House of Lords Commissioners for Standards
Debate between Lord Balfe and Lord Cormack
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to you and apologise for speaking on a similar topic three times in as many weeks, but I am profoundly concerned by the manner in which the retiring commissioner handled the issue of noble Lords who had failed to complete their compulsory training within a certain time. On both occasions when I spoke before, I raised the insensitive way in which the case of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, in particular, has been handled. It seemed to be a mixture of gracelessness, insensitivity and ineptitude. If we are to continue to have a commissioner—I accept that we are—I would like to address one or two questions to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance. I am delighted that he is with us in the Chamber on this occasion, so that we can talk to him directly.
I am not entirely persuaded that we need two commissioners. I wonder why we cannot have one doing 10 days a month, rather than two doing five. In that way, the person concerned would surely get to know your Lordships’ House rather better. The basic problem, until now, has been an inability fully to understand the nature of your Lordships’ House and how it works. I regret that we have to have outside commissioners, but I accept that what has happened will continue to happen. Within its membership, this House has an enormous range of wisdom and experience. It is unlike any other institution in the country in its size, complexity and the variegated wisdom of its Members. It is very important that, whether one commissioner or two, he or they—they are both men in this case—should get to know what we are all about.
It is a very small thing, but I am somewhat put off by the biographical notes. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, rightly referred to Mr Khan and Mr Jelley, but they are referred to by their first names throughout the biographical details that we have been given. It is a small point, but there has to be a degree of formality and it is not here.
I have talked about the necessity for these commissioners to understand the nature of your Lordships’ House. I hope that there will be a compulsory training course for them both to attend and that they have a proper opportunity to be introduced to the nature of your Lordships’ House. I would very much like to hear what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, has to say on that point.
It is also important that the five days a month include at least a couple of days of what I call acclimatisation and getting to know exactly how this House works. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, referred to Mr Jelley’s parliamentary experience. It was experience of putting into practice what Parliament had decreed, not of how Parliament actually works. I think it is important that he has that experience.
On paper, both these gentlemen are eminently well qualified, and I say nothing specific against their appointments, but it is crucial that they know their way around, in every sense. We should all do our bit to help them. That is very important and I hope that there is a structured opportunity for them to meet groups of Members, so that we can get to know them and can talk to them, formally but properly.
I will not oppose the Motion, as I said at the very beginning, but I go back to where I began. We have had some unhappy experiences recently and there has been widespread concern across your Lordships’ House; I know that from the number of colleagues who came to me after the very brief debates we have had and said how much they shared the concern I sought to express. There must be sensitivity above all things: the issues with which the commissioners will be confronted, which will not all be black and white cases, demand that they can understand and have a sensitive regard for the Peer or Peers concerned. I would be exceptionally grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, if he could address some of these points; then perhaps, together with colleagues, we could meet him to discuss these things.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I will not repeat what my noble friend Lord Cormack said, except to say that I did not disagree with anything he said. I also echo that it is a pleasure to see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, in the Chamber.
My first question is why we need the commissioners to spend 10 days a month looking at the standards in the Lords. Have they slipped so far? Secondly, why do we need two commissioners? Will they each have a caseload? I would have thought that it would be better if we had one commissioner, who would get to know the House better by doing 10 days a month. I would rather that he was doing the days necessary to do the job, up to 10 days a month, because I am aware, from a long life of bureaucracy, that it tends to expand to fill the gap available—he would then say that it should be 11 days, because 10 days is not quite enough. I am always concerned at the length of time set aside.
My noble friend Lord Cormack referred to the former Speaker of the Commons and the difficulties there. One of the first things that should be done is to publish, for the general public to see, this course that we have all taken, because I found it patently ridiculous, frankly. It taught me absolutely nothing, apart from the fact that there is some very easy money to be made out there by designing courses that are pretty irrelevant.
I came into contact with the commission over a much more minor, but fundamental, case; that of the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis. I always felt happy defending the noble Lord, because there was absolutely nothing I agreed with him on in politics. I did not agree with his attitudes to divorce, abortion, Northern Ireland or anything at all, so I always felt that I could look at his case as a straightforward one of whether or not he should have been suspended. To me, the way in which the procedure worked, with no opportunities for any input and no appeal, was unsatisfactory. Maybe we need some sort of private hearing—maybe we do not want it on the Floor of the House—but we cannot have a system that is quite as closed as that one.
My second point is that there does not appear to be any sort of decent trade union representation in this outfit. I know that the noble Lord can defend himself, but when I looked through his case, I saw that there were dozens of points that I would have picked up had I been a TU official. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, should make some provision for people to be accompanied by, effectively, a representative to put their case.
My final two points are these. The punishments being given by this body—and they are punishments—are way out of line with those of the House of Commons. I am not saying that the House of Commons is right, but in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, his political career was effectively ended by this body. That was also the case with Lord Lester. Their careers were ended. In the House of Commons, people tend to be suspended for a time and then they come back. In my view, the punishments here are far too harsh.
The second and final point I would like the noble and learned Lord to look at is that part of the finding against the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, banned him from the Palace of Westminster. I have raised this before, but can the noble and learned Lord and his legal colleagues assure me that we have the right to ban a citizen of this country from entering his Parliament? We did not take his badge away; we banned him from Parliament. I do not believe that we have the power to ban a citizen of this country from approaching his elected Members, but if we do, please let us know in writing.
That concludes my observations. I look forward to meeting the noble and learned Lord. I am in receipt of one of his letters offering to meet me. I would be happy to do so, but I felt that one or two things needed putting on the public record.
Committee of Selection
Debate between Lord Balfe and Lord Cormack
Lord Balfe (Con)
This is a great exercise in lack of transparency. We are appointing committees that will run virtually every aspect of the House’s policy-making functions. I am told that we do have some transparency and that an email was sent out in March. To me, that is not a very transparent way of doing things. Will the Senior Deputy Speaker make his name in this House by being a reforming Senior Deputy Speaker? I in no way criticise his predecessor, who I know put a lot of effort into trying to get things moving.
The appointment of chairs of sub-committees is quite different here from in another place. The other place for once seems to have got a bit more democracy into it. This is not an arcane point, because it means that the chairs of the sub-committees have to relate to the Members; they have to be to a level accountable. I would like to see, as in the other place, the chairs allocated to the party groups and then some elections, so that people had to demonstrate not only that they knew what they were talking about but that they could reach across the aisle—as they say in the United States—and one did not look at things and say, “Oh, well, that’s a Labour chair; we’re not going to get anywhere there”, and so that the persons standing for chair, of whom I hope there would be more than one from any group, had to make the case as to why they should be the chair.
The only committee excepted from this is the Committee of Selection itself. Perhaps the Senior Deputy Speaker could start a reform package by ensuring that at least a part of the Committee of Selection is elected and that there are some Back-Bench voices on it. At the moment, that committee is basically a committee of the leaders; it is like the chiefs’ pow-wow of the House of Lords—everybody gets together with their pipe of peace and they agree with everybody on how they are going to divide things up. I do not think that is acceptable.
I have one final point. Some noble Lords will recall that I was one of the two people who divided the House on the case of the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, and his suspension from this House. It was a suspension that was decided in private, that was never debated in public, where he had no opportunity to put his case to his Peers and where it was decided by a committee that contains four people who are not even Members of the Lords and five people who are, at least one of whom has a senior role on a completely different committee. Will the Senior Deputy Speaker look at the way in which this committee works? The punishments—that is the only word for it—that it dishes out are far more stringent than anything found in the House of Commons.
I examined carefully all the evidence that was published about the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis. I would certainly have suspended him for a week. His behaviour was “sub-optimal”—which I think is the word we are searching for—but he did not deserve to be sacked completely for ever from his job, which is the effect of a five-year suspension on a person of 82 years of age who, whatever else one says, had had a distinguished political career. I was never in his party in Ireland; I do not agree with him, but the punishment was far harsher than the crime. The crime, basically, was a curmudgeonly old man losing his temper at the door on the way in; it was nothing more serious than that. I ask the Senior Deputy Speaker also to look at ways in which the Conduct Committee can be democratised so that when it comes to conclusions Members are able to comment on them and have some influence on the way things operate. In the case of the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, a massive injustice was perpetrated by this House without any opportunity for debate, discussion or understanding.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, first, I thank you, Lord Speaker, for all the work that you did as the first Senior Deputy Speaker. The whole House is very much in your debt.
Secondly, I welcome my noble friend Lord Gardiner to his new responsibilities. I hope that he can develop the role, building on the foundations laid by our Lord Speaker, and become something of a spokesman for Back-Benchers in this House.
I often think that this House, or the usual channels—once described as the murkiest waters in Europe—have one thing in common with the Almighty: they move in a very mysterious way. We need to have much more transparency. Indicative of what I am saying is that we have 33 Motions to be moved and accepted en bloc. We have no elections of chairmen to Select Committees; it is all done in the back room and the names are then produced.
Serious Violence Strategy
Debate between Lord Balfe and Lord Cormack
Lord Cormack (Con)
The noble Earl has ranged far and wide. He talked fondly of his late father, whom I remember well. He was a member of Attlee’s Government, one of the seminal Governments of this country. Indeed, I believe that I am right in saying that he was the last Secretary of State for India—but I must not be tempted.
One thing to have come through in this debate has been the reiteration—it began with an intervention from my noble friend Lord Framlingham, who is not in his place now—of the importance of the family. This was brought home to me last week. Many of your Lordships may have heard in a news item anxiety being expressed at the number of young children in primary schools who knew nothing about basic hygiene. I intervened on a Question last week to urge my noble friend who has the education brief in your Lordships’ House to do more about the education of parents and for parenthood. It is clear that most of the problems which lie at the root of today’s debate occur because children have not been brought up in a stable home with parents devoted to their welfare, anxious to teach them the difference between right and wrong, cleanliness and filth, and all the things that we used to take for granted.
As my noble friend Lord Balfe mentioned, the strategy to which my noble friend the Minister spoke is a little turgid. It is long on analysis and a little short on solutions.
We can solve the problems troubling your Lordships’ House in this debate and on many other occasions only in schools and in prisons. We have to realise that many young people who are sentenced, often quite rightly, to terms in prison and young offender institutions have the most appalling backgrounds. I had such an institution in my former constituency in South Staffordshire, a place called Brinsford. I remember going there one day after there had been a fairly monumental riot; the place had been smashed up. Incidentally, a brilliant report on that prison was delivered by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, when he was the Chief Inspector of Prisons—and what a brilliant inspector he was. That report had a very salutary effect and the institution improved considerably. Going round and talking to those young men was a distressing experience. I could not honestly look at myself in the mirror and not say, if I had had their background, there but for the grace of God. It applies to all of us.
We must try to ensure that we do not stint on the resources going into the prison system, because prison must be the place where people are rehabilitated, and that applies most of all to young people. We must be able to give them a sense of self-worth, aspiration and hope. If we cannot do that we just create a sink generation. There is not enough emphasis on that in the strategy document we are talking about.
Of course, we should do everything possible to keep people out of prison. When I was chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in the other place, I saw the dramatic effect of community restorative justice. If you can keep people out of prison and make them atone for their crimes and shortcomings without risking the contamination that frequently occurs in a prison, you are doing a great deal. I would like to see emphasis on that.
My final point is about schools. I hope noble Lords who have heard me refer to this before will forgive me if I refer to it again. I believe that we need to educate our young people as proper citizens of this country. I want to see an emphasis on citizenship. That does not just mean teaching young people about the way Parliament and local government works; it means trying to make them realise that no society can work unless they play a constructive and, indeed, aspirational part in it. I had the privilege a couple of years or so ago of going to the Terrace in your Lordships’ House when there was a citizenship ceremony for those who were receiving British citizenship. The sense of pride among those people of all ages, backgrounds, nationalities and ethnicities was palpable. They were dressed in their best; they had their wives, husbands or companions with them; they were going to celebrate afterwards; it was a moving ceremony.
I would like every young person in this country leaving school to go through a citizenship ceremony. They should be prepared for it. They should all do some community service. Whether that is reading to the blind, visiting the old, helping the sick or going on a National Trust conservation programme does not matter, but it should be community service of a sort that is worth while, challenging and through which they can actually achieve something. They should also be taught properly about our country’s history and its system—the preciousness of democracy—and at the end of the day they should receive a certificate.
I have suggested, when I have mentioned this before, that to take this out of the realm of party politics this should not be done by the local authority but through the lieutenancy. I think we all respect the lieutenancy. The lord-lieutenant, the deputy, the vice lord-lieutenant and the deputies, all of them—I speak as a DL myself, although now on the retired list—could play a part in this. If young people aspired to it and were taught how important it was to aspire to it, it would help. It might just persuade some of those who are now seduced into joining gangs or tempted by the false romanticism of weapons; it might just help a bit. We must make our prisons clean, rehabilitative places with no drugs, no violence. It is not a punishment while you are there; the punishment is being sent there and you are rehabilitated while you are there.
If we can try to inculcate a sense of pride in nation and community in our schools, fewer people will go to prison. That is the way we should seek to tackle this and I hope that any developed strategy for dealing with violent crime will bear in mind some of these things, but also bear in mind that there is no substitute in human life for the family unit. I was deeply disturbed last week when I read that a very senior judge had said that the day of the nuclear family was over—what an utterly irresponsible, reprehensible and silly thing to say.
Lord Cormack
My noble friend interjects to say that the judge was president of the Family Division. I must not criticise the judiciary on the Floor of your Lordships’ House, but all I say is that it is a pity that we do not have the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, doing that job, as she did so brilliantly for so long.
Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding
Debate between Lord Balfe and Lord Cormack
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, on his excellent report. I begin by reminding the House that we have this report because of the great unease in the House about the proposition put forward. I say further to my Front Bench that it is highly likely that if the noble Lord tabled an amendment based on the findings of his report, it would be carried—
Lord Balfe
Okay, then it will be carried. I would therefore hope that the Government will devote a good proportion of their thinking power to working out where the acceptable compromise is between where they are and where the majority of the House will be, because I predict that the amendment will be carried.
Paragraph 61, which has not been mentioned, states that after 1927, unions raised the amount that they paid into political funds. That is a far more significant paragraph than has been realised. We have seen this with the political fund ballots. I remind the House that when the Conservative Government proposed political fund ballots, they thought that that would end political funds. Not only has it not: there are more political funds today in more unions than there have ever been. We should not underestimate the power of marketing. Also, if people look forward, they may say, “We may need a political fund to carry out certain functions”.
I am not saying that we should therefore support the clause, but that the law of unintended consequences may well come home to roost. This will not find much favour on the Opposition Benches either. We talk about political funds, but not about giving people any choice within them. There is no proposal to tick a box so that the money can go to the Green Party or the 30% who vote for the Conservative Party. It is a straightforward sledgehammer approach, in the probably mistaken belief that it will somehow break the union political funds.
I notice that the proportion going to the Labour Party is about four-ninths of the amount collected so, for the last time, we can use an old Liberal slogan of ninepence for fourpence: you collect ninepence and you give fourpence to the Labour Party. That was how Lloyd George sold national insurance—for those who are not in the Liberal party.
In paragraph 107, the committee states, “We endorse”. There are no minorities there. The Certification Officer needs a balance between proportionality and accountability. That is clearly evident, because it seems that things are being pushed on to the Certification Officer without thought being given to how he is going to carry out his functions. We need to think very carefully about what his role is. Is it just to receive the report? If you say, “Dear Certification Officer, we have spent £50,000 on Build a Better Society, a front organisation that will organise demonstrations at the Conservative Party conference”, you have fulfilled all that you have asked the Certification Officer to do. He takes that and puts a stamp on it and says, “Oh, yes, they’ve declared that—it’s jolly good, isn’t it?”. End of story. What are we trying to do with this Bill?
On the subject of funding reform, paragraph 115 has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Oates. We do not want to get into a unilateral tit-for-tat action; it is not going to do any of us any good. Paragraph 128 cites Sir Christopher Kelly, who is not normally found in the Jeremy Corbyn part of politics, but he called Clause 10,
“a partisan, cynical move that is likely … to bring the whole process into even greater disrepute”.
I think we need to take note of what he had to say.
In conclusion, I hope that we will agree with paragraph 141(a), giving the new members time to opt in, and I hope that we will find a way of coming to terms with paragraph 142(a), which reflects the majority feeling of the committee and what is likely to be the majority feeling of this House. The benefit of this debate is that the Government can think their way out of the problems they have unfortunately got themselves into. I am sure that all noble Lords will be happy to help them to solve this particular, rather difficult problem.
Trade Union Bill
Debate between Lord Balfe and Lord Cormack(8 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Balfe
There is no need for there to be a huge gap between us. One of the points that I put forward when I was working for the Conservative Party in conjunction with the 2010 manifesto was a suggestion that instead of contracting in to the political levy, one should be enabled on the box to tick any political party to receive part of the political levy donation—any party represented in Parliament, to prevent money going to fascists and the like. That was rejected by a very senior person who is still in the Cabinet, who said to me that it would be unfair unless we had an overall settlement of the party funding issue, because it would mean impacting on one party without having an overall effect.
I have made my views clear in this House before: I do not believe in public funding of political parties. But this is not public funding. I do not queue up to get my hand in the gravy bowl to give money on the basis of the number of votes or things like that. In fact, if it were left to me, I should set a quite low limit of probably no more than £2,000 a year on donations to political parties. I happen to be suspicious: if people put more than £2,000 in, I say, what on earth are you after, then?
We could look at the issue of contracting in or out, but only in the context of a reform of the system. The noble Lord, Lord Wrigglesworth, is absolutely right. Anyone who has had anything to with the trade union movement knows that three months is a ridiculous timespan. It is just not administratively possible, any more than it is possible to convert to not giving away plastic bags in three months: you cannot do it. I am afraid that this clause in the Bill is not motivated by anything other than a desire to take a partisan stand. One of our strengths in the House of Lords is that we can be a little more independent than in other places. I am very unhappy with this as a system, and the whole way it has been put forward is wrong. I am not against the principle of contracting in as part of an overall reform, but this is not the way to do it.
The whole political fund thing of course went wrong. As my noble friend Lord King probably knows, it was brought in because they thought that if they gave the unions a chance, all the union members would vote against political funds. If I remember rightly, the trade union movement got a chap called Bill Keyes to organise political funds, and he did brilliantly: he almost doubled the number of unions with political funds. Not a single ballot has ever been lost. This could bounce back the other way if we pursue this particular reform. It is neither fair nor democratic, and we should think very carefully before we upset the democratic apple cart.
I speak from this side of the House, from a party that is not affected. But we in the House of Lords, an unelected Chamber, to an extent have the strength to ask the Government to please go away and think again. We are not asking the Minister to give concessions tonight, because we realise that this is complex, but as it stands this is a very partisan move. I do not think that it has a place in a trade union Bill, and it is not in the manifesto. I appeal to the Government to think carefully and to at least allow a version of the noble Baroness’s amendment on to the book to give a decent amount of time so that this can be done properly.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, as one who has never been a member of the Labour Party, I entirely agree with the forceful plea made by my noble friend Lord Balfe. I very much hope that this does not come to a vote on Report, but I have to give notice that if it does, unamended, I will almost certainly vote against it, because it is intrinsically unfair. If one tries to stand for anything in public life, it should be for fairness. Of course my noble friend cannot announce concessions tonight, but I appeal to her to listen very carefully indeed to everything that has been and will be said.
The way forward, if there is to be legislation, has probably been hinted at in the extraordinarily important speech made by my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater. As he said, he negotiated in good faith with the then leaders of the TUC and an agreement was reached, which clearly has been honoured. What is not clear—my noble friend himself made it abundantly plain that he did not know—is whether it has been honoured more in the breach than in the observance or more in the observance.
I am prepared to give the benefit of the doubt until it is proved otherwise, on the same basis that a man or woman is innocent until proved guilty. But if it does transpire that this has not been honoured as scrupulously as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, believes it has been and should have been, and if it is considered that there should be any legislation on this, it is the enacting of that code of practice that should follow. We should not have what is proposed in this Bill—and we most certainly must get rid of this utterly iniquitous three months. It is quite wrong. The noble Lord, Lord Wrigglesworth, made a very effective and telling speech on this.