Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow my noble friend and I must say that I wholly agree with his conclusion. As the Leader said in opening, those of us whose paths crossed with hers all have our own personal anecdotes and remembrances about Margaret Thatcher. I have two. First, in a life that has, I suppose, had some small excitements, nothing that I have ever experienced so terrorised me as having to stand up as a young, inexperienced, wet-behind-the-ears leader of my party to question her in the House of Commons when she was at the full plenitude of her powers, with the inevitable result that I would be ritually handbagged twice a week in front of the microphones of the nation. Thank God there was no television in the Chamber then.
My second remembrance illustrates the point made by the Leader of the House about one of Lady Thatcher’s best qualities and most formidable weapons. My wife and I had been invited to one of those Downing Street events to mark the visit of some foreign leader; I honestly cannot remember exactly who it was. Afterwards, as we came down the stairs of No. 10, we met the Prime Minister coming up. My wife, who, I should explain, is much more rampantly left-wing than I am, hated her policies with a passion. The Prime Minister stopped and talked to us for a few moments. As she moved away, my wife hissed through gritted teeth, “She’s absolutely bloody charming, damn it”. So she was—to everyone, except of course those who happened to be in her Cabinet, as this row of wholly unextinct volcanoes sitting in front of me will no doubt attest.
This was only one of her many paradoxes. As the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, pointed out, she was not at all the straightforward, black and white, no-nonsense, unbending warrior leader that she latterly liked to portray. She knew, at least until the very end, when to compromise and did so, perhaps most significantly when, although relishing her anti-Europeanism, she nevertheless signed Britain up to the single European market.
In my view, three qualities set her apart as something different but each of them had its drawbacks. The first was a passionate commitment to freedom. As a Liberal, needless to say, I mostly welcomed that, although perhaps not as much as I should have at the time. Later, in Bosnia, when I tried to get a stagnant economy moving, I found myself putting into practice many of the very things that I had opposed when she introduced them: aggressive liberalisation of the markets, stripping down the barriers to business and lowering taxation. In these things she was right at the time, even if today we find that, taken to excess, some of these attributes have not led to greater prosperity for all but to near ruin and a disgusting climate of greed for the few. In this, I suspect that revolution she started has perhaps somewhat run its course. Our challenge today is to find a kinder, less destructive, more balanced way of shaping our economy, but that is today. At the time when she did those things, they needed to be done.
However, her belief in freedom was, one might say, strangely partial. She did much to enhance individual economic freedom, and our country was much the better for it, but she did far less to enhance the political freedoms of, for instance, the gay community or the people of Scotland, or perhaps most markedly and paradoxically—and this has been commented on, too—the standing of women in society. She was—and arguably, given the context at the time, this was one of her very greatest achievements—Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. However, her influence and power came not from the exercise of the female principles in politics but from the fact that she was far better than any man at the male ones.
Her second defining quality was her patriotism. David Cameron, the present Prime Minister, recently called her the “patriot Prime Minister”. It is a good phrase and an apposite one. However, her patriotism too, though so powerfully held and expressed, was more about the preservation and restoration of Britain’s past position than it was about preparing us for the challenges of what came next. She used her formidable talents to give our country a few more years of glory, and for that we should be eternally grateful. However, that legacy means that Britain today still finds itself uncomfortable and undecided about its true position in the world, not least in relation to Europe, where the infection that she planted still has the capacity to rip apart her party. There can be no doubt that she restored our country’s position in the world but in a way that perhaps today makes us even less able to answer Dean Acheson’s famous challenge that, having lost an empire, we have yet to find a role.
Her final triumphant quality was of course her courage. This, I think, is the pre-eminent quality of leadership and she had it in abundance. Yet this, too—her greatest asset—had its dangers. I used to have a principle in distant, more robust days that I would never take on operations anyone who was not at least as frightened as I was, but she was frightened of nothing. She could see the risks but she ignored them if she believed she was right, and paradoxically this, in the final analysis, was what ended her long term as Prime Minister. Is it not always hubris that gets us in the end?
She was complex, extraordinary, magnificent, fallible, flawed and infuriating. One thing, however, is certain and cannot be denied except by those so sunk in bitterness that they will not see: she won great victories for what she stood for at home and huge respect for our country abroad. If politics is defined—and I think it can be—by principles, the courage to hold to them and the ability to drive them through to success, then she was without a doubt the commanding politician and the greatest Prime Minister of our age.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
It is worth waiting for, my Lords.
Let us pick up the point made by my noble friend Lord Foulkes. We have a government commission considering the West Lothian question and the place of Scottish MPs at Westminster voting on laws that apply only to England. The current terms of reference apply only to the Commons, but surely the same issues would apply to an elected second Chamber. That is readily apparent when one considers the potential referendum on Scottish independence. Independence for Scotland would of course be a game changer. Carwyn Jones, the First Minister for Wales, has argued that if Scotland were, unfortunately, to leave the UK, and fearing English domination of what is left of the UK, there should be a new Senate in which Wales, Northern Ireland and England should enjoy equal status. You do not have to agree with the First Minister to realise that we may well be heading for a new constitutional settlement of major proportions in which the second Chamber ought to be a constituent part. I put it to the noble Lord the Leader that the place of an elected second Chamber has to be considered as part of a more fundamental question about the future of our United Kingdom and its democratic arrangements.
The alternative report recommended a constitutional convention to look at the next steps on House of Lords reform. That is an excellent suggestion but I wonder whether the remit should not be widened to look at these pressing constitutional issues that we face as a United Kingdom, and perhaps we have a little time to do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, talks about the Labour position on Lords reform but what is the Government’s position? Briefings emanating from Conservative parts of the Government in the past day or so have suggested that the importance of reform has been downgraded. Threats to use the Parliament Act seem to have faded a little and there is even talk of a search for consensus. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was at it again today.
Significantly, the Prime Minister’s call to arms in the Telegraph on Monday made no mention of Lords reform. On the same day, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Osborne, said that it was absolutely not a high priority. Even yesterday, Mr Cameron seemed rather lukewarm when it came to the debates in the other place. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, rather gave the game away over the weekend. In his fascinating article in the Sunday Telegraph, he proclaimed, as usual, his belief in an elected Chamber but then predicted that the Bill might get killed off in the Commons. Indeed, it seems that that is the option of choice for most Cabinet Ministers, at least on the Conservative Benches. Yesterday the noble Lord went further in the Financial Times and said that an elected House would be more aggressive in challenging the decisions of the Commons. Of course it will, but I suspect that the noble Lord was just giving a signal to MPs of his own party in the other place and perhaps an invitation to ditch the Bill.
In contrast to the voices emanating from the Conservative Party, we have had the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Clegg, signalling his determination to press ahead with Lords reform, while his right honourable friend Mr Cable said, in a moment of supreme optimism, that we should get on with it quickly and quietly.
So what are the Government intending? What is their priority? Yesterday the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, talked of adapting the proposals in response to my noble friend’s Joint Select Committee report. The choice of wording in the Queen’s Speech, describing the Bill as being concerned with composition, is intriguing. The noble Lord said this morning that it means that the Government will bring forward proposals that have elected Members and a smaller House at their core. Therefore, I ask him or his noble friend Lord Wallace: have the Government decided to ignore the Joint Select Committee’s report and the alternative report on the inadequacies of the crucial part of the Bill—Clause 2? Has the wording in the Queen’s Speech been couched in neutral terms to allow for a discussion on reaching a consensus? That would be welcome but, as we have discovered, more meanings are involved in that than “consensus”. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, defines consensus as what the Commons thinks, although he now sees himself as being rather misunderstood. Mr Clegg thinks that consensus is what he thinks, but Mr Clegg is Deputy Prime Minister and is in a position of some influence. Why is he so reluctant to have a proper conversation about Lords reform? If consensus breaks down, look no further than Mr Clegg and the fact that when we had joint talks at the beginning of this Parliament, the moment substantive issues were raised by the Opposition those talks broke down and we were never invited to them again. Do not lecture this party on consensus. We stand always ready to talk to the Government about Lords reform. We will do everything we can to help reach consensus, but consensus is a three-way process in our current political system. So far there is no sign that the Government are prepared to listen.
I am intrigued by the wording on the Bill. I wonder whether it is cover for eventual government support for the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Steel. Perhaps, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has a plan B for a Steel-plus Bill to deal with the size of the House. The briefings from different parts of the Government have been confusing, but I want to be clear and I accept the invitation offered by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to say that if the Government press ahead with proposals for an elected House, it is inescapable that unless they can articulate the role, functions and powers of both Houses and their relationship with each other, the Bill will fall at the first hurdle. It would deserve to do so. That goes to the heart of the arguments put forward by the Joint Select Committee and in the alternative report.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
That is an interesting statement. Would we be right to conclude from it that, unless those conditions are satisfied, Labour will vote against the Bill?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, we will of course have to see what is in the Bill. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, we have been told by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that the Government are busily pondering how to adapt their proposals in relation to the report of the Joint Select Committee. It is not unreasonable to say that we should see what is in the Government’s Bill, particularly given the ambiguity of the wording in the Queen’s Speech.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his patience. Anyone listening to his previous statement would have concluded that it would be a condition for Labour to have those powers defined before it supported the Bill. It is nice of him to tell us that that is not a condition. Clarity on this matter really would be useful.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I am slightly confused. The noble Lord asked me whether the Labour Party would support the Bill. I said that we had better see what is in it. I can tell the noble Lord that it is an inescapable conclusion and quite clear from my reading of the workings of both the Select Committee and the alternative report that, unless we are clear about the respective powers of both elected Houses, it will be very difficult indeed to make progress.
News Corporation: Conduct of Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
I will tell the noble Baroness exactly what is going on here. These are the cheapest and most vulgar political attacks on my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, whose evidence has not been heard at all. The noble Baroness asked about Lord Leveson’s statement. What did Lord Leveson say? He said:
“I have seen requests for other inquiries and investigations and, of course, I do not seek to constrain Parliament, it seems to me that the better course is to allow this Inquiry”—
that is, his inquiry—“to proceed”. That was done, and the Secretary of State will be able to give evidence to that inquiry in due course. When we have all heard the evidence, it may be that many noble Lords who have spoken today will be eating their words. As to the possible lack of oversight of the special adviser, the special adviser has resigned, having made a fulsome apology and explaining that the action that he took was way beyond the authority given to him by the Secretary of State.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
My Lords, the Prime Minister has used this rather particular phrase, that there has been no “grand bargain”, twice now—once at the weekend in his press comments and once in the Statement. Will my noble friend assure us that when the Prime Minister says that there has been no grand bargain, he includes that there have been no small bargains either?
Draft House of Lords Reform Bill
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield
My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Joint Committee and as a signatory to the alternative report. Perhaps I may add my own words of thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Richard. His was not an easy task, as we slogged our way towards a total of 30 meetings—a record, I gather, for a Joint Committee. I am perhaps a touch unusual in getting seriously excited by constitutional matters, but as the tally of our sessions mounted, even I was reminded of that shrewd observer of our country, George Bernard Shaw, who said that the English invented test match cricket in order to give the British people a sense of eternity. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, got us through and on time, and I am grateful to him and to our clerks, though I should point out to the noble Lord that there were two Cross-Bench members of his committee, not one as he suggested.
Every generation or so, we take a crack at the question of Lords reform. We throw the particles in the air and hope that, this time, they will fall in a way that paves a path on the road to consensus. Once again, we have failed, as the voting figures in volume 1 of the Joint Committee’s report show, as does the existence of the alternative report. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, spied the outline of a consensus. Over those 30 meetings of the Joint Committee, I have to tell the noble Lord, there was not a flicker of consensus. The noble Lord the Leader of the House is succumbing to an attractive outbreak of Pollyanna-ism, which is always pleasing but in this case is utterly misleading.
So, what next? In the coming Session of Parliament, we could immerse ourselves in the constitutional mire, dissipating copious quantities of parliamentary time and political nervous energy on the Government’s proposed Bill, probably boring the country and ourselves rigid except at moments of showdown and all with no guarantee that the statute will emerge at the end unless the coalition is prepared to reach for the Parliament Acts in what could well be the near twilight of its term. Is it wise to attempt to settle the future of the second Chamber before we know the outcome of another grade 1 listed constitutional question, Scottish independence, which is to be the subject of a referendum in autumn 2014?
There is an organic, incremental alternative to the invasive surgery proposed by the coalition for your Lordships’ House. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, described it with great eloquence in her oral evidence to the Joint Committee, as did Peter Riddell, director of the Institute for Government, in his. Put their thoughts together with the content of the Bill in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, and the proposals under consideration by the usual channels from the Leader’s Group on Working Practices chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, and you have in the making a substantial and hugely worthwhile reform which would have the additional benefit of being fuelled by a high level of genuine consensus.
The Joint Committee’s report acknowledges this in paragraph 11, which reads:
“Other approaches to reform are of course possible. A number of our witnesses advocated an incremental approach, focusing on issues on which there exists a large degree of consensus: the mode of appointment, the size of the House, retirement, disqualification and expulsion”.
The paragraph continues:
“Lord Steel of Aikwood's private member's Bill attempted to address some of these issues. The Joint Committee was established to consider the draft Bill, however, and we have kept within our remit”.
The alternative report, on pages 78 and 79, goes further and actively urges the Government to,
“consider including further proposals for immediate reform, including those put forward by Baroness Hayman, the former Lord Speaker, and those contained in the Leader’s Group report of working practices in the House of Lords, chaired by Lord Goodlad”.
Among the candidates for what the alternative report calls “immediate reform” are: reducing the size of the House to about 500, future appointments to carry a fixed term, the Appointments Commission to be made statutory, an end to the link between peerages and the honours system, a retirement scheme for Members, the matter of expulsion and exclusion and the ending of by-elections following the deaths of hereditary Peers. I know that the last will not find consensual support from several noble Lords whom I respect and admire.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I am listening very carefully to the noble Lord’s interesting proposals. Do any of them relate to the issue of democracy and election?
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield
In the purest sense, no, but the virtue of our system, as I have always seen it, is that the undisputed primacy of the House of Commons, if I can put it bluntly, takes care of democracy. I know that the noble Lord and I will not agree on this although we agree on so many other things.
The danger is that while anticipating the so-called big-bang answer to the question of the Lords, nothing will happen, needed reforms will be stymied and the planning blight that has afflicted your Lordships' House since the departure of the bulk of the hereditary Peers in 1999 will continue. The ingredients of a substantial reform are lying at our feet. Let us pick them up, fashion them into something coherent, something valuable, and let us implement that bundle of reforms before the next general election.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
My Lords, I think it was Oscar Wilde who once said that in a democracy the minority is always right. I have to say, as a Liberal Democrat, that it is a saying that has given me much comfort over the years, and I have a suspicion that it will have to give me some comfort today. I rise, of course, to argue the case for a democratically elected second Chamber—a case made by my party for 100 years. The time was ripe for that 100 years ago. It is essential now.
I just ask my noble colleagues in this place whether they find it acceptable, at a time when people are dying for democracy, that we should have in this place somewhere that infringes the fundamental principle of a democratic state, which is that the people’s laws should be made by the people’s representatives.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
They are not. We are not the people’s representatives, but we make and amend laws, and are part of the process of producing the laws of this country. We infringe that principle daily. I was sitting here and listening to the arguments made around the Chamber, many of which were, “Yes of course we are in favour of democracy, but not now, not on these proposals, but at some time in the future”. St Augustine should be living at this hour.
However, the question is this: when we frame the laws of this country—you cannot say that we do not participate in this—we do so because we carry with us a democratic mandate. That is the principle of democracy. I was imagining what kind of a debate we might be having if, instead of debating our institutions today, we were debating the institutions in Brussels. I can imagine the kind of thunderous rage that would be expressed against the fact that those undemocratic commissioners in Brussels are able to make laws imposed upon the people of Britain. But we are undemocratic—we participate in that process.
I was imagining what kind of argument might be made if we were discussing Italy. People would have said, “The present Italian Prime Minister is not directly elected, but is elected only by Parliament”. We are elected by no one. As my noble friend Lady Scott said earlier, we are placemen here—no more and no less. I thought that that went out with the Stuart kings. We are the creatures of patronage. There are only two ways to get into this place. One is because you are a friend of the Prime Minister, or at least he does not object to you, and the other is because your great-grandmother slept with the king. There is no other way of getting into this place and the votes of the people have no hand in this process whatever.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I will give way, but allow me to make a little more progress.
The truth of the matter is that this place, whether you like it or not, is a creature of the Executive. When the new Prime Minister comes in, the first thing he or she does is help themselves to a replica of what exists in the other place in order to give themselves the power to push through this place the legislation that they require. Are we really content with that?
I recall well, because I was partly involved, that in 2004 the world’s greatest Muslim democracy, Indonesia, went to the polls. The European Union issued a view, a wish—not an instruction, of course—that when those polls were finally counted there would be no placemen to alter the democratic judgment and that there would be no act of patronage to add to the legislatures people such as army officers or even bishops to alter the voice of the democracy. Yet, so we are here today.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I shall make my point and then I will happily take my noble friend’s point.
On this day, Egypt votes for a new president. The Muslim Brotherhood has recently constructed the Egyptian constitution. Imagine if it had said, “We will have a constitution in which the primary House, which we control, will give us the right to appoint who was in the second Chamber”. Would we not have declared that to be a democratic outrage? Yet we are replicating that precise position here today. I give way to my noble friend.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am most grateful. I always listen with huge attention to what my noble friend Lord Ashdown says, not least because he put me here.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am a placeman, fair enough. My noble friend said, with emphasis, that we are a creature of the Executive. I ask him then, what he makes of the following statistics. In the 13 years of the Blair Government, the Commons defeated the Executive six times. In the same 13 years, this place defeated the Government 528 times. In the coalition period, the Commons has not yet defeated the Government, except on a debate which had no legislative purport; and we have defeated the Government 48 times. It does not sound to me as if it is we who are the creatures of the Executive.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I will come on to my noble friend’s point in a moment, except to say this. The question is not what we do; the question is how we are created. We are created here with a balance in this place that reflects the balance that the Executive enjoy in the other. I will come on to my noble friend’s point, but time is relatively limited, as we were advised, so allow me to make a bit of progress.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me. We have been advised to speak for seven minutes; I am already at six.
Lord Trefgarne
The noble Lord made a highly offensive remark just now and I would like to challenge it. He said that some of us were here because our ancestors had slept with a queen. I am the second Lord Trefgarne; my father was the first Lord Trefgarne. He was a Liberal MP.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
He came here by an act of patronage, then, which is the point I was seeking to make.
Let me cite some statistics that may illustrate the point. Despite all the arguments made about primacy, et cetera, all the arguments made that we have to work out the new relationship, here are the figures. The House of Lords Library tells me that there are 71 bicameral legislatures around the world of which, leaving aside the micro-nations in the Caribbean whose constitutions were written by us to reflect ours, only seven are not elected second Chambers, seven have no connection with democracy, and seven are appointed, as we are—leaving aside Great Britain. One of them, for reasons that utterly perplex me, is Canada. But the other six may give us cause to pause for a moment. They do not include great democracies. They are Belarus, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, Jordan and Lesotho. That is the company we keep. Those are not great defenders of democracy. How is it that in every other legislature, all of them with elected second Chambers, issues of primacy, the issues which hold up people’s agreement with democratic reform in this place, are not great problems?
Here is the reason why it is said that we do not have to observe the principles of democracy. My noble friend alluded to it a moment ago. It is because, apparently, it works—in that curious, untidy, rather British way, nevertheless, it works. And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It does not work. There are two functions of a second Chamber. The first is to revise and the second is to hold the Executive to account. The first of those we do rather well. We are graciously permitted to follow along with a gilded poop-scoop, clearing up the mess behind the elephant at the other end of the Corridor, but when it comes to stopping the elephant doing things, when it comes to turning it round, when it comes to delaying it on the really big things that matter, we do not succeed. How can we challenge the Executive on big things when we are a creature of the Executive?
I do not believe that if we had had a reformed, democratic second Chamber, we would have had the poll tax, but we did. I do not believe that we would have gone to war in Iraq either, but we did. The last time that I said that, there was much twittering saying, good heavens, should a second Chamber have the right to say whether a nation goes to war? Yes it should. I see no problem with that. There is no problem with the Senate in America. That has not stopped America going to war. There is no problem with the Senate in France, one of our closest and immediate allies in Libya and which put more troops into Bosnia than any other nation and suffered greater casualties.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I will make the point and then I will take the noble Lord’s intervention. There is one nation in Europe which may be insufficiently able to take decisions about military action when it needs to, and that is Germany. The Bundesrat, the second Chamber in Germany, has no say over going to war. However, there is no reason why a second Chamber should not be asked whether to ratify treaties or whether it is reasonable to go to war. Why is that possible everywhere else in the world but impossible here?
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, if a second Chamber can block the nation going to war, what does that tell us about the primacy of the first?
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
Of course the first Chamber is going to have primacy. That is readily established in every other bicameral system in which there is an elected second Chamber. However, on the issue of whether to go to war, in the United States the President has to get the agreement of both Houses of Congress. Has that seriously prevented the United States going to war? Quite the contrary. This is an issue on which this House, as an elected Chamber, should be able to exercise its rights.
The time has arrived to bring this place up to date. The time has arrived when we have to stop what is not only an anachronism but an undemocratic anachronism. We send our young men out to fight and die and, perhaps worse still, to kill others in the name of democracy but we do not have a democratic second Chamber in this country, as is the case with the vast majority of bicameral systems throughout the world. Why can they cope with democracy but not us? Is our democracy so ineffective and immature and are our institutions so weak that we cannot cope with what they can cope with and we have to resort to the kind of principles that operate in Bahrain and Belarus?
This place is an anachronism and an undemocratic anachronism, and I am in favour of a fully elected second Chamber. However, if the proposition put forward by the committee as a compromise is the best one that we can achieve, I shall happily vote for it. By the way, I also believe that it should be supported by a referendum. The reality is that this is a reform that can no longer wait. Our democracy is in danger. We have to start renewing the democratic structures of this country, and the reform and democratisation of the second Chamber is part of that process. We cannot keep this waiting any longer. We have a proposition; we should take it up and do the business now.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I remind the House that noble Lords are speaking for quite a time. If all noble Lords take as long, we shall be sitting very late indeed.
Lord Stirrup
Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps he can help me on one extremely important point. I think that he referred to the most important element or principle of democracy as the right of the people to elect those who represent them. Rather, is it not the right of the people to remove those who represent them—something for which I believe there is no provision in this Bill?
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
My Lords, there is a provision in the Bill, although one might argue that a 15-year term is rather long to make that as effective as it should be. I am not claiming that the Bill is perfect—of course I am not. There are things that I would wish to see that are not there, not least that it should be a fully elected second Chamber. I am simply saying that we have an opportunity to reform. You have to choose between keeping this place as it is, which in my view is totally insupportable, or moving towards democratically based reform of the sort proposed by the Bill. The second of those may be a compromise but it is one that I embrace with enthusiasm because it will at least start the process.
European Council
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Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
My Lords, given that we have now cast the veto without stopping anything; that in the name of protecting the City of London we have made it more vulnerable; that we have in a time of crisis given greater incentive to investors to put their money in northern Europe than in isolated Britain; and that we have reduced our leverage in Europe and diminished our voice in Washington, is it not now necessary that we take every step to get ourselves out of the position that we find ourselves in, make ourselves relevant to the argument and get back in the game? How do we intend to do that? Does my noble friend realise how much depends for this country—and for this Government—on our success in doing so?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I cannot agree with my noble friend. We believe that we are very firmly in the game. Our voice is not diminished. It is strong. We have defended vital British interests and we will continue to do so in the single market at the level of 27.
House of Lords: Reform
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Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I have explained that I fully accept that there are splits behind me, and everyone knows that. We have been totally open about that, but we are united in our view that this is a bad Bill. That is where the difference between my Benches and the noble Lord’s Benches comes.
The debate will also demonstrate that the clear and united view on these Benches is, as I have said, that this is a bad Bill accompanied by an inadequate White Paper. Even for a Government who are making it their specialist subject to bring forward bad Bills, this is a very bad Bill. It is a bad Bill because it is badly done and because it is not up to the task that it is addressing. The Government can, for example, assert to their hearts’ content, as they do in Clause 2, that nothing in the Bill,
“affects the primacy of the House of Commons”,
as the Leader of the House explained earlier. Ministers can, if they wish, assert that the moon is made of green cheese. They can even put such an assertion in the Bill, should they so choose, but however eloquent such an assertion is, and however well drafted such a provision is, it makes not a jot of difference in fact, because the changes to the House as it is currently constituted, and its replacement by an elected senate, will automatically affect the primacy of the House of Commons. The fact that needs to be faced is that further reform of your Lordships' House is not so much about the House of Lords but the House of Commons. The real impact of Lords reform is not in this place, but in the other place. With the publication of the draft Bill and the White Paper, this Government have put the primacy of the House of Commons into play.
There will be many other areas on which to focus. Difficult issues have not been addressed to date. They have not been considered or resolved. This is a bad Bill because it does not answer the key questions on the issue. What is the role of the House of Lords? What should be the role of the second Chamber? What powers should a reformed House of Lords have? What powers do the Government want a reformed House of Lords to have? What will be the conventions that govern relations between the two Chambers? What happens to the current conventions that govern the relationship between the two Chambers? Should that relationship be codified? These and others are big questions that will have to be properly addressed, properly considered and properly resolved before any Bill to reform fundamentally your Lordships’ House is enacted by Parliament. These are questions with which constitutional reformers have grappled for years. They are questions that successive Governments have considered for years. They are questions that were considered in depth by the Joint Committee on Conventions, chaired by my noble friend Lord Cunningham of Felling—the conclusions of which included that the conventions would need to be considered again if substantive proposals on composition were brought forward, as they have been in this draft Bill, and approved by all parties in both Houses.
However, the Bill ducks those questions because, to Liberal Democrats, such questions and those who raise them are roadblocks to reform. They believe that those who pose such questions are just anti-reformers slipping into constitutionalist disguise. However, we on these Benches do not accept that. These are real questions and genuine constitutional problems. We certainly wrestled with them when we were in Government and wanted to proceed with Lords reform. Other Administrations have done the same. What is simply not adequate or sufficient is to do what this Bill tries to do—just to put the questions aside as though they do not matter. They do matter and they—
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I have listened very carefully to the noble Baroness, but, with great respect to her, it seems to me that her entire speech is predicated on the fact that she has been presented with a Bill. She is not being presented with a Bill. She is being presented with a White Paper.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I am sure that the noble Baroness understands the difference between the two.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, if the noble Lord were to read the White Paper again and reconsider it, he would find that within it there is a draft Bill. It is the draft Bill about which I am addressing my remarks.
We on my Benches give the House warning that when the draft Bill has been finalised, if it ever comes before this House, it will be properly scrutinised. Some Members of the House were disquieted by the way that we, as an Opposition, scrutinised the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill earlier this year. We may not necessarily scrutinise the Bill in the same way, but the Government need to know that if it comes before the House, we will scrutinise it with the same focus and intensity. However, we are a long way from there. First, we have the Joint Committee of both Houses. Joint Committees of both Houses of Parliament are excellent instruments. The Joint Committee is the proper committee to address all the difficult issues that require to be debated about further reform of your Lordships' House.
The Joint Committee, whose establishment we welcome, will, I am sure, do a first-rate job, and we thank all those who have volunteered to serve on it. We on these Benches thank in particular our Members from this House on the committee: the noble Lord, Lord Richard, a former Leader of the House, who is taking on the particularly onerous role of chairing the committee, two former Ministers and Deputy Leaders of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and a former Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. All are widely respected not just on these Benches but throughout the House.
Their task is a challenging, even a daunting one, as is the task before all members of the committee from both Houses. The scale of that task has been made clear by the responses to the publication of the draft Bill and White Paper: almost all of them sceptical or negative. I cite only two responses. The House of Lords specialist, Donald Shell, the University of Bristol politics academic whose book, The House of Lords, is the acknowledged primary guide to the House, argues that some hard thinking needs to take place. He asks a key question of the Bill: do MPs really want a Lords that can challenge the Commons? A key question indeed, although one that the Bill seems wholly to shrink. I might quote Martin Kettle; on the other hand, I might cite Peter Oborne in the Telegraph, who described the Bill as.
“a recipe for chaos, one that will see British government come to resemble the annual shambles of the Lib Dem conference”.
Mr Oborne concludes that,
“exactly 100 years ago, Lords reform helped wreck HH Asquith’s Liberal ascendancy. History may be about to repeat itself”.
Those are grim warnings for the coalition and for Parliament. It will take all the skill of those serving on the Joint Committee to navigate their way through those rocks and shoals.
It may be that if, as we on these Benches expect, the Joint Committee addresses itself properly to the complexities and difficulties which abound around the issue of further reform of your Lordships' House, its work may take time. The Leader of the House has already acknowledged in this Chamber that if the Joint Committee needs more time to conclude its work than by the end of next February, more time it will get. We welcome that commitment.
It may well also be that if the complexities and difficulties with which the Joint Committee will be wrestling prove as intractable as they have been for the past 100 years, the part-Liberal Democrat coalition Government may find greater attraction in the proposals put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, a distinguished former leader of the Liberal Democrats, in the Bill he has before the House. Members of the House will recall that we on these Benches had included the bulk of the Steel Bill recommendations in our Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill before the election, but they were struck out in the wash-up by one of the parties now on the government Benches.
When the Bill eventually appears in the House, there will be a clear position from these Benches. As I said, we have many different opinions on these Benches about Lords reform. Many of my Members are strongly opposed to a directly elected second Chamber, but we are united in seeing the Bill—and it is a draft Bill—as a bad Bill. That is not a unity in papering over the cracks, as the coalition parties on the Benches opposite will no doubt seek to do, but a unity of resolve to ensure that the issues involved in further reform of this place are properly considered. It is a resolve to ensure that any Bill that comes to this House is properly scrutinised and a resolve to ensure that, if this House is to be reformed, it will be reformed by good and proper legislation, not by a Bill as bad as the one before us today.
This House, this Parliament, our politics and our constitution merit more than that. Reform should mean proper reform. That in turn means a better Bill, a good Bill. We, as an Opposition, will work to ensure that this House, our politics and our constitution get the legislation that they deserve.
Libya
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
My Lords, perhaps I can invite the Minister to clarify that point which might be open to misunderstanding. Although it is true that the UN Security Council resolution forbids or does not cover any invasion or occupation, there is nothing in that resolution which would inhibit us using military assets to do something like rescue a downed pilot.
Lord Strathclyde
Yes, my Lords, I regard that as a very different point and I am able to clarify that to my noble friend.
NATO Summit
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I understand very much the position that the right reverend Prelate found himself in when talking to those who have a clear government interest within Georgia. I, too, have met and discussed the situation with Georgians who feel strongly about it—unsurprisingly, if I may say so. However, like the right reverend Prelate, I have found Georgians with whom I have spoken have a realistic understanding of the West’s role, which is why in answer to an earlier question—I think it was from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—I explained the case of the Geneva talks. That is the best place to resolve these issues, because all those most affected by them are represented in those talks.
The right reverend Prelate also asked whether I was confident that we can deal with our objectives in NATO and that the new strategic concept can deal with them. I am bound to say yes we are. We feel that this is an important step forward, not least in that the summit included so many different countries that are not officially members of NATO but are either supporting us in Afghanistan or, as the Russians themselves did, were playing such an important and distinguished role in the conclusions of this summit.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
My Lords, while we must always keep up the military pressure in Afghanistan, is it not the case that, now that we have established a deadline of 2015 for the end of combat operations by NATO forces, the weight of our activities should shift to finding a political solution? If that is, as I believe, the policy of the United Kingdom Government, what steps will they take to ensure that Washington is persuaded that it should be their policy too?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Ashdown is right. We have long said that the solution to the conflict in Afghanistan is not military. There has to be more to it, combining politics within Afghanistan itself with the support of aid, trade and all the other things that make up creating and building up a country in the modern world. I would not read it as such a difference between our own objectives and those of the United States. In fact, our objectives are not far away from those of NATO and, this weekend, there is an aspirational target for NATO to have achieved the end of conflict by 2014. The fact that we have taken this position on 2015 will not be missed by other countries, which will be asking their own leaders whether it is appropriate that they too should set a similar target.