Economy: High Street Trade

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend is absolutely right. The Government have recognised that some of the punitive practices on our high streets have prevented or discouraged people from going shopping on their local high streets and we have done something about it.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

Is it not true that online trading is going to grow notwithstanding what might happen in the high streets? Is it not also true that while online trading is welcomed by many people, there are also drawbacks, not the least of these being growth in traffic—white vans are everywhere now—that is creating congestion and poisonous air in the communities? What are the Government going to do to restrain it or at least to make drivers pay for the pollution that they are creating.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, whether it is the car going with its owner to the shop or the van from the distribution centre going to the home, I am afraid shopping does, in one way or another, create carbon in our atmosphere. The noble Lord is right that online shopping is increasing vastly. The high streets that acknowledge that, and are responding to it and creating different offers, for example leisure opportunities and markets on the high streets, are the ones that are doing well.

Aviation: Sustainable Fuel

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is right in so far as we have to look globally at the whole issue, including what is happening in the European Union. As the noble Baroness will no doubt be aware, we have been working with the International Civil Aviation Organization. In February, we reached agreement with other states in the ICAO on a global CO₂ standard for aircraft, which is all part of the same picture. All new aeroplane designs applying for certification from 2020 will have to be compliant with the CO₂ emissions standard. Designs already in production will also need to comply from 2023.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, when will the consultation be concluded and when will the Government implement it?

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, as I said earlier, the consultation will start later this year. I do not have any information on when it will conclude but I have read out the areas that we shall be looking at. Of course, I will write to the noble Lord if there is any more information that I can give him.

Adult Education: Part-time Attendance

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I also congratulate those two organisations on their work—in fact, I met both of them recently. The Government are certainly listening to their concerns. Part of the reason we are consulting on the introduction of maintenance loans is because we want to make sure that we get the details right and ensure that those who want to take advantage of this support can do so.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

With respect, can the noble Baroness answer the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, about the Government’s views on night schools and night classes? Do they support them and, if so, will they encourage them?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We want people to be able to access higher and further education in whatever way they think is best; night schools are one way to do that. Therefore, in order to provide flexibility for people who want to do further studies, there should be a whole range of provision so that people from all backgrounds and ages can access the support that suits them best.

Alcohol Consumption

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jolly]

I am not quite sure. I can tell noble Lords about licensing. We are actively working with Public Health England on the practicalities of how health-related objectives for the licensing of premises selling alcohol would work at a local level.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, while we welcome the reduction in the amount of alcohol being sold in certain areas, is it not true that growth is taking place in other areas? In particular, the drinks industry is trying to get its brands into the heads of young people. Is the Minister content to see supermarkets now selling alcoholic lemonade that is stronger than many beers? Is she content to see them selling ginger beer and other soft drinks with more alcohol than is contained in many beers? Should we not be doing something about that?

China: United Kingdom Trade

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Popat]

The noble Baroness has made an important point. We are addressing the issue of intellectual property and we now have legislation in place. We are asking our Chinese counterparts to comply with our regulations on intellectual property.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Popat]

My Lords, I am afraid that I did not hear the question.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

Can the noble Lord tell the House how many additional flights from Heathrow to China have been introduced since this Government came to power?

[Lord Popat]

My Lords, some 39 flights depart from Heathrow to China every week.

House of Lords: Membership

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, I think that we have a good debate and that the outlines of the issues that the House will want to consider are already clear. The points that have been made very forcefully by a number of noble Lords have been well made; obviously I have heard everything that has been said. Although I recognise that I am new to this job, one issue on which I can be in little doubt about the opinions of this House is that which we have been debating today. Noble Lords have already been extremely generous—I might say unstinting—with the advice they have given me at every possible opportunity. I am glad to say that I have had a chance to discuss these issues with many noble Lords who have already spoken today and I will continue to do so in future, because I think that that is the right way to take the matter forward.

Coming new to the subject, I cannot have the great expertise and history that many noble Lords have on this matter. We have seen it again demonstrated by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and my noble friend Lord Tyler. These issues go back a long time. However, I do at least bring a fresh pair of eyes to some of these issues. Given that the underlying issue to which all noble Lords have referred is the size of the House, I thought that I should start by going back to look at the figures to see by how much the House has grown. This is what I found.

The House that Tony Blair inherited on taking office in 1997 had 1,067 Peers eligible to vote. Of course, that was before the removal of most of the hereditary Peers following the 1999 reform. The House that Gordon Brown inherited on taking office 10 years later in 2007 was smaller: there were 738 peers eligible to vote. As of this week, there are 761 Members of this House eligible to vote; that is 23 more than in 2007. We have had some discussion about the proportion and size of the number who have been introduced, so I looked at the numbers for the Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Cross-Bench Peers in particular. In 2007, 698 Members sat on those Benches and were eligible to vote. I accept that the equivalent figure today is higher: today it is 704, which is six more than in 2007. Those figures come from the House of Lords Library note of 27 June 2012; for this week’s figures, I consulted the online House of Lords registry.

Given that the overall number of Peers eligible to vote is not so different from five or six years ago, that brings me naturally to the important question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, about the exercise of restraint in new appointments to the House, which is referred to both in his amendment and in my noble friend Lord Steel’s Motion.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, would the noble Lord be kind enough to give us the details of the average attendances from 1997?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am coming on to talking about attendance and participation, which I recognise as an important issue. As far as the exercise of restraint is concerned, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, refers to the Leader’s Group recommendation on the creation of new Members of this House. That read:

“Whilst we cannot recommend that there should be a moratorium on new appointments to the House—since, while the purpose of the House is to provide expertise, we must ensure that that expertise is refreshed and kept up to date”—

a point, I think, on which all noble Lords agree—

“we do urge that restraint should be exercised by all concerned in the recommendation of new appointments the House, until such time as debate over the size of membership is conclusively determined”.

I would argue that this recommendation has been followed and that the Prime Minister has indeed shown restraint. Since the well publicised lists of May and November 2010, a total of eight new peers have been created, six of them on the Cross Benches; 42 life peers have, sadly, died. I suggest, therefore, that the Prime Minister’s record is consistent with the recommendation from the Leader’s Group, both in terms of exercising restraint and in ensuring that expertise is refreshed and kept up to date.

I now come to the point about which I was asked. The real issue is not so much the absolute number of those entitled to vote but attendance. Surely we all agree that attendance and participation are good things that we ought to encourage. That is one of the reasons why I am extremely keen, as a new Leader, to try to find new ways to help a wider range of Members to play a greater role in this House. That is why, as an early priority, I shortly plan to put proposals to the Procedure Committee that will provide more time and opportunities for Back-Bench Members to lead debates. My intention is to build on the work of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, who, with the support of the Liaison Committee and the House, initiated a modest expansion in our Select Committee activity to include more pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny as well as a greater emphasis on single-session committees. I am keen to do that in order to ensure that a wider range of Members have the opportunity to serve on our Select Committees.

Noble Lords have raised the matter of Question Time. I welcome the fact that the Procedure Committee is due to come forward with some revised proposals on how we might make it easier for a wider range of Members to table Oral Questions. There is also the question of how we might encourage more Members to come in on supplementary questions and broaden participation. I am acutely conscious of how crowded the Chamber is during Question Time, just as it is at PMQs in another place. When you spend as much time as I now have the pleasure to do in your Lordships’ House, it is clear that, at other times of the day, this House is not as crowded as it is during Question Time.

As well as talking about the need for restraint, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, reiterated the support of this House for the proposals in the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood. Indeed, the House has already made its position clear. We passed the Bill without a Division and sent it to the other place last summer. It contains measures which my noble friend Lord Steel described as “housekeeping” and for which it is clear that there is widespread support in this House. I know that my noble friend is keen that the Government should take the Bill forward. As he said, he made his case directly to the Deputy Prime Minister earlier this week; he was the right person to talk to, as he is the Cabinet Minister responsible for this matter. Despite that, the Government’s position remains that we do not wish to facilitate the passage of the Bill. I understand that the Deputy Prime Minister made clear why that is the case. As my noble friend Lord Tyler said, it is because the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly last year in favour of an elected House of Lords. With that in mind, no Government could credibly support a package of measures that could be perceived as anointing an all-appointed House.

House of Lords: Reform

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman]

My Lords—

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Cross Bench!

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, is the Leader of the House aware that some Members of this Chamber believe that the present composition is unsustainable and needs reform? Is he also aware that it is my birthday today too?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am very glad that it is the noble Lord’s birthday. I am surprised that we have had no questions on age limits being introduced in this House. I join him in being one who thinks that the House should be reformed.

Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a supporter of the Campaign for a Democratic Upper House, and as a long-standing member of the Labour Party—a party which, within its DNA, has sought to reform the House of Lords and to move towards an elected second Chamber in this country. That is not to say that I am in agreement with everything that the Campaign for a Democratic Upper House has been saying in this context over the past few weeks and in its submissions, any more than it means that I supported the Government’s White Paper and draft Bill when it first came out. Indeed, when it did I was quite critical in a number of respects, particularly in regard to Clause 2. I was unhappy about the 15-year term and the absence of accountability which I believe this House needs to have introduced.

I have been in this House since 1997, and when I first came in I believed that the House should be reformed. Much as I have come to love the place and the people in it, and to respect the very significant contribution that it makes to society through its work, knowledge and expertise, I have over the years felt the embrace of the House on me to shift my position. The noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, has left the Chamber, but I have been almost seduced to switch my position by the efforts that he has made with his several Bills. However, I have not shifted it. In that respect, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and his committee for reaffirming my position.

I want first to say that over the past months I have watched people trooping through the Lobbies who for many years were opposed to what they were voting for in regard to health and social care—and that is what the public see, too. They were people who for many years had fought for benefits, particularly for the disabled, but who were voting in a manner quite contrary to anything I had previously seen. I am thus reaffirmed in the view that the public are entitled to have a say on who is in this House.

I express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and all the members of his committee for the report which has been produced for us. It has not been an easy task, as we all recognise, but they have moved us forward. This momentum has been under way since the 1990s, and it will not stop. In particular, I am pleased that a majority of them embraced the circumstances in which we, as representatives, cannot resolve this issue and find a consensual approach, and have recommended that the people should decide what should be done with the second Chamber. On that there was, fortunately, a very substantial majority in the committee.

I am pleased that my leader in this House has reaffirmed in the Lords today the Labour Party’s position in favour of a referendum. We indicated that in our manifesto. However, I was disappointed earlier to hear the Leader of the House, when speaking on behalf of the coalition, say that the Government saw no case for it. I hope that the Government are going to reflect on that and change their minds, that that will not become a point of dissent between and within the two Chambers, and that we can move forward and let the people have their say. When they have had their say, it should rest with a House of Commons, whose primacy we want to see maintained, to take a decision on the composition and powers of the House of Lords. That was a big change and is a big step forward, and I thank the committee for it very much indeed. In a sense, if the proposal goes through, the committee will have taken it away from the warring factions, which have so far been unable to move forward on it.

Finally, I want to say something on Clause 2, which I have been very unhappy about. I have long been an advocate of the Government working on codifying our conventions. They have resisted doing that so far, and I have looked at the arguments that they have advanced when they have gone before the committee, but I still believe that those issues need addressing—as do other topics that are still left over. We need a dispute resolution procedure beyond that which has been presented by the Government, and further work on codification or addressing the conventions of the House. When we examine the report which the noble Lord has produced, we see that within it there is an answer to most of the problems which have been presented hitherto by those who are opposed to us shifting on this ground: that the primacy of the Commons would be challenged.

I urge noble Lords to re-read the report because it provides us with a foundation on which we can build in moving forward. It also provides for those, perhaps particularly on the Cross Benches, who are fearful about the possible attack on that primacy from the Lords if we had elections. There is a scheme within it to cover that. I suspect that the minority on the Joint Committee have realised that there is quite a lot in this report, sufficient to have moved them to provide an alternative. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has done his best today to make sure that everybody reads it. Again, I urge people to read it fully, because it is a very useful document, although in some areas it does not quite represent the full position.

In conclusion, I will pick up a point from the alternative report. In its executive summary it says that the Government’s Bill “purports” to set out a system of an elected second Chamber that will not challenge the primacy of the Commons, but it fails to do so. I asked noble Lords to ask themselves: why should a Government—indeed, why should the previous Labour Government—whose power depends upon their position in the House of Commons set out to do any such thing to undermine their power and primacy? Why should they do it? Nobody has looked at or answered that question. The simple fact is that the Commons will continue to have their power there. Governments will want that, whether they be Labour, Lib Dem, Conservative or coalition. That is the way they will want it, and they will make sure that the laws of the land are structured so that that primacy is retained, even if they have to change it en route.

I look forward with great interest to seeing where we end up with the Bill, when it comes to us. I look forward, too, to the people taking a decision on this. I will be one of those canvassing and fighting hard to make sure that those people who have the right to make the law are there through the votes cast by people who have to live under those laws. We will then see where we end on the primacy issue. If the Commons come out with a majority in favour of change, as seems likely from the way that the voting has gone within the Joint Committee, this House should be willing to accept it.

Arrangement of Business

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

I cannot see any difficulty in having the Prorogation ceremony fairly late on Tuesday. In fact, I have been a participant in Prorogation ceremonies that have taken place quite late. I do not remember the latest occasion, but they were certainly late in the evening. I can therefore see no difficulty in having a Prorogation ceremony on Tuesday, but still allowing substantially two days for this debate at this stage, before we know what is in the Queen’s Speech.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, if the Sunday trading Bill goes through without any great difficulties, will the noble Lord tell the House what time he is planning to hold the Prorogation on Tuesday?

[Lord Strathclyde]

I am unable to do that but we will be making an announcement shortly. I am glad that all my noble friends have been so helpful on this. The plain facts are these: if we had never had a debate in your Lordships’ House with 63 or 65 speakers, and had not managed to complete it in a day, I would completely understand what the House was saying. The point is that time and again we have had debates with even more than 63 or 65 speakers in a day. It is therefore perfectly well precedented to do this. The very significant point that my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern made is entirely right. None of us should pre-empt the Queen’s Speech, least of all me; but in the eventuality that there was an announcement, it was entirely right—and again this is well precedented by successive Governments—to put down the subjects of debate for the subsequent debate on the humble Address. We are doing nothing new, nothing adventurous and nothing dangerous, if I may say so. My noble friend Lord Forsyth is certainly not naive on these matters. If we are taking so much time today to discuss how much time we should devote to the debate on the Joint Committee report, one can only imagine what it would be like if we were ever faced with a Bill itself.

Procedure of the House (Proposal 1)

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I am absolutely staggered that any Member of this House who has served in the other place—or the House of Commons, I am pretty agnostic on what we call it—should be advocating greater authority for our Speaker. I fear that I do not remember the halcyon days of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd. I remember her authority being constantly challenged on totally bogus points of order. You have only to pick up a Hansard from yesterday, which will be like any other Hansard from the House of Commons. It will show that after every Question Time, people leap to their feet with points of order which are not points of order. They are people who missed out on Questions—they have not managed to get in, so they ask their question anyway—or they bring up some constituency matter that happens to concern them. That is all completely bogus. The authority of the Speaker is constantly challenged in the House of Commons, and it will be challenged here if we give authority to our Lord Speaker. We do not want to go down that path; it is a very retrograde step. We should learn from the House of Commons and stay with a system that works very satisfactorily as it is.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I am finding this a very strange debate indeed. I always thought that when we had a Leader’s Group, the Leader of the House was on the group and presented the report to the House. Then it went back to the Procedure Committee. The Procedure Committee then went through the report and then presented its report with recommendations which it unanimously backed. We knew precisely where we stood then and had very strong leadership. Times change, and the report has been presented today in a very different way, in a neutral fashion. I have been waiting to see who will speak on behalf of whom in defending the current position or advocating change. It looks as if we have a new style of neutrality, which we have not had before. In those circumstances—and I say this as someone who saw the House regulating itself well when I first came in, with civility, courtesy and discipline; and no doubt I am now as much part of it as anyone else—it has changed. We should recognise that we have changed, and move on. I have again heard criticism of the Leader today, saying that he does not intervene in the way that Leaders intervened in the past. I am moving then to say that I am going with the change, and I am hard pressed on this. I do not like the state that we have got ourselves into, and therefore if changes come, I have got to go with them—unless, of course, somebody will stand up firmly and say “No, we are stopping it. We are going back to what it was like before, and I am the individual who will ensure that that happens”. I do not know who that individual is in the House, and who is going to say it. But the question I pose to the Leader is: is he going to speak this afternoon?