepute and been criticised for that lack of ability. For us simply to throw our hands in the air and say that there was no option of expulsion open to us would not be satisfactory. We have, in this Bill, at this time, the chance—if I can put it that way—to shut the stable door before the horse has bolted; not to be scrabbling around in the midst of a crisis to see what we could do that was appropriate. I hope very much that the House will take that opportunity.
My Bill is enabling, not prescriptive. It does not lay down in detail the circumstances in which these sanctions would be appropriate or specify the processes the House should adopt in its disciplinary proceedings.
We are lucky in this House to have Members with significant and judicial experience to guide the House in the painstaking task of drawing up the appropriate Standing Orders. That in one sense is a lock: getting the Standing Orders right and those being approved by the House, and making sure that we deal fairly and appropriately with the regime. The second lock is the fact that the whole House would again have to agree to a recommendation from the disciplinary committees of the House that such an expulsion should take place.
This is not a new idea. Provisions similar to those in my Bill were included in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill of 2010 but lost in the wash-up and therefore not included in that Act, and in the Government’s own House of Lords Reform Bill of 2012, from which the provisions of my Bill are taken word for word. Equally, and as another guarantee of draftsmanship, the consequences of expulsion laid out in the Bill are taken from the 2014 Bill that was brought in by Mr Dan Byles in another place.
The view was rightly taken that these processes are for the House to lay down after careful consideration. I have no doubt that the House would behave with its customary sense of justice, its care and responsibility, both in drawing up the relevant Standing Orders and in considering any recommendation for expulsion or suspension brought before it under those orders, as it has in the past with recommendations for suspension.
I return to my original words. This is a brief Bill. It could, with good will and a little support from the Government, become law, even within the short time available in this Session. I hope that the Minister will indicate that support today, because this Bill could contribute a small piece of the jigsaw in the painful work of rebuilding trust in Parliament and its institutions.
I end with the words spoken by the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford, last December when bringing in his own reforms to the Code of Conduct. He said that,
“ultimately, the reputation of this House rests in all our hands, which is why I believe that noble Lords will want to support steps to strengthen the sanctions available to us”.—[Official Report, 17/12/13; col. 1143.]
I am introducing this Bill as such a step and I commend it to the House. I beg to move.
Baroness Hayman
My Lords, I am enormously grateful for the support that I have received from all Benches of your Lordships’ House and for the seriousness with which Members have addressed the Bill. I was slightly worried on several grounds when the Minister wound up: at one stage I thought that he was inviting me to retire by the end of the Parliament. I do not think I am minded to do that with so much unfinished business before us, not least in this area.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I must congratulate the noble Baroness. She talked about completing a stage of House of Lords reform. What a wonderful phrase—the thought that we might ever complete a substantial phase of House of Lords reform. I suspect I will retire before we have done that.
Baroness Hayman
It is the never-ending story of British politics. However, I turn briefly to two points made by noble Lords. One was made by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. I quite understand his desire that we should not create rules so inflexible that injustices take place. That is less of a difficulty with a Bill that enables the House to make Standing Orders, which can themselves give the degree of flexibility referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. We then have the next lock of the House itself needing to make a resolution in individual cases. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, will not feel that it is necessary to try to amend the Bill, but that he will be engaged in the process that several noble Lords have mentioned of drawing up the Standing Orders, the procedures and the processes that would be necessary after enactment, which we all recognise should be taken very seriously.
Several noble Lords referred to the need for other measures of reform. It is well known that I share a desire to reform this House substantially. That does not mean I support an elected House—I do not—but I believe that there is a lot that we can do. I considered bringing the remains of the Steel Bill: an individual Bill on a statutory appointments commission, a cap on the size of the House, and even—dare I say it with the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, present—an end to hereditary Peer by-elections. I did not do any of those things because I believed that I should, in these circumstances, bring forward something that was deliverable and that could, in the terms of a Private Member’s Bill, become law and make a contribution.
The Minister said that it might be difficult to get people to focus on Lords housekeeping. I, too, take issue with that designation of the Bill. He might find it easier if he put it to colleagues that it was a Bill dealing with the reputation of Parliament, because that is what I believe it is and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, and others made that perfectly clear.
I am slightly surprised that the Government have “no settled view”, to use the Minister’s phrase. They had a settled view when they drew up these proposals and put them in the Bill in 2012. Of course, I am willing to consider and discuss what might be in the Standing Orders but I assume that that work has already been done in government: if it is necessary then it would have been done as the back-up to these proposals when they were put forward in the 2012 Bill.
The advice that the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, gave us was absolutely central. Although the Minister seemed to be willing the ends in a very generalised way, willing the means was not so specific. I shall certainly take up his offer of conversations—he did not say that the door was closed. I hope—and today’s debate has given me encouragement for this because I do not think that anyone expressed any doubt about the importance and necessity of the Bill—that we can deliver it up in good time for it to become law if the Government give it time in another place. That is the simple demand that, with the authority of those who have spoken today, I shall be taking into those discussions. I hope that, in a short period of time, the Government will reach the conclusion that it is in all our interests so to do.
Ebola
Baroness Hayman Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Noble Lords may be aware that Nigeria and Senegal were last weekend declared free of the virus. It is very encouraging news that part of what helped the Nigerians to get the virus under control was an extremely effective Twitter campaign to inform people about the precautions they needed to take. We ourselves are putting in a great deal of money and personnel—mainly military personnel—and we have offers of additional personnel from countries as far apart as Cuba and the Philippines. We are certainly doing our utmost to get up to speed but, of course, it takes a great deal of effort and, unavoidably, time to cope with something so complex.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, while endorsing the need for speed in the international response and the direct treatment and ending of transmission of the disease, does the Minister agree that the humanitarian consequences of Ebola go far wider than simply the medical problem? The economy is being disrupted; children are being orphaned; crops are not being gathered in; and normal medical services and immunisation programmes are being disrupted. Will the Minister recognise that international development agencies from this country are on the ground, tackling that whole range of humanitarian needs, and will he pay tribute to their courage and commitment?
South Sudan
Baroness Hayman Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
IGAD is currently consulting outside the country with potential civil society representatives who will be included in these discussions. This will in no way be a beautiful or perfect set of arrangements. If we manage to achieve some sort of transitional Government of national unity, we will have done extremely well.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the Disasters Emergency Committee and echo the Minister’s comments about the courage and commitment of the workers for those aid agencies who are out in South Sudan. They all report a desperate humanitarian situation in which it is not just the lack of resources—I pay tribute to what the UK Government have done in this—but ongoing fighting that is a barrier to those most in need receiving aid. Does the Minister agree that with more than 50% of farmers not able to plant in this year’s rainy season, unless a long-term enduring agreement is reached, this crisis will not only continue but deepen?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, there has never been an effective and functioning state in South Sudan. It is a new country born out of civil war. It is going to take a long time to construct an effective state administration with the ability to provide education and order within the 10 provinces with a large number of tribal groups and some 200 different languages. This is a major preoccupation with which all the states around South Sudan are engaged. Britain, the United States and Norway represent the troika of outside Governments who are most concerned. Of course we want other Governments to be concerned. It is good news that China has now recognised that it also has interests at stake and is considering providing additional troops to the UN peacekeeping forces.
House of Lords: Membership
Baroness Hayman Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I echo the remarks that have already been made about the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, and the value he has provided for today in allowing us to debate this subject. As the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has already reminded noble Lords, the size of the House was already a problem when the Hunt committee reported. Far from seeing a reduction in numbers, as was proposed, we have seen a substantial increase, with all the difficulties that have been referred to today, including the effects on the reputation and, indeed, the workings of the House.
I want to take up the theme of party-political balance in the House. We have no agreement about what the relative strengths of parties in the House should be. However, we do have agreement, I think, that much legislation that comes to this House is badly drafted, inadequately scrutinised or not scrutinised at all, because of timetabling in the other place. Given those circumstances, I ask the Government to think very carefully about increasing by large numbers the proportion of party-political Peers in the House. Second Chambers exist to ask first Chambers to have second thoughts. We need to do our job of pressure-testing legislation, both for policy and for drafting, and to ask the Commons to think again when appropriate. The joy of our present system, and the reason why many of us oppose an elected House of Lords, is because democratic power, accountability and legitimacy lie with the Commons, which always in the end gets its way.
I have been a Minister in this place and I know that it is very disobliging and disrupting to lose votes, but in terms of the quality of the legislation that emerges I suggest that it is counterproductive for the Government deliberately to diminish the number of times they are asked to think again in the House of Commons. That can rebound politically, as those who were involved in the poll tax legislation understand very well.
As regards the proposals for not just not increasing the size of the House through new appointments but reducing its size through offering opportunities for retirement and resignation, I echo what has been said about Dan Byles’s Bill because I have always believed that having a statutory basis on which to build in a voluntary manner is tremendously important.
The other development that I think is important is the recently published report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. Many of the proposals in the Clerk of the Parliament’s memorandum are supported in that report and there are specific requests, not just from the Government but from the parties in this House, for the leadership to take those proposals on board and to respond to both the committee and the House as a whole. I hope that the Minister will indicate that the Government are willing to respond to that.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Higgins. It has been an excellent debate. I have to say to my noble friend Lord Lea that I plead guilty as charged, although I hope that the Minister will also plead guilty. I notice that he left the Conservative Party office charge sheet, which rather disappointed me, but perhaps he just felt short of a bit of time.
I thought that the Clerk of the Parliament’s report was excellent, particularly paragraphs 36 and 37 in relation to a strengthened leave of absence scheme, including minimum levels of attendance and enforced leave of absence. Will the Minister state clearly what the Government actually intend to do to progress this? As noble Lords have said, the Leader of the House has already indicated that he is not in favour of it, but I think the House and the Committee are entitled to a proper explanation of why this should not be taken forward.
I also ask the Minister about the statement made by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, at Question Time this morning. She made what seemed to me to be a new statement of government policy in relation to the balance between the parties. I would be grateful if he would expand on what the Minister said in the Chamber.
Thirdly, I come to the point raised by my noble friend Lady Hayman. We have what I think is a ludicrous coalition agreement policy of saying that in one Parliament the membership of the House should reflect the votes cast at the last election; clearly, we have seen lists of new Peers being announced in order to make progress towards that. Our estimate is that the Government will shortly have a political majority in the Chamber of more than 100. What is the point of it? We are a revising Chamber; if the Government cannot be defeated, revisions cannot take place. In my own experience as a Minister, as my noble friend Lady Hayman will know—
Baroness Hayman
The noble Lord is definitely my friend, but in procedural terms in this House he is not my noble friend.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am duly dealt with on that. The noble Baroness was also a health Minister. I would have expected to lose five or six votes on any health Bill that I took through, and I took through rather a lot. This does not happen any more, and I want to ask the Government whether they expect to win every vote. Is this the intention? If it is the intention, frankly, I do not see the point of your Lordships’ House. If the Government are not defeated on a fairly regular basis, we cannot send matters back to the House of Commons and there is no point to us. I am increasingly of the view that in that scenario the only way out is to get rid of the House. I do not think that the Government realise the significance of this. We cannot revise unless the Government are defeated a healthy number of times.
We should look at other reports, as well as the Clerk’s. My noble friend Lord Foulkes has given the game away, in the sense that there is a Labour group looking at some of these issues. The House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has produced a very interesting report, with a number of suggestions as to how we might deal with these issues. We may not agree with all of them, but I particularly draw your Lordships’ attention to recommendation 10, on determining the relative numerical strengths of party groups in the House of Lords. In the end, surely we need to have sensible discussions and reach an agreement which will enable us to get a proper balance, allow the House to do its proper job in revising, and keep the numbers at a reasonable level.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, Members of the House of Commons earn their keep and are much more often in the prime of life. Most of us who come here have earned our salaries elsewhere and have pensions from elsewhere. That is part of the distinction that I am making.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, asked about human resources. My noble friend Lord Gardiner remarked that that is partly because Cross-Benchers do not have Whips. Whips in this House see themselves not as enforcers but as very much a human resources department for their own party groups.
House of Lords: Appointments
Baroness Hayman Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I do not think that I ought to answer that question. I am very conscious that there are those who, in the Corridors of this House, have said to me, among others, that those who are asked to leave the House should be compensated for doing so. To that I would say that membership of this House is a privilege, not a right, and the idea that one has to be bought out before one leaves is not one that should be considered.
Baroness Hayman
Will the Minister now answer a question about which the Government have been reticent? To which of the political parties contesting the last general election does the coalition commitment that he has reaffirmed today apply?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, over lunch I made a calculation which, even though I was unable to find a calculator, I hope was correct. If one were to be strictly accurate, the Labour Party as represented in this House is roughly in tune with the percentage that it received in the last election. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, is as good as 10 people. The most underrepresented group, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, knows, is of course the Liberal Democrats.