Government and Parliament

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, at the start of her speech, the noble Baroness, the Leader of the Opposition, was kind enough to make some complimentary remarks about what I said in the Queen’s Speech debate. I want to return that compliment. I very much welcomed the constructive tone of her speech today. I must say that I was a little surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, say that he agreed with every word that the Leader of the Opposition said, but fundamentally disagreed with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, because, for a major part of their speeches, they were both saying the same thing.

When the Leader of the Opposition put down this Motion for debate, I assumed that this would be a further debate on Strathclyde, so I went to the Printed Paper Office and drew out yet again the noble Lord’s report and the reports of the three Lords Select Committees to find that yet another report had appeared—this time from the Public Administration Committee in another place. I reflected that this issue seems to be prolific in producing Select Committee reports. The only thing that it has not produced so far is a response from the Government.

Today—and I welcome this—the speech of the Leader of the Opposition went wider. She referred not only to Strathclyde and statutory instruments but to the unsatisfactory nature generally of legislation which the Executive present to Parliament. I welcome that because, although secondary legislation is an important part of what is wrong with our legislative procedures, it is not the only aspect. As somebody who spent my career in the Executive, I respectfully agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that what is at the root of this is not any conspiracy to simplify the legislation coming to Parliament but the desire of the Executive to make themselves an easier life. That has been going on for some 250 years. It lies at the root of the development of the party system, the whipping system, it continues to go on and it results in Bills of the sort we see now. The shelves of the Libraries since I migrated from being a bureaucrat to a law-maker are groaning with the reports of committees on which I served, which sought to draw attention to the ill results of our country’s unsatisfactory law-making. As has been said, Bills are ill thought out, inadequately prepared, insufficiently consulted on and hugely added to by the Executive during their passage and finally often replaced before they are brought into operation. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who I am delighted to see is taking part in this debate, in a devastating lecture, drew attention to how appalled he has been in migrating from being a judge to a law-maker by the widespread and growing preponderance of Henry VIII clauses and secondary legislation, introducing policy changes which should have been in the original Bill. On that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham.

One of the committees of which I was a Member—the Leader’s Group on the House of Lords procedure in 201l, set up by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde— recommended that the House should establish a legislative standards committee to deal with precisely the deficiencies in legislation presented to the House which have been referred to and to answer these questions. Has the policy underlying the Bill been properly explained? Has there been consultation to establish whether the proposals are practicable? Is there enough detail to enable Parliament to scrutinise it properly?

The proposal of that Leader’s Group, on which representatives from all sides of the House served, was that, like the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, this new committee would consider those factual questions between introduction and Second Reading—not policy questions but the state of preparation of the Bill—and it should report to the House whether a Bill and its surrounding information were in a fit state for parliamentary scrutiny. The clerks to the House recommended that such a procedure was entirely practicable but your Lordships will be unsurprised to hear that this was yet another proposal on which the Government did not support action. Now the time may well be to return to it.

In the Queen’s Speech debate, I said that Parliament’s scrutiny of statutory instruments needed consideration by the Commons as well as by the Lords. Prompt upon its cue comes a report from the Commons Public Administration Committee which reaches similar conclusions. That committee concludes that instead of producing legislative proposals,

“aimed at implementing … Strathclyde … the Government’s time would be better spent in rethinking the way it relies on secondary legislation for implementing its policy objectives”.

I would add that if the Government do not do so, as has been said, fatal resolutions in this House—so rarely used over the last 60 years—are likely to become more frequent.

The Leader of the Opposition has proposed that we look at this whole question of parliamentary law-making. Why should we not do so? Committee after committee has said that there is a problem to be solved. The Government have an interest in avoiding fatal defeats on statutory instruments in the House of Lords. The Opposition have an interest in securing a procedure which they can legitimately use to defeat or amend statutory instruments in the House of Lords, while respecting the ultimate primacy of the House of Commons. I agree that in this respect the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde’s proposals have been misunderstood and misinterpreted. He is not proposing that the House of Lords’ powers in relation to statutory instruments should be curbed. What he is proposing is to substitute a procedure which the House of Lords rarely dares to use for one that it could use much more frequently to cause the Government to reconsider or amend statutory instruments in a proper way.

I hope that in replying to this debate, the Leader will respond constructively to the Leader of the Opposition’s proposal. But let not the best be the enemy of the good. We also need to solve our problem over statutory instruments. We do not want yet another report about which nobody does anything.

House of Lords Appointments Commission

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boothroyd]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review the powers of the House of Lords Appointments Commission.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and at her request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, the House of Lords Appointments Commission does an effective job in recommending candidates for non-party peerages and vetting the propriety of all those nominated as life Peers. There are no plans to amend its remit.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I ask this Question on behalf of my noble friend Lady Boothroyd because she is having to spend a few days in hospital. I am sure that the whole House will want to wish her well.

The last triennial review of the House of Lords Appointments Commission took place in 2013. Is the next triennial review not now due? Is it not necessary to increase the powers of the House of Lords Appointments Commission in view of the widespread concern at the Prime Minister’s use of his unlimited powers of patronage in making appointments to this House?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I echo the noble Lord’s remarks wishing the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, a speedy recovery. On the Question he raised, the House of Lords Appointments Commission does indeed play a very important part in vetting all nominees and recommending excellent candidates for the Cross Benches, but it is the political parties that must be accountable for the Members who sit on the political Benches. That is an important principle that should continue. It is also important that we maintain appointment to the Cross Benches, as well as to the political Benches. That is why the Prime Minister appointed 10 Peers to the Cross Benches in the last Parliament, alongside those appointed independently through the HOLAC process.

House of Lords: Strathclyde Review

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, will the Leader agree with me that, for many years now, there has been dissatisfaction in all parts of the House with the binary choice that is open to us for either accepting or rejecting statutory instruments? Will she also agree that it is relevant that the procedure recommended by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is very similar to that which was recommended by the all-party royal commission under the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, by the Leader’s Group in 2011 and by the Hansard Society and others? It would therefore be unfortunate if the circumstances in which this issue has arisen were to close people’s minds to positive consideration of the procedure that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has recommended.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am hugely grateful to the noble Lord for that very important contribution. My noble friend has drawn on some of the extensive work done over the past decade or more by the commission chaired by my noble friend Lord Wakeham. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, is right; my noble friend Lord Strathclyde has come forward with a recommendation that deserves proper consideration, and I really hope that that is what this House will give it.

English Votes for English Laws

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Leader for having missed the first moment or two of her speech. I contribute to this debate more in sorrow than in anger—but with an element of anger. The Leader promised that the House should have an opportunity to express views. This debate is providing that opportunity; I welcome that. What I do not welcome is that the Government are going ahead with their Motion for changes in the Standing Orders tomorrow, when they will hardly have had the opportunity to read in Hansard what has been said in this evening’s debate. Nothing could make it more clear that the Government do not propose to take any serious account of your Lordships’ views on this matter.

As has been pointed out, on 21 July this House passed by a very large majority a Motion inviting the Commons to set up a Joint Committee to look into the constitutional aspects of these proposals. We have not had a reply from the Commons to that proposal. As she has said, the Leader made it very clear in that debate on 21 July that the Government were opposed to a Joint Committee. But this is not just a matter for the Government. This was a message from the House of Lords, which the House of Lords passed by a large majority, to the House of Commons—and the House of Commons has not replied to it. The Leader said that such a reply might be provided tomorrow as a result of the House of Commons voting on an amendment put down by Mr Graham Allen, a Back-Bencher. But that is not adequate. The Leader herself said that the amendment might not be selected by the Speaker. The House of Commons should have replied to this proposal from the House of Lords. It is a gross discourtesy that it has not and that the Government have not made sure that it replied.

There is a precedent for the House of Commons to go ahead without taking any account of a Motion from the House of Lords proposing a Joint Committee. The precedent was in 1911. Not for 104 years have the Government proceeded without taking any notice of a proposal such as this from the House of Lords. Why are the Government treating your Lordships’ House with such disregard? Mr Grayling has made clear his reasons on a couple of occasions. In reply to a question in the other place on 15 October, he said that,

“this is a debate about the Standing Orders of the House of Commons and it would be quite a big step for us to take a move towards inviting the House of Lords to rule, consider and act on our own Standing Orders”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/10/15; col. 506.]

That is an obtuse answer and I am afraid that it is deliberately obtuse. These proposals are about the constitutional relationship between different parts of the United Kingdom. As the noble Lord, Lord Reid, said, that is a matter on which the Government should proceed with extreme caution—and they are not doing so.

However, blessed is he who repents. We hear tonight that the Leader of the House of Commons has asked the chairman of the House of Lords Constitution Committee to take a part in monitoring the constitutional aspects of the operation of the Standing Orders. The Leader has played some part in achieving that repentance—but it is merely satisfactory as far as it goes, and the discourtesy to this House has not been removed.

The Government propose to go ahead tomorrow regardless with their changes to the Standing Orders. I have said from the outset that I welcome the Government’s seizing the nettle of the West Lothian question. I advised the Conservative Party’s task force under the right honourable Kenneth Clarke, which proposed one of the three solutions rehearsed in the White Paper of Mr Hague, as he then was, at the end of the previous Parliament. That solution was better, in my view, than the one now put forward. I note that in addition to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, about a diagram that would look like knitting, even the Procedure Committee in the other place described the Government’s proposals with adjectives such as “complex”, “rococo” and “over-engineered”. For that reason, the Select Committee had great reservations about them.

The Government have not explained why a simpler solution has not been proposed. My objection to the Government’s proposals is, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, that for the first time it gives a veto to a group of MPs in the Commons—English or English and Welsh MPs—over legislation that Parliament as a whole wishes to pass. That is unprecedented. The proposal of Kenneth Clarke’s Democracy Task Force put it the other way round. It gave English or English and Welsh MPs the opportunity to amend a Bill in Committee and on Report and then the whole House the final say on accepting or rejecting the result. That seems both simpler and more in line with our parliamentary traditions than a veto.

Why does the difference matter, apart from a veto being a constitutional innovation? I suggest it matters for this reason, among others. If a veto is to be given to English MPs, or English and Welsh MPs, over legislation affecting only their areas, is a similar veto to be given to Scottish MPs on legislation in the Westminster Parliament that affects only Scotland? There is such legislation. An example which was brought to my notice is the Partnerships (Prosecution) (Scotland) Act 2013. If such a veto is not going to be given to Scottish MPs, why not? What is sauce for the English and Welsh goose should be sauce for the Scottish gander. If the Government do not give similar rights to Scottish MPs to those that they propose to take for English and Welsh MPs, they are giving Scotland a legitimate grievance. In the current state of the union, that is a dangerous and unwise thing to do.

There are many other questions about the Government’s proposals, which other noble Lords have raised. The Hansard Society has produced a paper entitled Five Early Questions about them. Why are the Government rushing into these proposals without waiting for the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the Scottish Affairs Committee and the final report of the Procedure Committee in another place to give their advice on these issues? It is very unwise of the Government to be doing so. Their answer is, “Let’s give our proposals a try and review them in a year’s time”. We have heard that sort of argument before. It is like saying, “We will jump over the cliff and grab a bush on the way down so that we can review our decision about whether we were right to do so”.

As has been pointed out, there is no need for this impetuous rush. The current position is that there is both an overall majority for the Government, and a majority in England and Wales for the Government, in the House of Commons. The Government can easily afford to allow their proposals to be properly considered by both Houses of Parliament. They are acting like a bull in a china shop—if that is not an inappropriate analogy in this particular week. However, it is clear that whatever we say tonight, the Government will push ahead with their proposals in the Commons tomorrow. There is only one chance that prudence will prevail and that this House’s invitation to the House of Commons to set up a Joint Committee will be adopted, which is that the House of Commons passes Mr Allen’s amendment tomorrow and accepts our proposal for a Joint Committee. The matter is now in their hands.

Proposed Changes to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

That it is expedient that a Joint Committee of Lords and Commons be appointed to consider and report on the constitutional implications of the Government’s 14 July revised proposals to change the Standing Orders of the House of Commons in order to give effect to English Votes for English Laws, and that the committee should report on the proposals by 30 March 2016.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper, and I shall do so briefly.

The purpose of this Motion is to enable the House to ask for a Joint Committee of both Houses on the Government’s proposals on English votes for English laws. I should first repeat that I welcome the fact that the Government are grasping the nettle of English votes for English laws. At the same time, it seems to me undeniable that their proposals are not just procedural but raise serious constitutional issues. They give a subset of Members of the House of Commons—English or English and Welsh Members—a right of veto on legislation which Parliament would otherwise pass. It seems to me right that Scottish MPs should not have the power to determine legislation affecting only England, or England and Wales, but the Government’s proposals are not the only way of achieving that. The McKay commission and the Democracy Task Force, chaired by the right honourable Kenneth Clarke MP, both suggested simpler and, in my view, less objectionable alternatives which ought to be seriously considered by Parliament.

There are many other problems with the Government’s proposals. The noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, has raised her concern that they require the Speaker in another place to make determinations which will be politically controversial and, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has said, could cause the privileges of Parliament to be challenged in the courts. Others have argued that the right way to deal with matters of this constitutional importance is by legislation, not by changes to Standing Orders in the House of Commons. That is a view which I share.

When people with experience and expertise from such a different range of perspectives as the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and the noble Lords, Lord Norton of Louth, Lord Forsyth, Lord Lisvane and Lord Reid, all express concern about the Government’s proposals, these concerns demand serious examination. It would not be sufficient to have a debate in which concerns can be expressed but not resolved before the Government rush the proposals through in September by a vote of the majority in another place. At present, when there is both a Conservative majority in the House of Commons and a Conservative majority in England and Wales, the problem is not urgent. Surely it is more important to get the proposals right than to rush them through.

This House has great experience and expertise to contribute on this matter. The proposal for a Joint Committee of both Houses did not originate in this House. It was made by the opposition spokesman in another place. The purpose of this Motion is to enable our House to support it and to indicate our willingness to take part. I beg to move.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly in support of the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell. He helpfully raised this issue last week in a QSD that he introduced, so the noble Baroness and the Government have had an opportunity to consider it.

I should be clear: we do not see this Motion as challenging the principle of what the Government are seeking to achieve—I am sure that that is not its intention. That is not our role or, as a House, our responsibility. However, it is our role as a revising and scrutinising Chamber to consider the implications of proposed changes for how we as a Parliament operate, and whether changes being proposed have any implications not just for how we do business but whether they impact negatively on our work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness and to the other noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I am particularly sorry to have to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, on the 30th anniversary of his wedding, because on that day 30 years ago I was his best man. He showed, if I may say so, very good judgment on that day, and I am very sorry to have to disagree with him today.

If I may, I will first of all answer the question that the noble Lord, Lord King, meant to ask me but did not manage to ask in my opening speech. He asked, if there is a Joint Committee that takes till March next year to look at this issue, what will happen in the mean time. Some have said that there are not many Bills that will be affected, but I have a different answer. My answer is that, at the moment, there is both a government majority in the House of Commons and a government majority in England and Wales, so the problem does not arise—there will be no Bills between now and then for which this will cause a difficulty.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

My Lords, with great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, his conviction that everyone in the Conservative Party always votes identically to the party Whip has not always been borne out.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I do not think that the problems of the Conservative Party ought to be dealt with by this constitutional change, if I may say so.

What is clear from all the speakers in this debate, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord True, is that these proposals raise serious constitutional issues and that there are many difficult questions which have yet to be answered. The noble Baroness has said that it is a Conservative manifesto commitment to solve this problem, and that is true. Of course I respect that, and that is why I say that I welcome the fact that the Government are tackling the issue, but the means by which it is being tackled were not in the Conservative manifesto. There are different ways of doing it, and I happen to think that some are better than the proposals that the Government have put forward, which the House had no previous knowledge of before they were contained in the Statement. I believe that those issues deserve to, and can legitimately, be looked at without breaching the convention that the Government are supported in their manifesto.

The Government have shifted their position significantly since their original Statement. They have encountered very much more political controversy than they expected to, and the very fact that they have done so indicates that, either knowingly or otherwise, they underestimated the constitutional significance of their proposals. Noble Lords will recall that the Government’s original approach was that their proposals would simply be voted through by the House of Commons by changes to Standing Orders before the recess, and that there should be no debate at all in this House, on the grounds that our procedures are not affected. The Government were forced to retreat in another place to allow time for consideration. The noble Baroness has said that, after reflecting, she recognises that there are indeed constitutional issues which this House should have an opportunity for debating.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, it is important to clarify what I said. When I repeated the Statement, I made the point, which I stand by now because it is still the case, that, procedurally, this House is not affected by the changes being proposed by the Government to amend Standing Orders in the other place. When I said at the time of repeating the Statement that I did not feel it was necessary to provide time for further debate, I did so because at that time the House of Commons was planning to proceed quite quickly to debate and decide the amendments to its Standing Orders. However, given that the House of Commons has decided to take a bit more time over this, I felt that there was therefore an opportunity for us to debate it. However, if it had stuck with its original timetable, my original position would have remained the same.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, the noble Baroness appears to be saying that she does not recognise that there are constitutional implications on which this House should have a debate, but I thought that she had accepted that.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am so sorry. The Government are proposing to introduce changes now and to review the implementation of these changes in a year’s time, so of course there will be an opportunity for us to contribute to that process and consider the implications of the implementation of these changes. That is what I said at the time of repeating the Statement, and that is what I say now. My main point now is that there is no way of finding a perfect solution through continuing to debate the issue. What we have now is a good way forward that should be implemented, tested, debated and reviewed in a year’s time.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I will not detain the House longer. As the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Reid, said, we cannot, of course, compel another place to set up a Joint Committee. However, what we can do today is to say that we believe that this is a matter for Parliament as a whole, not just for the House of Commons, and that it is best approached by Parliament as a whole through a Joint Committee of both Houses. I wish to seek the opinion of the House.

English Votes for English Laws

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to consider alternatives to their proposals for English votes for English laws.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful that so many Members of your Lordships’ House will speak in this short debate. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for being willing to answer it. The fact that so many Members have put down their names to speak in this debate indicates and strongly reinforces the case for this House taking an effective part in the debate on what is certainly a constitutional issue. This debate does not constitute such an opportunity: much more is needed, and I will return to that at the end of my remarks.

I want to put four points to the Leader. First, the Green Paper presented by Mr William Hague in December 2014 entitled The Implications of Devolution for England said unequivocally, on behalf of the Conservative Party:

“We therefore believe the arrangements for England or for England and Wales should also be put on a statutory footing, even if they are implemented in the first instance through changes to Standing Orders in the House of Commons”.

It appears that the Government are retreating from that approach, and that the reason is that they fear that the statutory route may be justiciable. Is it the Government’s view that the fact that the legislation might be justiciable is a satisfactory reason for not making these important constitutional changes in the proper way?

Secondly, in questions following the Statement that the noble Baroness repeated to the House on 2 July, she said:

“It is important to understand that English MPs cannot overrule the whole House, and the whole House cannot overrule English MPs”.—[Official Report, 2/7/15; col. 2218.]

In reply to a question I asked, she said:

“It is not about having a veto. It is about trying to find the right way forward”.—[Official Report, 2/7/15; col. 2220.]

Yet the Government’s Statement said:

“Our plans provide for an English veto at different stages of the process”.

Will the noble Baroness now acknowledge that the Government’s proposals do indeed provide for a veto for the first time by a restricted group of Members of Parliament?

Thirdly, Mr Hague’s Green Paper listed three options for approaching this issue. The second was the proposal of the 2008 democracy task force, chaired by the right honourable Kenneth Clarke, which recommended that stages at which English, or English and Welsh, Bills could be amended should be confined to English, or English and Welsh, MPs, but that the whole House would vote on Third Reading. The Mackay commission included a similar option. Yet the Government have rejected that. Why have these simpler proposals, which do not involve a veto, been rejected by the Government? So far they have given no explanation.

Finally, it must have become absolutely clear from the attention that these proposals have received, and the debates on them that have taken place, that this is an important constitutional issue. It is not just a simple matter of technical changes to Standing Orders in the House of Commons. Is it not the duty of the Leader to ensure that your Lordships’ House can make a proper contribution on these constitutional matters?

Yesterday, the opposition spokesman in another place suggested a Joint Committee of both Houses. That would be a good way in which this House could make its contribution on these issues. I do not expect that the Leader will be able to give the Government’s response to that proposal today—although it would be welcome if she could do so. If she cannot, I give notice that I propose to table a Motion for debate before the Recess that would give your Lordships’ House an opportunity to vote on whether this House would wish to take part in such a Joint Committee.

Palace of Westminster Committee

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, on a point of clarity with regard to the first issue of the Joint Committee of the Lords and Commons, my understanding, from all the conversations I have had with the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, is that there will be completely equal representation between both Houses. I think that she has heard the mood of the House—that is what this House expects. I think she said that that was likely, but she did not give the guarantee that the House is seeking. Can I therefore press her, because that is my understanding of the present situation anyway, to give a guarantee that there will be equal representation between both Houses?

On the noble Baroness’s second point, in which she responded to my noble friend Lord Grocott, as much as we welcome the QSD in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, next week on 16 July, that does not replace the need for a proper debate on the proposals for English votes for English laws, which impact on the work of your Lordships’ House. It is all very well for the noble Baroness to say, “We are not affected by it”, but we are. It affects how legislation is conducted in Parliament, and we are part of that process. I know that when she responded to the debate on the Statement the Government made last week she rejected the notion, but she will have heard that noble Lords across the House are very concerned at the lack of debate in this House on that issue, and I urge her to reconsider. It is the view of the Official Opposition and, I think, of other noble Lords around this House, that there should be a full debate, perhaps on a Motion that can be divided on as well. To deny this House the opportunity to debate this in government time is totally unacceptable.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

Further to the point made by the Leader of the Opposition, I understand that in another place the Government have decided not to go ahead with the changes to Standing Orders next week but to have a two-day debate on them. Does that not strengthen the case for there also being a full debate in this House, in addition to the Question for Short Debate?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

Coming back to the topic of this Motion, I make it clear to the noble Baroness and to the House that it has been my view that the membership of the restoration and renewal Joint Committee should be equal in numbers and in approach in terms of this House and the other place. I am just waiting for the House of Commons to confirm its approach before we finalise our own because I am trying to achieve exactly that aim—making sure that there is a proper balance in the way that the Joint Committee is formed. I hope that that gives the noble Baroness and the House the assurance that they are looking for. Therefore, we will be equally represented in number, and I might even suggest to your Lordships that the team of members from this House will be more powerful and more authoritative, because, quite frankly, that is what I think we are.

I note what the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said about the decision in the House of Commons regarding English votes for English laws, but I say to him, as I say to the noble Baroness and to the House as a whole, that the House of Commons is debating changes to its Standing Orders.

English Votes on English Laws

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am very grateful to my noble friend. He described exactly the issue that we are trying to address here. At the moment, a lot of people who live in England feel it is unfair that Scottish Members of Parliament are able to contribute to decisions on matters that affect only people in England. That is what we are trying to address with our pragmatic and proportionate approach to giving MPs in England a stronger voice.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I, like the noble Lord, Lord Baker, welcome the fact that the Government are grasping the nettle of the West Lothian question. If the result of the election had been a Labour Government with a Conservative majority in England, this question would have become very urgent. As things are, with a Conservative overall majority in the House of Commons and a Conservative majority in England, there is not the same urgency about it, and there should at least be time to have a thorough debate about the Government’s proposals.

The noble Baroness said that the result of these proposals is that the majority in the House of Commons will not have a decisive say on only English and Welsh questions over English and Welsh Members, and vice versa, but surely that is not correct. As things stand in these proposals, the English and Welsh Members of the House of Commons will have a veto in the House as a whole on Bills that affect only England and Wales. The Conservative Democracy Task Force, which I advised in 2008, proposed an alternative way of dealing with this, which was that on England and Wales-only Bills, English and Welsh MPs should be able to vote on amendments but the House as a whole should have a vote on the Third Reading, thus preserving the supremacy of the House of Commons overall. Would that not be an equally effective but also simpler and less divisive way of dealing with this question than the proposal for an English and Welsh veto, which seems to be both provocative and possibly unconstitutional?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I shall try to explain why I do not quite accept what the noble Lord has said. First, once an England-only Bill or a Bill with provisions for England and Wales gets through its Report stage, there will be a grand committee where the relevant MPs from England or England and Wales consider what was agreed on Report. If the English and Welsh MPs do not accept what the House wishes to do and the matters concerned affect only their constituencies, they will have the option of disagreeing. However, there will be a process whereby the whole House will then reconsider the legislation. The point is that these two groups of MPs will be seeking to reach agreement. If agreement cannot be reached between the relevant MPs and the House as a whole, the matter will fall. However, this is about agreement or consent. It is not about having a veto; it is about trying to find the right way forward.

I say to those who are concerned about whether Members from Scotland will have a proper role in this process that this is designed to ensure that they continue to be included, as they should be, in matters that are considered in the UK Parliament. Therefore, I do not accept the description that the noble Lord has given.

House of Lords

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I greatly welcome the opportunity to debate this important matter this afternoon. I found myself in a large measure of agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Elder, who has just spoken. In fact, it is a pity that this debate does not give the House an opportunity to express its opinion. If there were such an opportunity, I think that a majority of the House would agree with the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, in an earlier debate, that this House is too big, is growing bigger, and needs to be reduced. That is an urgent matter now, for a reason not referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde; it is inevitable that, after the next general election, there will be, and should be, a substantial number of further appointments to the House.

The House does risk coming into disrepute. Fun is poked at us by people pointing out that the House is the largest parliamentary body in the world, apart from China’s National People’s Congress. Of course, it does not act like that, and the whole membership does not attend, but it is an example of how fun can be poked at the House.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, despite what people might suspect from my background, but it is tempting to suspect that there is a conspiracy on the part of those thwarted in the reform of the House in the 2012 Bill to make so many appointments that the size of the House makes it unworkable and absurd, so reform then becomes inevitable. The flaw in that was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Elder—that there is no agreement among the parties about the nature of the necessary reform. If the 2012 Bill did one thing when it came before Parliament, it was to cause the penny to drop with Members of another place that an elected second Chamber would become, in one form or another, a direct challenge to the supremacy of the House of Commons, and that no way could be found of entrenching that supremacy.

I was a member of the royal commission under the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, which was the last body to take an unconstrained look at the nature of the reform of this House. That was 15 years ago. I do not include the Joint Committee under the noble Lord, Lord Richard, which did an excellent job, only because it was constrained by the 2012 Bill that the Government had introduced. That royal commission started, as all approaches to the question should—and as the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde, Lord Elder and Lord Williams, did—by asking what the purpose is of the House of Lords. Why should we have such a House at all? I think that on this matter, too, there would be a large measure of agreement in the House. It is to complement the other House, not to challenge or replace it, by bringing a measure of experience and expertise from people drawn from a wide range of positions in our national life to comment on and advise on legislation introduced by the Executive into Parliament. I do not think that there would be much challenge to the proposition that your Lordships’ House performs a necessary and useful role in doing that.

I will not go into the question of whether that is best achieved by an elected or appointed House, although the royal commission concluded that the range of expertise which is useful for that purpose could not necessarily be expected in an elected Chamber. That is why the royal commission proposed a mainly appointed House but with some elected Members. It also recommended that there should be a limit on the tenure of a position in this House of either 15 years or three electoral cycles. Again, I do not want to debate today whether that is the right thing to do or whether a scheme of the sort proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Williams, would be a better approach. As I looked round the House as he made his speech, I noted some scepticism about whether a scheme could be introduced in the very short time before the general election. However, given that we face the prospect of a number of further appointments, this is an urgent issue and I urge the Government to take it seriously.

For the reasons that I have given, some do not want to see any further reform of this House as they believe that that would cause the reform which did not happen previously to become inevitable. However, that is to argue the merits of a train crash. As the noble Lord, Lord Elder, said, the danger of adopting that approach is that an unwise reform is undertaken. That is what I fear. Therefore, I urge the Government to take this issue seriously.

I support the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to ask the clerks of the House to produce options that could be considered by the Procedure Committee. I do not think that there is much prospect of reaching agreement on a very complicated scheme. However, despite the political difficulties, I think that there is merit in a scheme offering a financial inducement limited by the amount of money noble Lords received in attendance allowance in the previous Session. Calculations show that that would be a good deal for the taxpayer which would quickly pay off. That cannot be done through legislation but it does need to be done. I say to those who wish to go on as we are that to allow the House to grow like Topsy until it becomes ineffective and almost a scandal is the height of constitutional irresponsibility.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My noble friend Lord Sewel has said it is a pity that that happened. I have just been appointed a trustee of Age Scotland, the new body that replaced Age Concern Scotland and Help the Aged in Scotland. The director, Brian Sloan, said to me when I was appointed, “Of course, George, you’ve got more of a direct interest in our work now”. He was absolutely right. This is the kind of thing that we should be doing. We are not in favour of arbitrary retirement ages; I should not advocate that. However, I do not think this is arbitrary. We have looked at it carefully and made a serious recommendation.

We then come to the longer term, which is the more important debate—no disrespect to what my noble friend Lord Williams and others have raised about the current matter. In the longer term, we need to start with the purpose of this House: not how many we are, but what we are here for. First of all, do we need a second Chamber? An argument has to be made against unicameralism in favour of a second Chamber. I used to be a unicameralist, but if you go to Scotland and see what has happened with the Scottish Parliament, where there are no checks and balances on a Parliament controlled by one party, with a First Minister, the Presiding Officer, and the majority of the Select Committees of the same party, you begin to see the advantages of a second Chamber.

If noble Lords agree with that, how should the second Chamber differ from and relate to the House of Commons? I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who said that it should be complementary to it. I think the noble Lord, Lord Walton, raised the question of the council of experts that we have here. This is a really important dilemma about what we are here for. If we want to be a council of experts that is one thing, but it does not have the legitimacy of a body that has some form of election, whether direct or indirect. That is difficult. It is difficult to argue that a nominated body, however expert and brilliant it is, should be part of the legislature. That conflict needs reconciling.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

I suggest to the noble Lord that it is the primacy of the House of Commons that is the answer to that. The primacy of the House of Commons is because they are elected. This body can contribute its expertise without being elected.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is an argument. I am posing a problem rather than coming down on one side or the other. It is difficult. If one looks around the world, there is nowhere else where the second Chamber does not have some form of legitimacy. We need to look at that where we are participating in the legislative process.

I do not know whether this is going to cause controversy in relation to what the noble Lord, Lord Cope, said. He spoke about the culture of this place and some of us—I am sure he was not referring to me, but maybe to some others—not accepting it. With respect to the noble Lord, some people outside this place do not accept all aspects of its culture, particularly the privilege that is represented by the very nature of this building, this legislature and this part of the legislature. People have to recognise that. We do not all think that the comfort and the comradeship represented here is automatically the right thing. There are some good aspects, but there are also some legitimate differences between the parties. These ought to be represented and expressed in a legislature. There is nothing wrong with doing that in a forceful and eloquent way; that was done no better than by my noble friend Lord Forsyth. I agreed with everything he said in his speech today. That will not do him or me any good; we will be attacked by the cybernats—the nationalists who go online and attack us regularly—for being in cahoots again. I think it is good that on an issue such as this, which is not a party-political issue but one about the functioning of the second Chamber, we come to some kind of agreement.

I have gone on much longer than I intended. I apologise. In conclusion, the Labour Lords’ group recommended a UK constitutional commission, as my noble friend Lady Taylor said. That has been supported by the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which Graham Allen MP chairs, by the Electoral Reform Society, by the Constitution Society, by Unlock Democracy and many others. Along with my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed from the Liberal Democrats, I have been involved in setting up an all-party group to look at ways that this can be pushed forward.

The leader of my party, Mr Miliband, has already said that a Labour Government would legislate for a senate of the nations and regions. With no disrespect, I say to him and to the leaders of the other parties, why can we not set up that constitutional convention now? Why can there not be some agreement between the parties? Why can they not show that they can work together and say, “This is how we want to go forward”? We need that sensible, holistic approach, with respect, to protect us from further constitutional Cleggery: poorly thought out, short-term changes in that outrageous attack from Mr Clegg on the House of Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said. By the way, that did not stop him stuffing lots more Liberal Democrat Peers into this place. There is a slight dichotomy there. Ah, a Liberal Democrat voice.

House of Lords: Procedures and Practices

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for giving us the opportunity to debate our procedures, but I really cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that this is a matter we should look at only once every 10 years when we have a Leader’s Group. It is precisely because I so strongly believe in the value of the work of the House of Lords that I want it to be seen to be done as effectively as possible.

It would be wrong to deny that improvements have been made since the Leader’s Group chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, on which I had the honour to serve. We now make better use of Grand Committee, and have extra Select Committees on specific subjects, more time for QSDs and more pre-legislative scrutiny. All this is very welcome. However, the system does not work in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, suggested. I want to take just one case history to illustrate that, as I have only limited time.

The Goodlad group recommended that this House should give Back-Benchers the opportunity to propose subjects for debate, as happens in the House of Commons. That was considered by the Procedure Committee, which agreed that it should be put to the House in a neutral way because, as the noble Lord said, it is for the House to decide. The relevant Motion was tabled. There was no Whip on the government side but Members on the Government Front Bench made it absolutely clear to their Back-Benchers that they were opposed to the Motion going through. They did that by ensuring that the debate took place on a day when the government parties were heavily whipped. Noble Lords who were not in the Chamber received a message on their mobile phones, saying that their Lordships might like to know that the Government Front Bench did not wish to see the Motion go through. It was not a Whip but it was something pretty close to it. That was how the Motion was defeated in this House. I am afraid it is the case that improvements which are in the power of the House to make are often defeated by the Government Front Bench, often in cahoots with the Opposition Front Bench.

I know that an effective House of Lords is often regarded by the Executive as a thorough nuisance. Parliament is regarded by the Executive as a thorough nuisance. However, having spent my career in the Executive, I know very well that it would not be kept up to the mark unless Parliament did its job of holding it to account and making itself awkward to the Executive from time to time. Your Lordships’ House should always ask how we can do that job more effectively—not by obstructing the Government getting their measures through but ensuring that they work to high standards. One of the weaknesses of Governments in this country is that there is too much legislation of too low a standard.

Both the House of Commons and the House of Lords should be taking a stand on that. The House of Commons is often not in a position to do so but the House of Lords is, and it is for that reason that many of us have argued that there should be a committee to look at the standards of preparation of legislation and advise the House when legislation coming before it has not been properly prepared. Then we might be saved from legislation such as the absurd Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill—the SARAH Bill.

If there is one message that I would like to ask the Leader to take to her colleagues, it is that while they may regard the improvements in the effectiveness of Parliament, and in particular of your Lordships’ House, as a nuisance, they should take a longer-term view because we have a role in improving the Government’s performance; and those improvements are in their interests as well the country’s.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, concerning the noble Lord’s point about Back-Bench debates, I hope that he will recognise that today we have had three excellent debates, all led by Back-Benchers.