Sexual Offences: False Accusations

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

I accept that there is a superficial attraction about that symmetry. But I suggest that one of the important things that the public policy demands is that making a complaint should not be discouraged. It is no easy thing to make a complaint about, for example, rape or sexual offences. The possibility not only that you will be cross-examined and traduced in court but will have your name emblazoned on newspapers or other means of communication is a considerable inhibition in making that complaint. That is one of the difficult factors that Parliament took into account when deciding to retain anonymity.

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, I have stated elsewhere the reasons for my conviction that Sir Edward Heath was not a child abuser. The allegations that have been published in the media to that effect have no shred of credible corroboration. Wiltshire Police are conducting an investigation, which is forecast to last for 12 months or more and which involves interviewing an extensive range of Sir Edward’s friends, colleagues, staff and former crew members and searching through 4,500 boxes of his archives. I have suggested to the chief constable of Wiltshire Police that there can be no conclusive or satisfactory outcome to this investigation. Even if, as seems likely, the police find that there is insufficient evidence to have justified a prosecution, the cloud of suspicion which has been hanging over Sir Edward’s memory would not be definitively dispelled. In the unlikely event of a finding that there is sufficient evidence, that evidence could not be tested in a court of law because Sir Edward is dead and cannot be prosecuted. It seems as if Wiltshire Police are arrogating to themselves the role not only of investigator but also of prosecutor, judge and jury in this matter. Does the Minister not agree that the investigation is a travesty of justice and a prodigious waste of police time and resources?

[Lord Faulks]

I am sure that there will be a lot of sympathy around the House and elsewhere for what the noble Lord says. Of course, we must not interfere with police operational independence. However, the points that he eloquently makes about proportionality in view of the death of Sir Edward and the likelihood of any significant evidence one way or another being unearthed at this stage are valuable, and I take them on board.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, I join others who have congratulated the new Peers who made maiden speeches this evening. I thank them and look forward to the contributions that they will make. I should like, in particular, to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane. I cannot emulate his manner but, as to matter, he will find that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

In this country we are much given to claiming with an air of regretful apology, but actually with modest and self-satisfied pride, that we have an unwritten constitution. We are not, we feel, the kind of country that needs a written constitution. It is not quite true to say that our constitution is unwritten. Over the years, it has been extensively described and written about by learned academics such as Lord Blake and Professor Vernon Bogdanor, but even some of those who have had to operate it have contributed to the discussion. Now, we have the Cabinet Manual. But the Cabinet Manual explicitly describes existing practice; it does not prescribe future practice or exclude or limit the possibility of change. There is no official and authoritative document, an Act of Parliament or whatever, that defines the constitution, as it were, set in stone—as seems to be the fashionable thing these days.

All constitutions need to be amended or revised from time to time as circumstances change and as social or economic developments require. In the United States, they have a written constitution which can be amended only by Act of Congress. In the Republic of Ireland, the constitution can be amended only by a referendum. In this country, without a written constitution, changes are made as we go along by means of precedent broadening out from precedent. The constitution can be tweaked as needed, not without notice or discussion, and sometimes not without an Act of Parliament, but without a prescribed and elaborate procedure for organising the change.

That has been possible, I suppose, because the constitutional state of the United Kingdom has for many years, until recently at any rate, been relatively stable. It has been a unitary state. We have known where powers lie, who has responsibility for the exercise of those powers, and who is accountable for the outcomes. Some powers are still prerogative powers of the Crown. But for statutory powers, Parliament at Westminster has been sovereign.

All this is changing. The processes of devolution and the principles of subsidiarity are fundamentally altering the distribution of powers and of responsibilities. Some powers formerly exercised at Westminster have gone to the European Union. Some have gone, and more are going, to the parliaments and assemblies of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. Some will be going to the new northern powerhouse and eventually, no doubt, to other regional powerhouses in England.

All these changes presage a continuing diminution of the powers and responsibilities of the Parliament at Westminster. Here and in the other place, we need to face up to the implications of this. I hope that the United Kingdom will remain the United Kingdom, but it seems that it is inevitably becoming a federal United Kingdom, not a unitary United Kingdom. This will be a great change: perhaps a necessary and inevitable change. To many perhaps, it will be a welcome change, maybe even a change for the better. If that is how it is to be, we shall increasingly need to design and define the structure of the United Kingdom and its parts, and the distribution of powers and responsibilities within it.

I have not hitherto wanted to see a written constitution, a constitution codified and made statutory. The move to a federal United Kingdom may make that not only inevitable but necessary. I do not think that the written constitution need necessarily be a statute, though that is no doubt a possibility; it might well be preferable to make it a code, rather like the Highway Code, based on statute.

The decisions on these issues will be taken by elected parliamentarians at Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. But, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester and many others reminded us, these political decisions should not be taken just at random or in isolation as immediate reactions to a political problem of the moment; they should be coherent and consistent with a system of constitutional principles.

I therefore share the view of those who think that we should set up without delay a constitutional convention or a royal commission—whatever you like to call its—to consider these issues and to make recommendations. The membership of such a body should include not only lawyers and academics but people with experience in central and local government. Governments and Parliaments would of course not be bound by the recommendations of such a convention or commission. They would be free to take whatever decisions seemed right to them but the proceedings of such a commission would enable a wide range of views and ideas to be brought together and put in the public domain. Its deliberations and recommendations would provide a framework and a set of principles against which a series of coherent political decisions could be reached and judged.

The outcome of such a process could be the written constitution which I believe we are going to need, and could make possible the establishment of a stable constitutional framework for the development of a federal United Kingdom in continuing membership of the European Union, but let us not be too optimistic. If your Lordships look back at major constitutional change in this country, I do not think that it has ever been worked out by something like a constitutional convention or a royal commission. It has emerged out of crisis and been in a situation which the politicians have muddled through. It is extraordinary how new muddle quickly morphs into old tradition.

Freedom of Information Act 2000

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster]

My Lords, I am glad to be contributing to this short debate initiated by my noble friend and former adversary Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield. I say “former adversary”, because when he was the Whitehall correspondent of the Times and I was the Principal Private Secretary at 10 Downing Street, I was required by my political masters to see that Whitehall did all it could to frustrate his knavish tricks, designed to extract information about the working of government which government would have preferred not to disclose. He collected nuggets of information with indefatigable diligence, like Squirrel Nutkin collected nuts, but, unlike Squirrel Nutkin, he always knew where he had stored his nuggets and where to find them when he needed them.

Now that the noble Lord is no longer a mischievous journalist but a learned professor, and I am a mandarin long since put out to grass, we are firm friends. I can acknowledge that, though he did not win them all, he did win more than we could have wished, and that much of what he succeeded in extracting was relatively harmless if occasionally a little embarrassing.

I am much in favour, and always have been, of the greatest degree of transparency in government as is reasonably possible. That is owed by government, central and local, to Parliament and to the councils to which they are accountable, and to the people they represent. But freedom of information is not, at least in its current legislative form, an unmitigated boon and blessing to men. Tony Blair expressed the point in his memoirs in his own characteristically vivid style:

“You idiot”—

he says, addressing himself—

“You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop”—

his words, not mine—

“I quake at the imbecility of it”.

“It” is the Freedom of Information Act. He goes on:

“Where was Sir Humphrey when I needed him? We had legislated in the first throes of power. How could you—

“you” is now Sir Humphrey, I think—

“knowing what you know, have allowed us to do such a thing so utterly undermining of sensible government?”

It is a well attested fact that, if I was the model for anyone, it was for Sir Arnold Robinson, not for Sir Humphrey Appleby. None the less, I am sorry that I was not around to be consulted in Mr Blair’s hour of need. I was already, unfortunately, well into my retirement.

I am afraid that there is no doubt that the risk of unwarrantable disclosure created by the Freedom of Information Act is liable to be damaging to the quality of governance. My successor, the noble Lord, Lord O'Donnell, has gone on record with his anxieties about the threat that the Freedom of Information Act presents to the usefulness of the minutes of the meetings of the Cabinet. Those minutes are not a verbatim record; they are none the less a comprehensive and accurate account of what the Cabinet decides and why. They are a valuable tool of administration. Their value depends upon their comprehensiveness and their accuracy. Their value would be diminished—they could even be misleading—if they had to be edited or bowdlerised to minimise risks of unacceptable disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

More generally, Ministers and officials, and indeed other people, now hesitate to put in writing things which are important, and which ought to be conveyed to their readers, but which they would not want to see having to be disclosed in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. The result is not only that discussion among colleagues is less candid than it should be but also that policy decisions may be taken on inadequate information.

The perverse effect of freedom of information legislation is thus to make important information less freely available where it is most needed and to impair the quality of governance. This is a problem that may well need to be addressed by amending legislation if its effects are not to become cumulatively more damaging.

I just add my support for the programme of official histories and my hope that the Minister will be able to assure the House that, despite the need for austerity in public spending, the programme will be maintained.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell of Alloway]

My Lords, may I take up the point which I made yesterday? It is really for the Boundary Commission, which exerts no political influence and has no political influence upon it, to decide what is a viable constituency. That cannot be explained in a definition which you write out in black and white; it is a matter of common sense for the commission. To impede that by a lot of legal processes and lawyers—I am one, although I am a bit past my sell-by date now—is a tremendous mistake and, although it is well intentioned, I do not support this amendment.

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster]

My Lords, once upon a time there was a man called Procrustes. He made a very beautiful bed, and he liked people to come and lie on it. Being a man of very high and strict principle, he insisted that the bed and the people should fit. Unfortunately, he made the bed unalterable, so he had to make the people fit the bed. He either stretched them out a little if they were too small or chopped a little bit off if they were too tall, with painful, serious and sometimes fatal consequences for the people concerned. Quite apart from the consequences for the people concerned, Procrustes found his reputation deeply damaged; great hostility was shown towards him and there were demonstrations in the street.

Then four good, independent people came along and suggested a simple mechanism whereby some of the strain could be relieved. It was closely restricted; it could be used only in exceptional circumstances and for reasons of an extraordinarily compelling nature. It was a simple mechanism whereby, in these very exceptional cases, the bed could be stretched or shortened by a very small amount. The number of cases would be few but there would be cases in which the variety of human nature was recognised and allowed for and the painful consequences to which I have referred were avoided.

There were many arguments about the principle; it was thought to be very proper, good and strictly maintained. I am sorry to say that Procrustes grumbled greatly about the idea that there should be any stretching or changing of the bed. But in the end he accepted that there had been one or two cases which he agreed should be allowed past and the exceptions and exceptionally compelling reasons were such that the further breaches of the principle which would ensue would not be very serious or great. Therefore, grumbling, he accepted—to the relief of those few people whose lives and bodies were spared and, in the end, to the contentment of Procrustes himself, who accepted that this small degree of flexibility had enabled the bed to survive and the principle to be broadly maintained.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, this amendment allows the Boundary Commission, in very exceptional circumstances, to exercise its discretion within a range of 15 per cent rather than 10 per cent. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made the point that this would give people who wished for one reason or another to delay the operation of the reforms greater scope to introduce litigation. Of course, even within the 10 per cent provided in the Bill, the Boundary Commission is exercising discretion. It is not clear to me why, in these very exceptional circumstances, there would be more scope for challenging under the 15 per cent variation than under the 10 per cent. If people, for reasons of their own, wish to obstruct this process, is there not exactly the same power to do that under the 10 per cent provision? The advantage of having 15 per cent is that without giving much greater scope—or, indeed, any greater scope—for challenge, the Boundary Commission can reach reasonable recommendations in cases where it is necessary.

Queen's Speech

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster]

My Lords, we are told in the gracious Speech that proposals are to be brought forward,

“for a reformed second House that is wholly or mainly elected on the basis of proportional representation”.

I am glad that a possibility, at least, remains of retaining an element of appointed independent Cross-Bench Peers.

I follow very much what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has just said. Discussion of House of Lords reform seems always to concentrate on how its Members should be chosen. Surely we should first be discussing, as a prior question, what a reformed House should do and what its role should be in the constitutional system.

In today’s legislature, the House of Commons has primacy. This House has useful functions as a revising and debating Chamber and in holding the Government to account, but, in the end, the will of the House of Commons is sovereign and can be made to prevail. Your Lordships accept that degree of subordination because Members of the other place are chosen by periodic election on a universal suffrage, and we are not. Whatever the shortcomings of the electoral system, this is seen as conferring a uniquely democratic legitimacy on the House of Commons such as to justify its primacy within the legislature.

If the second House were to be wholly or mainly elected by universal suffrage on a system of proportional representation, but its functions continued to be as they are now and it continued to be subordinate to the House of Commons, how successful, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, suggested, do we suppose that the process of election would be in attracting suitable candidates for election? The British public already enjoy the inestimable benefits of participating in elections for membership of the House of Commons, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly, local councils and the European Parliament; how ready will they be to turn out for yet another set of elections to the second House at Westminster on a system of proportional representation? What about the additional costs to the taxpayer of another set of elections and another set of elected representatives in Parliament?

For how long would a second House elected by proportional representation on a universal suffrage be prepared to accept constraints on its functions and being subordinate to the House of Commons? It would surely, sooner or later, begin to feel its oats and assert its rights. It could be expected to insist that it was no less democratically legitimate than the House of Commons—perhaps even more democratically legitimate if the Members of the House of Commons continued to be chosen by a system so unproportional as first past the post or even the alternative vote.

The role and functions of the second House would have to be reviewed and enhanced. It would deserve, and expect to be given, something much nearer parity of esteem, constitutional power and responsibility with the House of Commons. Is that what we want? Is it what Members of the other place want? I do not know the answers to these questions, but they need to be asked and answered when we are thinking about House of Lords reform.

I suggest that election by universal suffrage should not be regarded as the only means of conferring representative legitimacy on a parliamentary Chamber. It would not be beyond the wit of man to devise a system whereby Members of a second House could be chosen by processes of indirect election to represent the various social and economic groups and activities which make up the fabric of national life. Such a system would at least meet the requirement of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, that it be different.

There could be groups of Members chosen to represent, for instance, manufacturing industry, service industries, commerce, banking and financial services, the trade unions, the public services in central and local government, the medical and health professions, the legal professions, the educational professions, the universities, the arts, the churches and so on.

There could be a system of quotas of Members to represent each group. The quotas would be of varying sizes, to reflect the significance of each of the groups in the body politic and economic. Your Lordships will therefore see that the system that I have in mind would be not only representative but also proportional.

In each group, the representative Members could be chosen in whatever way seemed appropriate to the constituent members of that group. This could, if it was thought advisable, be combined with a system of quotas for representatives of political parties chosen by party leaders, with a view to ensuring whatever was thought to be the appropriate balance of party representation in the second House. We could even continue to have a group of independent Cross-Bench Peers, perhaps a little smaller than it is now.

The size of the various quotas would depend on the desired size of the second House. It would be necessary to define the length of terms for which Members would serve. The process could be co-ordinated through an independent statutory appointments commission. Candidates for membership could be recommended to the commission, which could confirm the suitability of candidates recommended to them, perhaps register their political affiliations and ensure a balance of representation from the countries and regions of the United Kingdom within whatever size of House was prescribed.

Such a system would enable the second House to be equipped with a wide range of expertise and experience which would inform the quality of its work and enable it to be effective in bringing forward proposals for legislation as a revising and debating Chamber and in holding government to account.

The second House would therefore be broadly and proportionately representative of the main interests and activities at work in the United Kingdom and in its component parts. It would have a high degree of representative legitimacy, yet it could continue to be ultimately subordinate to the will of the House of Commons, representing the will of the people as established from time to time by universal suffrage.

I urge that the terms of reference of the body—we do not yet know whether that body will be a Cabinet committee, a departmental committee of inquiry, a Joint Committee of the two Houses of Parliament or a royal commission—be drawn up widely enough to allow it to examine the merits and advantages of a system of the kind which I have had time only to adumbrate this afternoon.