Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Duncan of Springbank

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

I have received a single request to speak after the Minister. I call the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, we are talking about three different amendments; I am focusing on that from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. In so far as I could tell, the detail of the Minister’s objection to the right reverend Prelate’s amendment was that further delay could be caused by uncertainty over the attribution of costs and that he objected to the amendment’s requirement that the scheme be statutory. Further delay depends on how long it takes the Government to come forward with their scheme; they are in complete control of the timescale. On the statutory scheme, to foster peace and good will between the right reverend Prelate and the Government, I suggest that “statutory” be replaced by “government” scheme—which need not necessarily be statutory, for the reasons the Minister gave. Would he be prepared to entertain this?

Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Duncan of Springbank

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard
Wednesday 17th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

I have received a single request to speak after the Minister. I called the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The Minister did not comment on the figures given by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, which struck the House as of great concern. He said that average remediation costs could be in the order of £50,000 to £60,000 per leaseholder. Can the Minister comment on those figures?

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Duncan of Springbank

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

I have received a single request to speak after the Minister. I call the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for the lengthy reply she has given. However, unless I misheard her, she did not in fact give a direct reply to my very fundamental question on Amendment 2. It was: would the authorisation by agents of the state of murder, rape and torture be against the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights? If I understood her correctly, she said that nothing could be authorised that was against the Human Rights Act. Well, is it against the Human Rights Act or not? That is a straight question, but I noticed that she did not mention the European Convention on Human Rights at all in her reply. Can she say whether the authorisation of murder, rape and torture would be against that convention?

Liaison Committee Report

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Duncan of Springbank

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

For noble Lords’ information, I should say that the Senior Deputy Speaker has the right to reply. I shall take all questions first and we will go to him afterwards, should he wish to return to them.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, these are extremely welcome proposals, and we are very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McFall, and his colleagues for the review that they have undertaken of the committee system in the House and the proposals that they have made. Rather belatedly—but at long last we are getting there—noble Lords are essentially introducing a proper systematic arrangement of committees in respect of domestic policy. Until now we have had a committee system only really in respect of European affairs. It is my view, which I have expressed in the House before, that we have been overweighted. It was good that we had the European Union Committee, but we gave no scrutiny whatever to the great generality of domestic policy, which is hugely important. As I have noted in the House before, in my five years as a Minister, including a period as Secretary of State, I was never once summoned to appear before a House of Lords committee, even though I am a Member of the House of Lords, which is a pretty serious condemnation of the way in which this House has conducted its scrutiny.

In respect of the proposals themselves, essentially we are playing catch-up with the House of Commons. The noble Lord said that our committee on European affairs was 47 years old, which is somewhat older than the Select Committees of the House of Commons. But of course the House of Commons had all the departmental committees in respect of domestic departments in 1980, and it has taken us 40 years before we finally got to a system which, in a very intelligent way, taking domestic policy areas in a cross-cutting way, has given us the capacity to do the same.

The House of Commons has made two big changes in the past 40 years in respect of its committees. The first was to introduce systematic departmental committees, but the second—and I am surrounded by former Members of the House of Commons who might have views on this, but it seems to me to be just as important a development—is that the chairs of those committees are now elected by the House at large. That great outbreak of internal democracy in the House of Commons has, I am told, had a very beneficial effect, not least that it has given much greater prominence to the MPs who chair those committees, and it has given them a strong mandate on behalf of the House as a whole. Indeed, because they are no longer beholden to the Whips, because they are not appointed by the Whips or through a process that involves the usual channels, they are also likely to be—how can I put this delicately?—less subject to persuasion from Ministers as to what they should say in their reports.

I want to ask something of the noble Lord, Lord McFall, a very distinguished former member of the House of Commons Treasury Committee. Now that we have domestic affairs committees worth the name, I encourage the Liaison Committee to adopt the second of the reforms that the House of Commons has adopted and have the chairs of these new committees elected by the House as a whole, as we elect the Lord Speaker, and not continue to be appointed essentially by the Whips in dark recesses of the House through processes which most of us have no knowledge of or capacity to influence. I ask the noble Lord to tell the House whether that is under consideration by his committee.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Duncan of Springbank

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 23rd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

I have received a request to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

[Lord Adonis [V]]

My Lords, the Minister has given a very full response, but may I check that we have the numbers right in respect of the seasonal workers pilot? This is clearly crucial in how we recruit workers from overseas to meet our vital seasonal needs. Did I take the Minister to say that 4,486 visas had been granted, of which 3,000—so about two-thirds—have actually come to the country? Have I correctly understood that that number is out of the 10,000 visas that the Government said, some months ago, they would make available to seasonal workers? If that is correct, is it the case that less than one-third of the visas that the Government said would be available for seasonal workers from outside the EU have actually been taken up? If that number is as low as it seems—3,000 out of 10,000—does the Minister have a view as to why the take-up has been so low?