House of Lords: Labour Peers’ Working Group Report

Lord Borrie Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borrie (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a delight—as it would have been on other occasions—to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby. We have known one another for many years now and I am not surprised that he has given a measured and generally favourable comment on the report that we are debating. He has said all I need to say about the excellence of this report. My noble friend Lord Lipsey need not fear that the only people round the House who would welcome the report would be those in one particular political party. We have found this afternoon that many of the comments, and many of the conclusions of the report, have been supported on all sides. I am sure that my noble friend Lady Taylor must be very pleased with the outcome of this debate.

I want to comment on two matters, both of which the group regarded as either too difficult, and therefore put into the “too difficult” tray, or in some other way not appropriate for it to go into, perhaps owing to a large number of disagreements.

The first is the matter of religious groups. Here I come in to attack the Bishops’ Benches, and I am glad that there are two of them there now because there was a danger a short while ago that nobody would be there. In recent years various religious groups have increasingly found membership of this House by the Appointments Commission, and the rest of us in this House have welcomed that a Sikh, a Muslim or two, rabbis from the Jewish faith and, of course, quite a few non-conformist Christian groups have been so represented. In other words, Bishops are no longer the only people representing a particular religious faith.

Perhaps, of course, I should emphasise that the Bishops have a specially privileged position. The matter has been raised by a number of noble Lords this afternoon and my understanding is that, at any given moment, the two Archbishops, the Bishops of Winchester, London and Durham, plus 21 other Bishops in accordance with the seniority of their appointment, are eligible to sit in this House. That is a total of 26. Compared with the other religions that I mentioned, which may have some limited representation through the Cross Benches, that is an extraordinary number which could hardly be justified in the long term. However, when changes are made in this House, the short term seems to become the long term. I am not sure whether the Bishops would agree with me but surely, in any new House, the representation of Bishops must be changed. [Interruption.] There we have the usual mix of views from the Liberal Democrat Benches.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I ask my noble friend Lord Borrie to note not only the long history of many centuries but that the established church is part of the equation, as are prayers at the beginning of the Sitting. This would widen considerably what the constitutional commission would look at. Could this not be considered by a different constitutional commission? That needs to be thought about.

[Lord Borrie]

I note what my noble friend is saying. My feeling is that, despite this being a difficult question in terms of history—and it certainly seems to be regarded by a number of colleagues through the House of Lords generally as an embarrassing question to raise—I would like to hear whether the Bishops have any agreement at all with me as regards the 26 Bishops who are entitled to sit being a permanent feature of this House.

The other matter in the group’s report that I want to mention was one that was put off for some future discussion—the position of the Lord Speaker. Since we changed from having a Lord Chancellor, we went fairly quickly into creating a Lord Speaker, who, together with the work of the deputies, some of whom we have seen today, does a remarkably good job. However, a matter alluded to several times this afternoon is the large number of Lords and the fact that, at Question Time in particular, there is great competition between large numbers of new Members in particular to catch the eye of the powers that be. It is not the eye of the Speaker, as it would be in the House of Commons. There may be four or five people on one side and two or three on the other—but the job of choosing between them is not that of the person sitting where he or she would best be able to see where the voices are coming from but of someone sitting on the Government Front Bench. Nearly half of those in the House are sitting behind that person and therefore cannot be seen; the Leader of the House or the Whip tasked to consider that matter does not know who is getting up behind him or her. Of course, it is so often the case that the person with the loudest voice is the one heard best.

Would it not be better if the task that we give to a non-independent person, the Leader of the House or the Whip, no matter how fair they try to be, was done by the Chairman or Speaker? We have put that issue aside as the years have gone by. I can see that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, in his role as Deputy Speaker, is doing what I do not think he is supposed to do—he is shaking his head. I do not think that he is supposed to give an indication of his view. Perhaps he can nod, but not shake.

There are certain matters that the group considered and put into the “too difficult” box, and it is a pity that it will be years before we get any conclusion.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Lord Borrie Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Thank you. It is an aspiration of this Government to increase the proportion of government contracts which go to small and medium-sized enterprises. When we entered government, the proportion of government contracts going to SMEs was 6.5%. Our aspiration is to reach 25% by 2015. The latest figures we have are that we are almost at 10.5%, so we have some way to go but are going in the right direction.

[Lord Borrie]

The Minister has confined his answers so far to government or governmental bodies which owe debts to small and medium-sized firms. What about simply the failure of large firms to pay small firms the money they owe them? So far, it is left to the initiative of the SMEs. Since there is a significant Bill going through Parliament at the moment dealing with financial services, I wonder whether one might get more results if the public officials of those bodies that are to take over from the Financial Services Authority under the new Financial Services Bill had a responsibility to ensure that debts were paid.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are not yet convinced that we need to take legislative action, but we are thoroughly in favour of all pressure possible to encourage large corporations to pay their small contractors as fast as possible. There is indeed a new booklet produced by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, Experian, the Forum of Private Business and the Institute of Credit Management which is a guide on how to ensure prompt payment and has been produced in co-operation with the Government. I must say that a number of newspapers, including in particular the Telegraph, have been very helpful in exposing the tendency of some large corporations deliberately to delay payment to their subcontractors. We all know that transparency and reputational damage are things which multinational companies are well aware of, supermarkets included.

Electoral Registration

Lord Borrie Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borrie]

My Lords, the debate has mostly been concerned with the direct application of the register and the changes that will be made in it to individual registration from the present system of head of household registration. We have asked what that means and whether it will make it more difficult to avoid fraud. But there is a secondary purpose that I want to mention in the debate, which is that for many years, at least 30 years to my knowledge, the electoral register has been used commercially to indicate the truth about residence, permanency of residence and so on, along with identification of people on the register by credit reference agencies. I hope my noble friend Lord Beecham does not mind me saying that they are commercial entities; they are in business for commercial reasons. But they provide a useful public purpose in that, both for creditors and indirectly for consumers, they indicate various pieces of key identification and household information to suggest the creditworthiness or otherwise of the consumers to whom credit providers are inclined to offer credit.

Credit reference agencies have for many years had the privilege of being entitled to have access to the full electoral register. They are approved or licensed by the Office of Fair Trading at the present time and in future by the Financial Services Authority, and that is an indication of the probity of the particular agencies I am talking about. There is a small reference in paragraph 13 of the White Paper on this subject to indicate the significance of credit reference agency use of the electoral register.

There is a change suggested by the Government in the White Paper to individual electoral registration but the Government propose to remove existing penalties for non-registration. As I understand it, admittedly from a sitting position, my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours does not think much of penalties because they are very rarely imposed and people are very rarely prosecuted. I would suggest, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, indicated in his useful speech, that if there are to be penalties, as there have been in the past, they will be quite useless unless, at least from time to time, there are examples of prosecutions and fines imposed and whatever other penalties it is thought desirable there should be for non-registration.

I am very concerned about paragraph 16 of the White Paper, which makes the point that it is not compulsory for anyone to vote in this country, unlike in Australia, and the Government do not intend to compel people to vote. It then goes on to say, displaying a bad sense of logic, that it is sensible that registering to vote should also be a choice for the individual concerned. I do not think one thing follows from the other at all. Surely one can be in favour of allowing people the freedom to vote or not to vote on election day and yet regard it as a valuable requirement to make the comprehensiveness of the register a reality. I think the noble Lord, Lord Rennard would agree that they are separate matters. From the point of view of the secondary value of the electoral register that I am referring to, I would say that it is a helpful indication in relation to the creditworthiness or otherwise of individuals. It would be a severe loss if the register was much less comprehensive than it has been, let alone more comprehensive. So I doubt the logic of the Government’s view on this matter.

Others have said that this is not the subject of this debate but I may surmise that voting should be compulsory. There are indeed arguments to that effect. I am certainly saying that registration to vote is a public duty and should be enforceable by appropriate penalties. As I understand it, leading credit reference agencies as well as the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the House of Commons want registration to be mandatory. I entirely agree and I agree with the value of the 2014 household canvass that has been referred to by others in this debate.

In principle the move to individual electoral registration seems to me to be correct and we want to ensure that that principle is backed up by a greater reality than seems likely from the current proposals. As my noble friend Lord Wills has indicated, the reason why the proposals are inadequate at the moment is that the Government have rejected compulsion and various other ideas, especially those formulated by people outside the Government, and they have failed to go along a bipartisan route.