House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Barnett Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords—

[Lord Barnett]

My Lords—

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords—

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, my noble friend has had years of interest in this issue—not only in Parliament but on the royal commission, which completed its work just over 10 years ago.

I have long believed that giving this House an electoral mandate would make it stronger, more independent of party and more assertive. That would obviously have an impact on the Executive and on another place, but whether it would be weakening or strengthening I am not sure. Many people argue that the House of Commons and the Executive have become too strong and that this could be one way of changing that balance. I believe that the Joint Committee should examine the issue.

Many commentators believe that the question of the reform of the House of Lords affects only this House. It does not. It affects both sides of the building and I am sure that Members of another place will take a great deal of interest in the announcement that has been made today.

[Lord Barnett]

My Lords, I noted with interest that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, emphasised that the Statement he was repeating belonged to the Deputy Prime Minister; he did not imply that he agreed with it.

Can the noble Lord confirm that no senior Member of your Lordships’ House will be compelled to waste their time on a Joint Committee—including, perhaps, himself as a senior Member? When he is considering this issue, will he be careful not to take it for granted that any leader in either House can speak for all the Back-Benchers in this House?

The noble Lord emphasised the accountability and democracy of an elected House. Does he accept that the difference might be marginal when under the list system—STV or whatever—candidates are selected initially by political parties? How different will that be from the current situation where Members are appointed by leaders of political parties and/or an independent commission? What difference does he see between the two? Will he at some time have it in mind to let your Lordships into the secret of how during the transition the membership of the House will come down to the 300 that he has in mind?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, when the noble Lord reads the White Paper he will certainly find the answer to his question on transition. It proposes one option and provides for two alternatives which the Joint Committee and the noble Lord will wish to examine.

I can confirm that no one will be compelled to sit on the Joint Committee. However, there is a great deal of interest. If the noble Lord wished to sit on the Joint Committee—I am sure he would be an eminent member—he should address himself to the leader of his party.

Of course I recognise that political party leaders do not necessarily speak for their Back-Benchers in this matter—not only in this House but also in another place. One of the hallmarks of this debate has for many years been the divisions within parties rather than between parties. Sometimes it leads our leaders to believe that because they can reach a consensus between themselves, everyone else will sign up to it. I do not believe that and I am well aware of the divisions that exist. That is why I hope that when the Joint Committee is selected it will show a balance of views and interests across the House and between the parties because that is how we can best use the knowledge in this House.

I agree with the noble Lord on the list system. One of the reasons I would oppose a list system is because it is simply appointment by party by another name and I am not sure that it would be worth going through that process. We are, however, as a coalition committed to a system of proportional representation, on which I am not an expert. However, the Deputy Prime Minister—who is—is very keen on STV.

House of Lords: Conventions

Lord Barnett Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Viscount is the living embodiment of courtesy and good practice in this House and many of us would do well to emulate his behaviour. He is quite right that refusing to give way at Question Time is at odds with the usual courtesies extended in this House and that repeated interruptions are an aspect of behaviour that some argue have infiltrated from another place, which we should not be seeking to emulate. However, I think that there is general good will across the House to maintain some of the very good behaviour in the House when it is at its best. The best way of doing that is to follow the example of those who emulate that practice.

[Lord Barnett]

Is not the bigger problem ministerial behaviour? Is the noble Lord aware that some Ministers do not seem to understand government policy on transparency? I give one small example. I asked a very simple Question recently on whether the Treasury would supply information on what its representative on the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England had said about interest rates and quantitative easing. The Answer that I got was that it was a matter for the Monetary Policy Committee to publish, but Ministers know that it never does. Will the noble Lord perhaps issue guidance to Ministers—some of them, not all—on government policy on transparency?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I do not agree that that is a bigger problem than concerns about the conventions and rules of this House. Ministers in the House of Lords have standing instructions to treat Back-Benchers from all sides of the House with utmost courtesy and to be as transparent as possible. If the noble Lord received an Answer from one of our Ministers that he did not like, that was still the right Answer to give.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Barnett Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I do not know whether many of the questions were put to me or to the noble and learned Lord, but I shall be extremely brief. A number of issues have been raised this afternoon. They are important issues that will be raised and dealt with, quite rightly, in Committee—in particular, the questions of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, concerning Telford—but they have nothing to do with the question of hybridity. I make two very brief points. First, the Bill is not hybrid and, secondly, the motivation behind the Labour Party’s anger is one of delay on this all-important coalition Bill.

[Lord Barnett]

Will the noble Lord give way for a moment? As I understand it, it is only a matter of timing. The Bill is important and the timing is tight. He told us that it would take 10 days if it went to an independent examiner. How long does he think it would take if 400 constituency amendments were tabled in Committee?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, if the Examiners decided that the Bill was not hybrid, that still could not stop 400 constituency amendments being tabled.

Office for Budget Responsibility

Lord Barnett Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Barnett]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how the independence of the Office for Budget Responsibility is guaranteed.

[The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)]

My Lords, the Office for Budget Responsibility was established to make independent assessments of the economy and public finances. The terms of reference for the interim OBR describe its independence. They make it clear that the OBR’s assessments are produced with no ministerial involvement and that the OBR has the freedom to publish information at its discretion. Sir Alan Budd will be advising the Chancellor on the arrangements for the permanent OBR, including on issues relating to independence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Barnett]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. Can he tell us whether it was the sheer incompetence of the Government in not letting the OBR have independence that led Sir Alan Budd to resign, or was it my Question? Is not the real problem the reliability of the OBR’s forecasts? Is the Minister aware that the OBR has itself expressed great uncertainty about its forecasts? In the circumstances, and given the possibility that it could be wrong, as many leading economists have said, is it set in stone that the OBR should continue with its actions even if the economy has actually gone into a downturn even faster than the OBR had forecast?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, in answer to the first question, I am sorry to pour cold water on a newspaper story, but Sir Alan always planned to leave in the summer. He was appointed to provide forecasts for the emergency Budget and to advise on the establishment of a permanent OBR, which is exactly what he has done and will continue to do. The noble Lord, Lord Barnett, asked, secondly, about what he described as “uncertainty” around the forecast. The whole point about the way in which the OBR has presented its forecast is that it has given a transparent probability distribution. The Treasury has never done that before in its forecasts; it has simply given a line and not explained the variability around it. Forecasts are of course subject to probability distributions and the OBR has followed the best practice for forecasts that the Bank of England and others have used for many years. As to what will happen if the forecasts change, the Chancellor has set a fiscal mandate and it is the responsibility of the OBR following each Budget or other fiscal event to report on whether his latest announcement still sets a course that has a 50 per cent or greater probability of meeting the mandate.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Barnett Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

So I shall not bother telling him the good news about how often we hope to hear him speak in these quality debates over the next year.

Before the election, we knew that if Labour had won we would now be faced with a Bill based on Jack Straw’s committee paper, seeking to legislate on an elected senate in Labour’s historic fourth term—but that was not to be. Equally, we believed that, with a Conservative victory, reform would not be such an urgent priority and we could continue to seek a consensus for a long-term reform. Under the coalition Government, the three main parties all share similar objectives and the issue has now been given greater priority. Today’s debate is an opportunity for the Government to lay out the structure of their plan and an opportunity to listen to the views from your Lordships’ House.

There were more speakers who had put their names down on the speakers list but decided not to go ahead. Some have written to me with their views, but, as I said a moment ago, this, I think, will be the first of such opportunities to discuss the future of this House.

We seem to have been living with propositions for reform of your Lordships’ House for years, indeed decades. It is neither the most important question facing the country nor the least important; this is one House in a sovereign Parliament. It is a House that has often been proved right in recent years, but its voice needs to be better heard. Your Lordships’ House does an outstanding job, but it has not been able to avoid this country having a near disastrous experience from a surfeit of spending, legislation and regulation. We have done what we can well, but it has not always been enough to achieve all that we wanted, whether that was in the fields of ancient liberties, choice or plain old common sense. If the first job of your Lordships is to call the Executive to account and to challenge the other place to do its job, we have not lately excelled. It is at least legitimate to ask if one of the constraints on our ability to act lies in how we are constituted.

There have been years of debate since the 1999 Act changed this House for ever by ending the right to sit by virtue of hereditary peerage alone. We have seen umpteen schemes and watched them drift down umpteen backwaters, often with many here cheering loudly as they ran aground in the mud. We have seen umpteen propositions for change within the House, with my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood perhaps the most persistent in his bid to create the wholly appointed House that both Houses rejected in 1999. Many have hoped that it would all go away, but it has not. Indeed, all three major national parties promised a largely elected House in their manifestos only a few weeks ago, while the SNP pledged our abolition outright. A reformed House could play a great part in pulling together the voices of the devolved nations. No wonder those who would divide our kingdom see no place for any upper House, representative or not. That is a view that I totally reject. I have no doubt that this country needs a second Chamber with authority in all parts of the kingdom—one with confidence, powers and the willingness to use them in the public interest, even as the House that we now have acted to protect jury trial, defend habeas corpus and rejected the tyranny of electronic surveillance by compulsory ID cards. Can we create a Chamber better able to do all those things? That is the question before us. I believe that we can. Others believe that nothing under the sun could be better than this. As Leader of the House, I want to ensure that the voice of this House is heard from the outset in this debate, as sadly it was not always—indeed, some argue ever—heard in the past decade.

The coalition Government’s declared intention is to bring forward a draft Bill on reform of the House, which will provide a proper focus for debate and decision. It is something that I and many other noble Lords called for many times over recent years. My noble friend Lord McNally and I will set out the government agenda, but we are also, just as importantly, here to listen to your Lordships’ views. I can promise you this will not be the last opportunity. I know that many of your Lordships will have greeted this element of the coalition’s programme for government with a degree of apprehension, although the work of the cross-party group led by the former Lord Chancellor, Mr Straw, set it at the heart of the programme of the party opposite, too.

I hope that we will be able to reassure the House today that your Lordships, indeed both Houses, will have a full opportunity to take part before ever any legislation is introduced. In our programme for government, we said we would establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper Chamber on the basis of proportional representation. We have done that. My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister is chairing that committee, which is composed of members from all three major political parties as well as from both Houses. My noble friend Lord McNally, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and I all serve on it. The committee is charged with producing a draft Bill by the end of the year.

[Lord Barnett]

Whatever is in manifestos, the plain fact is that at the moment the Front Benches of this House are on this committee and, as the noble Lord and all sides of this House know very well, in advance of a debate the Back Benches do not agree with the Front Benches. Why is there not a single Back-Bencher on that committee?

[Lord Strathclyde]

Because, my Lords, this committee is charged to create a Bill in draft. There will be a full role for Back-Benchers in both Houses, on all sides and with different views, when we set up a Joint Committee of both Houses which will then give it the scrutiny it deserves before it is introduced to each House.

Barnett Formula

Lord Barnett Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Barnett]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they propose to change the Barnett formula.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, the Government recognise the concerns expressed by your Lordships’ Select Committee report on the Barnett formula, the Holtham commission on Welsh funding and other commentators on the system for devolution funding. However, as set out in the coalition programme for government, at this time the priority must be to reduce the deficit, and therefore any change to the system must await the stabilisation of the public finances.

[Lord Barnett]

My Lords, the noble Lord must know that he has not answered my Question. The Select Committee to which he referred unanimously pointed out that approximately £1,600 per head more is spent in public expenditure in Scotland than in England, which has serious implications for the coming cuts. The Select Committee, which included a former Conservative Chancellor and two former Conservative Secretaries of State for Scotland, unanimously recommended that the system should be changed and based on need. What is he going to do? Is he going to do nothing at all?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, not only for producing his eponymous formula at the end of the 1970s, when he was a much respected Chief Secretary to the Treasury, but also for his powerful arguments in recent years for change. He of course knows more than I will ever know about the Barnett formula, and he makes a valid point; and the coalition understands his concerns very clearly. However, I am sure that he will be among the first to acknowledge that, in the light of the grave financial situation that the country faces, it would be wrong for a new Government to rush to a decision on this complicated matter.