Iraq

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, I wonder whether we are inflating ISIS a little in this erudite debate. I suspect that most MPs today are voting in the dark, because the enemy remains obscure. On the published maps, ISIS is mainly represented in long lines and blotches rather than in territorial space. Its success reminds me more of the conjuror impressing an audience than of a power capable of covering wide frontiers. But I do not doubt that we are dealing with a murderous operation, which has to be confronted. There has to be an international response and we must welcome the unanimity of UNSC Resolution 2178 on violent extremism and prohibition on foreign fighters. Even so, we must all have some doubts about the effectiveness of an intervention in the long run. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, referred to owning the consequences.

Air strikes can have only limited impact—the one-off destruction of known enemy targets such as arms dumps and command centres. They have to be away from populations but there will always be civilian casualties. There will be a lot of civilians who, while unsympathetic to ISIS, will not see the US on any mercy mission either. Air strikes may contain and punish but, as has been said repeatedly, they cannot solve the problems of hearts and minds and will harden the feelings of many ordinary citizens. Here I warmly endorse the wise words of the right reverent Prelate the Bishop of Derby. In the long run, only troops from Iraq itself, Shia and Sunni and the hard-pressed Kurdish Peshmerga, reinforced by Arab or other neighbours, can influence their own people and push back the terrorists occupying their land.

We all remember the short-term success of allied strikes in Libya. We can all recall the excitement of air power over Kabul. But those days seem far behind us and we are still learning the lessons. We forget that so often we are dealing on the ground with family clans and tribal leaders, and so-called non-state actors, as well as with an often divided and ineffectual central government, such as we still have in Iraq. Bargains have to be made—in this case, with the Sunni leaders. Many of the Sunnis behind this present outrage surely must be remembering the dismantling of their world by Mr Bush and our own Government a decade ago. I heard what the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, said, but we should admit that that was a strategic mistake for which we are all paying a price. There is no point now in just preaching the rule of law and democracy in a vacuum occupied by criminals and dressed up as Sharia. Islam condemns the so-called Islamic State and anyone associated with it.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Williams, that the UN could be doing more to attract international support on a wider front and it should provide a platform for other countries, such as Iran. We should not expect any thaw in US-Iranian relations, but there will be more opportunities for diplomatic dialogue and the UK may be better placed to take them up than the US. “Let the time mature” was the phrase used by President Rouhani on CBS this week. Syria is a different issue, but clearly President Assad has had a new smile on his face this week, anticipating some quiet understanding, if not practical co-operation, with the United States.

Finally, we must applaud again the hospitality shown by Turkey and others to the thousands of refugees still within their borders. We commend the aid agencies—Christian Aid and others—which are actively helping families. Like the late David Haines, the lives of many aid workers are also threatened by ISIS. Their courage must be applauded and rewarded where possible with proper protection. This will be another long campaign.

European Council and Afghanistan

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with that point, which is a variant of the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons. In so far as we are able to do that, it is clearly Her Majesty’s Government’s intention to lend every effort to bring that about, as the noble Lord says. I cannot, for obvious reasons, guarantee that in a far-off country with a very different history and culture we can undertake to deliver that. However, I know that it is very much our intention.

[The Earl of Sandwich]

What will Afghan children remember about our intervention in Afghanistan over the past 10 years? The Statement implies that we are going to leave an entirely military legacy post-2014. Can the Leader of the House assure us that there will be a reconstruction conference? Investment must come in when ISAF goes out. We will have to shore up this country for several years to come, building up employment and jobs in particular.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I would hope that they might remember the efforts of a country to spread education, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister pointed out, the efforts of a country to spread and protect the rights and education of women, and the kind of efforts to which the noble Lord refers to help to get the economy working in a way that is not dependent on the awful trade in drugs. I can certainly reassure the noble Lord that, as I understand it, foreign Governments intend to carry on with a generous package of aid to try to help with precisely the kind of reconstruction, and getting Afghanistan on to a more secure footing, of the sort to which the noble Lord refers.

Business of the House

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the House has taken the decision over time as to how long it wants to set aside for debates. I take the point about the importance of some of the issues being discussed this afternoon, and the number of speakers who have signed up to discuss Europe is an indication of the great deal of interest that there is in that subject. If there is appetite for a debate of that nature, my noble friend the Chief Whip is always available to discuss that, and one could have a discussion through the usual channels as to whether we could make more time available.

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, I feel it is an important discussion to have now. For example, can the noble Lord say whether the usual channels have discussed and agreed the principle of a limit on the numbers of speakers, which would surely allow those who have prepared for several weeks for debates to have their say in a reasonable way?

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, time is short and I do not want to prolong this debate. However, I, too, am concerned about the time limits today on speeches, on issues which are of concern to all the people of our country. We are a self-regulating House and, although on this occasion it is too late, my noble friend Lord Bassam did make representations to the Chief Whip suggesting that perhaps we could have additional time on another day for the second debate. It is clearly too late now but I hope that in future the Government will exercise more flexibility when it comes to these issues in a self-regulating House.

Queen’s Speech

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wakeham]

It is another story as to why the noble Lord did not get anywhere with it. I will not bore the House with it now, but he and I know many of those reasons.

The main lesson of my report has not been learnt even to this day. Our report recommended a compromise, and that is why people did not like it. Everybody compared their ideal solution with our compromise, and our compromise looked weak and wishy-washy compared with what they wanted. We talked about a compromise; in the modern jargon, that is a consensus, but it is the same thing. We did not reach our consensus easily, I can tell you. One of my noble friends who was on the commission told me privately when we started, “I have already been party to a published document that said that there had to be an elected element in any reform of the House of Lords”. One very distinguished Labour Member of Parliament—a good many noble Lords will guess who I mean, but I shall not mention his name—came to me to say, “If the commission so much as discusses elected Members, I will not attend any more of the meetings”. I persuaded them both to stay. They both signed the report, and we got consensus. It is therefore possible for people of goodwill to get consensus.

What do I mean by consensus? I mean that all our preconceived positions, both of and within the parties, have somehow to be melded together in a form of compromise for a way forward. As my noble friend the Leader of the House has acknowledged, as a result of the Joint Committee report the Government have to think again about a number of the things which they are doing. If I may say so to the Labour Party, it, too, has to think again about the idea that it can have a 100% elected membership. It is quite simply unrealistic. A consensus outcome will not produce that. We have in Parliament a very big responsibility to get this right and to get consensus because, as people have frequently said, outside this Chamber there is no great interest in what goes on in here. They are not interested in what we do and for us therefore to try to put through a solution that was highly controversial within the House would be a grave dereliction of our total responsibilities as a Parliament. Consensus is therefore what we have to achieve.

Let me say three things about the position as I see it. First, the Government are right to try to see whether they can find a consensus. This issue has been hanging about long enough, and if it is possible to find consensus, we ought to move forward. Secondly, in my view a consensus will involve a partly elected and a partly appointed House. There will be some very tricky negotiations as to how they are going to achieve that. An issue which is now highly relevant, but was not realised 10 years ago, is the effect that that will have on the House of Commons. It has to be thought about very carefully. Thirdly, and of this I am quite sure, if the House of Commons reaches a consensus and sends us a Bill that reflects that consensus, the responsibilities of this House are clear. We should treat the Bill like any other coming before the House. We should give it a Second Reading, try to improve it in Committee and give it proper scrutiny in the normal way. This applies, I am afraid, particularly to noble Lords who do not like things going on as they are. All of us have a responsibility to act in accordance with our precedents.

Finally, I have been in this House for 18 years and was also in the House of Commons for 18 years. I had the honour of being Leader of each House. There are still Members of this House in all parties and of none who are of great distinction, but the place has changed in the 18 years I have been here—and not for the better. When I first came here, I remember Lord Callaghan and Lord Whitelaw getting up time and time again when their Governments were in difficulties to say, “I completely accept the right of your Lordships to pass this amendment, but is it wise?”. They were really saying that there is no point in a revising House passing series after series of amendments which will just be reversed when they get to the House of Commons. A revising House should be looking at the legislation that has come forward and seeking to improve it, particularly where the House of Commons is singing on an uncertain note. That is the moment to make amendments towards effective legislation, rather than sending back hundreds of amendments. I hope that people will not be offended if I suggest that we use with some humility the position that we are somehow superior in public perceptions and in our judgment of the public good. The House of Commons is the elected House, its Members accountable to their electorates, and we should not live in a world of wishful thinking, make-believe or has-beens.

[The Earl of Sandwich]

Would the noble Lord care to make a comment in his search for consensus on the original Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel?

[Lord Wakeham]

I will be frightfully indiscreet and say that if I were still in charge of business management, I would be 100% in favour of my noble friend’s Bill but probably would still not have given it government time to get it through, because I know perfectly well what happens. Every single amendment you can think of would have been added to it, and the timetable of the Government would have been lost. I have no idea whether that is the Government’s view, so while I am in favour of what he wants to do and think it a disgrace that we have not found the time to do it, I can see the difficulties of business management if you bring in a Bill of that sort when there is no consensus on the way forward.

Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, I am a 1660s placeman and I am very proud to have been in this House to represent my family for such a long time. I shall try hard to keep exasperation out of my voice today but, in my view, the coalition is propelling us towards certain constitutional disaster. The draft Bill will run straight into the sand and I can find very little comfort in the Joint Committee’s report—partly because we have read it all before but also because we have seen that it is a clear expression of the spectrum of discontent and confusion about our present situation and the way forward. However, it covers new ground and I know that a lot of serious people have contributed to it.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, and the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, I do not see elections to this House as a necessary route to legitimacy or democracy. Indeed, I am among those reformists who value and cherish the traditions of this House and the practices of our revising Chamber as they are now. They just need to be improved. An increasing number of Peers and MPs think that a Bill advocating the abolition of the present House, or even contemplation of it, is nothing less than madness and perhaps political suicide. MPs recognise that. At a recent 1922 Committee meeting, as many as 40 Back-Bench MPs are said to have opposed it; several PPSs are against elections; and perhaps as many as six Cabinet Ministers have expressed severe reservations about the Bill. Oliver Heald MP, former shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, apparently changed his mind after listening to expert witnesses. That is what we want to hear. The Conservative manifesto speaks only of working towards building a consensus, and it is already clear that there is no consensus on this issue.

As we have heard, there are positive reforms that could be enacted at once, building on the work done by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and others. They appear in Chapter 5 of the alternative report, on pages 78 to 79, but I have put them in my own order of priority: first, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, has already demonstrated, the establishment of a statutory appointments commission well away from Downing Street, which has been recommended for years but patronage still prevails; secondly, ending the hereditary by-elections, the principle having already been removed by the 1999 Act, although the public do not know that we are still electing hereditary Peers; thirdly, cutting the link between the honours system and membership of the House of Lords; fourthly, reducing the size of the House, with a moratorium on new Peers; fifthly, improving the balance of membership with more attention to diversity and the representation of other faiths; and, sixthly, provisions for the retirement and exclusion of Members of the House of Lords. I personally feel that one year’s expenses would be a reasonable offer to older Members of the House who might wish to retire voluntarily.

I do not accept schemes based on attendance because so many of our most valuable independent Peers attend only occasionally. I do not see the point of a constitutional convention proposed in the alternative report, which will only delay reform even further. It cannot be said too often that the coalition still has an opportunity to carry out these reforms now, and it is possible that during the passage of the Bill there may be openings for concessions that would lead to that situation; otherwise we will have an inevitable debacle with the present Bill, which the Joint Committee has shown to be defective, especially on primacy and powers in Clause 2.

When there are already so many urgent matters, as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, pointed out, why are this Government so keen to squeeze all other legislation into a corner while the juggernaut of reform proceeds over the next two years, dominating time in both Houses? One can foresee colossal blockships ahead, multitudes of amendments, night after night of pure frustration on a greater scale than we have already endured with recent Bills on parliamentary reform. Long before the Parliament Act is invoked, which is still a highly contested issue, there will be havoc and destruction. Morale in this House will sink to its lowest level, as surely it must, if we are talking of the destruction of this Chamber.

Having spoken to one member of the Cabinet last week and indeed attempted to entertain him with teacakes next door, with mixed success, I have tried to read the Government’s mind and have come up with this; Lords reform is the glue that keeps the coalition going. There are enough passionate Liberals to keep it on the list, although many of them disagree. On the Tory side, as we have heard, the 1922 Committee meeting showed that much more trouble is brewing. Public opinion is claimed to be on their side but I have my doubts about that. There has been a surge of opinion in favour of the Lords after amendments to the legal aid, health and other Bills proved to the public that this House is essential to the democratic process.

Abolition would certainly not carry public support in a referendum, and many people will smell a rat if the coalition disguises it as reform. Public attitudes to this House are quite complex and contradictory, as a House of Lords’ Library note makes clear, and a referendum could be very misleading and damaging.

I freely admit that there are some in the Commons who believe that two elected Houses can work together as well as the present ones, and that the existing conventions can endure, but most MPs are thinking about the composition and not the powers of the two Houses, which are bound to collide as they do in the United States. I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, was right about war-making there.

Finally, the Government understandably are avoiding the question of costs. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, and others demonstrated conclusively that the transition to an elected House would cost a lot. The Treasury will hardly advertise such a waste of resources now.

There is an excellent group in this House, led by the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Norton, that genuinely seeks a compromise on reform and would like us to move now towards an effective rather than an elected Chamber. I again urge the Government to listen to the group, as more and more Members of another place are doing, and to take this last opportunity to drop the Bill or to accept amendments that will lead quickly to a solution and avoid the expensive quagmire that otherwise will be inevitable.

Peers

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, in many ways, that may well have been a definition of those Peers who worked bravely on behalf of the Opposition in the dark years between 1997 and 2010. However, I indicated in answer to an earlier question that I thought the term “working Peer” was now outdated.

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that without financial inducements there is no possibility of any Peer—or very few Peers—retiring?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, when the leave of absence scheme was introduced, several hundred Peers—or in the low hundreds—took advantage of it without financial inducement, so I do not agree with the noble Earl’s premise. I also think that the public would find it very hard to understand why many who had been given the honour of being a Member of the House of Lords should then be paid to leave it.

House of Lords Reform

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, this debate goes on so long that I almost feel that I have been here for 350 years—in some senses, some of us have. I will focus today, however, on the present size of the House. There cannot be anyone here who does not want to reduce the number, which is growing every day. Our indulgent public would be quite hostile to us if they knew that we were funding a second Chamber of almost 800 Peers, half of whom do not attend regularly, so I hope that no one will tell them. Our numbers are absurdly high compared to other second Chambers.

That must be changed. There is only one way to change it quickly and soon: political parties will have to restrain themselves. They are the principal source of appointments, and hence the primary means of reducing our numbers over a reasonable time. There are dissolution honours, resignation honours and political lists of working Peers. The scene here nearly every day is still reminiscent of Trollope and WS Gilbert. Our website states that all Peers are vetted by an independent appointments commission. That is misleading. Rewards for favours and political patronage remain, only just out of sight of the public. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, has given a strong example. The do-nothing excuse on Lords reform—that in time we will have a partly or wholly elected Chamber—will not do. We heard that from the previous Government, but nothing happened, even at the last minute, when the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and his colleagues began to see the wisdom of the Steel proposals. The case for elections has been effectively demolished today and will be demolished again.

We are moving too slowly, and I propose that something is done about it now. One sensible way would be to bring the party and independent appointments together under a single committee of respected and still active retired civil servants. I rather like the phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Birt, “democratically rooted”. I have been at a loss to understand why both Front Benches have been against a statutory appointments commission. Perhaps the noble Lords who will be winding-up the debate can explain that. I am sure that it is not Downing Street or the Civil Service who are against that but the parties themselves, who wish to retain control over their appointments. Again, if the public knew all that, they would be horrified that the parties are still promising appointments as a reward for service.

There is now consideration for the balance of numbers and diversity of professions in the House, but not of the overall numbers. The noble Lord, Lord Lea, had a good phrase: leapfrogging is going on all the time. I very much hope to see the present Appointments Commission strengthened and, ultimately, made statutory. That is simply common sense, as many noble Lords have said.

What are the alternatives? The Leader of the House mentioned a Leader’s Group on retirement. I am glad that that subject is now being given fuller consideration. I supported an amendment to the constitutional reform Bill on that. One virtue of this House is old age; I increasingly recognise that. No other Assembly or organisation in this country reveres wise old heads as much as a loya jurga or a village shura in Afghanistan as does this House. The wise women and men here are precious to the nation, and long may they remain.

However, the proposed new national retirement age is lower than our average age in this House. We are not and should not be exempt from public discussion about the right age to retire. People grow old at a different pace, and there should be at least an opportunity for party leaders and our Convenor to speak to people from time to time to listen to their intentions. Length of service should be important but not a determining factor. Lord Russell and Lord Longford were examples of those who could never be allowed to retire—and they would not have agreed to it anyway. Fortunately, we are not all like that. In my view, it is time that we introduced that aspect of human resources, with a reasonable budget to help Peers in difficulty during their first year or two of retirement.

I repeat what I said at the outset. Those changes must be made now. They do not all need legislation or months of consultation. The virtue of the Steel Bill is that the House need not always be waiting for Godot or the Government. It can resolve to move now towards practical reforms, which most of us will see in our lifetime. Proposals that we have seen before are so far reaching and have so many constitutional implications—especially those regarding elections—that they would take many years to discuss and implement, and none of us would be left here to see them through.