Trade Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 15th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I support these two amendments. There is an overlap between them and the next ones tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed. As my noble friend on the Front Bench will remember, I highlighted the environment as one of the key areas in which ISDS could cause problems for the United Kingdom. I will say a little more about that in the debate on the next amendment.

Suffice to say on this amendment that we must realise that the trade deals we are making now will have a huge impact on each and every one of us. They are much more complicated than they were in the past. Some 80% of our fruit comes from Europe, along with 50% of our vegetables. If we do not have a sensible trade agreement with Europe which takes that into account, it will cause increased problems for the Prime Minister’s campaign against obesity and the problems that the poorest in our country are already suffering with malnutrition and poor-quality food. It is well known that obesity rates increased in both Canada and Mexico after signing free trade agreements with the United States of America because the nutritional quality of food was lower than before. These free trade agreements are going to impact on us in all sorts of ways.

I am reminded that when we discussed this Bill on the first day of Report, my noble friend Lord Grimstone said that public health considerations would be excluded by the Trade and Agriculture Commission, although reports about them would be taken into account. Perhaps I may therefore press my noble friend: who or which institution is going to provide those reports on public health? We do not know. Public Health England is about to die a death. Which organisation will produce those reports? That is important. The reason I raise this is because the words “human” or “public” health are included in the proposed new clause in subsection (3)(b) of Amendment 21.

The other important area when it comes to health is the traffic light system that we put on packages to notify people about the nutritional quality of food. We all know that the United States of America hates the idea of a traffic light system and thoroughly disagrees with it. However, if we are trying to improve the quality of the food that we eat and get rid of some of the dependency that we have on processed foodstuffs, the traffic light system, which is currently the subject of further discussion, will play a hugely important part in that. This was part of the discussion and recommendations made by the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Committee, whose report we have yet to debate. However, if we do not get things like this right, we will pay a huge price, and it is for that reason that I support these amendments.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for supporting what I said on the earlier amendment. It encourages me greatly, because the campaign for our rejoining the European Union is gaining momentum day by day.

Returning to this amendment, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, I am also a member of Peers for the Planet, an excellent organisation, involving Peers from all parties, for raising awareness about the dangers of climate change. Indeed, it was the noble Baroness who recruited me to that organisation, and I agree with absolutely every word that she said and have very little to add.

Just to underline what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, I add just one thing, in relation to the United States of America. It will now be much easier to have a trade deal with the United States that incorporates these requirements. The election of President-elect Biden—and we can all, I hope, rejoice in the fact that he has now been confirmed as the President-elect—is a great step forward in that regard. He has pledged that one of his first actions in office will be to rejoin the Paris climate change agreement, and the United States could therefore formally be a member of that agreement before the beginning of March 2021. His transition website suggests an aspiration for net zero by 2050, which is a great improvement even on what President Obama agreed. President-elect Biden has named former Secretary of State John Kerry as his special envoy for climate change, with a seat on the National Security Council. That is very important, because it underlines the fact that climate change is also a national security issue.

I look forward to being around, if not in, Glasgow next November and welcoming to Scotland and the United Kingdom delegates from all countries from around the world in the COP 26. I say “welcome to Scotland”—I know that the Minister will agree with me wholeheartedly on that. We hope, expect and believe that it will remain part of the United Kingdom for many years to come.

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

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 23rd November 2018 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, we move to an important amendment which would not delay the implementation of the Bill in any way if it were accepted. It touches on a matter that we have briefly discussed: the appointment of life Peers to the House. When the 1999 Bill was debated in the House of Commons there was considerable discussion about patronage. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, then Sir George Young, said that the Bill would see,

“a quango House created by stealth”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/11/99; col. 1147.]

My noble friend Lord Cormack also criticised the patronage that could happen at that stage and recommended that the hereditary Peers be kept because of the undiluted patronage of the Prime Minister.

Since then, as the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has said, the House of Lords Appointments Commission has come into being, but it is not statutory. Whatever happens to this Bill, immense power and patronage will be in the hands of one person to appoint life Peers.

The purpose of Amendment 58A and the two other amendments that go with it is to establish a statutory appointments commission. I will not go into detail because noble Lords who have studied the 2012 Bill—which, sadly, fell in the House of Commons because of mishandling at that end—had it all in there. My words are taken from the 2012 Bill, of whom one of the proposers was none other than Sir George Young, so my noble friend the Minister will know the words intimately. I hope that because he designed and approved them, he will have no objection to them coming in.

This would be a good amendment for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, to accept. At the moment his Bill is destroying a part of the House. He has described it as a small Bill, but it is like lighting a match and putting it to a fuse that is going to Semtex because there will be substantial alterations to the British constitution as a result. He could go out with this Bill not only having destroyed something but having put something valuable in its place—a statutory appointments commission.

I will not weary your Lordships by taking you through all the points of detail because they were all made by parliamentary draughtsmen seven years ago. I beg to move.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, if I was still in another place and not here, I would ask the person chairing the Committee how this amendment is allowable. The purpose of the Bill is to:

“Amend the House of Lords Act 1999 so as to abolish the system of by-elections for hereditary peers”.


It does not go beyond that. However, this amendment goes way beyond that.

As I understand it, because of the crazy procedure in this place, the chair has almost no powers, so perhaps I may ask the Minister, who has been referred to on many occasions by the proposer of this amendment, how on earth these amendments are allowable. It is crazy. Is there no answer?

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

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I have reflected and I have stated exactly what I did. My noble friend also went on to say that we should,

“recognise that the interim House, as it is called by some, which will assemble next week, could exist for some considerable time”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/11/99; cols. 1200-01.]

So my noble friend knew exactly what the situation was, and what he said was repeated by John MacGregor, now the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I think I am right in saying that the noble Earl is the 20th Earl of Caithness and his title goes back many centuries. Instead of speaking here, would it not be better if he went back up to Caithness, got down on his knees and thanked the Lord that he lives in the United Kingdom and not in France, where they had a rather more ruthless way of getting rid of their aristocracy?

[The Earl of Caithness]

Well, some survived that too and doubtless some of us will survive this onslaught against us. My noble friend Lord Deben, the then Mr Gummer, also said what a good thing it was to have some hereditaries here because:

“A society is better run when, even if it is not entirely rational, power is spread a bit, with the opportunity for different people to make different comments about different things.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/11/99; col. 1173.]


All I am asking is that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, consider that we amend the way by-elections take place at the moment to make them for the whole House rather than just individual parties, and that we revisit this when, as I said earlier, there is greater implementation of the report of the noble Lord, Lord Burns.

House of Lords Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

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

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Elton is absolutely right to say that there is concern about the size of the House. But my noble friend Lord Strathclyde is equally right to say that this is more a perception than reality. Of course, there was a perception pre-1999 that the House was too big, but the vast number of the hereditary Peers did not attend. The net result of the 1999 Act was that about 90 working hereditaries were removed from the House, as well as a lot of non-working hereditaries.

If we are concerned about the size of the House, the Bill before us does nothing to reassure me. To limit this House to the size of the House of Commons would positively encourage Prime Ministers to keep on appointing working Peers in order to build up their number to 600. I think that that would be to the great detriment of the House.

My noble friend Lord Strathclyde was absolutely right to say that when we move out of here in a few years’ time, that will be the ideal point at which to start reducing numbers. Rather than follow the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Elton, I would rather go for a fixed number of Peers. I would go for 350, which is not that different from the current working House. To have a figure of 600 that would be variable over the course of a five-year Parliament would be a nonsense that would not help the situation.

If it comes to an election in order to achieve that, it will be nothing new in your Lordships’ House. For 273 out of the last 309 years, part of this House has been elected. I refer in particular to the Scottish representative Peers. Since 1707 until the Peerage Act 1963, there were 16 elected Scottish Peers—Peers of Scotland. After every general election they held an open election in Holyrood Palace, to which they were summoned, and they decided who the 16 would be. When that happened in 1707, it represented a reduction of 90% of Peers sitting in Parliament, because there had been 143 Scottish hereditary Peers sitting in the Scottish Parliament. So what my noble friend Lord Elton suggested, and indeed what the Lord Chancellor at the time, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who I am pleased to see in his place, did in 1999 is minor in comparison with what the Scots suffered in 1707.

One of the problems that resulted from the reduction in 1707 applies to what my noble friend suggested. There was resentment in Scotland that they were not properly represented. As we move increasingly towards becoming a full-time working House, the remoter parts of the country are going to get cut off. I found this particularly when I was living in Caithness; it was one of my reasons for moving back to London. If one wanted to take part in business here on a Monday, the only way to guarantee that was to leave home on Sunday night. On a good day it was possible to make the journey in around five hours, but on a bad day it could take well over 16 hours. If the House of Lords is to become more political and professional, inevitably Peers in the outer reaches are going to be squeezed because they will not be able to participate.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

I support what the noble Earl said. Is he aware that almost 50% of the membership of this House is currently from London and the south-east of England?

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I am grateful to hear that from someone who lives comparatively close to an airport compared to where I used to live. I always welcome the noble Lord’s support—and indeed he makes a point for me. We are far too south-east orientated—M25-orientated—and if there is to be an election, it should be on a regional basis rather than on any other. We must make certain that we cover the geography of this country.

Also, the election should not be held on the proportion of Peers sitting at the moment but on the vote at the last general election. At the moment we have a disproportionate number of Liberal Peers, while the number of UKIP Peers in this House is insufficient to represent the electorate, and there are no Scottish Nationalist Peers. That might be their choice, but at least it should be built into our legislation that the parties that get a certain percentage of the vote at a general election should be allowed to be represented here. It should be up to them who they put up and in which region.

So I say to my noble friend that I would like more of what he is proposing in the Standing Orders to be on the face of the Bill—far too much is left to Standing Orders—and that the system that he is proposing is not one that will be workable or indeed popular throughout the country.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

I wonder whether my noble and learned friend can help me with the parliamentary procedure. We are discussing the referendums this afternoon. When are they going to be dealt with on Report? As my noble friend Lord Forsyth has just said, they were delayed at this stage. Is it likely that we will be discussing them on Monday? If so, those of us who have to travel to the far north of Scotland tomorrow will have precious little time to table amendments. It will give us at least a day or two longer to consider matters and read the Official Report if they are to be dealt with on Wednesday. It is crucial for us in how we conduct our business to know whether the referendum issue will be taken on Report on Monday or Wednesday.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I understand the noble Lord’s frustration about the whole process and the way it has been dealt with. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, makes a very good point, which others made earlier, about the time between Committee and Report. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, also made that point effectively.

I think we should absolve the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, of blame in relation to this. He has been faced with great difficulties from a number of sources. I was going to include the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth as one of the people who created some difficulty for him, but I will just put that to one side for a minute. The noble Lord has had to labour with a Cabinet which has only recently begun to realise some of the implications of Scottish independence and what it might mean—to our defence policy and to a range of other things—if it were to go ahead. It has taken some time for it to realise the enormity of the possibility of Scotland seceding from the rest of the United Kingdom, and that is something that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has had to deal with. He has also had to deal with a very difficult negotiating body in the Scottish Executive, and its leader in particular. Driving a bargain with it is not easy.

We should consider that earlier this week—and I hope I am not giving any secrets away—we may not have had even this letter and the Statement today if it had not been for the intervention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness. Admittedly, he was under pressure from the Opposition—both the Front and Back Benches—and no doubt from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, as well, but it is to his credit that he got us the Statement. Otherwise we would really have been dealing with it in the dark.