UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl and his committee on not only producing this report but, for once, getting it into the Chamber for debate before it has gathered too much dust. He has done remarkably well there.

The House knows my attitude to things European. I welcome what have been called “changing attitudes”, but I am a member of the Lord Speaker’s panel for schools and there has been no change of attitude there. School pupils were appalled by the referendum result. Every time I speak to a school, I say quite clearly, “I think it was a dreadful thing and we should reverse it as soon as possible. Does anyone disagree?” Occasionally you get the odd hand, but very seldom. Most of our younger generation, including the students at Cambridge University whom I meet from time to time, believe that we should repeal the whole process. That is why I welcome recent statements about looking again at how we can get a closer relationship.

It is fine to say that you can go around Australia for tuppence, or whatever, but most people want to go to Europe. Most people want the Erasmus programme back and students from the European Union to be able to come here. Most students want to come here. I want to see a Government looking to get as near as they can to the single market and back to the customs union and free movement. It seems incredible that we have such labour shortages but do not allow people to come into the country who would be prepared to work and benefit the economy.

I welcome the European Political Community and Britain’s participation in it. I see that we are hosting a summit next year; I hope we will put a lot of effort into it. I have also been interested to see recently that the French in particular are looking at a possible different structure. It has been common gossip in Brussels for years that the EU needs a different structure to enlarge. As someone said to me of the Baltic states, “You let one in and they’ll veto all the rest”. We have to work out a different structure; this two-tier structure is certainly worth looking at and working on, because I think it would work. It would probably also work for some of the current members of the EU that appear congenitally unable to keep its rules when it does not suit them. They do not seem to realise that the EU is an organisation where you have to compromise and, in the end, agree in order to go forward. That has been the EU’s secret—people can talk together. In this landmass, with fewer languages than India and a far smaller population than India or China, we have no option but to work together.

One hundred years ago this year, my grandmother moved into her first married house. She had gas mantles—not electricity—and no radio, and penicillin was a thing of the future. By the time she died, towards the end of the last century, all those things had changed. I say this because my granddaughter, now aged two, will probably be alive for the better part of another 100 years. This world will then be very different. Britain will be a small part of a small continent. It may well be China’s century—however much fantasy we have, I can tell noble Lords it will not be Russia’s—and we need to come to terms with that. The only way of doing so is to work with our European colleagues and to accept that you have to make compromises in working together —compromises that lead to the better good, a stronger Europe and a better place for us to leave our children to inherit.

Parliamentary Democracy in the United Kingdom

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, one can say very little in two minutes, so I will concentrate on one subject. I spent a long time in another legislature in another country. One of the conclusions that I drew 30 years ago, which is still with me, is that our electoral system is fundamentally unfair. You cannot talk about parliamentary democracy when you deny large numbers of people representation in Parliament. For many years, I have been a strong supporter of PR. When one talks about strong government, one should think also about stable government; the German, Swedish and Dutch systems have brought forward very sound Governments.

I think the Labour Party—as many in it probably think—would be far better off if Jeremy Corbyn was in an ultra-left party, as exists in most European countries. The House of Commons would be much stronger if the Green Party had a representation that came somewhere near its votes. I also think that Nigel Farage clearly has a following that is worthy of representation. You cannot talk about the strength of parliamentary democracy when you deny so many people a vote and a say in the way that the country is governed. I have believed that for many years and still believe it now.

There is a myth about strong government. We have a strong Government now, but look at some of the things that they have done. I am unhappy with them and I am on their side. God knows what other people think about them. I ask that we give serious consideration to electoral reform as the basis of a strong parliamentary democracy.

House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Lord Balfe Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add to the many congratulations for my noble friend Lord Norton on getting the Bill this far. I also thank him for the work he does, month in, month out, together with my noble friend Lord Cormack, to keep this issue alive. Reform of the Lords is not just one Bill; it is something that we need to address seriously.

I will concentrate on Clauses 7 and 9, because they open up a number of problems that affect different parts of this House differently. First, the capacity and willingness to contribute is clearly important. I have told this House before that, when David Cameron asked me to serve in the Lords, he was very keen that I would come here, contribute and vote. He was so keen that he did not ask me who I would vote for or in which way, but he was very keen that I do that and I was pleased to assure him that I would.

However, we need to go further. We need to address whether a capacity and willingness to contribute can be squared with the points my noble friend Lord Leigh made about attendance in this House. Attendance must be part of the undertaking of being an active Peer. It is of course different for different groups. If those in the Cross-Bench group want to carry a few passengers when, at the same time, they are limited in numbers, that is up to them, because they would just be reducing their numbers. But if the political parties want to be effective, they have to find a way to get their Members here and voting. That is most important.

I have some concerns about “conspicuous merit”. The only body I know that has that as a criterion is the Order of Merit, which is chosen personally by the sovereign. Face it, most noble Lords would not pass that criterion. I have no particular conspicuous merit. When I was sent here, the then Prime Minister said, “I think we need someone on our Benches who will put in a word for the trade unions, from time to time”. I am not sure he realised what he was letting loose on the House, but that was his criterion in asking me to be here. That is not conspicuous merit.

I notice that, under Clause 9, party leaders will be asked to submit the

“criteria adopted by the party for the purposes of selecting the name for submission.”

Generally, we need people to keep the House of Lords going. Many different criteria could be adopted. For instance, the various leaders of the Labour Party over the years may well have had different criteria in mind when they sent people to this body. Some noble Lords whom previous leaders have sent have made a distinguished contribution to our deliberations; I think, for instance—although she is not here—of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, who participated in discussions on a Bill the other day. She was a Corbyn nominee but she has turned out to be a very effective parliamentarian.

The parties have to be able to say that one of their criteria will be that a person will help strengthen our reputation and have an ability to contribute to the duties of the House of Lords. That, more or less, should be enough, and hundreds of people would fulfil that criterion. I can think of many members of the Conservative Party who are at least as worthy as I am of being here. I was lucky, and just happened to have been in the right place at the right time. We will need a party-political view at the back of our minds when we look at that criterion.

I am pleased to see this Bill here. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Norton and will do whatever I can to help it on to the statute book, but it is a start, not a finish.

Negotiating Objectives for a Free Trade Agreement with India

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations and thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on chairing this committee and getting this debate going.

I read the report with a sense of despair, because, if you strip it away, it does not actually say very much. It seemed to me a triumph of hope over experience, as they say. One of the things that struck me early on was the absence of any discussion with our friend, the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, the Commissioner who began the negotiations on this at an EU level. Frankly, I was surprised that there was no attempt to find out what the problems at his level were.

A couple of years ago, I was fortunate enough to be in the Commission at a reception. I met a French diplomat. I said to him, “What do you do?” He said, “Blah, blah, blah—oh, and I look after the trade agreement with India.” I asked, “How’s that going?” He said, “Round in circles. It’s been 10 years now. We haven’t yet got a memorandum of understanding. We’re not actually going to get anywhere, but we don’t really want to drop it publicly.”

We are up against a certain amount of difficulty, and we need to learn from elsewhere. I know that I am an unrepentant remainer, but I am surprised that Europe is not even mentioned in any context in this report. However, it does mention, and is quite right about, the “notoriously difficult business environment”. It is notoriously difficult. Part of it is an inheritance from British rule, because when we left India we left the states of India with certain powers in relation to tariffs that they have been completely unwilling to give up. If you travel round India by road, as I have done on the odd occasion, one thing you notice when you get to the state boundaries are long queues of lorries waiting to get through the different state customs levels. When we talk about the need for change in domestic laws, we are rather glibly talking about something that has been a problem for some 75 years. The states do not want to give up their powers, because they use them as part of their weapons against the central state. It is a bit like having Nicola Sturgeon in the middle of India blocking your way of doing things and not being prepared to give up. I am pleased to see the remarks about the investor-state dispute settlement, but unless some flesh is put on it it will not work.

I am disturbed by the fact that the whole report does not mention human rights at all. You would not think from the report that the present Prime Minister of India was forbidden from coming to Britain and denied a visa for many years, and that this was lifted only when the Cameron Government decided that they might make some money there. Frankly, if you look at the state of India today and the tensions between the Hindu and the Muslim communities, you cannot honestly say that they pass the human rights test. You cannot honestly look at them and say, “This is a state that conforms to the human rights that we in Britain expect.” When I looked at the back of the report and saw a comparison with New Zealand, I thought, to paraphrase Noël Coward, “Small place, New Zealand. Nothing much in common at all, and certainly nothing much in common on the field of human and social rights.”

I also felt that it skated a little on labour rights. ILO rights are quite basic, down to the way in which international agreements must take place, and if we do not support the ILO it will wither away. Countries such as this are reliant on supporting the ILO and its rights to make them mean something, so there are some serious deficiencies.

We are India’s 17th-largest trading partner. Position 17 is not a high-leverage position for a start, but I will remark on two separate points that have not been addressed properly. The report mentions facilitation fees, but we do not seem to understand what they are. When I was a Member of the European Parliament, I was well known for my love of men in uniform running countries. For that reason, I was on one occasion sent to Bangladesh to find out what was going on there. I actually got on very well with the military Government that was in power then and with the Finance Minister in particular. I had a useful formal meeting with him, which ended with an invitation to dinner. He explained facilitation fees to me: they are ways to make sure that public servants have enough to live on, because the state cannot afford to pay public servants what they actually need.

The Finance Minister of Bangladesh was clear to me that the function of a facilitation fee was a fee for a service. If someone wanted something done, they paid a facilitation fee. Facilitation fees were not some sort of jungle; they set out quite precisely how much you could charge for what. Public servants knew what the facilitation fees were. The fact that you kept on and on paying them was, as far as Bangladesh was concerned, and I suspect it is exactly the same in India, a legitimate way of running the country. It was a way of getting things done. As the 17th-largest trading partner, we will have some work to get around this problem of facilitation fees, because we say they are corrupt, but they do not think that. They think they are part of the way of running the state.

The final point I will deal with is Russia. We seem to be surprised. It is said that India ended up as a friend of Russia because Winston Churchill, rather like Jinnah in Pakistan, drank whisky. The whole division between India and Pakistan is very real, but the division between Russia and the West was, to an extent, because India felt rather unwanted.

The history of Indian relations with Russia goes right back to the beginning of the state. We have all heard of Francis Fukuyama, who predicted the end of history. In 1987, he wrote the book The Soviet Union and the Third World: the Last Three Decades, in which he pointed out that by the end of the 1970s—50 years ago now—the USSR had helped to create 30% of India’s steel capacity, 70% of its oil-extraction facilities, 30% of its oil-refining capacity, 20% of its power-generating capacity and 80% of its metallurgic equipment production. This is not a recent relationship, and no one should be surprised by the quite favourable terms that Russia has consistently provided for the development of India and its substructure.

For instance, during the 13-day war in 1971, it was Russia that came to the aid of India when Britain was washing its hands, to an extent. There is a friendship treaty which goes back to 1971. There is a long history and it will not disappear because, frankly, as Russians will tell you, the Indians are not really interested in Ukraine. It is as sad and simple as that. India is interested in Indian foreign policy, which has consistently led it to look after its relations with the Soviet Union. It is looking after them now because it is benefiting from the sanctions.

We are in grave danger of getting into a situation where the end result of sanctions will be a permanent shift from Russia and the “-stans” looking west to their looking south. There is a whole middle class in China and India which is looking for energy in particular and can see the benefits of keeping on the right side of Russia. They cannot see any benefits to keeping on the right side of Ukraine. We need to remember that when we look at world politics because, at the end of the day, foreign policy is about getting the best for your country, not doing favours for the rest of the world. We always remember that when it is Britain—some of our foreign policy adventures have been pretty awful—but we often forget it for other countries, thinking that they should somehow be beneficent and do things for us. Friends, they are not going to.

House of Lords Appointments Commission

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I did not notice that dominance in the massive number of defeats suffered by the Government in your Lordships’ House in the last Session. However, the noble Baroness, whose wisdom and experience I always heed, makes an important point: your Lordships’ House is a House that advises and has the capacity to ask the other House to think again; its conduct must be based on restraint and, above all, a good understanding across the Front Benches between Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition and the Government of the time. Historically, this was founded in the arrangement known as the Salisbury/Addison convention. I hope that we will continue to heed that doctrine, whoever is in office.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, when I came into this House, I was told by the Conservative Chief Whip that the difference between this House and the Commons was that in the Lords you had to win arguments to win votes. It seems that we are moving towards an untenable situation where one party in this House is trying to get a majority.

Will the incoming Prime Minister commit to working with this House to achieve the aim of the Burns report? That aim was to have a responsible second House that can challenge the Government; although, as my noble friend Lord Cormack and I both know, in the final event we accept the primacy of the elected Chamber. All we are asking for is balance. When I am told the Labour Benches are going to be strengthened by eight new Peers when we get 20, I am not sure that is balance.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am not certain it is the role of your Lordships’ House to challenge the other place, although I agreed with the later points made by my noble friend. I believe your Lordships’ House worries at this question too much. I repeat that I do not believe fundamentally—as I have said many times from this Dispatch Box—that your Lordships’ House, which is unelected, can aspire to dictate who and how many Members are in it.

Standards of Behaviour and Honesty in Political Life

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I join many others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Morse, for initiating this debate, which is certainly timely, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, for his enlightening quotes, which are very interesting.

We have to follow standards in public life which are out there and can be seen by other people and tested. I have always thought that the standards called on for politicians are, rightly, somewhat higher than you might find in the general public. We are nearer the right reverend Prelate, who has just left his place, in that we have to abide by a set of standards that people expect, which are higher than many follow in their day-to-day life.

During the Second World War, when Britain was under great strain and the House of Commons had been bombed, there was a survey that asked people, “Do you trust MPs?” Something like half the people surveyed said no. That was at the height of the war, when everyone was fighting for their life. The significant thing was that when the question was, “Do you trust Mr Jones, your MP?”, the results were quite different. Most people said, “Yes, well, he’s a bit different, you know.”

The conclusion to draw is: if you actually know the person and they are doing a good job in your locality, you are likely to think more highly of them than if they are abstract figure who appears from time to time in the papers. I have always argued that, to an extent, we have created our own problems—not so much in this House, but certainly down the Corridor, where MPs have failed to face up to the fact of being public representatives.

Whenever there is a pay increase, there is always an MP who will get up to say, “I’m not taking it. We shouldn’t be paid this much and we want to give it back.” But my MP is paid two-thirds of what my GP is paid. That does not seem quite right to me. Part of our problem, which translates to this debate, is that, instead of paying MPs, we let them go out on the dinner circuit and earn a lot of extra money. We should be paying them properly and stopping them earning anything other than a token amount on top of their pay. Then we would have accountable MPs.

We have heard a bit about resignations, including from the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, but there is a bit of difference. Now, we seem to have got to a position where you need a report to get a resignation. When I look back over my political life, which has been quite long—not as distinguished as that of my noble friend Lord Cormack, although it has been as long, in that I was first elected to the Greater London Council in 1973, a bit after him—I see the names of resignations as they came up. Dalton has been mentioned. Thomas Dugdale resigned over Crichel Down. John Profumo resigned over lying to the House of Commons. Lord Carrington resigned over the Falklands. Cecil Parkinson had a not very distinguished resignation, but it was one none the less. Then there was David Mellor, and the various resignations in the Blair Government and afterwards.

Most of them resigned because they felt that they should. They did not resign because they had waited for a report or an ethics adviser had come up with a report. They resigned because, in the light of the feelings of the day, they had gone too far and should surrender their seals of office. That is quite right. I have a lot of sympathy with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Butler. There should be a gradation between resignation and holding on and refusing to say anything at all. A minor infraction of the rules should get a minor slap on the wrist, but it should not need a committee to do that. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Geidt, or someone else in his place is reappointed but I do not acknowledge that they have the job that should be done because people should have enough honour to police the system themselves.

I have said this privately; I say it now publicly. I am afraid that our present Prime Minister was well known before he got the job. No one ever pretended that our present Prime Minister knew much about truth, veracity or anything else. Let us not hide this. This is not something that we discovered last week. It has been present ever since he was working on the Times many years ago, when his first career came to a somewhat juddering halt.

I want to disabuse both my party and the Opposition of another thing: the Prime Minister won the election because, first, people were fed up to the back teeth with the Brexit debate and wanted to get Brexit done; and, secondly, the leader of the Opposition was widely perceived as not being wanted on voyage. It is as simple as that. You cannot heap all the honours on the Prime Minister without looking at who he beat and how he beat them. The truth of the matter is that the biggest asset the Conservative Party had was the market gardener from Islington, also known as the then leader of the Opposition.

The fact is that—having been a member of both parties, I know them reasonably well—Labour is perceived as having abandoned that essentially conservative, working-class base. That has been Labour’s difficulty for many years. Its base is essentially conservative. The people I grew up with in Methodist Sheffield, who went out and voted Labour because they thought that Hugh Gaitskell would be the best person to run Britain, were not revolutionaries. I would argue that they were not even socialists. They were good people who wanted change and thought that the Labour Party would bring it. When Labour has excited people—I have seen them excited twice, by Harold Wilson and Tony Blair—the people vote it in. People were not excited at the time of the last election. I am sorry but, if they were excited, it was probably in the wrong way.

I finish with this: I welcome this debate but we need to look at our own area first.

Houses of Parliament: Co-location

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Norton for initiating this debate. In my nine years in this House, I have attended his group fairly regularly and benefited from his wisdom and that of my noble friend Lord Cormack. Unfortunately, we have not managed to achieve much in these years, although that is not for the want of trying, but one of the things that we seem to have achieved, which my noble friend Lord True is probably not too happy about, is that from time to time we have debates where not a single person supports what the Government want to do.

I must say that I am disappointed that our own Front Bench is not represented here today. I am pleased to see the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and the Liberal representation, but I am sorry that our own Conservative Front Bench have not been here for any part of this debate.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

The Minister is here.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

Yes, but I am talking about our representative in the Cabinet, who I would like to think was out there defending us. I want to hear a statement from someone who supposedly represents us in No. 10 saying what their take is on all this and what they intend to do in order to carry out the wishes of this House.

I spent even longer than my noble friend Lord Inglewood in the European Parliament; I was there for 25 years. For 10 of them, I had a very obscure job that involved me going around Europe to all the member states looking at their administrative arrangements for liaison back to the Parliament. That meant that in the course of those 10 years, on a cycle, every two years I visited every Parliament in the EU, the number of which of course expanded slightly during my 10 years. I noticed that all of them saw the necessity, where they had a second Chamber—and not all of them did—for it to be collocated with the other Chamber, generally in a building where they were connected at some point to each other, not dissimilar to this building. In one case, Germany, there is a clear distinction between the roles of the lower and upper House, but even there they are in the same city.

Another point that always struck me was that the seat of government is exactly that. It is not just the Parliament; it normally contains the seat of the Supreme Court and the seat of most of the major public bodies—just as London has the Local Government Association, for instance. The capital is the place where policy is debated, discussed and made. That is why, in my view, it is important that all parts of the democratic machine are located within that capital complex. That is the common way in which things happen.

As my noble friend Lord Cormack has mentioned, that does not mean that committees cannot travel. To take another European Parliament example, most committees went twice a year to another city somewhere within the EU for a meeting. Part of the job of the rather boring committee that I sat on was to make sure that they did not both end up in the same place, or that you did not get two committees in the same town at the same time, but they did travel around so that is possible.

However, we found in Strasbourg, as my noble friend has already mentioned, that getting people together was extraordinarily difficult because everyone was travelling there. Getting meetings of the Commission, the Parliament and the lobbyists who came down was extremely difficult and it did not function properly, largely because it was not cohesive or in the same city. Indeed, in the early days the European Commission made very little attempt to get there at all, and that was one of the big early rows about the Commission reporting to the European Parliament. I mention that because the essence of a Parliament has to be that all the different constituent parts, not just the Chambers but the other parts of the democratic structure, have to be located largely within the same geographical area.

Turning to some very local matters, some of which have been mentioned, every week within this place we have debates on Bills, and sitting in the Box are the civil servants. Where are they going to be? Are they going to be shipped off to our new home? No, they are going to be working in Whitehall, but then presumably they are going to be asked to travel. The noble Lord, Lord Best, has mentioned a number of all-party parliamentary groups; I doubt that a week goes by without virtually every Member sitting in this House being in an all-party group somewhere or other with Members of the House of Commons. That is part of what makes this place work.

Although “lobbyist” is a dirty word in many voices, that function is also very useful. Instead of talking about lobbyists, I could talk about my useful relations with the TUC, which of course is based in London and can tell me about what is going on in the TU movement, or the various trade unions that I am in contact with and sometimes mention in this House. Most of their head offices are in London and their officers can pop in here for a cup of tea, or I can drop in and see them. I have my reservations about lobbyists, particularly some of them, but one of their jobs is to impart information. A few weeks ago, when I was moving an amendment with the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on the Health and Care Bill, we both made extensive use of consultation with lobbyists who we could get hold of. They came to see us and, together with senior civil servants who were prepared to come to meetings, we were able to draft a very useful clause.

In conclusion, I have only one question for the Minister. Is money still being spent on looking at the QEII Centre or has that stopped, and was there a contract? Will that contract be published and, if it is, will we see who in Michael Gove’s department initiated it? It appears that the Levelling-Up Secretary has cancelled a contract which his department must have negotiated, and presumably there is some sort of paper trail. I ask the Minister to pass the buck and say “Look: my House of Parliament—the House of Lords—wants to know what the background is to this contract. How did it get let, who has been representing you on it, how much have you spent, is it still running and what are you up to?” I would like that one question to be reflected forward. I join everybody else in roundly condemning Michael Gove’s plan and wondering whether it will have any support at all.

Elections Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 17th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I too express my deep concerns about the ways in which the Bill contravenes the Human Rights Act and indeed our constitutional commitments. I have canvassed the views of human rights lawyers and constitutional lawyers, and I am afraid I find it very difficult to see where the Government’s advice has come from that this complies with our commitments and obligations under our own legislation and constitutional commitments. When people say, “Let us think twice”, it is a reminder to this House about our role in causing hesitation when something of such significance in our democracy is going to interfere with the fundamentals. I call upon us to hesitate before going down this road, and to question what its purposes really are.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to say a word of caution as well. When I look at a piece of legislation, I invariably say, “How would this work if the political parties were changed—if, instead of us implementing it, the party opposite were doing so?” If it passes that test because it is a fair piece of legislation, then I think that is within the Government’s right.

My concern here is that we are unbalancing the structure and that a Secretary of State—from a party, my party, that clearly is not well known for its love of the trade union movement—could exercise these powers, which may need exercising but not in this way by these people. We have to be very careful with the Electoral Commission because it is in all our interests for it to be seen as fair, independent and trustworthy. I am not going to make lots of speeches on this Bill because they would all be essentially the same, but I am afraid I am concerned about the way the Bill is tipping things.

I clearly have no interest in funding Labour Party campaigns, but I have an interest in there being a level playing field and people being able to campaign. My personal view, which I will mention in debate on another clause, is that party financing has got completely out of control and needs fundamental reform. You cannot run a democracy on selling games of tennis. When we say, “We have a great democracy and we’re really proud of it”, we are asked, “Oh yes? How do you fund it?”, and we have to reply, “Well, the Prime Minister plays tennis with Russians, and we get quite a bit of money in from that.”

When I came into politics, which was a long time ago—about 60 years, to be exact—the great joke was that you could not have a party function without a raffle and you could not run an election without at least a couple of jumble sales. When I was eventually disposed of by the Labour Party, which in retrospect was actually not a bad thing, I joined the Conservatives—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

I have followed the noble Lord’s career for all those 60 years in great detail; I remember when we worked together in the Co-operative Party. I think his recollection is just a little wrong. My recollection is that he left us; we did not kick him out.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I have a letter signed by none other than the great Mr Blair terminating my membership of the Labour Party for a disciplinary offence, which was running for an office that was not actually reserved for any political party but was supposedly open to all. Mr Blair decided that I was to be forbidden from running for that office. I had won the election fairly easily because it gave people an excuse; they were voting not for Balfe but against the Iraq war, which was a bit odd because the job I was standing for was administrator of the European Parliament pension fund.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Was the noble Lord not running for a well-paid lucrative post within the European Parliament?

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I suggest to my friend the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that he stops making a fool of himself. This was not a paid post; it was an elected post within the European Parliament, known colloquially as “shop steward”—I see the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, nodding—that attracted no pay but you got some staff, a big office and the ability to actually get things done for the members. By definition, it was a non-political post. It had no politics attached to it, which made what happened even more odd. I will bring the noble Lord the letter; I will get it out of the LSE archives.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Could the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, just help us with something? Having gone down this road, we need to complete the journey. I think I understand why he was removed from the Labour Party, and why he presumably accepted the post, but I would like to know what it was he found particularly attractive about the Conservatives. It is one thing to leave the Labour Party, but to join the Tories, I mean—

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

From my position in the trade union movement, I knew there were quite a lot of right-wing people in AUEW/TASS. We were not all bleeding-heart liberals; we were actually toughies. I had no difficulty in joining the Conservative Party because I felt that it reflected many of my values.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I am enjoying this exchange, although obviously we need to focus on the clause. In recent times the noble Lord has addressed this House about the discipline that has been imposed on him by the Conservative Party in the House of Lords, so that seems to be a common thread through his career.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I think we should stop our entertainment and get back to the purpose of the Bill.

My concern about the Bill is that it leads to an uneven playing field—it is as simple as that. If we are to have reform, it should be by some form of consensus, although I know that has been incredibly difficult to achieve. I take a rather puritan view as to how much should be spent on elections. We need to get back to a situation where a democracy consists of people asking for votes, not of people going out and attempting to buy them. To my mind, the party funding system has got completely out of kilter.

Peerages: Recommendations

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Balfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the resolution of the House on 31 October 1917 which required that any recommendation for a new peerage sent to the Crown be accompanied by a statement of the reasons for the recommendation, what plans they have to ensure that (1) any person nominated for a peerage has been approved as a proper person by the House of Lords Appointments Commission, or any other appropriate vetting committee, and (2) the assessment of the Commission accompanies the recommendation to the Crown for the grant of the peerage.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to introduce this short debate. It is a bit of a raffle, is it not? You put in your subject and about four out of 20 get drawn, so I am probably lucky to be drawn.

This comes out of my long-term interest in history, particularly the history of the way Britain has developed. When I first got here, some nine years ago, I was quite fascinated to be told that we were a self-governing House. I think I have discovered over the last nine years that our definition of “self-governing House” is something like that of a self-governing colony. We have no rights other than the right the governor-general wishes to accord to us, and she does not seem to want us to do very much at all.

When I was looking back in the history books, quite by accident I chanced on a debate from 1917, which quite clearly demonstrates that this House has the right to ask the Government to do something. People have said that we cannot ask the Government and can only petition or request, but we can take a decision. That is why the rather obscure reference to 1917 is at the beginning of this Question.

The second thing is that my studies of history have led me to somewhat different conclusions from many people’s about certain aspects of British history. One of them is that George V is probably the most underrated monarch of the last 200 years. He did a huge amount to bring Britain from Victorian England, which was really his father, to an England of George VI, which was his son. His almost 26 turbulent years transformed Britain. Together with probably our greatest Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, he not only probably saved Britain from revolution but put it on the path it is on today as a constitutional democracy.

We are quite unique in that we survived many buffetings without going down very extreme paths. If you look at the resolution of 1917, and one before it from 1914, you find at the base of it a general perception that the House of Lords was in need of some reform and that the Lords had got out of touch with the people. I think that is the case today.

The Earl of Selborne said in 1917 that the way in which the Lords behaved was

“doing grave damage to the prestige of the Crown”.

I do not think that recent events around honours and peerages have done any good for the Crown—let us put it that way. In the same debate, the Marquess of Lansdowne said that in passing the resolution we were going

“a long way towards allaying suspicion, which may be exaggerated, but which is certainly widespread and very deep-seated.” —[Official Report, 31/10/1917; cols. 847-60.]

There is a widespread and deep-seated perception today that there is a class of people in this country to whom the normal rules do not apply, and I am afraid that one of those people is not far from the head of this particular Administration we have. In short, we are in a situation where respect for the Government is far lower than it needs to be. Many people look at what is happening and say, “It’s okay for them; they live in a different world from us”.

What I am trying to do with this resolution is one little part of the procedure—the nominations of peerages: to ask that, when they are sent to the Crown, they be accompanied by the findings of whatever commission looks into peerages. If that commission rejects the peerage and the Prime Minister still wants to send it, he or she should be obliged to include with that the recommendation of the House of Lords commission that has been appointed to do this job. They should not just be able to sweep it under the carpet and say, “Oh well, I’ve looked at that and don’t agree—sorry”. All I am asking is that a document that would already exist, because the commission would have drawn it up, is forwarded to the Crown. I also suggest that that document be laid before each House. It is surprising to me that a parliamentary system that constantly talks of the need for openness does not even lay before its own House the qualifications that its own committee has approved for membership of it. This is not acceptable.

We need to do all that. It would also open up further areas where we need to look at reform. However, that is deliberately not part of this Question. I would be surprised if, when people start looking at the House of Lords, they do not start asking some questions about the business and other interests of some of its Members.

As many noble Lords know, I was sent to this House by David Cameron because he said that he wanted someone to speak for trade unions from the Conservative Benches. There was not a very long list of competitors for me to defeat but I have done what I said I would. Normally, if there is anything to do with the TUs, I pop up. I meet the TUC; I do not always agree with it but, during my time here, I have attempted to remind people that 30% of all trade unionists vote for the Conservative Party and they deserve to be listened to by our party—that is a jolly good thing. I say that, but of course the other thing David Cameron said was, “I want you to be a regular attender and voter in the House.” Then he stopped, and there was a gap before he said, “Preferably voting on our side.”

This House has to be relevant. Frankly, we have to open up the process, particularly on the question of what someone can contribute to the House of Lords. That question should be asked whether people are political nominations or Cross-Bench nominations. There are too many people in this House—this is not aimed at anyone; I am not naming any names—who, in a great flurry, become Lord or Lady So-and-so but you then have to ask the attendants, “Have you got a picture of them because I have never seen them?” This is not acceptable. This must be a working House, and one where most of the people are here most of the time.

When people ask me what my job is, they say, “Oh, you’ve retired.” I say, “No, no, I’m still working away.” They ask what I do, and I say that I work in the House of Lords. I do not say that I am a Member, which I obviously am—I say that I work here, because I do work here. This is where I come to and intervene and, I hope, do a small amount of good for the country.

I believe that this modest proposal to open up at the margin and shed some daylight on the system would be good for the Crown, which is not looking too good itself in the light of recent stories about nominations, and good for this House.

I close by quoting my dear grandmother—the wisest woman I ever knew—who once, when talking about somebody being given a knighthood, and getting it in properly, said, “Well, I don’t know why he did it, because you can’t eat it, can you, lad?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, one of the glories of this House is the wide range and diversity of its Members. If you wished to divide them up into categories, you would find that difficult. There are all sorts of opinions and views, and hurrah for that.

I recall, when I was on the Opposition Front Bench, going through Bills, and however late in the evening it was there would always be a number of Back-Bench Peers on all sides of the House. They had huge knowledge of the matters being discussed and were articulate in expressing their views. They made huge contributions to debates. Frankly, they made my own attempts to call the Government to account as a Front-Bench spokesman seem rather puny. I mention this because a number of those doing such sterling work would have been extremely unlikely to have passed the rigours of a vetting committee. Almost by definition, they had become such experts in their own fields that, on occasions, they might have appeared slightly odd when not discussing their own subject.

In a recent letter to the Times, Paul Dacre, that most eminent and distinguished newspaper editor said—oh, I have lost it.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

Maybe he did not say it.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

Well, I think he did. He said—the noble Lord will enjoy this:

“To anyone from the private sector, who, God forbid, has convictions, and is thinking of applying for a public appointment, I say the following: the civil service will control (and leak) everything; the process could take a year in which your life will be put on hold; and if you are possessed of an independent mind and are unassociated with the liberal-left, you will have more chance of winning the lottery than getting the job.”


I do not think for a moment that the committee suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, to give approval to anyone nominated for a peerage, would be in the least bit biased or show anything but the most even-handed and scrupulous attitude, and nor would they be likely to take a year. However, members of committees change and the new members may not always show such admirable impartiality.

Even if that was the case, it is inevitable that, as time goes by, the views of committees are reflected in those selected. This House could end up losing its independent thinkers and eccentrics, and those prepared to challenge the fashionable groupthink of the day. As things stand, there may be appointments that raise eyebrows. But rather that and retain the individuality of the Members of this House, and their willingness to call the Government to account, than the dreary sameness which would result over time from these proposals.

Elections Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, this is a very interesting Bill. It gets us into an even bigger mess than we were in before we started.

I believe in the principle of no representation without taxation. I spent almost 40 years living part of the time in Brussels. I paid my local tax there. I carried my national identity card, which was my voter ID card when I went to vote. It never caused me any problems; I never really thought about it. So I just do not sign up to all the business about the difficulty of having a card.

But the Bill has some very funny things in it. New Clause 1A(3) introduced by Clause 12 gives the right to vote to people who are living abroad and who have never been on the register here. I think instantly of my dear 75 year-old sister, who left Great Yarmouth at the age of seven and has lived in Dublin ever since. I do not know that there will be a branch of Fine Gael, which she has been active in all her life, for her to join here. Really, are we going completely mad, when we are giving the vote to 75 year-olds who left Britain at the age of seven? It happens that when my sister lived here, she was in the constituency of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. So, from Dublin, she will be able to vote for the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Colleagues, we have gone mad, have we not?

I share many of the points made by my good friend Lord Cormack about the Electoral Commission. I am not going to go into the detail as to whether the Government can or cannot, but when every member of the Electoral Commission, apart from our Conservative member, signs a letter such as they have, there is a serious problem and it needs sorting out. We cannot just go ahead with things as they are outlined in the Bill. The Electoral Commission must have enough freedom and free standing to be able to do its job.

I was a strong remainer. I think the Electoral Commission went too far during the course of the referendum campaign, became too partisan and needs some change, but the change needs to come on an all-party basis. We must have a broad consensus, otherwise what happens? There will be a change of government. I am sure the Labour Party is fine and upstanding, but it will certainly be tempted to say, “If they could do it to us, we can do it to them”. This is one of the areas of public life where it is essential to have some agreement between the parties.

I have been kind to the Labour Party for long enough. On the matter of trade unions’ support for funding and campaigning, they have to decide where they stand. Some 30% of trade unionists vote for the Conservative Party. That is not reflected in their political activity. Our colleagues will tell us that, of course, people can opt out, but the trade unions really have to get themselves up to date. In part that means, as Sharon Graham said, they have to start representing their members and stop trying to run the Labour Party. That is important on the way forward, because they do not need to support the Labour Party any more, frankly, than we need Russian money.

Colleagues and friends, I am very unhappy that we get so much money from big donors, because donors do not pay for nothing. These various shady people are not paying for nothing any more than Len McCluskey was paying for nothing. I would like to see a radical overhaul of party funding on both sides, because it has got us to a position where the whole of democracy is now starting to smell. Those on the Liberal Benches may well nod; they have also had their problems. People are looking at it and saying, “It’s not really our democracy, is it? It’s them up there”, so we have to tackle that.

Finally, the move to abolish the alternate vote is a severe backwards step. Personally, I believe in proportional representation; I think it gives us better government. I have worked in Europe for 40 years. People who tell me that strong government comes from our system need to look at places such as Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and the Scandinavian countries—countries that have run very good Governments for a very long time on the basis of proportional representation. It is an idea whose time has most certainly come. It deserves close looking at, and I do not mean look at it as Tony Blair did, when you think you might need it to get into government and then say to Paddy Ashdown, “I’ll give it to you for Europe, but I can’t go any further”.

We need to look at how we run society, and I put it to the House that when we do so, we might find that a PR form of government is a much fairer way of running our society. I think I have upset everybody now.