Elections Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Adonis

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I agree with almost all of the previous contributions. I wish I had joined in on the previous group, but I was not here for all of it—although I certainly feel that I was. The debate covered a lot of the territory that we are going to talk about now.

For clarity, the Green Party opposes the whole premise on which the Government build their case for requiring voters to present ID. There is no real voter fraud. It is no good to keep bringing up Tower Hamlets, because that argument has been demolished already. This will disfranchise the most marginalised people in our population. It is voter suppression; there is absolutely no doubt about that.

Suppose we pretend for a moment that the Government are sincere in wanting to reduce election fraud. If that was so, they would accept a lot of the amendments in this group—for example, Amendment 64. Why on earth should that not be included? The Government could be absolutely clear by putting it in the Bill, so that we know exactly what they are thinking. Why not accept Amendment 78? If somebody has voter ID, they are accredited, so why should they not support somebody else who might have forgotten their ID?

I do not do anything where I have to show ID, although I know the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, says that she has to show it for a lot of things. The last time I was asked for ID was when I used my passport. I do not do anything that needs ID and there are a lot of people like me.

Personally, I think this is Trumpian and Putinesque. We have heard a lot about integrity and trust. I spoke to the Minister about the Government we have at the moment, our Prime Minister, No. 10 and the Cabinet Office, who quite honestly do not understand what integrity is about. They are happy to take money from dodgy Russian donors and happy to break the rules when it suits them. So please do not talk to us about integrity and trust on something like this, when it is clear that it is going to stop some people voting. That is a bad thing.

Of course, we did not hear an answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. Why are the Government so exercised about this when they have an 80-plus majority? Surely it should be this side of the Chamber that is concerned about voter fraud. The Government are bringing forward some terrible legislation. We sit here and listen to the Ministers—I have a huge amount of respect for most of them—and I just do not understand how they can back this Government. They are a terrible Government, with terrible ideas, and this is another of them.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to return to what the Minister said in the last group, because it is going to be of great importance as this House proceeds with the Bill. I totally and completely refute his proposition that the Bill in its current form is covered by the Salisbury convention. My contention, which I will elaborate at greater length in future if need be, is that something as significant and of such great constitutional import as a requirement on all voters to have a wholly new form of photo ID is not covered by the Salisbury convention. What is covered is the requirement that there should be some form of voter ID—that is why I would not support the removal of Clause 1 in its entirety—but not photo ID. That is a fundamental distinction. Indeed, the conflict between the Blair Government, of which I was a member, and this House, which led to the loss of a substantial part of the ID cards Bill, was precisely that this House contended with a significant majority that there was not sufficient manifesto cover for the proposition being put forward.

I say this very directly to the Minister now, because I think this is going to be a very significant issue in due course. It is going to be particularly important that my noble friends on the two Front Benches of the Labour and Lib Dem parties—I am speaking to them as much as to the Minister at this point—do not fall for the argument that, simply because this Bill has come from the House of Commons and has photo ID in it, and because it is asserted that it is covered by the Salisbury convention, it is covered by the Salisbury convention. It is a particular tradition of this House, which goes to the heart of the constitution, that the occasions on which we are prepared to assert our power against the Government where they do not have manifesto cover particularly relate to constitutional issues, where we have a special role as guardian of the constitution to see that one particular party cannot gerrymander it at will, claiming a general manifesto commitment for something that specifically has a very big impact.

The noble Lord, Lord Willetts and I—I hope he does not mind me saying that he and I are old friends—both approach public policy from a fairly centrist perspective, applying rationality and so on. Not only was his speech on Amendment 80 brilliant and very compelling but he went to the absolute heart of this issue in his analysis of the distinction between the Government claiming that their manifesto contained, and gave a mandate for, an identity document requirement, and it being a photo-identity document requirement. Those are two fundamentally different propositions. The proposition that they are fundamentally different is made by the content of Amendment 80 itself, because although the noble Lord did not deconstruct his amendment, I have had time to deconstruct it since he moved it.

In Amendment 80 the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, lists 21 forms of personal identification. By my calculation, only five of them are necessarily photo IDs: driving licence, student ID card, 18+ student Oyster photocard, National Rail card and, I assume, the Young Scot National Entitlement card, because young people’s documents require photos. Of the other 16, only another three may—and I think it depends on who the issuing authority is—require a photo: a trade union membership card, a library card, and a workplace ID card. That varies very much between local authorities and trade unions, and so on. All of the rest are non-photo ID documents: birth certificate, marriage or civil partnership certificate, record of a decision on bail, bank or building society cheque book, and, and, and.

The noble Lord from the Conservative Benches made the argument that this is completely consistent with the Conservative Party manifesto. That point will be of huge importance as the House takes forward consideration of this Bill, passes amendments and then gets into what I assume will be—is very likely to be, if there is time in this Session; the sand is going through the hourglass quite rapidly—a significant standoff between this House and the other place. I have no doubt at all that not only is it within our powers but it will be our duty to resist the mandatory introduction of photo ID requirements. I suspect that Amendment 80 may well be the fundamental amendment that we take forward in some form in later stages of the Bill.

I will quickly deal with Amendments 78 and 64. We have dealt with Amendment 64, and I hope the Minister will be able to give us satisfaction on it. It is an absolutely crucial point. It is not enough for it to be possible to apply at the same time; it has to be a requirement that people can apply at the same time, or else it will become a matter of postcode lottery across the country as to whether you can apply for your identity document at the same time as you apply to register to vote.

One point that has been made which we have not debated enough is covered by Amendment 78. When I first came to the Bill, not being an expert in the evolution of the Government’s thinking, I thought that they were going to propose that people needed to turn up at the polling station with some form of ID. I thought that that alone was going to be off-putting. It never occurred to me until I read the Bill and heard what they were doing that not only were they going to have to turn up with some form of ID but it was not even sufficient for them to have an existing photo form of ID. Over and above that, even if you were going for a photo ID requirement—which, as I said, is not even covered by the Conservative manifesto—surely it would be proportionate for you to turn up with your passport or driving licence that is an existing form of photo ID. What is the great security risk of saying that people can turn up at a polling station with a passport or a driving licence? Why on earth can the Government not regard that as adequate?

Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Adonis

Committee stage
Friday 3rd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It seems almost superfluous to get up to support this Private Member’s Bill because it is so self-evident that it is excellent. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, on the progress it has made. Quite simply, you can care for something only when you understand it. That is true about caring for ourselves, for each other and for the natural environment. It is especially true for what can feel like an abstract concept: caring for future generations. The Bill will help tackle not only the environmental and ecological crises but the humanitarian and mental health crises.

Our Green MP, Caroline Lucas, has done great work promoting a nature GCSE and my noble friend Lady Bennett has called for a right to nature for children. Together with this Bill and the future generations Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, we begin to see a framework for the cultural and educational shift needed to underpin an ecologically minded society that no longer destroys our living world.

It would be very wrong for your Lordships not to pay recognition to the very many young people demanding action on the ecological and climate emergencies. As well as teaching them, we must learn from them and support them to use all that energy and enthusiasm to make lasting change, because it is their future that we are discussing. They will live to be the judges of our collective action or inaction.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, this is one of those debates where we are all violently agreeing with each other and with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I wish the Government were always as responsive to his committee’s forensic examination of the problems of delegated legislation as my noble friend Lord Knight has been this afternoon.

I do not think there is any concern at all on the substance of my noble friend’s Bill and the amendment, but I looked at the Bill because I have a Private Member’s Bill coming up on a related matter in the new year on votes at 16 and reducing the voting age. Alongside that, which I see as a critical element of lowering the voting age, is significantly enhancing citizenship education in schools. My view is that part of the reason why we have such a massive crisis of youth engagement in politics, including on the issues my noble friend refers to in the Bill, is because we do not take citizenship sufficiently seriously in schools. We do not have automatic registration of young people at 18, or polling stations in every school, educational institution and university, as we should have.

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Adonis

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government have clearly moved on most of the contentious issues. We expect nothing less of the Minister, whom we hold in very high regard. The fundamental issue that is outstanding—you could argue that the use of under-18s is fundamental, but at least the Government have moved on that, although as it happens I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, that under-18s should not be used—which the Government have not moved on and which we wish to press the Minister on is Amendment 2. I have listened to the debates, but I have not participated in them until now. We are at the crucial moment of whether the House will insist on its amendment, so it is reasonable for people to express a view on this crucial point.

The crucial question is the one put by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. We are talking about very weighty matters in Amendment 2 as to whether authorisations can be given in respect of murder, rape and torture. I thought the Minister equivocated on this in the example she gave in opening the debate. Can she say categorically when she replies that murder, rape, torture and their authorisation by agents of the state would contravene the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act?

If she is saying that, then it is a complete mystery why the Government will not accept Amendment 2. As my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti so rightly said, Amendment 2 cannot be both dangerous and superfluous. If it is indeed superfluous because the authorisation of murder, rape and torture, even in the circumstances the Minister gave where it might somehow protect an agent’s cover, would itself contravene convention rights and the Human Rights Act, then how can we not be prepared to put it in the Bill? The only reason not to do so is to equivocate on whether murder, rape and torture are indeed against the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act. This point seems fundamental.

I so rarely disagree with my noble friend Lord West, even on the need for more frigates; I generally agree with him even on the long list he has of further naval equipment that we need. In this case, I thought that he was in danger of simply parroting the lines of those people who clearly support having no legal safeguards at all in this respect. He said, slightly glibly, if I may say so, that we were talking about a checklist that it would be unreasonable for agents of the state to observe. We are talking not about a shopping list, but about specific exceptions for the most heinous crimes, which I do not believe that my noble friend, whom I know and trust greatly, would grant authorisations for.

The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, gave a very powerful speech; he has himself operated and manged agents and is not coming to this as a kind of naive human rights lawyer. But when he gave chapter and verse on other jurisdictions and how they have dealt with precisely the same issue, my noble friend said that Australia and the United States are—I noted down his phrase—“dangerous and irrelevant.” I was then waiting for him to expand on why they were dangerous and irrelevant, but he stopped at that point; he did not tell us why, somehow, the experience of the United States and Australia—not countries that play fast and loose with their own security—was not relevant to us here.

That leads on to the powerful points made by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti about the role of the House and, if I may say so, the role of my party, the Labour Party. Those of us who engage in public life do so because we think that our parties express our values. My noble friend pointed out that these provisions were in no party’s manifesto. The Salisbury convention, which rightly governs our conduct, states that we should not insist on amendments in respect of a matter that the governing party has put in its manifesto and on which it has therefore had the explicit endorsement of the people. However, this issue is not covered by those arrangements.

Therefore, there is an important question of judgment as to why we are placed here: whether the House of Lords, as a second Chamber, should seek to insist on amendments concerning an issue in respect of which the Salisbury convention is not operating. Normally, we would not, and normally, I do not, because I am very conscious, as we all are in this place, that we are nominated and the other House is elected. But my noble friend made a very powerful point: that fundamental protections for human rights and the constitution are issues in respect of which, if the Government do not have explicit Salisbury convention mandates, we should be prepared to insist on amendments. The Parliament Acts themselves recognise that, because they except from the power of the House of Commons to override this House Bills to extend the life of Parliament. That was specifically put in to provide a constitutional protection, and in our enlarged understanding of the sphere of proper constitutional protections since the Parliament Act 1911, it is reasonable that fundamental human rights should be a part of that.

If this House does not exist to see that murder, rape and torture cannot be committed by agents of the state, then I am at a loss to understand why we are here at all.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am not shy about admitting that I am critical of this Government, whose majority in the other place has made them quite shameless. They have, on occasion, asked your Lordships’ House to break the law, and this is another such occasion. Sometimes we are tough and we refuse; I hope that that is what will happen today.

It was superb listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. Of course, both Greens will be voting for the amendments because this is about the rule of law and human rights. I do not very often agree with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis —probably never, in fact—but on this occasion I agreed with every single word he said, and I wish I had said it first.

On the enhanced protections for children, I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Young of Cookham, feel that something is better than nothing. But quite honestly, this is child abuse. It is child abuse by the Government—using children as spies. I cannot see how any Government who care about the rule of law could put this in legislation. It is obvious that this Government do not care about the rule of law; they protect their own while throwing others to the dogs.

This Bill provides blanket legal protection for undercover police and their informants—who could be criminals—for crimes with pre-authorised immunity. Similarly, the forthcoming overseas operations Bill creates new protections against prosecution for military personnel acting overseas. The Government have fought strongly for these protections against prosecution for the police and the military. They fought against any attempt by your Lordships’ House to reduce or check these protections.

Yet, having granted such broad protections to the police and military, even in cases of fundamental wrongdoing, the Government then refuse what is a comparatively far more limited legal defence for survivors of domestic abuse—usually women. A public inquiry is under way examining the 40-year history of government agents abusing their power while spying on trade unions, green campaigners and those in the black community fighting for justice. Police officers were using sexual relations with women as a deliberate strategy, although we are now told that it was unlawful all the time. We see this Government protecting their own from the law while allowing the abuse of vulnerable people and women. That is what this Government do.

I do not want to pile in on the noble Lord, Lord West, who said that the safety of CHIS should be paramount, but quite honestly, I thought the rule of law and the safety of the realm were meant to be paramount. If you continue to break the law as a Government, you are not increasing the safety of the realm; you are actually making it more dangerous for us all. I very much hope that noble Lords will vote for these amendments today and refuse again to let the Government abuse the law.

Trade Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Adonis

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Polak; I did not realise we had so much in common. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Collins and Lord Alton, on their moving speeches. I support them and very much hope that there will be a vast majority in favour.

I have been an elected, and now appointed, politician for more than 20 years and in all those years, I have seen critiquing the Government, whichever side they were, as good sport; it is what small parties are for and what opposition is. In the last year, though, there have been two well-publicised, well-known events that have brought home to me just how morally bankrupt this Government are. The first was the decision to restart arms sales to Saudi Arabia, calling the possible war crimes against the Yemenis “isolated incidents”, and the second was their inability to see that feeding hungry schoolchildren is actually a moral imperative. They had to be shamed into it by a footballer who had principles. Well done, Marcus Rashford; thank God for people like him. So, this Government actually need these amendments to do the right thing.

During consideration of the last set of amendments, the Minister took a dig that was slightly below the belt, saying that I was implying that officials were not competent and got us bad trade deals. My point is not that the officials were at fault; rather, they are operating in a political climate of inept and, worse, incompetent government. We have to do the right thing here today. We have to vote for these amendments because that is the only way of making sure that our Government do the right thing.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, we have heard many powerful speeches today. If I may say so, the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, is one of the most powerful I have ever heard in the House. He made an utterly compelling case for sending this issue back to the House of Commons. Purely as a matter of parliamentary protocol, we should do so, and not only because, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, rightly said, the opportunity for the Government to honour their own commitment to seek a compromise can arise only if this matter goes back to the Commons, but because the current amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has addressed the points made in the Commons speech last week by Greg Hands, the Minister for International Trade, about why we should not agree to the earlier Alton amendment.

Greg Hands said in the House of Commons last Tuesday:

“Nobody denies the importance and seriousness of the situation in Xinjiang … or that human rights cannot and should not be traded away in a trade agreement or anything like it.”


He went on to say that the Government are clear

“that doing more trade does not have to come at the expense of human rights. In fact, as I am sure my hon. and right hon. Friends will agree, there is a strong positive correlation between countries that trade freely and human rights”.

However, he said that the House of Commons should not agree to the then amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, because it

“would, in effect, take out of the hands of Government their prerogative powers to conduct international relations with regard to trade”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/1/21; cols. 796-97.]

The current Alton amendment meets that point entirely. It does not take prerogative powers out of the hands of the Government; rather, it enables Parliament and government to be better informed. They could not be better informed than by the advice and judgment of the High Court, and other courts in the land, on the specific issue of whether genocide is being committed. It does not even matter whether the Government intend to come back with further proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has already met the test which Greg Hands set last week.

On the wider question, where I have some sympathy with the Minister, there are wider issues involved here —of course there are. When I was a Minister, I visited China and had substantial dealings with them. Those who of us who have been engaged in these events for many years are aware that we have a growing China problem, which is not just about the Uighurs and potential genocide. It is also about Taiwan, Hong Kong and China’s belt and road initiative. What we have in Xi Jinping is essentially a leader who is not so new now—his leadership is 10 or 11 years old—but who is increasingly Stalinist. It was reasonable to think in the decades after Deng—although, of course, Tiananmen Square was a wake-up call—that China might be on a more liberal path and that we should move accordingly. It turns out that that was a mistake. We all make mistakes, and there has been a significant change in circumstance. The Xi Jinping decision to essentially abolish what passes for the Chinese constitution at the end of his original 10-year term was clearly a massive wake-up call. Many of the worst atrocities being reported now, which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to, have flowed from the radicalisation of his regime, and we have to respond accordingly.

We have been here before. I said that the regime was increasingly Stalinist. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in a powerful speech, did not exhibit himself to be a great fan of the Foreign Office. He used certain epithets about it, which might indicate its weakness or pusillanimity, and so on. I have spent a large part of the last two years researching and writing about Ernest Bevin who, I can assure the noble Lord, was in no way weak as Foreign Secretary. He stood up to Stalin with determination, well before that was fashionable either in this country or, crucially, the United States, where the early years of the Truman Administration sought to appease Stalin. Bevin stood up with a relentlessness for which we should all be grateful; maybe our freedom depends upon it. Great departures such as NATO certainly depended upon his actions.

However—and this goes straight to the point of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Alton—although two situations are never alike and there are differences between the situation with China today and with the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s, one hugely important commonality is that there was then a distinct absence of knowledge about, and much controversy about, what was actually going on in Russia. Many people, predominantly but not exclusively on the left in politics, I am ashamed to say, thought that Soviet Russia was “a new civilisation”—to use the phrase in the famous book by the Webbs. They thought that it had found a new pathway to success and prosperity which we should honour. What goes straight to the point of this amendment is that they constantly poured cold water on reports coming out of Russia that there were massive abuses of human rights which verged on genocide, and which we now know were genocide.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Adonis

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 2nd sitting : House of Lords & Committee: 2nd sitting
Thursday 12th November 2020 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, I apologise for my ineptitude with the mute button. I am afraid that I have been infantilised by the previous system, but I promise to do better.

I strongly support this amendment because this is another thing that ought to be standard in public life. Government works are for the public good and private contractors are there to perform that role for the Government on behalf of the public good. It is about trying to achieve that outcome and transparency should be a central pillar of all public works. Lack of transparency breeds distrust, fuels conspiracy theories and undermines whatever public good the Government are trying to and might achieve in doing the work. In particular, non-disclosure agreements should never be used for political purposes; for example, to avoid embarrassment or controversy. Perhaps the Minister could give us an explanation of the full range of NDAs being used in relation to HS2 and precisely why they are being used. That would help us move forward on this issue.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, while I recognise that there is a fixed order of speakers, I really want to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, because I know that in the past she took up the case of a particular whistleblower. I think that it relates to the time when she was the Minister responsible for HS2. In thinking how I can use creatively the processes of the Grand Committee, now that I know which clerk to email in order to speak after the Minister, if I have anything to say after the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, has spoken, I shall do so by those means.

What the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has just said about non-disclosure agreements not being used for political purposes is of course completely correct and all noble Lords would agree with that. I am very keen to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, because I think that she is going set out her concerns about a particular case or cases, and obviously I am also keen to hear the Minister’s response to those.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Adonis

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

I did not. I said, “without proper parliamentary scrutiny”. There has been massive parliamentary scrutiny of this project. The Motion the noble Lord referred to, which he moved at Third Reading in January 2017, attracted 25 votes while there were 385 votes on the other side, so I do not think anyone can say that it is not the express will of Parliament that is leading HS2 to proceed.

The problem we have at the moment is, as I say, a left hand/right hand problem. On one hand, Parliament has given emphatic consent to this project to continue, and indeed to be authorised in the first place: not just the first phase, which passed this House by 385 votes to 25, and passed the House of Commons by 399 votes to 42—absolutely colossal majorities—but this Bill, extending HS2 from Birmingham to Crewe, was passed in the House of Commons in the middle of July by 263 votes to 17. There has been cross-party consensus and overwhelming support.

The Minister referred, and I assume that her officials were giving her very carefully crafted drafting in this respect, to the work taking place on HS2 as “preparatory work”. There is nothing preparatory about the work being done on HS2 at the moment. The line is being built; more than £5 billion has been spent and more than 1,000 people work at HS2 Ltd in Birmingham. If your Lordships go to Euston, you will see that it is not preparatory work that is leading to the virtual closure of the station, with huge tarpaulins up and big excavation works, but the construction of the railway line. It is right that this should happen, because, unless we start constructing it, it will never be there.

Parliament authorised this project to proceed two years ago. Billions of pounds have been spent, thousands of people are working on it—we expect this work to proceed. It is this that makes the review that has been set up so bizarre. At the same time as Parliament has given express and overwhelming authority for this work to proceed, thousands of people being employed and billions of pounds having been spent, what do the Government do, courtesy of the Prime Minister? They parachute in a fundamental review which is essentially conducting open-heart surgery on a moving patient, if I may mix my metaphors.

This whole project is being constructed, massive public expense is being entered into, and what do the Government do? They announce a strategic fundamental review, looking not just at the management of the project, which is absolutely appropriate to look at because it has not been good enough and is part of the reason we have the cost overruns, but the whole case for HS2, which has been approved by Parliament by majorities of more than 10 to one.

I see the clock is flashing, but I will carry on for a few more minutes because this is Second Reading.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

The noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, stuck to seven minutes.

[Lord Adonis]

There is not a fixed time limit. I will make two more points if I may.

When the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, said that the case for HS2 when it started was on speed and not capacity, that was completely untrue. I published the White Paper on HS2 in March 2010, the opening words of which were,

“the Government’s assessment is … That over the next 20 to 30 years the UK will require a step-change in transport capacity between its largest and most productive conurbations … alongside such … capacity, there are real benefits for the economy and for passengers from”—

Constitutional Convention

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Adonis

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on bringing forward this debate. It is obviously very timely and we all have strong opinions about it. It feels slightly odd to be following the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I have a slight grudge against him because he is one of only two politicians to have blocked me on Twitter, the other being Donald Trump, the President of the United States.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I would willingly unblock the noble Baroness. It must have been some particularly insulting remark she made in respect of me, but I am sure she regrets it and I regret blocking her.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

I am afraid that I cannot promise not to be insulting again; that is how Twitter works.

The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, was absolutely fascinating about all the issues that he has worked on. It means that I now know where to go with any complaints on those matters, so I hope that he will not be leaving us too soon.

At the moment we are in the awful throes of what to do about Brexit. Whether or not we leave the European Union, we have to grapple with something that other noble Lords have touched on: how to heal the divisions within our deeply divided country. Anger, frustration and mistrust is endemic in parts of society. We need a complete overhaul of the so-called British constitution, which could begin with a constitutional convention.

Many people were surprised and confused when proceedings in the other place on Monday night came to a halt because someone had picked up the Mace. A lot of foreigners were expressing their confusion on Twitter and wanted to know why it mattered. The explanation illustrates an incredibly important point, which is that the Mace represents the authority of the monarch. Parliament sits only under the authority of the monarch and when the Mace is removed, Parliament has no authority. I was deeply saddened to disagree so strongly with my friend the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. He, I and the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, have a little leaver block-sympathy going on on this side of the House, so I was sad to disagree with him. I do so because the British constitution is not a democracy in any sense of the word. We have a feudal monarchy with a few bits of democracy bolted on to it. It is difficult to identify a single development in the British constitution which has not been the result of a compromise between the ruling elite and some sort of opposing force that threatened its power. A little bit of power is ceded by the most powerful people in order to keep the greater amount of their power intact. Most of the rights and freedoms that exist in our country have come about through these little compromises. It has never been about doing the right thing for its own sake.

For example, we celebrate the Magna Carta as the “Great Charter of the Liberties”, but it was actually a very small step in reducing the power of the king. The English Bill of Rights was another deal where the rich men in Parliament obtained a guarantee of their rights and freedoms in exchange for granting the throne to William and Mary. The Representation of the People Act and the Parliament Acts have all been compromises that have allowed us to call ourselves a democracy when in truth we are not. Each of these developments has its unique historical and factual quirks, but the overall narrative is one of a power struggle resulting in a compromise to maintain as far as possible the status quo.

As another noble Lord has mentioned, almost every other country in the world has a written constitution. These have normally come about after some massive historical event such as a civil war or a revolution. We have never got to that stage. It means that we have something which is wholly unfit for a country that wants to call itself a 21st-century democracy.

Now we have Brexit. As has been said, in a sense it is a symptom of people feeling excluded and alienated by a system that was only ever devised to protect the rich—the ruling elite. The intense frustration directed at Brussels is made up of a sense that politics is something done to us, rather than something we are active participants in. This is just as true of our local, regional and national politics as it is at the EU level. The Green Party policy is very much about devolving power down to the most appropriate level. An example of that failing utterly is up in Lancashire, when the Government overruled every level of local government and imposed fracking on a community that did not want it. Democracy has failed utterly in that case because the Government were not the best part of our system to decide what to do.

Leaving the EU will not resolve that intense frustration and anger. People will feel just as disfranchised by our electoral system and our politicians. Equally, if the tide turns and we end up remaining in the EU, people will be just as frustrated because neither option on its own provides a viable way forward. I would therefore argue that a constitutional overhaul is the only solution. I have a lot of questions that I would like to put privately to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, about how he sees this going forward, and perhaps I will contribute in various ways. Organic change, as has been suggested, is simply not enough. There has to be an overhaul.

We in this House have tried to discuss changes that will make us more relevant. I brought forward a Bill on reforming the House of Lords to the point where it would be abolished completely. I almost did not get it through its First Reading because of the grumbles from all around the House. It did in fact get a Second Reading, and I will be tabling it again. I look forward to hearing from noble Lords who have said in this debate that they would like to see reform. Reform of this place is inevitable, and I look forward to their supporting the Bill when I bring it back.

I would also argue that first past the post has absolutely failed to supply strong and stable government in the way we have always supposed it would, so it is time to consider proportional representation. I have been elected under first past the post and under proportional representation. They are both perfectly valid ways of being a voice for people who would otherwise go unheard. I spent four years on Southwark Council as one of 63 councillors, which was very hard, and then I served for some years on the London Assembly combating Boris Johnson, which was much worse. The only way forward now is to rethink our democracy, and this convention would be a good way forward.