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

Debate between Earl Attlee and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

2nd reading
Friday 3rd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

That is a question of public appointment, as we know, and there is some controversy about public appointments—but we have approaches to them. Making the committee on public appointments also a statutory body is perhaps also something that we need to do when we have a Prime Minister who is not, in the terms of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, a “good chap”.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, we already have an Appointments Commission for the Cross Benches.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I thank the noble Earl. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, that we should then move towards a partially elected House, at least, or perhaps even an indirectly elected House. That is the direction of travel in which we need to go.

We all know that the second Chamber does valuable work. I say to the Minister: yesterday, I was checking how long the House of Commons had spent scrutinising the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill. It was just under two hours for Committee, Report and Third Reading. We ought to give that a little more scrutiny, and that is what this House is here for and does very well, as we all know.

My plea to the Minister is: I hope that he will imitate the example of the noble Lord, Lord Young, and do his best to stretch his brief. We all know that it will say that the Government are opposed to piecemeal reform, the time is not ripe and this needs further consideration. It is clear that this debate has been quite different from that of some years ago. Even in this House, the mood is changing. We will come towards taking this step within the next five to 10 years, and perhaps he might even suggest that it could be in the next Conservative manifesto. Therefore, I look forward to what the Minister will say, and I hope that he will give us a little encouragement at the very least—as far as his brief will allow it—and that we take this forward.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Earl Attlee and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene at this stage, but I hear people saying that we should not make piecemeal changes. The Committee should read Clause 2, to which we are debating an amendment, because it makes piecemeal changes. There are several lines which refer to allowing Peers to vote in this referendum—800 of us. A number of further lines then spend a lot of time on Gibraltar— all 22,000 of them—and then the Irish and Commonwealth citizens in Gibraltar. I have been unable to discover how many there are of those, but I think there are probably around 100. These are piecemeal changes.

The problem was raised by a number of people at Second Reading that this referendum will be an exceptional vote. There is therefore a case for looking exceptionally at who should vote, whether it is in this set of amendments or in the following three groups, which we will be discussing later on tonight. The question is really: for this very important vote, which will affect the future of this country for the next 40 years, what are the appropriate changes that we wish to make in the electoral system? Clause 2 as it stands offers a number of changes. The question is what other changes we might wish to make for this vote.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I hate to say this, but noble Lords opposite have challenged my thinking on the Bill, as a general issue, but I agree that piecemeal reform in this area is not desirable. I share the noble Earl’s anxieties. Noble Lords, particularly the Liberal Democrats, consistently argue that someone under 18 is a child, but when it comes to an issue of this magnitude, they suddenly then become an adult.

Ebola

Debate between Earl Attlee and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have already said twice that the United Kingdom Government raised the question at the Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union last weekend, and that the Prime Minister will be discussing it with our European partners today and tomorrow. There has been an informal arrangement between NATO and the European Union in recent years that NATO is the security organisation which deals with major security issues and that the European Union is the forum through which we work on humanitarian issues, particularly in Africa. For this, I think the European Union is the right framework—and I hope I do not upset too many noble Lords by saying that.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, is it not a mathematical certainty that insufficient resources are currently being devoted to bringing the outbreak under control?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Noble Lords may be aware that Nigeria and Senegal were last weekend declared free of the virus. It is very encouraging news that part of what helped the Nigerians to get the virus under control was an extremely effective Twitter campaign to inform people about the precautions they needed to take. We ourselves are putting in a great deal of money and personnel—mainly military personnel—and we have offers of additional personnel from countries as far apart as Cuba and the Philippines. We are certainly doing our utmost to get up to speed but, of course, it takes a great deal of effort and, unavoidably, time to cope with something so complex.

Iran

Debate between Earl Attlee and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Monday 25th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I see here that the agreement also refers to a,

“Submission of an updated … design information questionnaire … for the reactor at Arak”.

However, the exact details of the inspection regime on an interim basis are part of the detail that has to be negotiated and agreed between the parties between now and when the interim agreement comes into implementation in, we hope, late January.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of the benefit of short questions for my noble friend the Minister in order that all noble Lords who wish to contribute may have a decent chance of doing so.