His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, on behalf of myself and my noble friend Lady Bennett, I send our sincere condolences to Her Majesty the Queen and her family. It is very hard ever to get over the loss of a loved one, especially someone with such a big personality.

I met the Prince only once. I was in the line-up of assembly members at the opening of City Hall in 2002 when he inadvertently gave me some advice that made me a better politician. I say “inadvertently” because I think he was actually complaining to me, but I took it as a positive statement. When he heard that I was from the Green Party, he first gave me his own green credentials, as the founder of the World Wide Fund for Nature and so on. He then said, “You know the problem with you Greens?”—and I think he actually wagged his finger—“You never give anyone else any credit.” I said, “You’re absolutely right. Greens want such giant strides in policy and, of course, it is hard to accept baby steps.” Since then, I have tried to be kinder about such baby steps and kinder to the Government.

A big debt is owed to Prince Philip and that whole generation of environmentalists of which he was a part and which he promoted through his work. The conservation of nature was important in the 1960s and is obviously even more important today. In the past 60 years, our understanding of conservation has evolved. We have learned that, in order to conserve a species, you must conserve its habitat, including those habitats that are threatened both at home and abroad by manmade climate change and the powerful vested interests of greed and profit. Prince Philip was one of the pioneers who started to highlight the links between people and planet. Many have built on that understanding of our global environment; I am very happy to give him credit for it.

But I cannot speak about one death, however momentous, without speaking of the 127,087 other deaths over the past year due to coronavirus. Many of those deaths will have been premature, with people of all ages dying before their time and leaving many more people—hundreds of thousands of them—grieving. Sisters, brothers, children, mothers, fathers—it has been an incredibly hard year. We all hope that the worst is over.

[The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh. We cannot reach the noble Lord, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering.

Civil Procedure (Amendment No. 4) (Coronavirus) Rules 2020

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, first I would like to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, on her expert and compassionate opening remarks.

Being a sympathetic person, I see that the Government have faced an unprecedented challenge in the last few months. It would be a challenge for any Government, let alone a team newly in place, but it has not helped the Government that that team, and of course the Prime Minister, are arrogant and boastful, persistently making comments, claims and statements that bear absolutely no relation to the truth. It must be hard for a Conservative Government to spend so much public money so fast, albeit that a considerable amount was misspent.

I understand that the Government are trying to get back to normal, but I would argue that restarting evictions and allowing more people—families—to be pushed out on to the streets is not the answer. Everyone has the right to a home. It is plain cruel that, during a pandemic and a massive economic downturn, people are being forced out of their homes. The short extensions to the ban have done nothing to alleviate fears of renters up and down the country. We are now once again on the precipice of a homelessness crisis, which will not only bring misery to many but will hinder any effort to tackle Covid-19. We have to do whatever it takes to protect people during this pandemic, and that means a permanent ban on evictions for the duration of the crisis.

Of course, as with most crises, it is the poor and vulnerable who suffer most. It is within the Government’s power to ensure that nobody is left without the basic human right of a roof over their head. The Green Party and I have urged the Government to extend the ban on evictions.

I would like to answer the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, for whom I have a huge amount of respect normally. He suggested that we were going to break with convention, but when we have a Government who break the law, what price convention?

Business and Planning Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I always take great pleasure in following the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles. I note that we debated many of these issues very well in Committee. Things have come on a great deal, and my noble friend the Deputy Leader has tabled a number of well-judged amendments and concessions in this and later groups.

I wish to reiterate the importance of balance. This legislation is intended to help businesses, particularly in the hard-pressed hospitality sector, so that they can get back to work, lure back customers and support broader economic recovery. We are concerned with temporary measures and must not confuse matters by adopting regulatory amendments, some of which we might feel would be well justified if we were talking about permanent laws. To my mind, we have already gone quite far enough and the detailed draft guidance—I think its extent will make many small businesses blanch—makes it quite clear that where a pavement licence is granted, clear access routes on the highway will need to be maintained, taking into account the needs of all users, including disabled people, as my noble friend Lord Blencathra made clear earlier. The guidance also requires applicants to fix a notice to the premises when they make their application.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, made a good point about enforcement. I look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister on that.

We have to get the economy, our construction industry and our high streets going again if we are not to live through a number of frigid economic winters. In particular, our hospitality sector has been decimated and needs all the help it can get. We must stop debating this Bill with its temporary provisions and get it on to the statute book.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP) [V]]

I declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA. I am quite torn on these amendments, as I appreciate that the Government have moved and accommodated some of the problems, but I also see their compromise as insufficient to address the issues raised so well by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes.

The Government’s amendments tend to kick the issues into the long grass, leaving your Lordships to hope that Ministers will made the right decisions at the right time. That might mean bringing in the necessary provisions later through secondary legislation, which none of us likes very much. Instead of the Bill providing certainty that blind people and those with disabilities will be protected from unnecessary obstacles, the government amendments actually create uncertainty.

That uncertainty also exists for the many businesses that will be applying for pavement licences, which will have questions about all sorts of random conditions that might later be applied by central Government to their licence. For these reasons, I hope that the noble Earl the Minister can explain their plans and set out a clear timetable for bringing in secondary legislation for these amendments. Most importantly, I would ask him to give a clear assurance that blind and disabled people will be safe and will not be put into harm’s way by the Bill. I hope that he will do everything in his power to ensure that this remains the case.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 15 very strongly. I do not understand why on earth the Government are being so weak on this. They should accept that this is the way in which society is moving. Furthermore, why is Labour letting them? I have huge respect for the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox of Newport, and I could not understand the rationale for Labour accepting the government amendments. The smell from e-cigarettes does not go very well with food either, so why on earth should we not ban those when we are trying to enjoy our food?

As we heard, thousands die from the complications of smoking. My mother, a lifelong smoker, did exactly that. It was decades ago, but I still miss her; she had an early death because of smoking. The damage from smoking was not clearly understood then—we understand it now, and we really should be doing something about it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, spoke extremely well. I thought that she expressed her concerns and it was a brilliant speech; I was delighted that I agreed with her. I often agree, surprisingly, with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and I often support her amendments. She says that this is not very libertarian, so I ask: what about my liberty to breathe clean air? Road traffic and road safety campaigners that I meet come up against this all the time. We want the liberty to breathe clean air, and smoking does not allow that. Therefore, I wholeheartedly support Amendment 15 and I very much hope that it will go to a vote.

[Baroness Pinnock [V]]

My Lords, we have heard, as we did in Committee, powerful arguments about taking this opportunity to exclude smoking from new pavement licensed areas. The case for ensuring that those of us who do not wish to inhale second-hand smoke are not excluded from that enjoyment is well made.

The amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Northover is a vital step in making our country smoke-free. It had strong and detailed arguments in support of it from the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Grey-Thompson, the noble Lords, Lord Faulkner and Lord Balfe, and many other noble Lords.

However, Amendment 11, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox of Newport, lacks clarity for businesses and shies away from the paramount public health concern. It is a cop-out. When an argument relies on pointing to the drafting issues of a stronger amendment, as hers did, you know that it is very weak.

We have heard that the overwhelming majority of people do not smoke: a mere 14% do. Protecting the interests of a minority does not extend to a situation where, by doing so, harm is created for the majority, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, has just explained. Smoking kills and second-hand smoking kills. Surely the Government should take every opportunity to restrict it.

The choice is clear: do we use this opportunity to keep the health needs of customers paramount or not? The amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, is supported by the Local Government Association. I hope the Minister will provide a full response to the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, to have further consideration on Amendment 15 prior to Third Reading, so that progress on this issue can be made.

Other amendments on this matter fudge these vital health concerns, and we on these Benches wholeheartedly support the cross-party amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Northover.

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[Baroness Neville-Rolfe [V]]

My Lords, I associate myself with what my noble friend Lady McIntosh said about the noble Lord, Lord Beith, and his late wife. I have nothing to say on this amendment and am delighted with the amendments the Government have brought forward. I also associate myself with the comments made by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Beith.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb [V]]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to say something positive about the Government because it is positive that the Minister has tabled amendments that tighten up the secondary legislation powers in the Bill. The Government routinely ask Parliament to grant excessively broad powers so that they can go off and make up their own laws. It would save a lot of time if they were to exercise self-restraint in writing Bills because, if they thought something like, “Let’s draft it as narrowly as possible without undermining the purpose of the Bill”, I think we would have fewer fights in your Lordships’ Chamber.

The amendments brought by the Government today will head off many of the potential problems raised in Committee and show how parliamentary scrutiny can bring the Government to the right place in the end.

Business and Planning Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I have heard a lot of the debate, and a lot of the issues that I was going to raise have been dealt with already, so I will just mention them in passing. I will also take a moment to contradict noble Lords who have said that we need to get back into the Chamber as soon as possible. Quite honestly, many of us enjoy remote working and do not want to experience disease and death. We are happy with the way things are. I understand that this might change, but we have to learn to adapt. The lack of democracy and holding our Government to account comes not from the fact that we are remote but from the fact that we are being ruled by ministerial diktat at the moment. Again and again, laws are passed that could have been brought before Parliament to be properly scrutinised but were not.

This Bill is being pushed through very fast as emergency legislation, so there really is not much time to scrutinise it. I will come back to these issues at a later stage. I will be focusing on a few specific issues. Road safety is incredibly important. We have to bear that in mind when we talk about the use of pavements. Walking and cycling are extremely important. If we are to have a continental-style cafe culture, with beautifully arranged tables and street dining, we have to ensure that these places are safe and accessible. We do not want to impose disabilities on people. We should make sure that everybody has access to these spaces.

I will also mention environmental issues. The Prime Minister’s comments about newts were absolutely baseless and rather lowered the tone of the whole debate. We have to think about environmental issues when it comes to business and planning.

I have not heard community land trusts being mentioned. I would like the Government to do a little bit of research on this. Community land trusts enable communities to create the sort of housing that they want in their area, with the big advantage that it would be affordable houses that stay affordable in perpetuity. Unlike affordable houses built by councils, which can then be sold at the market rate the first time they change hands, community land trusts hold the houses for ever and allow them to be affordable to local people.

The last issue I will raise is provision of adequate toilet facilities. So many businesses have closed and, even when they are open, many are not allowing people to use their facilities. There could be real problems, especially with people drinking so much. I urge the Government to think about public toilets. Somehow in this century we do not like using them and we do not have many of them anymore. That is really something that we should consider.

Media and Lobby Briefings

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Tuesday 4th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I have to say to the noble Lord and your Lordships that, having myself been briefed earlier today, it became clear to me that a certain amount of disingenuousness has entered the public debate on this matter and in some of the press reporting. Briefings to selected journalists have been common practice across government for many years. I know that myself from my time in the Ministry of Defence. We had regular selected briefings for journalists. The briefing in Downing Street yesterday that has been covered in the press was explicitly billed as one such selected briefing, and I understand that invitations were issued to between five and 10 journalists. There should have been no misunderstanding about that. There is therefore nothing unusual in briefings for selected journalists.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the mother of a journalist. Will the noble Earl take back to No. 10 the fact that this House clearly did not believe that Statement? Both sides of the Chamber were laughing at the Statement that has just been given to us. Will he take back the message that, in a democracy, a free press does not have to express loyalty to the Government? In fact, it is their job to critique it.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the Government support a free and open press, and we will continue to do so. I can only re-emphasise that there has been no attempt whatever to deprive journalists of information on any matter of government policy.

Business of the House

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Wednesday 4th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Indeed.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Does the noble Lord accept that a guillotine would not be necessary if noble Lords undertook not to filibuster?

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[Lord True]

My Lords, if that argument had been put before this great House for 700 years—with the House told that every time a vote in the other place produced a majority it must be silent—this House would not have endured. This House has a right and a duty to respond. I believe that we should consider the matter of the guillotine separately. On this I agree with the noble Baroness opposite that the sensible thing is for an accommodation to be reached between the opposition party and the governing party, which must involve a lot of things, including acquiescing to this general election, about which we do not know whether they are keen. It is clear that the House of Commons is not functioning. In those circumstances, of course there would be no need for her guillotine and no need for our response—but that is certainly above my pay grade. That accommodation having not yet been reached is no excuse for her to come and present to the House something so exceptional, so draconian and so unprecedented, and then to complain when that gets an exceptional, unprecedented and possibly draconian response. If there is no guillotine Motion, I will shut up. But as long as this House is prevented—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

I thank the noble Lord. One way, of course, would be if Prorogation were delayed so that this House had plenty of time to discuss it. Will the noble Lord undertake to lobby the Prime Minister on that?

[Lord True]

No, I will not. I will not be sidetracked—

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[Lord True]

Then do not impose the guillotine; do not use the closure Motion on this issue. I shall give way to a representative of a party that opposes power.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

Oh, not at all. I am so sorry; you are completely wrong on that. I thank the noble Lord for sitting down; I wish it were for longer. As I have said previously here, I voted leave; I did not vote for no deal. What I am trying to do here today is stop no deal. The person who had the power is the Prime Minister, who decided to prorogue Parliament, to close it down and to shut it up. It is not this side of the Chamber that is stopping debate; it is that side, and you have to take responsibility for that.

[Lord True]

That of course is entirely false, my Lords. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, whoever it is, has no power to enter this Chamber. He may come and stand at the Bar of this House and listen to its proceedings or sit on the steps of the Throne, but he has no power here. It is in your Lordships’ gift to decide whether to submit to the principle of the guillotine, and the guillotine of the guillotine, which has been put forward by the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip. “Shut up”. Is that what we are going to accept in future in this Chamber? I beg to move.

Privileges and Conduct Committee

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Monday 17th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to express my concern at the procedures that this House has adopted with regard to the case of Lord Lester. In expressing these views, I make it plain that I am making no criticism of the commissioner. I accept that she was conducting her functions in accordance with the rules that were laid down by this House. My concerns lie with the procedures that we have put in place, rather than the manner in which they were exercised.

Lord Lester has resigned from this House, so this debate can be more general in content than was the case on 15 November, when his future was being discussed. I will make just two comments about Lord Lester. For the avoidance of doubt, he is in no sense a close friend of mine. First, I do not take his resignation as an admission of guilt. I can well understand that this process has been extremely distressing for him. He has said that these events have had a serious impact on his health and for that reason he wishes to draw a line under them. I can well understand that decision. It is a sufficient explanation for his resignation. Secondly, Lord Lester has made an important contribution to the law on human rights, to this House and in public life in general. That is an important legacy, which, notwithstanding the findings of this report, will always stand to his credit.

My concerns about the procedure that this House adopts are of long standing. I first expressed them in 1997 in the House of Commons when the case of Neil Hamilton was under consideration. Mr Hamilton was no friend of mine. His was not a popular case. But I formed the very firm conclusion that he had not been fairly handled by the parliamentary process then in place, which is substantially the same as our own.

I regret that I could not be here when this matter was debated on 15 November. I have, however, read the Hansard and the two reports produced by the committee. I am reassured to note that the views that I am about to express are very much in line with those expressed by, for example, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Lord, Lord Thomas. I am happy to associate myself with them.

I have never held high judicial office nor been a frequent advocate before the Supreme Court; I am but a jobbing barrister, but I have jobbed for 50 years on and off in both the criminal and the civil courts. I presently act as the legal assessor to the regulatory panel for the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Health and Care Professions Council, and until last year I helped to regulate the doctors as a legal assessor. For these regulatory panels—indeed, for all the statutory panels of which I am aware—Parliament has laid down by statutory instrument a precise procedure that has to be observed in order to ensure that the principles of natural justice and fairness are observed, and the appellate courts are rigorous in enforcing compliance with those requirements. Paragraph 15 of the further report states that,

“professional bodies have systems very similar to our own”.

That is not my experience. It is not correct in respect of professional bodies regulated by statute. In respect of them, the further report is wholly mistaken.

Very recently I was the legal assessor in a case that is relevant to the one we are considering. A registrant was alleged to have had sexual relations with a former patient during and after the provision of treatment. In accordance with the procedure laid down by Parliament, both parties were represented by counsel; the regulator’s lawyer opened the facts of the case and submitted to the panel the previously made statements of relevant witnesses; and the relevant witnesses were called and cross-examined. The registrant then gave evidence and was cross-examined. Closing submissions were then made. This was the procedure laid down by Parliament. It ensured that a fair process was observed. Had it not been followed, the appellate courts could have intervened.

Yes, the registrant had had sexual relations with the former patient, but these had commenced after the conclusion of the treatment and at the instigation of the patient. Moreover, the sexual relations were continuing, years after their commencement. These facts were not clearly apparent from the papers and emerged as a result of the process that I have just described. They were highly relevant to the ultimate conclusion.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Forgive me—I just do not see the relevance of this. I am sure there is almost no Peer in this House who does not think that our processes are inadequate and are going to be changed in future. I wonder if the noble Lord is trying to describe a system that he wants imposed here. I suggest that that would be better given in writing to the committee, rather than our hearing about other processes at this time.

[Viscount Hailsham]

My Lords, when you have a topic of this importance, touching as it does on the liberties of Members of this House, it is entirely right that we should take part in a public debate. To say to the contrary is to try to suppress argument, and I will not be party to that.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

I was not trying to suppress debate; I was trying to suppress planning for future processes, which is clearly going to be a committee job.

[Viscount Hailsham]

I hope that future processes will be informed by the nature of this debate. I hope that noble Lords will participate in considerable numbers, so that future processes can be properly formulated in accordance with the views of your Lordships.

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[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven]

I wish to address the House for a few minutes only on a subject to which many noble Lords have alluded, which is cross-examination. I cannot claim the 50 years of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, but I can claim 40 years at the Bar. During that time, I guess that I have spent hundreds of hours in adversarial proceedings cross-examining witnesses myself or watching co-defending counsel or opposing counsel cross-examining. That has been the greater part of my professional life.

Many noble Lords in this debate and in the debate last month have reminded the House of the famous dictum that cross-examination is the greatest legal engine for the discovery of truth ever invented. Of course it can be, and I have seen it so. I have seen liars unmasked, fraudsters exposed and terrorists cross-examined into confinement for decades. But my years of experience have also taught me that, like most aphorisms, this one is not able to paint the whole picture. Cross-examination can, of course, uncover the truth, but it can also obfuscate. It can advance a false prospectus, and it can intimidate. In adversarial proceedings, especially where freedom and forced confinement are in issue, its essential combativeness is indulged, but always and only under the watchful eye of a trained, professional judge.

I am sure that cross-examination can be one way to get at the truth, but I have never believed that it is the only way. In particular, I have never doubted that a diligent and fair inquiry by a competent tribunal, taking the necessary evidence, examining the relevant issues and asking the proper questions, is also capable of uncovering the truth. Tribunals proceed in this way every day, in this country and in other fair-trial jurisdictions around the world. The questions asked by a tribunal are, of course, a form of cross-examination in themselves, but cross-examination conducted in a more neutral, more objective manner, perhaps better suited to the inquisitorial style.

It is clear to me from the papers in Lord Lester’s case, which I have read, that the commissioner asked the complainant about all of the primary matters that might have been put in cross-examination: “Why did you go back to Lord Lester’s house?”, “Why did you dedicate the book to him in the way that you did?”, and so on. And the commissioner got her answers. It is true that these questions were asked in a gentler, more neutral way than might have been expected from a robust cross-examining lawyer, but there is no harm in that. Indeed, there are many situations in which this sort of low-key approach is more likely to get at what really happened, precisely because it occurs in a gentler, less aggressive environment. In my judgment, a disciplinary hearing, particularly where sensitive allegations of sexual misconduct are being aired, is certainly one of those situations.

Your Lordships could have mandated an adversarial disciplinary regime. I would not have recommended it, but you could have done so. This House could have mandated an inquisitorial system in which the participants were lawyered up, including for the purposes of cross-examination. Again, I would not have recommended this, but it could have been recommended. Even though both these things could have been done, they are emphatically not a pre-condition for a fair process. On the contrary, in my judgment, the process that your Lordships alighted upon was, for all the reasons that other noble Lords and the committee have set out, reasonable and fair.

Let me address one final thing on this subject, the standing of the commissioner. Lucy Scott-Moncrieff is a figure of the highest reputation in the legal world, a solicitor with a distinguished practice, a past president of the Law Society and a founding member of the Queen’s Counsel appointments panel. This House could hardly have selected someone more suited to the difficult task in hand, or more deserving of our trust. Your Lordships devolved to her the power to inquire fairly and thoroughly into the circumstances of Lord Lester’s case and to come to her reasonable conclusion on the evidence. That was her warrant. In my judgment, she discharged it faithfully.

Before I sit down, I wish to say one other thing briefly. During my five years as a public servant, as a prosecutor, my colleagues and I struggled endlessly against the sort of insidious stereotyping that bedevilled sex crime prosecutions. “Why didn’t she report it sooner? Why didn’t she distance herself more? Why was she wearing this? Why was she drinking that?”. In the end, we believed that we were making some progress, as judges repeatedly warned juries about the dangers of making stereotypical assumptions about the way that traumatised people react to the source of their trauma, warning them that they should not allow what may be little more than prejudice to cloud their judgment of the fact that an injustice has been done. Let us not find ourselves, in this House, moving backwards.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, I was at the debate last month. I do not know if any of your noble Lordships have seen “Groundhog Day”, but this has similarities. We are going over the same ground again. I should like to make two points. First, I support the Committee for Privileges and Conduct. Its robust response to the November’s debate was superb. I was furious during the debate; I walked out at one point, because I was so angry with a Peer who was speaking. The report is fantastic and obviously I will vote for it if anyone decides to divide the House.

Secondly, I never thought these words would pass my lips, but the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is wrong. He was wrong to press the amendment last time and he would be wrong to push it today. He talks about fairness all the time. Was it fair to divide the House when there was no expectation of a vote and many Peers had gone home because the debate went on for much longer than expected and they had trains to catch? As I see it, fairness is not playing a full part in this process.

My last point is a question for the Senior Deputy Speaker. Lord Lester has resigned rather than been suspended. Does that mean that he maintains his rights and privileges of access here in this House, such as eating here and so on? I am sure that many of us will feel that natural justice would suggest that he should not.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I shall be brief. I find debates on the conduct of Members of this House and of Members of the House of Commons rather sad and distasteful affairs because we are being asked to sit in judgment on our friends and colleagues. That really cannot be right. History shows that there have been many more cases in the Commons than in this House, the most famous of which was the Marconi scandal, when three Liberal members of the Cabinet bought shares in the company knowing that it would be given a contract. Today they would be put in jail. Eventually a Select Committee of the House of Commons exempted them all; they were totally guiltless. In fact, one was made the Lord Chief Justice.

I agree strongly with the proposals made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in his speech. I do not object to the report of the committee, which has done a proper and correct job. But I also think we need an entirely new procedure and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that there should be a genuinely independent body operating under the conventions and practices of the legal system. Such a body should be drawn up and we should accept it, but let us know what we are accepting.

When it is recommended that a Member of this House be expelled, that should not come back to this House for approval. We then cease to be a court of justice and we become a parliamentary assembly. A parliamentary assembly has other feelings, emotions and loyalties, built on friendship and respect over the years. The public cannot possibly believe that we could act independently. By having an independent body, Members of this House must recognise that we would be restricting our powers in that position, which is absolutely necessary.

Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal

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Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Horam. I support his idea of reducing traffic around Parliament but am a little less sure about his idea of asking royalty to take over as the client. That would not do at all. I congratulate the noble Baroness the Leader of the House on bringing this debate. To show my gratitude, I am going to say words that I thought I would never say in this Parliament: I fully support the government Motion and will not be voting for the amendment. I was a little bit iffy about paragraph (8), but if we decide we do not want to come back we could probably repeal the law. We could have more debates and sort ourselves out.

I will make some wider points. Parliament has become unstable not just in its physical structure but in the two-party system of Government and Opposition Benches. There are signs of decay all around. Democracy should be a striving for consensus, not the bipartisan festival of point scoring that we have at the moment. Surely we want a mix of voices and a democracy that values having a lot of different views and opinions in our Parliament. I used to be an archaeologist—not a very good one—and my view is that tradition is incredibly important to our society. However, at the same time tradition has to be practical, appropriate and useful. Despite my respect for tradition, since coming to this House I have seen a lot of silly conventions that could be swept away in a refurbishment of your Lordships’ House.

I support some of the radical ideas offered by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I hope he will not mind me saying that I was very surprised at the source. It would be good to see new technology and ideas being brought here. Anything like solar panels or battery storage would be a good move. We could sell the renovation of the House as progress and an exemplar for other buildings in the UK.

I would also like to see a proportional voting system, as that would mean people being properly represented across the political spectrum. This is also an opportunity to replace your Lordships’ House with a democratically elected Chamber. That would mean more women. Proportional representation is a feminist issue and, today of all days, we should be thinking about it, considering it and, perhaps, absorbing it as a good idea. Along with modern democratic structures for Parliament we need to modernise voting in the Chamber, so that votes can be done at the press of a button rather than having all MPs and Peers spending days of their lives queuing in corridors. What about changing the times of our debates? Why can we not meet in the mornings and do a normal day’s work and not miss family meals and social events? We could have social lives, which would improve us as parliamentarians. And it is not just noble Lords who bear the burden of lots of late night debates; it is also unfair to all the staff who have to stay as late as we sit.

On the specific issue of whether or not to move out, I have been to the basement and seen the accretions of 150 to 170 years—and, frankly, I feel unsafe here. I now have an office in Millbank, for which I am very grateful because it takes me out of this building. If we moved to QEII it would mean quite a sprint for me up the road, but if we reduced traffic it would be a much safer sprint.

In the basement I noticed a very small box on the wall that looked like a tangled mess of very dirty rice noodles bursting out of a metal frame. I was told that it was part of the phone system and probably still in use. I also took a photograph on my phone of a recently removed rusty pipe that had been gaffer-taped over the years to fix some rusty holes in it. It had finally been taken out of use three weeks before I took the photo because of a very large hole in the pipe. That is probably indicative of an awful lot of the infrastructure in the basement, which is very concerning. Water pipes criss-cross electrical cables, as we have heard, and I was told that we have 27 people on 24-hour fire watch. That frightened me and I hope that it frightens some other noble Lords.

It also occurs to me that we are probably not meeting our health and safety obligations to not only ourselves but our visitors. We should probably have warning signs, “Enter at your own risk”. And it is not just the fire risk: bits of the building are falling off, as happened recently when a car window was smashed.

I understand that others have different options, but I read that one option put forward by a Member of Parliament in the other place was that to fix the mouse and rat problem we should have a cat. I do not know whether that person understands the size of the Palace, but to sort out the problem with cats would mean having an awful lot of cats.

The scale of the problem also raises the question of whether to do the upgrade in a piecemeal manner. The dreaded word “phasing” was used. As an ex-archaeologist I can tell noble Lords that phasing is almost always visible and almost always ugly. So I would definitely advise against doing anything piecemeal. That is exactly the problem in the basement: it was done piecemeal. It is made up of layer upon layer of work that people have done without removing the previous layer.

I do like the idea of moving out of London. It would be fantastic and a real breath of fresh air for us to experience different parts of the country and be lobbied by local people to help them with their issues. However, I accept that that probably will not happen. Parliament is a glorious place for history. We should value that and ensure that this building is properly cared for. We should ensure that it is loved as the home of our democracy—one which is in need of renovation in more ways than one.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I did something very controversial during the EU referendum campaign: I went against my own party’s remain position. I campaigned to leave the EU because the EU is a top-down project designed to promote endless industrial development and economic growth. It remains my strongly held belief that we can have a greener, fairer, healthier country by leaving the European Union. In taking this view, I feel a strong personal responsibility to Greens everywhere and to the country to do what I can to ensure that Brexit is a success for the environment. I still want to leave the EU, but I absolutely cannot support the Bill as it stands. The Constitution Committee has described the Bill as,

“fundamentally flawed from a constitutional perspective in multiple ways”,

but it is fundamentally flawed from an environmental and social perspective too. It remains government policy that through Brexit we will strengthen our democracy, protecting and enhancing environmental and social laws in the process. In its current form, though, the Bill will fail on all those aims and, sadly, the gaps in it will leave the environment as the biggest casualty.

The Bill does not do what it was promised it would do: it does not ensure that existing EU law is retained. In fact, it explicitly excludes certain aspects of EU law without any justification. For no clear reason it drops some fundamental principles of EU law, such as the precautionary principle that must currently be applied by courts, businesses and government. Additionally, the Bill retains EU laws without their accompanying preambles. This misses out, for example, the “polluter pays” principle from the environmental liability directive and loses the aim of biodiversity conservation from the habitats directive. These omissions lose crucial interpretive aids for the courts in some obscure attempt to squash a square peg into a round hole as we bring the body of EU law into the literal system of English law. I struggle to understand how the courts will continue to apply retained EU law when these essential principles are gutted from our jurisprudence. Indeed, senior judges have expressed the need for Parliament to make this as clear as possible. We are setting ourselves up for decades of legal chaos while we needlessly undermine our environmental and social protections.

I am warmed by the many promises this Government are making about ambitions for the environment and their pledges to bring forward legislation. However, I note a very deliberate change of tack in their approach to the Bill. No longer is it seeking to retain all EU law and bring everything into order to prepare for Brexit. The Government are now saying that a whole raft of other Bills are the correct place for retaining some of these really important parts of EU law. It is the promise of jam tomorrow, which we more or less do not accept. I suspect that this repositioning is a government tactic to avoid some very important amendments being made to the Bill while passing through scrutiny. There may well be better legislation in future in which we can establish the lasting legal frameworks that will define our post-Brexit lives, but we only have the Bill before us now and we cannot allow deficiencies in it to prevail in the hope that some future Bill may address them. We must amend and repair this Bill so that it is fit for purpose, and I hope there is sufficient will in this House for that to happen.

I shall speak on two issues in particular. First, on animal sentience, there has been a surprising amount of public support lately for this rather technical-sounding principle. We are a nation of animal lovers who understand in our hearts that living creatures deserve respect and care, and that humans should avoid their suffering as far as possible. The Government’s attempt to head off amendments to the Bill has been to publish a draft Bill recognising animal sentience, but that achieves the opposite of their intention by setting out a perfect example of how the Government could well fail to replace EU law with equivalent provisions. A legal opinion commissioned by Friends of the Earth has compared the provisions of the draft Bill with Article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Article 13 requires the state and its bodies to “pay full regard” to animal welfare. It has a very narrowly limited set of permitted exemptions. Contrast this with the draft Animal Welfare (Sentencing and Recognition of Sentience) Bill, which requires Ministers only to pay “regard” to animal welfare, balanced against other matters of public interest. This makes the relevant considerations a matter of fact to be assessed by the decision-maker, subject only to the relevant legal test of irrationality.

So animal sentience and animal welfare is an ongoing example of the withdrawal Bill failing to bring EU law across into domestic law, and of the Government’s proposed alternative legislation failing to give the same level of protection as exists in EU law. Far from setting a gold standard, it is a significant undermining of the current position. Accordingly, this makes me quite sceptical that the Government will be able to protect and improve on EU law in other Bills. It seems incumbent on us to fix whatever deficiencies exist in the Bill now so that we can be sure, when it goes to the other place, that they will have a good Bill to comment on.

The second issue is the Henry VIII powers contained in the Bill. The reports of the Constitution Committee have done a fantastic job of setting out these issues. I am sure that many learned Members of this House will cover the detail of the constitutional implications, so I will focus on the principles that are at stake. The Government are giving themselves some very broad powers, which could even be used to grant themselves more powers. I know that many civil liberties organisations are very concerned about human rights. Stonewall, for example, would like a clear commitment that LGBT people’s hard-won rights will be protected.

I want to be constructive; I remain supportive of leaving the EU, but the Bill before us is the wrong way of going about it. I am confident that the collective wisdom in your Lordships’ House will bring this Bill into a much more palatable form but, as it stands, I cannot possibly vote for it.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, one of the deep delights for me in your Lordships’ House is the fact that we have such deep divides in opinion and yet we can still stay polite. That was the position that I found myself in during the referendum campaign, when I was campaigning to leave the EU. I found myself in some unsavoury company at times, with some people with whom I share not a single view, apart from the fact that the UK would be better off outside the EU.

I believe passionately that we have made the right decision, but at the same time we have to be absolutely sure that we go about it in the right way. The Bill that the Government have presented to us is simply inadequate. Had there been a decent White Paper with some detail about the things that many of us care about, I would have felt calmer about voting for the Bill as it exists. However, the Prime Minister is approaching these negotiations with a blank sheet of paper. Where are the underlying principles? There are underlying principles in the EU, but where are the underlying principles that we will maintain during negotiations, or are there to be no principles at all?

The Green Party is particularly concerned that the Cabinet will attempt to dump protections for everything from wildlife and the countryside to the social protections that we see as normal in society nowadays. The Government could use a combination of exit negotiations and secondary legislation to do all sorts of things that the majority of people who voted leave would not want to happen. It is wrong to use the referendum result as cover for bypassing proper parliamentary procedure and scrutiny. The Lords has the job of ensuring that a democratic process is followed throughout the different stages of the negotiations.

As somebody who has advocated leaving the EU ever since we joined as a result of the 1975 European Communities membership referendum, I resent people suggesting that I am out to wreck the Bill by seeking to amend it—someone even said that it would be “traitorous”. That is an unpleasant thing to say about people who are trying to improve things. As for threats from the other place to replace the House of Lords with a different sort of Chamber or abolish it altogether, for me, that would be a welcome bonus. I believe that it is time for us to be abolished and replaced by a democratically elected Chamber. For me, therefore, that is no threat at all. However, it is bullying. What do we do with bullies? We stand up to them.

I will try to amend this Bill. I have put down five amendments that I feel would definitely improve the Bill and I will support amendments from other Members of your Lordships’ House. It is our job to advise and to reform and improve the sometimes very poor legislation that comes from the other place. My five amendments cover the following areas: transitional arrangements; legal enforcement; environmental regulators; access to justice; and employment and equality protections. These are self-evident. They will ask for detailed plans, lots of preparation and proper funding, which I know this Government have a huge problem with.

I am going to keep my remarks brief because some of what I would like to say is probably best left unsaid. However, before finishing, I would like to add that I also commend the amendment from a recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which will protect the residence rights of EU citizens legally resident in the UK on the day of the referendum— 23 June 2016. It is a precautionary but self-evident amendment and it would be cruel not to include it. I cannot see why the Government would have any objections to it being in the Bill.

Finally, although the outcome of last year’s vote was what I wanted, I have not taken a moment’s pleasure from it in the intervening time, partly because of the way in which the campaigns on both sides were conducted and partly because of the conduct since. There has been so much hatred and vile rhetoric, which has inflamed people. I am sure that many of us here have had abuse. That is a normal part of any progressive politician’s inbox but it has now reached levels that are just incredible.

We should take pleasure in issues such as immigration, because it is good for our country: it is good for the economy and it is good for our culture. I also believe that if you accept free trade, then why not accept the free movement of people? When we look at the Bill and vote on it next week, I hope that the Government will understand that we must not lower our standards. Whether it is on food, social protection or protecting our countryside, we must not go down the route of making things worse. In a sense, society is already worse because of the referendum and the Government must do everything in their power to heal as much as possible.