NATO Summit
Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, on that last point, not only is START important, it is vital to our interests. So I can respond positively and say, yes, we will encourage all members of NATO to make representations to make sure that that treaty is ratified.
On the question of Georgia, I agree with my noble friend that it is still an outstanding and difficult issue. We will not do anything to make Russia believe that this is not still an important issue for us. There are a number of other bilateral issues as well. However, we also believe that we should not allow those to hold up these very important talks and the summit. That is why we have gone ahead with them. My noble friend should not be overly concerned, however, that we have forgotten the plight of Georgia; we have not.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, we have come a long way since President Reagan’s star wars concept and President Bush’s proposal for interceptors in Poland and radar installations in the Czech Republic. That is an important matter, as is the improvement in relations with Russia two years since the conflict in Georgia. The Minister said that Russia should withdraw from Georgia, but is that not a pipe dream given the evidence that Russia is militarising part of Abkhazia on the Black Sea? What is being demanded by Russia on missile defence? What will be the decision-making process? Will Russia have some form of veto over the intercepts? Equally, what is being said about Georgia and Ukraine’s membership of NATO? As a result of the agreement, have we decided to put back very indefinitely the applications of Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO? What, if any, movement was there at the summit on the “frozen conflicts”?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I am not aware that the last aspect of the noble Lord’s question was discussed. On his key point that the whole situation vis-à-vis Georgia is a pipe dream, we do not share that view and we believe that to be unduly pessimistic. Obviously, discussions are ongoing. In 2008, NATO and the UK condemned Russian military action in the break-away territories. Two years on, Russian troops remain in both separatist regions in considerably higher numbers than before the war. The UK Government strongly support the Geneva talks, which remain the only forum in which all parties to that conflict meet and which help to keep open the prospect of addressing unresolved security and humanitarian issues. We firmly believe that Russia should respect the territorial integrity of Georgia and other states as well as international law and human rights. That is why we call on all parties to play a constructive role in the continued efforts to resolve the conflict. Others may well have argued that we should have used the Georgia talks not to make progress on the greater issue, but that is not the view that we took. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, Georgia is not an issue that we have forgotten.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, in the same way as the figure of 650 is one that has developed over time and is basically an arbitrary one, so the figure of 600—I see that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, plucks a figure from the air. It was not quite like that. Six hundred strikes me as being a nice, round figure. But these are precisely the points that we will take up in Committee.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
If the motive, as the noble Lord says, is to save money, can he say how it is consistent with the constant churning out of new Peers by this coalition?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the number of new Peers since the general election is infinitesimally small compared with the number of new Peers introduced during the period of new Labour. Moreover, no one is suggesting that these new Peers will cost £12 million to house and look after in this House.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I appreciate that. The reason why I refer to that figure is because that is the group of people that the MP has to deal with. If someone comes in and says, “I want some help”, I do not think that you say, “Can you prove to me that you are a voter?”.
MPs provide the pool from which Ministers are chosen. That pool would be reduced. The removal of 50 MPs would reduce at a stroke the number of MPs available to scrutinise legislation and to hold the Government to account. Professor King said:
“The House of Commons, compared with other national legislatures, is already a feeble affair. The present proposal would enfeeble it further”.
I hope that, in the five days that it cobbled together this agreement, the coalition thought about what effect this number—to quote the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, “a nice round number”—would have on our democracy.
Why does the coalition propose the reduction? The Deputy Prime Minister, whom I mentioned earlier, said that it was because the legislation underpinning reviews had meant that the number of MPs had crept up. That is what he said in the House of Commons, but it is not so. The number of MPs is lower than it was a decade ago and no higher than it was 20 years ago. It is virtually impossible to discern any principle underlying the proposal to reduce the number of MPs. We will oppose the reduction and we will in any event make any reduction conditional on a proportionate reduction in the number of Ministers in the Commons.
Crucial in the Bill is the method for determining new constituency boundaries. With the exception of Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles, a new system will apply to all constituencies. The crux of the new system is that the driving factor will be the number of constituents in a constituency. We agree with the need for substantially greater equalisation of constituency size and that there should be a small number of exceptions to the process, but we consider that the constituencies to be treated as exceptions to the system should be identified and chosen in a fair way. Why not choose the Isle of Wight? Why not recognise the importance of keeping Cornish and Devonian constituencies separate from each other? We support the inclusion of the two exceptions that are already there, but we think that there should be more and that their selection should be entrusted to someone other than a politician. Let there be a fair process. If the hybridity route has been rejected by this House, perhaps there should be an inquiry conducted by the boundary commissions, which have proved themselves over very many years to be above politics.
As regional, council and even ward boundaries are crossed in the onward march to perfectly sized constituencies, representation will become more strained and harder to navigate. For instance, the Government’s insistence on only 5 per cent leniency in constituency size would require 385 extra electors to be found for the Forest of Dean and 59 electors to be expelled from Warrington. The prospect is ridiculous.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My noble and learned friend has mentioned the report of the Constitution Committee. Is he also aware of the recommendation of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee in the other place, which is a Conservative-dominated committee? It said:
“in terms of … geography, culture and history … We recommend that the Government brings forward amendments to the Bill to permit the Boundary Commission to give greater weight to these factors when drawing up new constituencies than it is currently allowed under the current proposals”.
Again, a committee of this Parliament rejects what the Government are doing.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, I was not aware of that. There seems to be a trend that any independent body within Parliament that looks at this matter criticises the way in which it has been done and criticises the conclusions. The only way in which we can give effect to that is by this House introducing amendments to the Bill.
The prospect of the sort of fiddling around with constituencies to which I have referred is ridiculous and unnecessary. It can be removed by increasing the leeway to 10 per cent either side of the standard constituency size, which would give considerable equalisation but at the same time give the ability to reflect local needs. Mathematical purity should not be allowed to carve up communities. We advise the Government that they should seek a balance between equalisation and recognition of tradition, culture, and local authority boundaries rather than aim for bland uniformity.
To add insult to injury, the Bill plans to remove public inquiries from the boundary process. The proposals in the Bill have been described by Dr Stuart Wilks-Heeg of Democratic Audit as,
“the most ambitious attempt to redraw the UK’s electoral geography in six decades”.
As acknowledged by the chairs of the boundary commissions, every constituency will have to change. If this is not an ideal moment to include the public, who will be most affected by these changes, in a meaningful way, I cannot think what is. The Government talk—just as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has talked—of the big society and of a new politics where power is handed to the people, but they stubbornly ignore the calls of the constituencies of the Isle of Wight or Argyll and Bute to special recognition of their communities. The Government may talk of the big society, but with the abolition of public inquiries they will remove the one meaningful mechanism that allows ordinary people to have their say. I hope that the coalition Government will realise their mistake, but I am not optimistic.
The Electoral Reform Society has described the coalition’s proposals as meaning that,
“most constituencies will pay less regard to what most voters think of as community and natural boundaries, and change more frequently, destabilising the link between MPs and constituents”.
The United States, notes the Electoral Reform Society,
“has rigorous requirements for arithmetical equality of population in congressional districts, but the worst gerrymandering in the developed world”.
We want to support proposals for greater equalisation and we would welcome discussions with the coalition to achieve it. This sort of Bill is a classic vehicle for seeking consensus rather than ramming things through in this way. We will not support operating in this overly hasty way, which places the power to influence constituency boundaries out of reach of local people and which in the short-term will disfranchise 3.5 million people in the country, the vast majority of whom are young, living in private rented accommodation, in poverty and from the BME communities.
This Bill will promote rapid and damaging changes to our constitution in order to have the new boundaries in place by the next election. It will do so at great cost to local communities and to the unregistered voter, and it will do long-term damage to faith in our politics. We can achieve the goal of equalisation without the damage that this Bill will cause. I hope that the fact that there is now a coalition embracing the Tories and the Liberal Democrats does not mean that this House loses its reputation for amending Bills when they need amending. I hope that the House will join together to make this Bill a much better Bill than the poor, partisan Bill that it is at the moment. It can be done, and I ask your Lordships’ House to help us to do that.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, I recall a veteran US Congressman stating that we have reached the stage of the debate where everything that can be said has been said, but not everyone has said it and I propose to make what I hope are one or two new points.
I start with a confession. I have a considerable degree of sympathy for the Liberal Democrats. Indeed, I am sorry for them because I feel that they have reached, with the Conservatives and the coalition, a sort of Faustian pact, but in my judgment the result will be a tragedy for them of Greek proportions and one of their own making.
AV is an orphan concept—it is unloved by all and cherished by none. No one wants it, and the Conservatives, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said very well, prefer first past the post. They do not want any change. Many of my Labour colleagues, like me, were rather unwillingly led to accept it as part of a pre-election matter, but after the general election defeat they no longer feel any obligation to support it. The Liberal Democrats do not want it; they prefer a full multi-member system. For them, therefore, AV is second best and of course ultimately the electorate will reject it.
The debate is, in part, about the Liberal Democrats’ towering obsession with constitutional reform. It is, for them, an all-pervading priority and they are willing to dump long-held principles for it, whether it be tuition fees, where their leader was going to die in a ditch, or welfare reform and housing benefit. If one were asked to say which policy has been most distinctive for the Liberals over the past decades, it has surely been a devotion to the European Union, yet the Liberal Democrats appear willing to abandon even that, as they have tamely accepted the EU sovereignty Bill, which is populist and against all their instincts. It is designed to block possible changes in the European Union—even those, such as matters relating to QMV, which are manifestly in the UK’s national interests. Therefore, the Liberal Democrats appear willing to yield most of the field to the Conservatives to achieve their aim of constitutional reform, which for some, I suppose, is the enduring legacy of Lloyd George.
However, now we come to the Greek tragedy element of this—that the Liberal Democrats will not achieve their aim. They will be left with nothing because, in my judgment, the public will vote against AV. Therefore, all these concessions and the dropping of long-held principles will be in vain, and equally the public will punish them because of the unpopular policies and cuts that they have accepted. That is bound to lead to conflict within their ranks: those in government will wish to keep the trappings of office; the rank and file will feel betrayed. I think there is an old US saying that a platform is something to run on, not to stand on. That is perhaps what has happened with many of the promises made prior to the election.
I have one further thought on AV. There is a real danger that there will be a low turnout in the referendum. The public do not share the obsession with constitutional reform; it is very difficult to motivate people in such areas, as former Members of the other place will confirm; and the Electoral Commission found very low levels of public understanding about voting systems. This does therefore back the argument for at least a threshold in the referendum.
So far as concerns the reduction in the number of constituencies, the Government are determined to press ahead. No amendments were made to the Bill in the other place and there is a whiff of gerrymandering. The number of 600 has clearly been chosen deliberately as the most disadvantageous to the Labour Party. What is the aim if not party advantage? In one sense, the Government have sold the pass in terms of community by recognising the special nature of the two island constituencies. As has just been said very well, what about the Isle of Wight, what about Ynys Mon, and what about other areas with clear community identification? The boundary commissioners will, inevitably, have to divide communities and the disparity should be 10 per cent and not 5 per cent. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that there will be only one central Boundary Commission. The joy of these local inquiries, as I have witnessed, is that the views of the boundary commissioners can be tested and challenged by local opinion because a central body will not understand the intricacies of local identity. All will be sacrificed on the altar of mathematical correctness and precision. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn said, there is a danger of in-and-out communities.
I wish to make two brief points on Wales and they were made very well by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan. My old constituency, Swansea East, I know very well. I like to think that I share the prejudices of my community. I was born there, went to school there and went to university there and I am the only member of my family ever to leave there. I know very well all parts of that constituency. Currently, the area is divided into three seats, Swansea East, Swansea West and Gower, each with an electorate of about 60,000. If the electoral quota is to be 76,000, we will have two and a half seats, and how one divides a proud city, composed of a series of villages held together by gossip, into two and a half constituencies I do not know.
On broader Welsh issues, I adopt the concerns of the Select Committee which I quoted earlier and which I shall not quote again, but England will lose about 5 per cent of its seats; Scotland about 16 per cent; and Wales 25 per cent, probably falling from 40 seats to 30. In the past there has been a compact—even in 1832—which meant that Wales was somewhat over represented with 35 Members, but that compact has now been broken. Welsh weight at Westminster will be reduced and very possibly encouragement will be given to separatists by the so-called unionist party.
Finally, the government juggernaut has moved on from the other place to the House of Lords. There has been no amendment. When I lecture to schools about this place, I talk about the traditional role of this Chamber as being a chamber for second thoughts and for thinking again, based on the fact that no one party holds a majority. The fact of the coalition has overturned that presumption—a safe majority now, as we saw in last week’s debate, which is to be increased within a few weeks by the new coalition appointments. In my judgment, this is a bad day for democracy.
House of Lords Reform
Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I well understand the concern being expressed around the Chamber about due process, but quite frankly, as Leader of the Opposition, I am not responsible for that due process. This is a matter for the Government and noble Lords should continue to put their questions to them.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My noble friend appears to agree that the Government have made a crashing error of judgment in excluding the Cross-Bench Peers, who clearly have a legitimate interest in the outcome of the draft Bill. Will my noble friend therefore not adopt a grandmotherly attitude, listen to the Cross-Benchers herself and be prepared to put forward their view, as they are excluded from the committee?
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, it would give me great pleasure to listen to the Cross-Benchers and to put forward their views in the committee. I must rapidly move on and come to a conclusion.
From everything that has been said, it is clear that this is going to be a separate Bill and not part of a great reforming Bill. However, can the Leader of the House confirm that its separation will not mean that it will be considered in isolation from issues such as voting systems? Would it really be sensible for the people of Scotland, for example, to be subjected to as many as four different voting systems, perhaps on one day?
In relation to pre-legislative scrutiny, can the Leader of the House state that a Joint Committee, which I welcome, will be given enough time to consider, in depth and in detail, all the complex issues involved in further substantial reform of the House? For example, can the Leader confirm that such a Joint Committee will fully take into account the stipulation of the last cross-party Joint Committee of both Houses, chaired by my noble friend Lord Cunningham of Felling, on the conventions of this House, that if substantial proposals on the reform of your Lordships' House are brought forward, then the issues considered by the Joint Committee will need to be examined again?
The powers and functions of this House are significant and merit careful consideration, which I hope they will be given. Can the Leader of the House also set out the coalition Government's attitude to the Bill covering a range of reforms of this House brought forward again by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood? I welcome the Leader’s announcement about a small group to look at people leaving the House.
I shall detain the House no longer, other than to say that, in this next period, we on these Benches will be holding the Government to account, both inside the Cabinet committee and outside it, on four key points—that the major issues of further reform of your Lordships' House, including the conventions of its relationship with the other place, are properly considered; that the process of pre-legislative scrutiny is full, thorough and sufficient for the nature of the issues involved; that due regard is given to and provided for any necessary transitional arrangements—I am glad that the grandfathering idea is mentioned in the coalition agreement; and that the issue of further substantial Lords reform is a matter for a referendum of the whole country.
We on this side of your Lordships' House, together with the Liberal Democrats on the Benches opposite, have long been in favour of reform. If, in becoming a member of the coalition, the Conservative Party, and not just its leadership, is now also in favour of reform, we in the reform group genuinely welcome that. History and experience might suggest otherwise, but we shall see. As the noble Lord himself suggested, we know that change is inevitable. As ever, however, the questions are: what kind of change is intended? What will be the rate of change? How will the change be managed? And, crucially, what is the change for? As my noble friend Lord Rooker said, “What will it achieve?”. Will it make our Parliament, our politics, our constitution and our country better? Those are real and important issues, and throughout this process we shall seek answers to these extremely important questions.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, we are invited to note,
“the case for reform of the House of Lords”.
In fact, the debate has noted the case for only limited reform or no reform at all. Clearly, House of Lords reform is very much a minority interest. As my noble and learned friend Lord Morris of Aberavon said, if there were to be a referendum just on this, one would anticipate a very small participation. The Conservative component of the Liberal-Conservative Government read public opinion better than its Liberal Democrat junior partners. For the Conservatives, at best before the election this was a third-term issue, which means that there would have been no conclusion during the lifetime of the first Parliament. They recognised that there are many issues much higher up the political agenda.
Thus, the question is: why now in government has this issue been accelerated against the political instincts of the Conservative Party? The answer is clear. For the Liberal Democrats, strictures on constitutional structures are very much part of their raison d’etre. There is a certain wide-eyed zeal, believing this to be, after 100 years or so, the unfinished business of Lloyd George. Just as Mr Clegg misread the significance of the Reform Act 1832, so I believe he has misread that of Lloyd George.
Lloyd George in my judgment would have shown himself to be a pragmatist at this time. One recalls the Limehouse speech:
“They toil not, neither do they spin”.
That is a world away from your Lordships’ House. Today’s House has a very different role and composition from his time. The truth is that the Liberal Democrats are so zealous that they were willing to pay a high price to obtain reform—not just voting reform, but including the reform of the second Chamber. But, the Minister, Miss Featherstone, as quoted in today’s Daily Telegraph, has said that she now recognises the sort of price that is being paid. It is the price of a free rein on constitutional reform for the Liberal Democrats so that the Conservative Party can have a free rein for a Tory Budget and massive welfare cuts, which will harm the poor particularly. It is sad to see the willingness to sacrifice the poor and the deprived in the country on the altar of constitutional reform. We have been here before. At an international parliamentary conference I recall a Florida Congressman saying that everything that can be said has been said, but not everyone has said it. So he proposed to make his own speech.
Let me try to expose some illusions. One illusion is that an 80 per cent or 100 per cent elected Chamber,
“answers the claims of democracy and accountability”.
That is absolute nonsense on stilts. If there were to be one election every 12 years with no possibility of facing the electorate again, how can such an individual be deemed to be accountable because they happened to pass an electoral test at one stage in the distant past? How can they in any way be accountable to an electorate?
The second illusion is that such a changed House would not rival the House of Commons. I think that it was Berkeley who said that no institution is static; all institutions are dynamic. Certainly, a House of Lords with democratic legitimacy would inevitably challenge the House of Commons more regularly and with greater ease.
Another illusion is that in a reformed House of Lords one can still expect the same expertise as we have now in this House. For me the argument is less strong, having seen some of the arguments in favour of a Welsh Assembly. We were in favour of an Assembly, but one of the arguments was that we would have a new sort of person coming from all corners of Wales and not from the traditional political structures. Alas and alack, although there are many very good people, the normal pathway to the Welsh Assembly is through being in the office of an existing Assembly person. One has to pass through the normal political structures if one values the expertise which one has from senior lawyers, senior medics and senior military people. Does one expect those lawyers, medics and generals to find a place on a party list? Of course they would not. If they were to expect to find a place on the list, the argument put to them would be: “What have you done? Have you laboured in the vineyard? What have you done for the party?”. It would be a different sort of House, which would be a pale reflection of the House of Commons and of those who, for various reasons, were not able to find their way here. They will not be the new people. Indeed, the old will prevail:
“New presbyter is but old priest writ large”.
Finally, the reality for all of us is that, ultimately, reform will come, as my noble friend Lord Hoyle has said. There will be a House wholly or mainly elected even if there is a Passchendaele of trench warfare in this House on the way. The other place seems not to understand that there is a real danger that much of value will be lost. Surely there is a case for analysing the strengths of the current House of Lords and for asking how one could mitigate the negative aspects of change.
That means not just altering the composition, but at present this House is less partisan than the other place, is more expert, has a stronger representation of women and minorities, is much stronger on human rights and is willing to be a curb on Government in this and other respects. So any change should ensure that no one party has a majority. At least 20 per cent of its composition should be appointed for their expertise and should be based on diversity. In the past, we have altered our constitution gradually, smoothly, moving from precedent to precedent. The Steel Bill, in my judgment, offered such a way out for the Government, but the zealots have rejected it, as the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, said. I fear that much of value will be lost, and that we will indeed be a weaker reflection of the other place unless there is a clear analysis of the virtues of this place now and a serious attempt to preserve these so far as is possible.
Government Spending
Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Onslow for his helpful words. I assure him that I will indeed exhort my colleagues as he requests.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, any such cuts are likely to bear disproportionately on those who depend on public expenditure, notably the poorest people in the poorest regions of this country. What formula is being used? How does the noble Lord seek to protect vulnerable people and areas such as Wales which depend disproportionately on public expenditure?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I have just said that the Government agree that we must pay closest attention to the effect on the most disadvantaged in society. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, specifically asked about the devolved Administrations. At this stage, all that I can say is that we acknowledge that these cuts must be fair. While savings are to be made as a top priority, they must be done sensitively.