House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Brabazon of Tara Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 8th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)]

My Lords, when I was elected one of the 90 in 1999, I never supposed that I would still be here 18 years later, because we were promised at that time—at least, I think it was a promise—that there would be further stages of reform. There was one attempt by the coalition Government, which failed in the House of Commons. There was no attempt in the 11 years of the Labour Government to bring any further reform forward. As for the matter of the hereditary by-elections, which is the subject of the Bill, as has been said, they were the result of a deal done among those involved at the time. They do not have to go on for ever, because if we get a second stage of reform they will stop.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and others who have said that some of the by-elections have been curious, to say the least. At least on our side of the House, we have a reasonable-sized electorate of about 50, and we have elected some very capable people, one of whom is sitting at this moment on the Government Front Bench, but I take the point that my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lord Cope have made that there could be a better way of dealing with the size of the electorate.

I am delighted that the Lord Speaker has set up a committee on the size of the House, which has been referred to. The real problem of the House in the public perception is its size. It is worth reminding noble Lords that when the hereditaries were effectively abolished in 1999, the total size of the House was 666. It has now grown to just over 800, and there can be no more stark example of that, I fear, than the Lib Dems, who in 1999 had 54 Members. They now have nearly double that number. In 1999, they had 46 MPs; they now have 12. I hope that the committee, which I think is to report next month, will have something to say about how we deal with the size of the House. If it makes any recommendations concerning the hereditaries or the hereditary by-elections, we will have to see what it says, but if they are part of a more extensive proposal I would be inclined to go along with whatever is suggested. I do not know whether it will make any recommendations about hereditaries—we will have to see—but the timing of the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is slightly unfortunate given the imminent publication of the report. At least it will be out before we get to the next stage of the Bill and, for what it is worth, I assure the noble Lord that I will not be part of any filibustering attempt, if one is to be made.

Taxation: Capital Gains Tax

Lord Brabazon of Tara Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

No, I reject that utterly, I am sorry to say, my Lords. As the noble Lord will know if he has read the Conservative Party manifesto, the Government are committed to cutting income tax for 30 million people, taking everyone who earns less than £12,500 out of income tax altogether. As I alluded to, we intend to surpass what we did in the previous Government and help businesses create more than 2 million new jobs. That is the best way to tackle poverty and disadvantage in this country.

[Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)]

Does my noble friend recall that, when capital gains tax was first introduced many years ago, there was a rate for exactly one year that you had to pay on income tax rates and after that it became 30%, which is the sort of suggestion that the noble Lord, Lord Lee, was making. That was a disaster, actually, and resulted in significant distortions in the market. It would be a disaster to move back to that idea.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, the Government believe that the current structure of CGT balances the need for simplicity alongside fairness by having three effective rates, which provide a lower rate for basic-rate taxpayers and support for entrepreneurs, alongside the main rate. At that, I am going to stop.

House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]

Lord Brabazon of Tara Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman]

My Lords, I hope that I will not have to detain the Committee at great length on this amendment or on the subsequent amendment, because, at Second Reading, I was enormously encouraged by the widespread support for the aims of this Bill that came from all sections of the House. I was encouraged, too, by the words of the Minister in his offer to discuss issues arising from the Bill. In Pollyanna mode, I decided that not having a settled view was a good thing and that we could perhaps move forward to a point where the Government had a settled view that this was a small but important measure that they would be able to support.

As I have said, this is a simple Bill; it is an enabling Bill; and no major concerns were raised at Second Reading. I think that Members of the House recognised that this was not a Bill about composition or reform of your Lordships’ House, although many people would have wished that it were so, but that it was dealing with a limited but very important issue, which was to ensure that the House had available to it, if the circumstances arose in which they were needed, sanctions and disciplinary measures that the public would expect us to have in those circumstances and which I think there is general agreement that we do not have at the moment.

My conversations have been mainly about the technical issues that arose from the Bill—that is Amendment 2, which we will come to in a moment—but also about whether there was a way in which we could do two things. The first was to clarify in the Bill that this is a Bill about conduct, not about composition. The other was to address the point raised in the debate: to ensure that no injustice should be done in respect of any Member of your Lordships’ House.

As I have said before, this is an enabling Bill, and it will be for the House to draw up Standing Orders to ensure that the powers that it has been given by the statute are appropriately, fairly and properly implemented and that the processes and procedures available in such circumstances should be of the highest standard. In proposing the amendment, I am happy to include one thing in the Bill: the issue of retrospectivity. The amendment makes it crystal clear that sanctions that came to pass because of Standing Orders made under the Bill may be made only in respect of,

“conduct by a member which takes place after the coming into force of this Act”.

Given what I have said about the amendment clarifying in the Bill that it is not intended in any way to be a retrospective measure but is about putting our House in order in future, it is profoundly to be hoped, as many noble Lords said at Second Reading, that these serious disciplinary measures will not be needed because conduct will not occur that calls them into action. However, forewarned is forearmed and, as I said at Second Reading, I believe that we have a dangerous lacuna in our disciplinary proceedings and the Bill sets out to fill it and protect the House in those circumstances. I beg to move.

[Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)]

I very much support the amendment, and apologise that I was unable to be in the House for Second Reading, but I also support the Bill. As some of your Lordships may recall, I was chairman of the Privileges Committee during the saga of the first suspensions to take place in the modern era. They were not as simple as all that, because a number of people thought that we should not have been able to suspend noble Lords from the service of the House. We found that we were, but we also found that we were unable to suspend noble Lords beyond the length of a Parliament. In other words, if someone was suspended today, they could be suspended for only five or six months or so, whereas if someone was suspended on 1 June, they could be suspended for five years. The press and the public were rightly unable to understand why we did not have the power to suspend for longer or, indeed, to expel. The Bill appears to deal with that matter extremely well, and I very much support it and the amendment.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I want briefly to add my support. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, is a leading member of the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, which includes Members from all parts of the House and of another place. We see the Bill as the logical extension of the Bill taken through the House of Commons last year by Mr Dan Byles and through this place by my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood, who has done so much in this field. During Second Reading, the word housekeeping was slightly disparaged. The Bill is extremely important, dealing with a vital subject, but it is quite literally about keeping the House in the best possible sense.

We are all grateful to the noble Baroness for, at this late stage in the Parliament, seeking to introduce a very short, precise and particular measure, which can certainly pass in the little time left available in this Parliament, given the good will and support of the Government. I was heartened, as was the noble Baroness, by what the Minister said at the end of Second Reading and by what I have heard since, and I very much hope that the Minister will be able not only to accept the spirit of the amendment but indicate that the Bill can have a fair wind. It is in the best interests of your Lordships’ House that this House should be kept in the best possible way, and the Bill enables us to move in that direction.

Cabinet Office: Efficiency and Reform Programme

Lord Brabazon of Tara Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

The noble Lord gave a very interesting answer to the previous question—

[Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)]

If we did sell the Post Office too cheaply, surely that pales into insignificance in comparison with the sale of the gold reserves some years ago.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I do not want to be too partisan on this question. I am focusing on the efficiency gains that this Government have achieved very creditably in the past four years.

Deregulation Bill

Lord Brabazon of Tara Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)]

My Lords, returning to the Deregulation Bill, I dare say that not every noble Lord will wish to hear my speech. I do not blame them. I will leave a moment or two for the House to settle down.

This Bill has been described by the Minister as a wide-ranging measure. Other noble Lords have described it as a Christmas tree. I have heard most of the speeches on the Bill so far and they have ranged over a very large number of topics. However, there is one little gem hidden away in the Bill on page 203—out of 204 pages. Paragraph 40 of Schedule 20 states:

“Omit section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996”.

I had the honour to chair the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which reported a year or so ago. One of our recommendations in paragraph 170 was,

“the repeal of section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996. The anomalies it creates are more damaging than the mischief it was intended to cure. There is no persuasive argument for granting either House a power of waiver or for restricting such a power to defamation cases alone. A wider power of waiver would create uncertainty, and have the potential to undermine the fundamental constitutional principle of freedom of speech in Parliament”.

The Government told us:

“There are clearly problems with Section 13 of the Defamation Act. It is at odds with the principle that freedom of speech is a privilege of the House, not just individual members and it can create an imbalance where one party to proceedings can choose to use the parliamentary record but the other cannot”.

The Government went on to say:

“However, the Government is not aware of any instances in which anyone has used the power of waiver and as such it would not appear to be a pressing priority to repeal Section 13”.

However, I am very pleased that three of my Commons colleagues managed to table an amendment to put this into the Bill. It was accepted—indeed, I think the Government added their name to it—and is therefore now in the Bill.

I do not suppose that a great number of your Lordships have actually got as far as paragraph 40 of Schedule 20—perhaps I should not say that—although I did hear that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, at least got to the preceding paragraph about dog collars, so he must have jolly nearly got there anyway, on which I congratulate him.

Anyway, the amendment was successful and is now part of the Bill. I congratulate the Government on that and I hope the Bill will get a smooth passage through its remaining stages.

Internet: Copycat Websites

Lord Brabazon of Tara Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Brabazon of Tara]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to discourage customers from using copycat websites that charge for services, such as European Health Insurance Cards, that are provided free of charge by government departments.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, most users access digital government services via the major search engines. This user behaviour has been used to inform the design of gov.uk so that government services consistently come at the top of search results. Easy access to and education about the official source of digital government services is the main way the Government protect users from inadvertently using non-official sites. The Government will continue to take action against websites that misrepresent their relationship with government and misuse government logos.

[Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that reply, but is he aware that if he googles “European Health Insurance Card”, the first two or three sites that he will come to will charge him something more than £20 for the card, whereas if he goes down to the National Health Service official site, he can get one for free? There are other examples of this, most notably passport applications where one can pay well over £40 for something that one can do oneself for nothing or go through the Post Office and pay just over £8 for help with filling in the form. Does my noble friend agree that some of these sites, to a non-legal eye anyway, come very close to passing themselves off as the official site? Would not the solution be for the Government to make sure that their site, even if it costs money with Google, always comes first on the list?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I spent some time on Tuesday afternoon looking at some of these sites. I confirm I had not realised—no doubt a number of noble Lords have not realised—that the first two or three sites to come up on the list are sponsored ads, which is indicated in very, very small print. In all cases, the top site of the non-sponsored ads was the gov.uk website. I also checked a number of the sponsored ads, which are extremely well designed. They all say that they are not an official website, but it is quite easy if you are in a hurry to miss that paragraph. Perhaps I should add that Transport for London also suffers from this if you are paying your congestion charge. I suspect that one or two noble Lords have paid more than they should for their congestion charge on one or two occasions.