Brexit: Devolved Administrations

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

It is always slightly worrying when the Minister is told that he has said something important at the Dispatch Box when he believes that he has stuck to the departmental brief. I say to the noble Lord, who has asked me a number of questions on this, that I have set out clearly the reasons why we think there is a strong case to retain some powers at Westminster. For example, it would be ridiculous if wheat grown in one region was unable to be used to bake bread in another region because of different rules on pesticides, so we need to keep some powers in Westminster. Subject to those requirements, which were set out in the agreed communiqué, it is indeed the case that we would like to devolve as much as we can to the devolved Assemblies.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the Government have undertaken to share with the EU Committee exactly the same access to the sectoral analyses, which are due in the Commons on Tuesday, can he confirm that they will arrive here that day? What plans are there then to share them with the devolved Administrations? Further, the Commons was told that the impact assessment for the whole of the Welsh economy does not exist, but the Chancellor has said that the Government’s modelling enabled the impact of Brexit to be analysed by country. Can the Minister advise the House whether such work on the impact of Brexit on, for example, Wales will be shared with this House and the devolved Assemblies?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

May I write to the noble Baroness on her first Question? On the second, there is an outstanding Written Question from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, asking whether there will be an analysis of Brexit’s impact on Wales. That Question is due to be answered shortly—I think not by me. So there will be clarity on our position on whether there is a particular analysis of the impact of Brexit on Wales once that Question is answered.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 8th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

For a second time, it is my pleasure to congratulate my noble friend on the Bill and to give it a very warm welcome.

Of course, I was not here and I did not vote for that deal in the last century, and I have to tell the House that I do not feel bound by it. As I said this time last year, there are hundreds of reasons for supporting this Bill, not least the hundreds of male sons of earlier honoured men who over time have taken their seats here, not because of their own attributes but because of those of their forebears. Surely in 2017 there can be no one outside of the hereditaries themselves who thinks that our legislators should be chosen by the deeds of their grandfathers, their great-grandfathers or their great-great-grandfathers—very rarely their grandmothers.

It is true that the hereditaries in the House today have shown their value, and many—probably most, if not all—could well be here as life Peers, given their own accomplishments. So this Bill is not to say farewell to them, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, but simply to say that when they leave us—by retirement or through a higher calling perhaps—they should not be replaced.

Everyone agrees that this Chamber is too big and should be reduced in size—a size which far outnumbers the democratically elected House. I say to the noble Lord, Lord True, that the recent flood of Conservatives who have already been put here more than makes good for any fall-off there may be if the hereditaries are not replaced. However, I am grateful to him for confessing that it is the Conservative interest, not democracy, that leads some to resist the Bill.

I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, that I accept what he said about the independence and expertise of your Lordships’ House, but surely he should be arguing for more Members of the Cross Benches and fewer of the political appointments, rather than continuing to appoint Peers by who their father, grandfather or whatever was.

So surely it is time to take forward this very modest measure. My noble friend is making only a very slow and slight attempt to reduce our numbers, but it is surely right to do that.

It is true that we would prefer greater changes, discussed by a constitutional convention rather than in piecemeal measures, but in the absence of that approach, surely this Bill is appropriate. It is tidy, measured and reasonable and it might even be well drafted.

The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who I think is not in his place, asked whether the whim of the Prime Minister to appoint us is better than hereditary by-elections. But I have to say: we are an appointed House. That was probably the whim of a former Prime Minister who first appointed the forebears of the hereditaries who are here today. I hesitate to say this in the presence of one of the Bishops who is a Member of this House, but I do not think that those Peers were touched by God to be here. It was the whim of the Prime Minister of the day who appointed them. So, in that sense, it is an appointed House.

[Lord Elton]

Does the noble Baroness subscribe to the view of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that our births were accidental, in which case it is not a matter of appointment but of chance?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Well, we are all here by that way.

This is an appointed House: it just depends on the century in which the Prime Minister made the appointment.

It is absolutely clear that those of us who are here should bring to the House our own attributes and experience rather than those of our ancestors, proud though I am of my grandfather who was a miner and my other grandfather who was a baker. Their own geographical spread and attributes contributed to this country. But I should be here not because of them—and I do not believe that it is—but because of what I hope I have done by myself.

As a number of noble Lords have said, if we are to earn the respect of the public for our work, having just 16 people electing someone who is perhaps 12th in line to their title to sit in this House, is not the PR that we would like for the work that we do.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Can the noble Baroness deal with the point made by my noble friend Lord True? Should this Bill go through, will the Opposition recognise the effect that that would have on the political balance and therefore be prepared to see those hereditaries appointed as Conservatives in order to maintain that balance? If she gave that undertaking, it would make it much easier for some of us.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I have answered that. I said a few moments ago that it has already been done because of the number of new Peers that David Cameron appointed. As Prime Minister he appointed more new Peers than the previous five Prime Ministers did in total. Virtually all of them were appointed to that side of the House, and we have had one. So, in a sense, I have already answered the point—because it has already happened.

Of the 32 by-elections that have taken place, which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, mentioned, the total number of votes cast was just under 6,000. That is under 200 votes per seat. All 32 Members elected were white men, as noted by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. The most significant contribution today was the challenge to the Government that, because of their broader remit, it is part of their responsibility to do something about this. That is a challenge that we wholeheartedly endorse.

We wish the Bill well. Last year, the Government used the slightly weasel words that they were sympathetic to any reform but that it should only be part of a broader review. But as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, because of Brexit we will have very little time to do very much more, and the result of the election removes any such possibility. So we should accept this modest, incremental and reasonable Bill.

I am grateful for the last intervention because of the acknowledgement that it is the Conservatives who are most worried about this because they will lose some of their seats, which I do not think we have heard before. But change will be very gradual. I look round the Chamber and see some of the hereditary Peers who I am sure will have many more years with us, and we look forward to their contributions. But the Minister must rise to the challenge of his noble friend Lady Berridge. This matter is not simply for this House but for the Government to see whether they want to continue a system where white men have a privileged way of finding their way into the Parliament of this country.

Bell Pottinger

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

This is a private company operating in a foreign country. In this particular case, the chief executive has resigned and a number of officials have been dismissed. I am not sure there is a role for the Government in intervening on a private company in disciplinary matters of this nature.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, that is not quite the case. When the lobbying Bill was going through the House, we warned the Government that if they did not require a lobbying firm to be a member of a professional body and abide by its code, then their statutory register would be meaningless. We now see that Bell Pottinger, although thrown out of the PRCA because it broke the code, is still a member and remains on the statutory register, able to lobby Ministers and Permanent Secretaries. Could the Minister undertake to discuss with the Office for the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists whether it is appropriate to give to give credence to this company and whether Ministers will still be willing to meet with it?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

As I said, the Government have no contracts with Bell Pottinger. I understand that the registrar is in touch with Bell Pottinger to establish whether or not it is still signed up to the codes of either the PRCA or the other professional body. In the light of those inquiries, the register will then clarify whether it is still signed up to those principles. As the legislation stands, you can be removed from the register only if you stop doing public relations business. You cannot be removed from the register for the sort of activities that we have been talking about.

Civil Society and the Democratic Process

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to my noble friend, who piloted the relevant legislation through the other place. During those debates he made the point that the boundary between what you could and could not do has not changed. What we did was insist on transparency and accountability. Therefore, if charities or civil society organisations want to engage in certain activities during a campaign, they have to register and declare their expenditure.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I am glad that the noble Lord has raised the question of transparency. During the referendum, the DUP spent £250,000 on the leave side, but because of the rules in Northern Ireland it does not have to declare the source of that income. We do not know who funded that. On behalf of my noble friend Lord Kennedy and I, I asked for a meeting with the chief executive of the Electoral Commission about this serious matter, but she has declined to meet us. Can the Minister tell us what plans the Government have—which I am sure will not be affected by the deal with the DUP—to re-examine this issue?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree with the noble Baroness that we need to have another look at the exemptions that Northern Ireland has from certain parts of electoral law, in particular on declaring sources of expenditure. We have a new First Secretary of State, and I am sure he will be interested in taking this matter forward in discussions through the usual channels.

Lobbying (Transparency) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

I will be moving Amendment 16A as well.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 16A is in this group and I am sure that my noble friend Lord Brooke will speak to it.

I want to be clear on one point on Amendment 28, which we will come to in due course and is about the ability to charge. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, may not like it but I think he is absolutely right—that is the end of his political career, but all our political careers are behind us—in that the regulators of virtually every sector, other than the Charity Commission, are funded by the sectors that they regulate. We have had an unhappy position with the Charity Commission when the Government were able to cut its funding, for understandable financial reasons. However, it leaves a regulator in some jeopardy if its running costs are, as in this case, in the hands of the Government—the very people who are being lobbied while we are trying to get a register of who is lobbying them. Amendment 28 is very important and I hope very much that my noble friend Lord Brooke will find it possible to accept this one.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I have some difficulties with this amendment. I declared at the beginning that I had no interests but I have been helped very considerably by a couple of NGOs, Spinwatch and Unlock Democracy. They have been very big parties to the preparation of the Bill and, in fairness to them, they are very unhappy indeed about any movement on my part on the charges side. They make the fundamental point of principle that it is open to anyone to lobby. It should be free, and there should not be any charge for anybody who engages in it, whether they be the highest in the land or the lowest. In particular, they are concerned that if charges are introduced charities may find it difficult, as might small businesses which might like to play a part in lobbying in one form or another and would have to register and pay, and that would be an imposition on them. They are strongly in favour of resisting any attempt to move away from what the Bill proposes, which is that the Government should bear the cost. They point out that in virtually every country in the world where there is a lobbying or transparency Act, the funding is from the Government. Scotland put a Bill through last year. It is coming into place, and the cost will be met by the Scottish Government. If we continue with charges, we will have a different approach within the UK, assuming this Bill becomes an Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My Lords, I think I am probably beginning to sound a bit repetitive, I am afraid, but there we are. These amendments would largely repeat a number of sections of existing legislation. The Government believe that existing legislation is effective as it stands and does not need to be supplemented.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

This is a slight aside, but I am sorry that the Government are taking this view. We know that they do not want the Bill, but it seems a shame that they are not engaging with how to make it as good as it can be—which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is doing—so that, should it become an Act, it can be made to work. I am sorry that the Government are taking the view that, because they do not like the whole Bill, they will not engage on its content. That is a small comment. There seems to be a slight loss of the expertise of the Cabinet Office and the Government to make this Bill as good as possible, even if, at the end of the day, we do not manage to get it on the statute book.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

As the noble Baroness obviously realises, the Government feel that the Act we already have is the right one. Our aim was for lobbying regulation to avoid unnecessary burdens, not to establish top-to-bottom regulation of all who lobby. That is why we set up an appropriate way to ensure high levels of transparency, but only in the specific areas of the lobbying industry where that was needed, and that is the Government’s position.

Public Contracts: Conflicts of Interest

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

Obviously, these appointments are the responsibility of each department, and each department follows the Civil Service Code, which sets out the process for dealing with any possible breaches. Essentially, cases are dealt with by the department according to its own processes and can ultimately be referred to the Civil Service Commission to investigate. The propriety and ethics team can give general advice on the application of the code.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, of course data protection does not prevent the people on that conflict of interest committee being willing to have their names released, so will the Minister tell us whether they can be asked to release their names? Will she also comment on the other big conflict of interest, which is the revolving door? The committee that looks at this for ministerial and civil servant retirees has never turned down any of those appointments, many of whom then turn up on exactly these committees but technically have no conflict of interest. Will she agree to review the terms of reference of that committee?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I do not think that I can go further than what I said about the Data Protection Act. As far as public appointments are concerned, we need to remember that there is a Commissioner for Public Appointments. Appointments come under the remit of that commissioner and they are made using the process from the commissioner’s Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments to Public Bodies. This is a strong code of practice and it is backed up by the regulations under the Act—the Public Contracts Regulations 2015—which set out the requirement to take,

“appropriate measures to effectively prevent, identify and remedy conflicts of interest arising in the conduct of procurement procedures so as to avoid any distortion of competition and to ensure equal treatment of all economic operators”.

Party Funding Reform

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate on an important issue. There is a lack of trust in parties, and therefore in the political system, which is deeply unhealthy. We have a duty to work to restore confidence, and tackling political funding is a vital part of that. The Kelly Committee on Standards in Public Life emphasised not only that,

“the regulatory regime must be fair to all political parties”,

but also must be,

“widely believed to be so”.

As my noble friend Lord Whitty made clear, the then Trade Union Bill failed this test, addressing just one party’s source of funding—a view shared across your Lordships’ House. As we have heard, the House then set up a Select Committee to examine the union party funding in the context of Kelly’s view that a cross-party approach was needed. As we have heard, the Government were urged to take a wider and consensual route. Well, they did not, and the trade union aspect was the only one looked at, which has now been legislated for.

There will be an opt-in to the political levy for new members, even though these are a mere 10p per week. The Certification Officer is now consulting on how to implement this, after which there will be a year to put the new arrangements in place. That means that we now have time to rectify the imbalance of regulating Labour but not Conservative funding, and to deal with the bigger issue of companies’ and individuals’ largesse. It is urgent.

The Government are determined to remove the 15-year time limit for overseas voters, handing a vote for life to an estimated 1 million expats, who have left and not paid any taxes to this country for decades. But even more seriously, as the Minister helpfully revealed in her letter to me of 24 October—her department having refused to answer my questions for the year before that—all these extra voters will also become “permissible donors”. As she writes:

“If a British citizen is able to vote in an election for a political party, we consider that they should be able to donate to that political party”.

I cannot think what political party she had in mind.

Therefore, unless we change the law, all these extra voters, long after they have left these shores, will be able to funnel unlimited—presumably untaxed, probably unearned—amounts into the coffers of a UK political party, in a country in which they do not live, giving to a party that makes laws which do not apply to them and which takes decisions which do not affect them. Clearly, therefore, although the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, says that the Conservatives are content with existing donors, they are not—they want to add these extra expats as well. As the Mirror Online says about this today:

“Tycoons who have not lived or paid tax in the UK for decades will be able to fund political parties under new rules drawn up by the Tories … That means more foreign-based financiers will be able to push policy by pumping cash into the Conservative Party—where a £50,000 donation buys dinner with Theresa May as part of the ‘Leader’s Group’”,

as we heard today from both the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and the noble Lord, Lord Leigh.

What does this look like to the general public? According to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, three-quarters of the public think that wealthy individuals influence government to benefit their own interests, and the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said that nine out of 10 people think that large donations are motivated by hopes of influence. We have to deal with this. We must keep it simple and clean. There must be an upper limit on the size of the donation any one person—or company, trade association or a body corporate—can give. That was once accepted by the Conservative Party. Its 2010 manifesto promised,

“an across-the-board cap on donations”,

to,

“mark the end of the big donor era”.

Notably, this was dropped from the 2015 manifesto. Perhaps the Minister can explain this regrettable omission when she comes to reply.

A cap on individual donations is urgently needed, and at a level which avoids any perception—let alone reality—of bought influence. As Kelly emphasised, only a low cap will be seen as taking,

“big money out of politics”.

He thought £10,000 was low, as the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, clearly does. To me, £10,000 is high. It could amount to £50,000 over a parliament from one individual. That sounds like big money to me, and to voters, if not to the noble Lord, Lord Leigh. A lower cap would signify that we are changing. In addition, we should not be afraid to discuss adjustments to public funding. The free post will, over time, become less of a necessity, and could be better directed, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, says.

A healthy democracy requires properly run and accountable parties, able to undertake serious policy work as well as campaigns, able to train and develop its elected representatives, able to engage with the electorate, and with MPs able to serve their constituents. This is a price worth paying for a healthy, functioning democracy. If it needs more public funding, so be it. What it does not require is unlimited donations from rich individuals. This matter is urgent. I hope that the Minister will take back what she has heard to Downing Street, with the message: “Something must be done”.

House of Lords Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 21st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, in bringing the Bill forward because it deals with a topical and, I think, urgent issue on which this House must take a lead. I am also delighted that the noble Baroness the Minister and I are able at last to reflect the women in the House. If we do come to any method for reducing the numbers here, a gender allocation will be high on our list of considerations. The noble Lord, Lord True, referred to selection being done in the Bishops’ Bar. To spare their blushes, we should make it clear that it is a coffee bar that I have never seen a bishop enter.

I rarely repeat anything the SNP says—but, as it has no representatives here, I will, for once, endorse its words in the other place this week when it expressed concern about the size of the House of Lords, which,

“with more than 800 members, is considerably larger than the elected House of Commons … there is no case … for the number … to exceed the number of members of the democratically elected House”.

The SNP said that it,

“cannot condone any Government action that may increase the number of unelected members while reducing the number of elected Members of Parliament”—

as has just been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. It called on the Government—splitting an infinitive—

“to significantly reduce the number of unelected Lords”,

and,

“to abandon any plans to reduce the number of Members of Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/10/16; col. 876.]

Two years ago, Labour Peers concluded that the House had to reduce its size—since when, of course, it has grown significantly. The fault, although he has not been named, lies, I am afraid, fairly and squarely with David Cameron, who, despite the 2015 manifesto promise to reduce the size of the Lords, handed out life peerages at a faster rate than any other Prime Minister since their introduction in 1958—some 260 since the 2010 election. At a cost of more than £100,000 each, that is some £30 million—and this despite his party’s repeated rhetoric that it wants to cut the cost of politics. Furthermore, as Professor Meg Russell has shown, he has appointed a greater proportion of government Peers, with fewer for the Cross Benches and the Opposition. It is time to take action.

We support the very modest Bill referred to by others, introduced by my noble friend Lord Grocott, to end hereditary by-elections. Surely it is right in itself, and a tiny step on size, but it is too modest to take us anywhere near the size of the Commons. So we need more—and parts of this Bill point the way. There must, however, be some serious debate about the actual size, the freedom of a Prime Minister to appoint at will, as has been mentioned, and the balance of composition. Freezing as of today will not attract consensus. Indeed, without clear agreement on an appropriate balance between the parties and the Cross Benches, it is unlikely that there will be consensus on a way forward.

This Government—the first Conservative one without an effective majority here—seem to dislike having their will challenged. But that is our role. Their action on numbers seeks to undermine a balanced House to which an Executive must listen. Indeed, the Conservatives became the largest party in the Lords after just three years of minority party government. Tony Blair, the Labour Prime Minister, has been referred to; it took him three successive general election victories—two of which, we must recall, were landslides with majorities of 174 and 167—before Labour became the largest party in the Lords in 2005. Yet only just over a year into the first majority Conservative Government, and with a majority of only 12 in the other place, the Tories are now 50 ahead of Labour. So how we move forward on size has to include consideration of the role of the House and whether it is right to engineer a government political majority.

The Liberal Democrats, as the noble Lord, Lord True, mentioned, are greatly overrepresented here compared with their eight Members in the Commons. It is hard to justify the continuation of this, as I fear the current Bill would allow. The issue is one of balance between the Government, the Opposition and the Cross Benches. As always, we welcome the very non-political spiritual Members. Cementing the currently engineered relative numbers between those groups might not attract the wide political support which we will need for any move forward. This will probably be the issue that most needs addressing before we look at how each political grouping should be reduced pro rata. Perhaps we might move to an all-female House and do it that way.

The hope today from this Bill is that the Government will see size as the “incremental” step referred to by the Minister on 9 September when she said that the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park,

“looks forward to working with Peers to support incremental reform”.—[Official Report, 9/9/16; col. 1251.]

I hope, too, that the Bill moved by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will nudge the powers that be to ensure that, before we move out of this building, we, too, have our own restoration and renewal to make ourselves fit for purpose.

Abortion (Disability Equality) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 21st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

First, I pay a heartfelt tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, for his living testimony that disability is as much in the mind as in the body. As others have said, as we have recently witnessed at the Paralympics, many of us so-called able-bodied are indeed rather weak imitations of those either born with, or who later acquire, a physical or mental disadvantage.

Despite the contribution that disabled people make to national life and their human right to equality of treatment, there are, sadly, still huge hurdles in the way of many of them being able to pursue a full, and indeed fulfilled, life. The House does not need me to enumerate the physical barriers, whether access to transport, buildings, facilities or the availability of aids or support required, or the social and psychological barriers—in the minds of others, of course—in terms of expectation or discrimination, to say nothing of the lack of adequate resources to meet their additional needs. Of course, all this is not helped by the Government’s welfare reforms, which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, continues to rail against within his own party. Indeed, just yesterday in the House the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said that,

“the Government have not removed the barriers between disabled people and jobs. There is a lack of transport and an unwelcoming workplace. What disabled people need—and I hope that this will be favourable to the Minister—is that all buses should be accessible with audiovisual information and all the taxi provisions of the Equality Act should be brought into force”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, noted:

“Up to 600 disabled people a week are losing their Motability cars because of the harsh PIP reassessment test”.—[Official Report, 20/10/16; cols. 2437-38.]

Therefore there remains much to do, in virtually every avenue of life, to improve the life chances and opportunities of disabled people so that they—and we—can benefit from them achieving their full potential.

However, I have to query whether a Bill, no matter how well intentioned, which could have the effect of forcing some 200 or 300 women a year to carry to full term a much-wanted and planned child, knowing it might not even see the light of day, or live just a few hours or days or face a life of pain and illness, is the best way of moving us further along the line of promoting equality and removing disability discrimination. The BMA, as well as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, and the British Maternal and Fetal Medicine Society all oppose the Bill, which they describe as neither “patient nor woman-centred” and which they think is about restricting abortion care, while the Genetic Alliance stresses that,

“abortion on grounds of foetal abnormality is an important component of the options available to a woman who discovers that she has a pregnancy affected by a serious genetic condition”.

As it says, genetic conditions can often come to a couple with no advance warning. Where it is due to an autosomal recessive condition, they are likely to have discovered the risk only during the pregnancy—a shocking, disappointing, often devastating discovery, and frequently of a condition serious enough to cause stillbirth or severe, eventually lethal, neonatal illness. These are voices we should heed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, said, as they come from people who, day by day, deal with the women and children who would be affected by the Bill. In addition, I am sure that they deal with situations which I am certain the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, never meant to cover but which would be caught by his Bill.

We welcome the attention the noble Lord draws through the Bill to the continuing discrimination disabled people face, but this is not the way to improve their lives.

Franchise: British Citizens Abroad

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

This has nothing to do with the EU referendum. That was run under the Westminster franchise. This is a completely different set of rules, and the idea is to bring it in with primary and secondary legislation.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I have twice asked the Minister’s predecessor—or perhaps three times—whether this means that such people will then become permitted donors. This is serious: it means that non-doms, who may not have lived here for 50 years, who may not have paid income tax for 50 years and who have no real interest in this country, would be able to be permitted donors, and foreign money could pour into our political parties.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

All those things are under consideration. I think that what the noble Baroness says is unlikely to be the case, but I will get back to her to make sure that that is correct.