Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a privilege, as it always is, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. I think that she and I have two reasons to celebrate today. The first, of course, is the change that has taken place as a result of the Minister’s statement, to which I will return in just a second, and the second thing we celebrate is that we are both from Tottenham, and it is one of those rare days when people from Tottenham will be celebrating as well. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, will know exactly what I am talking about.

I join others in expressing my thanks to the Minister. We have not always been on the same side of debates, but I have been enormously impressed, as have other noble Lords, by his willingness not just to listen but to argue his case and then to come to a conclusion, which I am sure is his conclusion, which he has urged on other Ministers to make the Bill a better Bill. I appreciate that and I thank him for it, just as I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for moving the amendment, which I fully support, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Nicholson, and all others who have provided not only a lot of good sense but a very educative process for the House. I appreciate that a lot.

A number of noble Lords have been quite rightly appreciative of the role on all these issues of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. I am afraid that I am going to break ranks a tiny bit with her, and I hope that one day, if not today, she will forgive me, because when people tell you that you that because of the sorts of things you are likely to say or the things that you have said you are going to be called out, it is important to know what you are being called out about and whether it is true. I said at Second Reading, and I know it is true of very many colleagues across the House, that we have been involved in various fights—led by women’s organisations, I have to say—for the extension of women’s rights. I deeply appreciate those who led those fights, and I am grateful for the chance to have taken part.

The same is true about LGBT. I cannot recall one of the significant campaigns that have come from that community for which I have not had 100% support. That is also true about the rights of trans people, so I do not accept in any sense that by raising these issues we somehow have turned our backs on that history, or on the commitments which we have adhered to or that we have made, or that we are engaging in grievous stereotyping. I completely accept, for example, that trans women are under threat, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, but it is also true that other people and other groups are under threat and I do not think we do any of them any service if we play them off one against another.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said that we would be alarmed if we saw some of the things that have been written and said to her, so let me say that I deplore that as well. That kind of nastiness and incivility is deeply damaging to our political life and social life, and I deplore the fact that the noble Baroness has been on the receiving end of that kind of diatribe. But I hope she will accept that when we talk about evidence, there is genuine evidence on all sides. My noble friend Lord Winston made a point about some of the occasions when he has been on the receiving end. I can confirm that, on some issues, for me in the Labour Party the anti-Semitic abuse was completely intolerable at one stage, as I think it was to all people of good will. You do not accept that that behaviour should be meted out to other people, and I do not expect to be on the receiving end of it either.

The truth is, there is a huge amount of evidence. The most important evidence—referred to with great care by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who has also played a huge role in this, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—is that organisations and individuals are having their capacity to act on behalf of people who suffer from discrimination stripped out by being denied the kinds of funds they have had for a long time to conduct that fight. That is all real evidence. It is as real as the evidence on any side of this. I have received a large number of very pleasant emails, but I am afraid to say I have also received a significant amount of abuse on social media.

The language is an issue. Getting the right language in our legislation is always an issue, for reasons I will not repeat because noble Lords have made the point very clearly. It is urgent at the moment, not just because of this Bill but because, for example, the basis on which the ONS has decided to collect data on biological sex—or rather, not to collect this data in the census—now means that a number of leading quantitative social scientists believe we will have inadequate data and an inadequate track back through data historically. We have been given almost no time to comment on the wording of the census, yet that wording, which guides so much social policy, so much of our understanding of our country and should guide a great deal of our debates in this House, will now be poorly defined. I suspect too that it will be poorly used in policy-making. I hope the Minister will comment on how we might rectify that problem.

I started my speech, as has every other speaker in the House, with the words “My Lords”. When the Minister replies, I suspect he will also start with the words “My Lords”. We are in an institution which is named after the male Members and not the female Members. We do not raise the issue—I am not intending to raise it as a specific, sharp problem—because it is a matter of historical convenience and we like traditions. On occasion, we use language which I suspect would be thought offensive or inappropriate in other circumstances.

We of all people should be extremely sensitive to the way in which the people of this country speak, what it is they expect from us, how they quite rightly expect not to be patronised, and how they expect what we do to be intelligible. We should not abandon that, and that is why the language is vitally important. I thank noble Lords for having listened to what I have said. We have a long way to go to get this right but let us applaud the start we can make today.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Triesman. We have a special connection—in fact, it seems we have two. He was the general secretary of the Labour Party when I was expelled, although the credit for that is always claimed by Mr Anthony Blair and one or two other people. I subscribe to my daughter’s feeling that the only thing wrong with me being expelled was that it was 20 years too late. Our other connection is that I spent five years as chair of the Tottenham Conservative Association; if anyone ever took on a hopeless cause, that is it.

I first thank the Minister for the concessions that are being given, but I would like to ask one genuine question. Lots of people have said they prefer the word “woman” to “mother”. Can I ask him why the Government prefer “mother” to “woman”? They must have debated and discussed it, but no one here seems to agree with them. Obviously, I am not going to divide the House or anything like that, but I would be interested in that.

Another thing, which probably cannot be debated but should be borne in mind, is that someone got the Government into this mess. This came about because the people drafting the Bill messed it up: it is as simple as that. This is not a policy that is wrong; it is a drafting measure. I hope that steps will be taken to ensure that we are not put in this position again, because it is a pretty awful position to be in.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referenced the article by Louise Perry in the New Statesman. It is an excellent article which brings this whole debate into focus. She says:

“the number of people who will benefit from this move is truly tiny: specifically, we are concerned here with trans or non-binary people, who are biologically female, and able to bear a child following any surgical or hormonal interventions … and decide to do so, and care about squabbles over vocabulary.”

There are a lot of qualifications in there. She goes on to apply some figures to a much more serious problem: the number of mothers presenting at maternity clinics who do not have a full knowledge of the English language, let alone these ways of interpreting it, which would mean nothing to them. As she says, “the first maternity appointment” for a person who does not speak good English—I am not talking about no English—takes “twice as long” as it does for those with a good command of the language. As she says,

“Now try adding terms such as ‘chest-feeding’ and ‘birthing person’ to the official forms.”

In other words, you are making great difficulties. I draw attention also to the work of the psychologist Rob Henderson, who describes much of this as “luxury beliefs”:

“ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class”.

There is a wider issue here. We need to be careful to make our legislation and policies relevant to all citizens, particularly citizens who are not necessarily as wealthy as the rest of us.

At the beginning of my career, as a lay trade union official I was told that one of the golden rules was that you should never get further ahead of the membership than they could see and understand what you were signalling them to do. On issues like this, I regret to say that we are tending to get a bit too far ahead of ordinary people and their desires. We are, after all, a Parliament for everybody and not just for a few.

Maybe in 20 years’ time—this was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, among others—this issue will come back to us, having developed more maturely, such that we look at changing the language. That point is far from where we are now. I close by mentioning that my daughter, who is going to have a baby in a few months’ time, thinks this whole thing is “hilarious nonsense”.

Covid-19: Vaccination Passport

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I hope very much that that is not the case. The Government’s objective is to see a safe and sustainable return to international travel for business and pleasure. To achieve this, my colleagues in the Department for Transport will be leading a successor to the Global Travel Taskforce. It is important that we work towards that objective.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, much of this debate is around holidaymakers, but there is an important section of the population—businesspeople—who travel in order to increase the prosperity of the companies and countries that they represent. Can the Government give some attention to easing short-term business travel restrictions which mean that, every time you go for a 36-hour trip to the European mainland, you need to spend £200 to get a certificate? This is ridiculous and does no good for business at all. There does not appear to be a business party in this Parliament any longer.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I understand where my noble friend is coming from, but repeat what I said in reply to the previous question: the Government’s objective is to see a safe and sustainable return to international travel for business and pleasure. I put business first advisedly. We have to do this in a safe and sustainable way, and the Prime Minister has set out a road map towards it.

Economic Update

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Tuesday 12th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I will quote from the Statement, where the Chancellor said:

“Across almost all areas of economic policy, we are providing comparable or greater support than all our international peers.”—[Official Report, Commons, 11/1/21; col. 23.]


We are supporting with borrowed money and using the inheritance of the country. When the Government cut back, as they inevitably will have to, they will be opposed and told that they should spend more. I will ask two questions. Do the Government have any perspective on getting back to a balanced budget? And have the Government factored in the possible impact of increases in interest rates on the amount they will have to pay back on all the money that has been borrowed?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con) [V]]

The noble Lord asks very important questions. I am not in a position to give a date by which we will attempt to rebalance the budget, but I assure the noble Lord it is a very high priority. Indeed, on his second question, we are aware that we are able to borrow large sums of money at the moment because of the very low interest rates that will not necessarily remain, which re-emphasises the need to bring the budget back into balance as soon as possible.

EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

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Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I first draw attention to my entries in the register, in particular my presidency of BALPA, the pilots’ union. Secondly, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Wharton. I am sure that we will hear much more of him in a very positive light, and I welcome him to this House. Thirdly, I want to make it clear that I fought strongly against the referendum result. I called for either an election or another referendum. We had an election; the answer was clear. The Prime Minister asked us whether we wanted to get Brexit done. I accept in a democracy that we must now do that. My comments and votes from that day onwards have been destined to try to get the best for my country.

However, I want to raise a number of points on air transport where there is some need for clarity in the agreement. First, on non-regression from levels of protection of social standards, the Government promised not to water down workers’ rights after 1 January and a new employment Bill was announced in the Queen’s Speech on 19 December 2019. Will the Minister take on board that we would like to receive assurances that aviation-specific employment rights and safety rules, such as civil aviation working time regulations, will be protected in the new legislation?

Secondly, on wet leasing arrangements—I do not have time to explain what they are—there is a need for the imbalance between us and Europe to be addressed. Thirdly, flight crew licensing is at the moment biased towards Europe and away from the UK. Could the Minister look at that? Finally, on traffic freedoms, appropriate bilateral agreements with EU states need to be made as soon as possible. Can this be given priority?

Covid-19: Economy Update

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

To answer the noble Baroness, as I mentioned earlier, a huge range of initiatives has been announced over the last few months, particularly for some of the sectors referred to. On 30 June, the Prime Minister announced substantial infrastructure commitments, partly from new money and partly from acceleration of money. Many of those are strategically aimed at the sorts of businesses mentioned, including those involved in a carbon-free economy.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to another division in this country. Those who I define as the salariat are largely working from home and not suffering any reductions in pay. Indeed, they are saving money and a couple of hours a day from not travelling to work. They are making the rules, but seldom suffer any of the consequences. At the same time, we have a lot of very junior workers, some around this House, who are struggling to get by. Some are furloughed; some have no jobs at all. They feel rejected and unwanted by society. This is not a matter that the Government can wave a wand to solve, but we need to pay more attention to this division in society.

This House is almost empty of workers. If they can work at home for so many months without us even seeing them, is there not a good case to move some jobs from the House of Lords to areas of high unemployment and poverty in the north-east? If they can be done remotely from Dorking, Woking and towns in Berkshire, they can surely be done from Hartlepool and other delightful towns found in the north-east and north of the country, where these jobs are seriously needed.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. By coincidence, I am the Minister working on the programme to move civil servants out of London, which was recently announced. The Prime Minister will be making more comments on this shortly but, given that I have lived this for six months, I can reassure my noble friend that we have identified 14 hubs with spokes across Britain, including the devolved authorities. The most important part is to get the senior civil servants out of London, because they make decisions on the lives of people from whom they are, in my view, far too detached. At the moment, some 65% of all senior civil servants in the country are here in London, and the vast majority in this postcode. We are committed to ensuring that opportunities for those senior jobs are outside the capital, and that they make policies that affect citizens in those areas.

Brexit: Civil Service Code

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Thursday 17th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the law officers act at all times in line with their duties and responsibilities, and I have every confidence that the law officers and this Government will continue to do so. For my own part, I cannot answer questions about the personal positions of other members of the Government.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

The Question states,

“in the light of reports that new guidance has been issued”.

Could the Minister say whether new guidance has been issued? If it has, will he place a copy in the Library for us to consult? My second point is that it is now 59 years since I became an established civil servant. We have much more of a revolving door these days, and I fear that far too many senior civil servants and Ministers are looking at their next job in the private sector when they are interpreting the regulations. Could the Minister comment as to whether it might be time to review the whole principle of the revolving door? Incidentally, I notice that his colleague, Mr Grayling, went into a £100,000 job this morning, according to the Times.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the last part of my noble friend’s question is again outwith the Question, but it is an important issue and one that the Government and Parliament turn their attention to from time to time. I am sure that people will note his remarks. As for the reports of a new communication, obviously I made inquiries, as was my duty, having seen the Question. We have not been able to locate this particular communication but if, as has been reported, it is a restatement of the long-standing position which is expressed in the Civil Service Code—that if civil servants ever believe they are being required to act in a way that conflicts with the code, they should raise it with their line manager, et cetera—I have already told the House that that is the position and it is unchanged. I do not know whether this alleged communication was saying that. If it was, in a sense I have already offered to put that before the House, but I will take it away.

It is extremely important that we do not let the idea be taken that there is conflict and distaste between Ministers and civil servants. That is not the case; it is partnership. Sometimes, things break out. I was reading Servants of the People the other day, in which Ministers are quoted as saying, “Civil servants are useless” and, “We expected to find Rolls-Royce service; we found a Reliant Robin”. People say things and there are moments of crisis in relationships, but my experience is that there is an outstanding relationship between the ministerial side and the Civil Service side under every Government, whatever one hears reported in the press.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

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2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord True, said that this was the first Bill he was taking through the House—well, welcome. It is also a Bill on which he will hear more special pleading, with, coincidentally, most of it being in the interests of the party making it.

I will start by reminding noble Lords of the historic cry for “Equal votes of equal value.” In this debate, we seem to have done a lot of asking for special favours to make votes less equal. Also, it is fine to talk about registering people, but we are doing so against the background that at least two, often three and sometimes more in every 10 voters do not vote at all. They are on the register, but they do not vote.

The next point that I would like to make is this. You can have your peculiar constituency anomalies and you can have fairness if you have the German system where there are two votes, one of which elects the party and the other elects the constituency representative. For at least 30 years, I have been a supporter of proportional representation, and the only Private Member’s Bill I have had debated in the House was on that subject. But I find it difficult to believe that we are living in a full democracy when the Greens are so badly underrepresented and the SNP is currently overrepresented —although for a time it, too, was underrepresented. Although this is a limited Bill, we should not lose sight of the wider principles that we are dealing with.

One area where I have sympathy with the changes being proposed in the Bill has been referred to by a number of noble Lords, although the first to do so was my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. We have to get to a position where, if the Boundary Commission is going to be independent of political interference, Clause 2 must be changed and the words

“As soon as reasonably practicable”

replaced with a much firmer formula.

My final point is this. I have been through a lot of Boundary Commission decisions on the fringe in both the Labour and the Conservative parties. My experience has been that the Labour Party is much better at discipline, so I would counsel my party, the Conservatives: “Get your act together. Don’t get in the position that I was in, where one Conservative association was appealing against the Boundary Commission’s decision and it was being opposed by another Conservative association.” One of the reasons for losing out is when you do not think it out, and that is something which has to be done.

Finance Bill

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2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 17th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con) [V]]

We are meeting, as has been said, in very different circumstances from when the Budget was delivered, but I would say that we are meeting against a background of obedience, fatigue and confusion. People are getting mixed messages: our buses are going around with seats roped off, our stations tell us not to travel, but our Prime Minister tells us to go back to work. We have message confusion and numbers confusion. Most people do not have the faintest idea what £1 billion is—or a billion of anything else—but the Government keep on saying, “A billion here and a billion there”. The image created is that there is an unlimited amount of money, and I do not think that that is a good start.

There has recently been a report about 120,000 new deaths. If that figure is to be taken seriously, do we expect people to go back to work or to restaurants, et cetera? No, it is actually encouraging people to do the exact opposite. Do the Government have a financial strategy for another spike? They need a strategy.

I turn to taxes. The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, who like me is from the LSE but is more distinguished, mentioned the need for a crisis levy. This is probably the only practical tax solution that we can come forward with. There has to be a levy that affects everybody, with everybody contributing according to their ability, but one that is severely time-limited. We all remember the temporary nature of income tax, so any levy needs to be time-limited. I also endorse the idea of a delivery charge for online orders. This could get around some of the problems of a tax. A delivery charge on online orders would be environmentally sensible; it would also even up, to an extent, the fact that out-of-town shopping opportunities such as Amazon pay virtually nothing for their premises. This would put some more tax revenue into the Exchequer.

The third thing I suggest is that we even up the tax between unearned income and PAYE income. It is ridiculous that, at the moment, you can have unearned income taxed more lightly than your earned income. I hope that the Government will look at ways in which they can raise taxes—fairly—and also have something in reserve in case there is another spike.

Manifesto Commitments

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Tuesday 16th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I can add little to the previous answers I gave to the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, and my noble friend Lady Eaton. Of course, the Government attach the highest importance to tackling diversity and disadvantage of all sorts, and that remains our objective.

[Lord Balfe (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the world has changed enormously since the election. The Conservative Party held power for two-thirds of the last century. John Maynard Keynes is reported to have said: “When the facts change, I change my mind.” Will the Government continue to support the working-class and trade union votes that got them into power through most of the last century and, when they adapt their policies, as they must, bear in mind the need for trade union and working-class people to continue—I stress the word “continue”—their support for the Government?

[Lord True]

My Lords, the Government intend to be and are a Government for all people and respect every person in this country, not only the many who—as my noble friend rightly said—voted for them. The Government have made a major change in the face of the Covid crisis in giving unprecedented help to people at disadvantage. That in itself is a manifest of this Government’s intent and spirit.

Beyond Brexit (European Union Committee Report)

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Tuesday 12th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, for his report. I am sorry that we did not debate it a good time ago but, at last, we are here. I also congratulate him on his distinguished chairing of the European Union Committee. The report is called How to Win Friends and Influence People. I want to concentrate on that, because the present governing party has made a complete mess of winning friends and influencing people. The only member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe taking part in this debate is the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. I assure him that I am not implicating the Labour Party.

We send 36 people to Strasbourg; about half are British Conservatives. I am afraid that the way they behave there is—shall we say?—not designed to increase the influence of Great Britain. In particular, I mention the chairman of the Conservative group, Ian Liddell-Grainger, who, at the beginning of this year, together with Sir Roger Gale, invited the Alternative for Germany —the AfD—to join the Conservative group. In Strasbourg today, at a time when we are looking to influence Governments all around Europe, we have the British Conservatives allied with the AfD, the Holocaust deniers and the racists. What will we say to the Conservative Friends of Israel and the Jewish community? We have rightly condemned the Labour Party in the past; I am pleased about what Keir Starmer is now doing. But really, if the Minister has any influence, he must realise that this does us absolutely no good. It is time for the Conservative whip and the Conservative leadership to intervene, stop pretending that this does not matter, and get us out of this alliance with near fascists.