House Committee

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, has in a sense put her finger on it. We have no procedure in this House for assessing whether someone in these circumstances is capable of repaying. If the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, cannot in all conscience repay this money because she does not have it, I would not be in favour of penalising her in the way that she is being penalised. If on the other hand she can repay it and is deliberately not doing so, it seems to me that the decision that the House is being asked to make is perfectly proper. There is a gap. We have no procedure for determining what her circumstances are, and it would have to be done in a quasi-judicial way. I wonder whether the way out today, because this is a very troubling matter, is for the Chairman to take the matter back to the committee and see whether we cannot institute some form of sensible procedure for determining the basic question of fact upon which, in the end, this matter depends.

[Lord Alderdice]

As a member of the committee, I toiled with other members of the committee over this very difficult question, on which it is not easy to become entirely clear. Noble Lords who were on the Privileges Committee have to some extent confused the role that they very properly exercised at that time—exercising discipline in respect of an offence that had happened—with the quite different responsibility of the House Committee to address not a matter from the past but a current problem of continued and ongoing indebtedness to your Lordships' House. Therefore, I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that it is not a retrospective matter but a current matter, and that the indebtedness continues. It is not clear whether the person’s failure to repay is intentional or because there were no other possibilities, although I know in my part of the world that it has not been entirely unusual for people to have their fines paid for them, never mind their debts. That is not an area in which we can necessarily get involved.

However, there is a further matter. Comparisons have been made with Dickens and debtors’ prisons and things of the kind. This is not a private club; it is not a company; it is part of the legislature of this country. It is not a right for us to be here; it is a responsibility for us to be here and to fulfil that responsibility on behalf of the country.

I have no doubt in my mind how the country would regard a Member of your Lordships' House who continued not to repay debts that should never have been incurred in the first place. I know what the country would say about speeches, votes, questions and interventions by a noble Lord—indeed, I do not think that people would regard such a person as a noble Lord at all. We have the reputation of your Lordships' House to consider in this matter.

Noble Lords will, I am sure, have read the report and will understand that when the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, talked about there being no right to permanently suspend a Member, she was of course right. However, the report makes it clear that this can last only until the debt is repaid and until the end of the Parliament. If it is still unpaid in the next Parliament, the next Parliament must then make its decision. This is not permanent; it is dependent on the repayment of a current debt, not the punishment of a past misdeed. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the House Committee could properly return with anything other than the recommendation that it has thoughtfully made to your Lordships' House today.

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, this should be a day of great joy for me because it is exactly a year ago today that I entered this House, but because of this desperately sad issue there is no joy. I listened closely to what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, said. Of course, this is a heavy burden that we undertake, but I cannot agree with her that this is retrospective. When a fine is imposed, it is meant to be repaid. There is an explicit understanding in that. Repaying a fine is not a voluntary gesture.

I hope that the noble and learned Baroness will forgive my impertinence, because she has far greater legal experience than me, when I say that she has made a fundamental error. For all the legal learning, she has construed an argument that would never be accepted by a jury of ordinary men and women. A Peer who had misappropriated public funds and not repaid them is not a victim. He or she cannot expect simply to walk back in as if nothing had happened; £125,000 is not a drop in the ocean, it is a huge figure. How many decades does a state pensioner have to wait until they get anywhere close to that sort of total?

The Chairman of Committees is entirely right. What he proposes is sensible, measured and just. I also happen to believe that it is in the best interests of the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin. I wrote an entirely personal letter to her some time ago, but I thought it appropriate that I should not say anything in public that I would not have said to her directly. I urged her to take into account that if she were to rush back here without having repaid her outstanding dues, she would find herself subject to huge public and press hostility. It would do her and this House only further harm. I have not had a reply and perhaps I should not expect one, but if she would only let it be known to the House that she will not rush back and has no intention of claiming more money, perhaps there would be no need to take the action that we are proposing to take today. However, she has not, so I fear that we must. I hope that she will bear in mind—