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

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Lord Butler of Brockwell

Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, this is the only opportunity I have to say that it is not often I would do anything which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, did not approve of. But I voted against the Motion and I want to make the point that it was the only way in which the House could send a message to the Government, and to people outside, that the House is greatly in favour of the Bill going forward.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I am terribly sorry to intervene but the reason I did not vote on it was exactly the opposite. The Motion actually referred to regret about the Burns report; it would not in fact have prevented the Committee stage or any part of the Bill. It expressed regret that it had not been done, so, having read the Motion, I do not think that it conveyed exactly what people thought.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

Before the noble Lord sits down, can I just say in reply that, if he reads the newspapers tomorrow or listens to “Yesterday in Parliament”, he will hear that the way in which the House demonstrated that it wanted to support the Grocott Bill was through that Bill.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I want to say one thing on Amendment 59, which is the last one in this group and is a non-destructive amendment, which is why intrigued me.

House of Lords Act 1999 (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Lord Butler of Brockwell

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 9th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I wish to make a quick point and not detain noble Lords. This series of amendments—from Amendment 5 onwards—is about trying to modify the electoral system to make it more sensible. That is something I do not object to at all. If one wants to have a debate about the hereditary Peers election system, one should probably at some point do something. I am not sure that this Bill is the right place to do it but there is an effort here to have a more sensible system. The reason I voted previously in the way that I did was because until we remove the power of the head of the Executive—in other words, the Prime Minister—to appoint everyone, either directly or indirectly, to the Chamber that is passing laws to control that process, I think we must resist any reform. If you change the powers of the Prime Minister to appoint people to the Lords, then I am with you and we can move forward as a democracy.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, has asked for an assurance from the Minister. She will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that she has given the assurance that the Government will not let this Bill pass, and that if it did pass in your Lordships’ House, the Government would not allow it to pass in the House of Commons. If the Minister will repeat that, I think that we can bring this procedure, which does no credit to this House, to an end.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Lord Butler of Brockwell

Thursday 17th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, having supported the Minister in response to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and having criticised him in response to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, in this case I support the Government and agree with those who oppose this amendment.

If we pass this amendment we would find ourselves in exactly the same danger as we are with the provision of this Bill. We would be presented with a Bill in the latter part of 2016 that would be very urgent and the House would have inadequate time to consider. Although two and half years seems a long time, let us consider what is going to happen in the mean time. The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has been asked to carry out a thorough review of the RIPA legislation. I understand that his timetable is to try to complete that by the time of the Dissolution of this Parliament, by May of next year.

The Intelligence and Security Committee is similarly carrying out a review. This autumn we plan to have public hearings where those who are critical of the legislation can have their say. I hope that that will generate a public debate and allow these issues to be widely discussed; that will be very valuable. We also hope to reach a conclusion by the end of the Parliament. Indeed, we had better, because there will be a new committee after that. The election will be in May of next year. The new Government will come in with quite a short time before the Summer Recess, when there will be other urgent things to do. It has been suggested that there should be a Joint Committee of the two Houses to look at the conclusions of the reviewer of terrorism legislation, and those of the Intelligence and Security Committee. It will want to have time to consider that. It really will not be practicable to reach a position where properly considered legislation can be introduced until we are well into 2016.

Two and a half years may seem a long time, but when one considers that those are the sensible and necessary steps before legislation is introduced and passed, it follows that the end of 2016 really is the earliest possible date when we can expect to have properly considered and satisfactory legislation in place of the Bill that we are passing today.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I have not intervened earlier because I have been doing lots of other things, but I wanted to intervene on this amendment and say that I think that this is a sensible approach. I cannot believe that you can produce this Bill within a couple of weeks and then say that we cannot do something better in a year and a half. It seems that we are trying just to push the boundaries out, and the question is why. It tends to be the people who can see the challenges, who come from a senior executive background, who are trying to get this sorted out, and I can see their point.

We need to consider some of the principles behind the amendment, which is why I fully support it, and we need to discuss those principles very early on. The issue is not the technicalities in the Bill, the definitions of communication data and metadata; we know that we need to do this for the purposes of finding terrorists, enforcing the law and stuff like that. The real challenge is posed by that old bit of Latin—which I might as well use, as we are now using Latin—sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchers? Who guards the guardians? We should remember the line that is supposed to come after that, which I will say in English: they keep quiet about the girl’s secrets and get her as their payment. Everyone hushes things up. That is the trouble. If corruption runs high enough, you get the Cambridge set—was it four or five by the end of it all? You get J Edgar Hoover.

That sounds as if I am painting a hugely black picture, but there is danger there, even more so now that we have rolled together—for the purpose of catching terrorists and people in serious and organised crime, which we have had to do—what used to be our external forces, GCHQ and MI6, responsible to the Foreign Office, and our internal police, which was MI5 and is now basically the NCA. In America the CIA and the FBI were kept separate. We have started to bring our forces together because of things falling between the cracks. This means that we are potentially giving huge powers to internal police. Therefore, how those at the top are to be watched is of vital importance.