AI-generated Public Services

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I agree that the Post Office scandal was one of the most awful. It is good that we now have a proper process for moving forward on it, even if it is far too late. To deal with the point raised by the noble Lord, I can say that we are setting up the AI Safety Institute and a hub in the Cabinet Office, bringing in experts from outside. The idea is that they can help across the board with these issues. Some of the uses of AI, such as with fraud at Companies House and the DWP, can be very useful. The noble Lord is right in that we need to look at the dangers as well. As the noble Lord, Lord Allan, rightly said, we have to make sure that we look at the opportunities. We think that, as regards public sector productivity, costs could be reduced by about £5 billion a year through the sensible use of AI on the kinds of things that we have been debating.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I too am optimistic about AI, but I am also concerned about leaving people behind. I refer my noble friend to the report about digital exclusion published earlier this year by the Communications and Digital Select Committee, which I chair. It painted quite a stark picture. It showed how much more complex this challenge is becoming because of the way in which technology is developing at pace. I am sad to report that we found that the Government’s strategy for dealing with exclusion was not good enough. Will my noble friend revisit that report? Will she also explore one way forward—by looking at a joint venture with the banking sector? It has long promised to have banking hubs in towns. These could also become digital hubs where people could go to learn, and for assistance and advice as to how to get on to digital services in the way in which we need them to do.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her report, which I have just picked up for my Christmas reading. It has been rather influential within the system. I do not know if my noble friend is aware of the cross-Whitehall ministerial group chaired by the new Minister for Technology, Saqib Bhatti MP. It will certainly look at how the digitally excluded can be helped in hubs in different ways. The library network already exists. I have always thought that this is very useful in communities. I have collaborated with bank expertise on fraud—which is my area of responsibility. I am grateful for the work of her committee. I will certainly take her point away.

House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, there is much of merit in my noble friend Lord Norton’s Bill, and it is hard to disagree with some of its common-sense suggestions for raising standards. However, I cannot support more power being given to an unelected body, as a matter of principle, as a solution to the problem it seeks to address. The main problem we wrestle with in this House is our legitimacy as an unelected body. The central criticism of the existing regime for appointments from the Bill’s proponents is that recent and successive Prime Ministers are undermining the House’s legitimacy, as an unelected House, by their approach to appointments and, in some cases, the people they choose to appoint. Indeed, the Constitution Unit argues, in the briefing it circulated ahead of this debate, that successive Prime Ministers are “deliberately” bringing the House “into disrepute” through their nominations.

I am certainly not here to defend any Prime Minister’s choices or the number of appointments they have made, but I champion the fact that a Prime Minister—or an Opposition leader—can be held to account by the electorate for their choices. It is clear that some appointments—although, I emphasise, very few—by recent Prime Ministers and today’s Labour Party leader deserve critical comment, and some people will question their respective judgments in making those appointments. If that legitimate criticism informs voters’ views of these party leaders, they can at least exercise their view via the ballot box. However, the same is not true for members of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, however noble and distinguished they may be as public servants.

I am proud to be a Member of your Lordships’ House and to sit in this Chamber among many talented, diligent and highly respected colleagues on all sides. In my view, our first priority in maintaining the legitimacy of the House of Lords must be our own conduct.

I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Norton and other noble Lords participating in this debate who have done much over the last 10 years to strengthen our disciplinary and sanctions regime. The power to expel, brought about in the 2015 Act, was a massive step forward—but there are still loopholes. There remain among us Members who have served prison sentences for more than a year for committing serious crimes predating that legislation. Just because we could not legislate retrospectively does not mean that we should ignore that fact. Indeed, we also introduced the facility for Peers to retire yet, when I sought it, I could not get cross-party agreement prior to the 2015 general election to ask these convicted Members to avail themselves of this facility before the start of a new Parliament.

Similarly, we also have yet to close the loophole of a Peer bringing the whole House into disrepute if we ignore any serious act of misconduct that shows contempt for the people we serve. That could be dealt with by amending our own code, which I also sought to do as Leader, but was thwarted at the final hurdle.

More routinely, there is the question of how we all conduct ourselves when scrutinising legislation. I remain most sincerely of the view that every piece of legislation is improved by the scrutiny that it receives from this House—but too often lately we approach our work with a distaste for what the legislation is seeking to achieve because it is in response to the demands of an electorate that noble Lords seem to think do not understand or know as much as we do.

Before we seek to constrain any Prime Minister, we need to be more self-aware and close any remaining loopholes that exist in our own conduct regime. Ultimately, we should not forget that the underlying problem of this House when it comes to its composition is a democratic deficit. That is why there is no satisfactory technocratic answer. There is only one real solution. Until or unless we become at least mainly elected, directly or indirectly, our main priority should be our own conduct, making sure that we are equipped and prepared to act against each other if we fail, in the way the electorate would want while they remain unable to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, as always, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. I must begin by declaring an interest in that I am chairman of the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, which I founded with my noble friend Lord Norton—my very good friend—more than 20 years ago. That is what makes it such a very special pleasure to be able to speak in this debate to congratulate my noble friend and to say that although every Bill is capable of improvement, particularly by an experienced scrutinising body, this is a good start. I hope it will follow the other incremental reforms that have come out of the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, namely the Bill introduced by Lord Steel of Aikwood, which brought about provisions for retirement, and the Bill brought by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman—a former distinguished Lord Speaker—which enabled us to take action and to expel those who had transgressed in very serious ways. I hope the Bill will come along.

I am afraid I did not have any text with LOL in it, any more than the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, did, but I had a very good conversation with David Cameron when he rang me. I was delighted to be invited, but I said, “I will be a working Peer. I will come all the time. But I must say that I will regard it as my duty to exercise independent judgment and therefore to vote as I think appropriate.” He said, “Well, you’ve always done that in the other place, so I can’t really ask you to behave differently.” I have taken that as my licence ever since I got here and will continue to do so, because it is the duty of your Lordships’ House to examine critically, to ask the other place to think again and, if necessary—this is the ultimate, and we have not done it since I came here—to give a Bill a whole year before it can come back. There might be one before us at the moment where we have to take that sort of action.

I digress. It is very important that attendance accompanies membership. I would go further than many and say that unless a Member, without good reason or cause, such as serious illness, bereavement or whatever, puts in 20% attendance in the course of a year, he or she should be disqualified from being a Member of your Lordships’ House. You cannot be an effective member of a body unless you attend it fairly regularly and play a real part.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

Will my noble friend give way?

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I cannot, really, because there is no time.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My noble friend is very kind. What he is asking for with a commitment to attendance, which I have some support for too, is something we could deal with through our internal procedures. That is not beyond our existing powers to implement now. Now that we also have the power to disqualify on grounds that we might consider fit, we can do all these things.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I will take a minute’s injury time for that. I will not respond because my noble friend, for whom I have a high regard, misses the point. It is very important that we move forward here.

What has disturbed me more than anything has been the cavalier disregard for the constitution by Prime Minister Johnson, amounting almost to a trashing of it. It is very important that a Prime Minister has an ethics adviser and follows their advice. It is very important that we have an appointments commission on a statutory basis. The Prime Minister is in no sense prevented from making nominations but he should listen to the advice of that appointments commission.

My greatest concern of all is the position of the monarch. We have a new King. We must not put him in an invidious position, because he is the fount of honour. He has to award peerages on a recommendation. We should have a real sensitive regard for his position, just as we must listen to what the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, said. When we get this Bill in Committee, which I hope we will, we must try to make sure that there is no opportunity for the courts to be dragged in. That is very important.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, I took issue with my very good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, and his letter to the Times. To say that there is broad consensus for an elected senate is not right. To have an elected senate with 400 people elected and 100 appointed will create two problems: first, the clash with the other place by the elected people; and secondly, the 100 who would inevitably be regarded as second-class Members. That is not a good idea.

When my very good friend the Minister comes to reply, I hope she will say that the Government will assist the progress of the Bill through Committee so that it can be critically examined and go to the other place. I think, like the noble Lord, Lord Butler, that it would then stand a real chance of going on to the statute book.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

I find it difficult to find a credible argument against the proposition in this amendment. It keeps the monarch out of trouble; it keeps the judiciary out of trouble; it gives the Prime Minister what the Prime Minister wants and is entitled to have with his or her majority in Parliament; and the Government get what they want. What is not to like about it?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, like everybody else who has spoken in the Committee so far today, I share the objective of returning to the status quo ante and repealing the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. But as some noble Lords who heard me speak on Second Reading may know, I do so for different reasons from that which the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and most others have set out today. I supported the original legislation, and the reason why I think that it should be repealed is because something that I believed was a relinquishing of power to the electorate turned into a weapon that got used against the electorate, as my noble friend Lady Noakes has described.

That is why I think it is important that we go back to how we were before, rather than, at this point, seek to introduce something that would maintain a power that the House of Commons did not have before. I thought what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said when he introduced his amendment was interesting as he said this about where power lies. He carefully made the point that this was not about the current Prime Minister, this was about where power rests in this situation. Should it be with the Executive? Should it be with Parliament? I know that over the last few years the noble and learned Lord has raised many different examples of where there is an imbalance of power between the Executive and Parliament, and that there are some ways in which that needs to be looked at and that imbalance addressed.

I do not think we would be wise to try to introduce a power because of what happened a couple of years ago. The battle for power at that point, in 2019, between the Executive and Parliament was observed, in my view, by people outside Parliament as a battle that should not have taken place. It was power that should not rest in the hands of Parliament. Indeed, it should not rest, in a direct way if you like, in the hands of the Prime Minister. This was about a democratic mandate that was in need of being implemented. I think, for everybody’s interests, trying to introduce the amendment that has been proposed here would be unwise, and the best course of action would be to return to exactly what we had before.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I put my name to this amendment for the reasons given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. Like the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, I have been searching for credible arguments against it. I was therefore very grateful that the Minister circulated a letter, setting out the Government’s stance, in which I hoped I might find some credible arguments against it, even if I did not agree with them, but this is what the letter said. It said that it

“will not necessarily achieve the desired outcome”

and:

“Its long-term consequences … are untested.”


I may have got the logic wrong, but until something is implemented how can we know what its long-term consequences are? So I was not too troubled in my belief by that.

Then I read that it was a “novel element”. Anything that is change, by definition, has a degree of novelty to it, so that did not get us very far. It was then said that there could be “(unintended) consequences” without any suggestion of what they might be, so that did not get us much further. It then said it was a “constitutional innovation”. Well, yes—so? That did not get us any further. The letter then said that it had not been “fully considered” and constitutional change needed to be fully considered. Perhaps it had not been, but it has now, so that is not a credible argument. Finally, we had a typically empty threat from the noble Lord, Lord True:

“We are not doing a service to the elected chamber if we ask them to reconsider a question which they have squarely confronted and which they have decisively decided against.”


We might as well go home if we adopted that policy. We certainly would not have been voting against the police Bill at all if we accepted that. That is the sum total of the Government’s response on why we should oppose this amendment.

The further argument—which the Government did not use, incidentally—that I thought had some substance was advanced by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. These are my words, not hers: MPs might refuse a Prime Minister an election because they feared for their own seats and so would act out of personal interest rather than the national interest. Against that theoretical possibility, surely there is the more likely possibility of a Prime Minister calling a premature election primarily to save his or her skin, rather than because they have considerations of the national interest uppermost in their mind.

In any event, surely, the constitutional position is that citizens vote for someone to represent them in Parliament, not for a Prime Minister. In my political lifetime, there have been five occasions on which the Prime Minister has changed during the lifetime of a Parliament without triggering a new election in any case. So voters have ended up with a Prime Minister who was not a prime ministerial candidate at the previous election and who has no personal, direct mandate from the electorate. MPs, by contrast, will be held to account by their electorates if they trigger an early election and so, in my view, the decision on whether to do so should rest with them.

I was going to respond to the noble Baroness in terms of what happened in 2019, but the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has done that extremely comprehensively. I would just say, going back to 1974, that the same arguments apply. Does anyone believe that in the autumn of 1974, if the House of Commons had been asked whether there should be an election, Harold Wilson would have been denied one? The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, gave the reasons. Oppositions are there to oppose, and they do not vote to keep their opponents in office—it is in the name. The key question which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, raised is by what authority does a Prime Minister decide, uniquely, when an election should be held, particularly, as I said earlier, if that Prime Minister was not the candidate for Prime Minister at the preceding general election? In my view, authority on when an election should be held should rest with the people who have been elected to run a Parliament. That is why I support this amendment.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 30th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, as the final Back-Bench speaker, I cannot help wondering whether I have been so placed because I supported the Fixed-term Parliaments Act when the Bill came through your Lordships’ House. While it may have been a political convenience for the coalition Government, as some have argued in this debate today, I believed in it, and I spoke up for it at every stage, as a Back-Bencher and a new Member of your Lordships’ House. I did that not because I particularly favoured fixed-term Parliaments—I do not. I supported the Bill because I saw that it was one of the few structural changes that we could make to our political system to show the public that we were serious about putting their interests before our own. This was, in my view, essential following the financial crash of 2008, the expenses scandals of 2009 and the crises in public confidence across all aspects of politics and institutions that are meant to serve the public interest. Indeed, I was not alone: fixed- term Parliaments featured in the Labour and Lib Dem 2010 general election manifestos, broadly for the same reasons—although it seemed to me that, once the Bill arrived in your Lordships’ House, the Labour Party seemed less convinced about them by then.

To me, alongside behavioural changes, we politicians needed to identify some meaningful structural changes that would favour the public interest, even though, from the perspective of parliamentarians, they were not broken—and I say that again. I made it clear during the passage of the fixed-term Parliaments legislation that the system for calling elections that we had before was not broken; the reason to change it was to give up some power for the benefit of the electorate.

All that said, I am not going to argue against the Government’s decision to repeal the Act. It has not worked, and I think that it needs to go. However, if we are not to perpetuate the problem which fixed-term Parliaments were meant to help solve—at least according to my view and that in the Labour and Lib Dem 2010 manifestos—we must make sure we understand why it did not work and learn the correct lessons.

I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord McLoughlin and the Joint Committee, which considered this matter in detail, as well as the other committees of your Lordships’ House, particularly the Constitution Committee, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton. But even with the benefit of those committees’ work and all the constitutional experts and lawyers in your Lordships’ House who have spoken today, our biggest risk is failing to see the bigger picture. We must not lose sight of that as we scrutinise this Bill in detail.

As the final Back-Bench speaker, allow me to paint with some broad brushes. The value to the voters of fixed-term Parliaments was some certainty that the Government and political parties would not be distracted by a general election, at least for a while, and certainty that the Government of the day and all political parties would have to face the electorate on a predetermined date, whatever the political conditions at that time—something that has already been said by other noble Lords today. Although fixed-term Parliaments meant certainty for the electorate in principle, in practice, as we have heard, the legislation meant the Prime Minister relinquishing power to Parliament—or, more specifically, to Members of the Commons—to decide when it would be in the public interest to undo that certainty to achieve greater clarity from the voters. Once enacted, MPs were given the power to override what the electorate had determined at the general election by way of a vote of no confidence or a two- thirds majority in favour of an early election.

The basic safeguard was our assumption, I guess, that in order not to scupper voters’ impending support via the ballot box, MPs would not seek to force a general election unless it made sense to the electorate that they did so—in other words, if there was a problem which was preventing effective governance of the country which could not be resolved without clarity from the electorate. That principle seemed to work okay in 2017, when Theresa May, as Prime Minister, could see that getting the necessary legislation through Parliament to enable Brexit would be near-on impossible. The opposition parties might not have agreed with her intentions about Brexit but, in line with all expectations and like all opposition parties throughout the ages, they did not give up the opportunity of an election when it was offered to them by the Prime Minister.

As we all know, things did not work out quite as Theresa May planned. I believe that that was not because, as some have argued already, she was opportunistic but because during the campaign the voters were left uncertain and unsure about the various party leaders and what they offered, and delivered a result that was even less clear than before. That lack of clarity from the voters was a message to the political class to sort ourselves out, but instead, we all turned inwards: Parliament and the Executive engaged in battle, and parliamentary gridlock ensued. Whatever anyone thought of Mrs May’s Government or her attempts to secure Parliament’s agreement to her Brexit deal, I think she was vindicated in her belief that, without a clear majority, Parliament would not deliver the will of the people.

By the time Boris Johnson succeeded her in 2019, normal parliamentary rules and political conventions had collapsed. It was clear that a general election was needed, but Parliament refused. Whatever noble Lords think about Boris Johnson’s tactics when he succeeded Mrs May, his efforts to force a general election were rewarded with clarity from the electorate.

Unlike most other noble Lords who have spoken, the reason why I think the Fixed-term Parliaments Act needs to be repealed is not that there is anything wrong with the legislation in principle, although I am sure that some points of detail could have been improved, but, sadly, that Parliament sought to use the legislation to its own advantage when it was out of step with the majority of the electorate—not just those who had voted to leave the European Union but the many other voters who just wanted Brexit to be dealt with, so they could move on. That is a dreadful indictment on us all, and it is the lesson that I think we need to show that we have learned.

As much as I regret the demise of a structural change to our system which I believed was in part a response to voters’ lack of confidence in Parliament, I think the only way forward now is to go back to what we had before and concentrate on behavioural changes which show how we are motivated by serving the public interest. That is why I hope very much that noble Lords, however well intentioned, do not bring forward amendments during the passage of this Bill to give the House of Commons the power to decide whether a Prime Minister can dissolve Parliament and call a general election. In my mind, that would not improve matters of public confidence in Parliament; it would make matters worse, because it would appear that this House is driven by its opinion of the current Prime Minister, not by what best serves the long-term interests of the public at large.

Standards in Public Life

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, for whom I have huge respect. I also commend, as others have done, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for calling this debate.

Standards are not a topic that those of us in public life like to discuss. If I am being charitable, I think that is because we sometimes fear being accused of throwing stones while we live in glass houses, but the cynical side of me recognises that, sometimes, the less said, the better, because we do not necessarily want people to be reminded that we are here to uphold standards and to be held to account for that.

However, we have to acknowledge that our privileges as legislators and decision-makers on matters which affect other people do not come without responsibility. Part of that is upholding standards which people have every right to expect of us. Obviously, that includes not breaking formal rules, but people’s expectations of us are sometimes hard to codify. “No rules were broken” cannot be an excuse when it is obvious that we have fallen short in our conduct. That is why, as public figures, we have to meet another test in meeting expectations and that is in how we hold one another to account on behalf of the public. That includes in a debate such as this.

Before I go on to my main point, I should say in respect of your Lordships’ House that we have done a lot in the past 10 years to improve the sanctions regime here, but, as noble Lords will know from other debates, because we are an unelected House, I believe that we still have further to go. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, is a member of the relevant committee. I hope that this is a subject it will revisit.

As my main point today, I want to make a positive case for why any of us as public servants should, just as the code requires of us under the heading of “Leadership”, uphold standards and promote them. The simple reason is that these standards help promote behaviours and social norms which bond us together as a society. Behaviour which we associate with good character is particularly important for us to see among those who obtain or are given the power to lead or to make decisions which affect everyone else—that was mentioned earlier by the right reverend Prelate. It helps stimulate the confidence necessary for us to comply with and follow what is asked or requested.

In a complex world where people are increasingly angry and distrustful, and asked to take on trust complex solutions, we look for simple motives. But we can judge people’s motives only through the actions that we see on display. Leaders need to promote the importance of common standards of behaviour and social norms for us to tackle some of our biggest and most difficult problems, because that is the only way we can bind everybody in. What we must not do if we are to be successful in meeting that challenge is weaponise or politicise the standards in public life that people have every right to expect of us. We must uphold and promote by example those standards to make sure that, together, we meet people’s expectations and serve them better.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I think I should steer clear of the topics raised by the noble Lord who spoke most recently, but I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, for her kind words about my late colleague Diana Maddock. She is much missed on our side. She was a predecessor on the Committee on Standards in Public Life on which I now serve.

One of the key tasks of that committee is to monitor how the seven principles are being applied and to assess the relevance and resilience of those principles in an age when society is changing and evolving, when legislation imposes new challenges and demands on those who deliver public services, and when public expectations are a moveable feast and reshaped. There are new risks and new opportunities, so the committee has a full agenda.

The principles operate in a dynamic society. Even seemingly rock-solid principles, such as the principle of objectivity, which require office holders to act “without discrimination or bias”, change from generation to generation. I will give an example: when my mother got married, she was required to resign from her job in the Civil Service. There was not much objectivity there. In my generation, the fight for equal pay for equal work across public services finished only when it was resolved in the High Court. There was not much objectivity there. Now, my children have expectations about protection from sexual harassment and bullying in their workplace that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago. Noble Lords may well think it has been a change in the application of the principle of objectivity in the right direction.

However, some changes have had more mixed results. The advent of social media has indeed dramatically improved openness, but it has also—as the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, pointed out—enhanced bullying and created a polarised climate in which calm and balanced decision-making may put at risk. That polarisation has made custodianship of those principles—

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I am grateful to him for referring to my contribution earlier, but I am just a little concerned: I was not suggesting anything in the way that he is interpreting—I did not refer to anything in the way that he is suggesting I meant. I would just like to correct him on that.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I deeply apologise if I misunderstood or misinterpreted what the noble Baroness said. I certainly would not wish to sustain that. What I will say is that there has been a polarisation in political dialogue, which has led to the custodianship of those principles being an increasingly challenging task.

An example I will give is that, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton gave a hint of a tax change to a journalist a few moments before giving his 1947 Budget speech, he felt compelled to resign over his leak. Last Friday, the Prime Minister set out a new tax policy in a daily newspaper, with a three-day lapse before a Statement was made in the House. Any idea that this breach should lead to his resignation is now regarded as absurd in the popular discourse. That means that, clearly, the application of the principles of integrity and selflessness have migrated in that period. Yet the principle of leadership still requires a leader to

“be willing to challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs.”

The CSPL does not deal with individual cases. It does not make findings of fact nor does it pass sentence. Where appropriate, that is the task of the various regulatory and monitoring bodies. Nevertheless, when a pattern of practice emerges in public life that, at the very least, challenges the conventionally understood meaning of the principles, the committee does report on it and makes recommendations. Those recommendations go via the Cabinet Office direct to the Prime Minister. That is of course both a great strength and a serious weakness. However, those who argue that it should report instead to Parliament, or maybe have a free-standing statutory constitutional position, are surely mistaking the presenting symptom for the underlying disease, which is that the UK has a uniquely powerful prime ministerial constitutional model.

All roads lead to the door of No. 10. Everything depends on the occupant leading from the top, whether it is on Covid, Brexit, or standards in public life. Seen that way, the more directly that the Committee on Standards in Public Life sends its good advice and strong recommendations to the top, the better. There is certainly a strong case for urgent reform of our current model of prime ministerial power, but that is a matter for a further debate.

Government Departments: Non-Executive Directors

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, transparency and conflicts of interest are important. But it is also important for us to recognise too that Secretaries of State, in the context of analogies to a chairman, need NEDs to help them support driving change and holding the Executive—in this case, the Civil Service—to account in their departments. My question is about the appointment of non-executive directors to the boards of public bodies. Would the Minister consider whether that process could be made swifter and whether the chairs of those public bodies, who have been appointed to drive change and improvement in them, could play a greater role in the appointment process for the rest of their boards?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I shall pay close attention to my noble friend’s remarks. I agree that having a balanced and skilled board with a broad range of perspectives and backgrounds is vital in ensuring that public bodies deliver the best possible services. There is an aspiration that appointment campaigns should complete within three months of competitions closing, but I will look into the matter that my noble friend raises.

Intergenerational Fairness in Government Policy

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, it is great honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, who is a leading authority on so many of the topics encompassed by this debate led by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham.

It interests me that the two groups in society who feel very unhappy at the moment and who want things to change are highly educated young people and less well-educated older people. Clearly they are using different vehicles to express their desire for change, but both these groups feel that their views are not taken seriously and that they are somewhat misunderstood.

In my remarks, I shall focus in particular, certainly initially, on older, less well-educated people. I might describe them as working-class pensioners, but when I say that I do not mean working-class pensioners who are currently poor but those who have worked hard and struggled to achieve their modest financial security. If we need to rebalance the economic situation between the old and the young described by my noble friend Lord Willetts and many others today, we must understand why some older people feel ignored and disappointed, even though they have a better financial situation now. The answer to that is twofold. One part is that we do not recognise and discuss often enough the challenges that they overcame to succeed. I know there has been passing reference to this today, and I shall come back to that. The other thing we do not do is see how their experience and knowledge in overcoming those challenges would help us support young people better to meet their needs. As has already been said, older people want to help younger people, and they have a lot of knowledge, experience and wisdom that could be put to good effect.

I was born in 1967 and grew up in the 1970s, so I think that means I am a young Generation X. I lived in a place where the factory at the end of the street employed thousands of people. My parents and my friends’ parents worked there or in the building trade. Their purpose in life was to provide security for themselves and their family. In trying to do that, they had to battle with a lot of things such as the three-day week, petrol shortages and factory closures. They were trying to fulfil that purpose in the face of quite a lot of difficulty, but they succeeded, and a lot of them were the first generation of their family to buy a house. They got there, and they made it.

When we talk about people’s property, particularly people who have gone through that kind of experience to get to where they are, putting their property at risk to pay for their care is quite hard for them to cope with. It undermines the fundamental purpose that they were trying to achieve because it puts their security at risk. In a way, it is worse than that because successive generations since, such as my generation or younger baby boomers, who are better educated and have taken advantage of other opportunities, have dismissed or diminished the things that people such as my parents and their generation relied on to become successful, such as financial prudence, avoiding debt, saving, the importance of skills, a vocational education and their family. For some of them it must feel as though we are asking them to pay the price for our incompetence. We have to find a way of acknowledging how that must feel to them, and at the same time we should be seeking their advice on what we should do in future.

It is rather insulting to suggest that people such as those I have just described are nostalgic or want to turn the clock back. When I talk to my parents and their friends, I do not find them nostalgic at all. They will tell you that there was no such thing as the good old days. They very much recognise that this is all about the future. When they think about the future and the challenges for young people, they will say that their needs are the same as theirs were. Young people want work and housing, they rely on their friends and their family, and they want that sense of belonging and purpose. It is interesting that research shows that young people want things such as honesty, clarity and respect for others. These standards and values are as important to young people as they are to older people.

When we think about all these complex issues that we are trying to address when we look at different policy areas, we must not forget that if we are to rely on each other—which we evidently need to do—we need not just to acknowledge the challenges those who went before us overcame, but to seek their advice more than we have and recognise that some of those standards and behaviours that they relied on to succeed are the same things that young people need now, and that the people who are letting them down are often those of us who are sandwiched in the middle. Like my noble friend Lady Jenkin, when I talk to young people I feel very heartened by their attitude and their aspirations for their future.

Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL]

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th September 2017 Lords Chamber

When the Minister refers to cold calling in her reply, will she say whether telephone cold calling, SMS messages, emails and letters—the old-fashioned snail mail—all fall into the same category or whether it is right to differentiate between them? If you make it impossible in all circumstances for a consumer to have access to a CMC of any kind, it may be counterproductive. It has to be reasonable. The Government have to do many things that are not popular, but if they were to act quickly to outlaw cold calling and nuisance calling, it would be extremely popular.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that I was not in the Chamber earlier to hear my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral make his contributions on earlier amendments on a similar theme. I should declare that I have recently become a member of the board of ABTA.

I know that the explosion of claims for holiday sickness has been mentioned already, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and my noble friend for highlighting the way in which cold calling is encouraging people to commit fraud. However, we need to recognise that in encouraging this kind of fraudulent behaviour—which, in itself, is very bad for all the obvious reasons—false holiday sickness claims are also affecting our reputation abroad. We might like to make fun sometimes about the Germans and their towels, but we Brits are now gaining a reputation not only for having dicky tummies and not being able to weather the food overseas but, much worse than that, as a nation of people who are now willing to commit fraud.

This goes more broadly than the narrow way in which we are debating it today, and I want to lend my support in principle to the efforts to tackle a growing and serious problem.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I would not normally deign to interpose in this debate but, having listened to a number of the arguments that have been put forward, I feel compelled to voice my support, but with a word of warning.

I was looking at my private emails and found that since half-past two this afternoon I have had four spurious emails from an outfit called Metro Bank, with which I have no business, telling me about the suspicious activity on my account and suggesting that I might like to click on a link. The fact that such messages usually contain spelling mistakes and start off “Dear Customer” without any other personal identifying information, and the fact of the sheer number of these repeated emails, probably tells its own story, but never mind. The reason I raise that is because in my experience—along with that of probably everybody in this House who has received on their mobile phone something to do with PPI or a personal accident—I frequently get messages that tell me my claim has been settled in the sum of £4,275.80, or something like that, and ask me to click on a link so they can process the claim. I have had no such incident and made no such claim; the process is led by a completely bogus and fraudulent promise of something for nothing.

In my experience, these things are increasingly moving from a posse of anonymous, but still identifiable, 0800 telephone numbers of one sort or another to people’s mobile numbers and landlines. In particular, the mobile numbers may well be a pay-as-you-go account: completely anonymous and possibly passed on in a pub, complete with its ticket. Nobody can track down where these things are coming from. So, if somebody makes a cold call from a pay-as-you-go mobile phone, and having made contact then pass that live contact back to a claims management company of perhaps no great repute and even less good intent, is that still a cold call? If not, then straightaway the whole process of what these amendments are designed to deal with is bypassed. I would like to make sure it is not.

Civil Service Fast Stream

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, several Members from the Labour Benches have asked questions and we have not had anyone from the Lib Dems for a while.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that last week evidence emerged that staff employed in the Civil Service from black and minority ethnic communities are sometimes paid significantly less than their white counterparts? Will he assure the House that this is not the case? If he does not have the reply now, will he undertake to look into the matter and write to me?

Housing and Planning Bill

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend has been very clear. Following discussions with the usual channels, my noble friend the Chief Whip will provide an update at 7 pm. Meanwhile, we have time before us where we can make progress and continue the very good work of this House. As to the noble Lord’s assessment of what progress can be made on groups in time, I remember being advised that, when his party were in government, it was quite regular for them to be making much speedier progress on groups than we have been doing lately. I would urge noble Lords to continue their very important work and see how far we can get, rather than spend any more time now talking about what may or may not happen once we get to 7 pm.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am sorry to persist, but these are very important matters. Why does not the Leader of the House try again to get an earlier statement than one at 7 pm, because we want to know what is going to happen over the next hour?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I say to the noble Lord that the best thing for us to do now is just to continue with the work of the House. My noble friend the Chief Whip has been in the Chamber very recently; he is talking to his counterparts in the usual channels. What we can most usefully do in the Chamber is to do our very important work of scrutinising this legislation, debating it and making the great progress that has been made this week, to which the noble Lord has contributed, alongside many other noble Lords in this Chamber, all of whom want to continue with that work. I suggest to the noble Lord that that is what we do right now.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

That might be the view of the Leader of the House, but it is not my view. The House is being unfairly treated. For those watching our proceedings from outside, we should explain that this Bill is being opposed by a large number of Members of this House on the basis that it is a skeleton Bill, which is being driven through Parliament without all the controversial areas being debated. That is why it is important that we have enough time to debate the nine or 10 remaining groups of amendments. What is happening now in this Chamber is that the Government are trying to find a way in which to secure the passage of the Bill this evening. That is what is going on. The public outside should know that it is a scandal.