Leader of the House of Lords

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I shall not repeat the reasons that have been so eloquently put about why this decision was wrong; I want to make some practical suggestions about how it can be put right.

There are, in fact, three ways in which the Prime Minister could now put the situation right. I fear that it was simply not correct in his letter to say that it was impossible to make the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, a member of the Cabinet. There are still three ways in which it could be done, although perhaps some of them, with the passing of time, are less practicable than others. He could have chosen not to have made one of the other members of the Cabinet a member of the Cabinet. He chose not to do that. As suggested by the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Lang, it would be possible to amend the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act. If, 10 days ago, the Government could introduce as emergency legislation a Bill to amend the retention of data, they could have introduced an emergency Bill to do this. It may be difficult now that we are in the Recess, but perhaps the House of Commons could be recalled for that purpose.

There is another solution, which I hope that it is not invidious to draw attention to. The limitation on making the noble Baroness a member of the Cabinet is simply the number of Cabinet Ministers who can receive salaries as Cabinet Ministers. It would be possible—indeed, it has often happened in the past—for Ministers who are members of the Cabinet to choose not to take their salary. I do not think that it would be unreasonable to ask that one of the present members of the Cabinet for the next 10 months should forgo their salary, so that the Leader of our House can be a member of the Cabinet. I hope that it is not invidious to say that I think that there are members of the Cabinet who could afford to do that. Indeed, they might simply be anticipating the position that they will be in anyway in 10 months’ time.

The Prime Minister could have made one of those choices. The fact that he did not indicate indicates that he chose to humiliate this House and put the noble Baroness in a very difficult position in taking up her responsibilities. There is still time for the Prime Minister to do the right thing, and I hope that he will do so.

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, I shall be very brief. Like many noble Lords, I share the dismay expressed so eloquently by the noble Baroness that, for the first time in history, there is no Member of your Lordships’ House in the Cabinet. That of course demeans the position of your Lordships’ House and lowers the standing of the Leader in the eyes of everybody, as we have already heard.

I suspect that this wholly unprecedented situation was arrived at by accident. Thus, I imagine that it cannot be corrected without disrupting existing appointments or, perhaps, coalition dispositions. What a price we pay to keep this coalition in place.

Who is the Prime Minister’s principal adviser on this matter? Presumably, as the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, explained, it is the Cabinet Secretary. Was the Cabinet Secretary’s advice taken on this occasion? What was that advice? That we shall never know, but it has caused this terrible situation and, I hope, can be corrected. If the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, chooses to divide the House a little later, I shall join her in the Division Lobby.

Procedure of the House

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Lords Chamber

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

Would the noble Lord, Lord Butler, like to speak first? It might make more sense and, if he would like to do so, I should be delighted to give way.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I think that I should defer to the Leader of the House but if he would like me to speak first, I am very willing.

I support the Motion that the House should establish for the duration of the 2013-14 Session a Back-Bench debates committee but I should first make it clear that I have no particular status in doing so. I was just one of eight Members of the House—who will no doubt speak for themselves—who put this proposal to the Procedure Committee. I also speak as a member of the Leader’s Group on the procedures of the House, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, which originally made this recommendation. I say that because one Member suggested to me that I was taking a lead on this because I wished to be made chairman of the Back-Bench committee. I assure the House that I have no aspiration to do that at all and I hope that the fear that I might be chairman will not deter Members of the House from voting for it.

It is also important to remind your Lordships of what the terms of reference for the Back-Bench debates committee would be. The Chairman of Committees explained it to us but there has been some mis- understanding. The proposal is:

“That the Committee be appointed to schedule debates, to be moved by backbench and Crossbench members, or by Lords Spiritual—

During the time currently set aside for balloted debates;

On at least one day in Grand Committee for every six sitting weeks in the session;

That the Committee schedule a one-hour topical Question for Short Debate each week, from the start of the session until the end of January, to be taken on Thursday between the two time-limited debates”.

I emphasise these limited terms of reference because there has been some impression that existing arrangements for Back-Benchers to put down Questions for Short Debate would be transferred to a Back-Bench debates committee. As the terms of the proposal make clear, that is emphatically not the case.

Speaking as a Back-Bencher, I express my appreciation to the Leader of the House for his proposal to increase the time available for topical debates and Questions for Short Debate. I know that he wants to increase the opportunities for Members of the House to take part in debates, and that is very welcome. The only issue between us is that, as the Chairman of Committees has said, the Leader opposes the proposal by the Goodlad committee that subjects for Thursday two and a half hour debates in time allocated once a month to Back-Benchers and for a new topical short debate should be chosen by a committee of Back-Benchers instead of, as now, by ballot.

I remind the House of the current situation by which subjects are chosen for debate in the two and a half hour slots on Thursday. The choice of subjects for debate on government or opposition Motions on Thursdays is made by the Government or opposition parties, presumably after discussion and presumably for their own party-political reasons. As I know, the choice of subject for debate on Cross-Bench days is discussed in the meeting of the Cross-Benchers. In our group, we often take a vote on the subjects for which we should use that time. However, the choice of subjects on Back-Benchers’ days is made by the random process of a ballot—a lottery. There is no rational process for choosing subjects that may be of general or topical interest and may make best use of the expertise available in the House to debate matters of significant national interest. As a result, subjects that come out of the hat for the use of this precious Back-Bench time may be of only minority interest and may even attract insufficient speakers to make best use of the two and a half hours provided.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The Back-Bench committee in the other place is, of course, elected and not selected by the usual channels. Can the noble Lord tell us how he sees this committee being selected? My view of it is very dependent on it being elected if it is to be as effective as the noble Lord suggests.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

The method of appointment is not specified in the resolution but, for my part, I wholly agree with the noble Lord. It is right that such a committee should be elected and it should, of course, include representatives of all the groups in the House, as indeed happens in another place.

The establishment of the committee has been a success in another place. The Procedure Committee there says that it has been widely welcomed as a successful and effective innovation. The Government have said that they “agree with that conclusion” of the Procedure Committee. I suspect that agreement may be through gritted teeth, on the grounds that what has been done cannot be undone. I also suspect—and I hope that I am not doing the noble Lord the Leader an injustice—that the Government in this House suspect that the subjects chosen for debate by a Back-Bench debates committee might be more interesting and more topical than they would ideally wish. Of course, individual Back-Benchers should, and will, continue to be able to get unintermediated access to the Order Paper through Questions for Short Debate, and the Leader has said that opportunities for such debates will be increased.

Therefore, I urge the House to support the Motion for a trial run of a Back-Bench debates committee, as recommended by the cross-party Leader’s Group chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad. If we are eager, as we should be, to promote the relevance of debates in this House and the better use of the time and expertise that are available here, we should do so. My message to the House is: Back-Benchers of the House unite—you have nothing to lose but your chains.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Lord Chairman for his introduction and to the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, for getting our debate under way. It is extremely good to see a former Cabinet Secretary, who operated at the highest levels within Whitehall for many years, not always in the glare of transparency, openness and accountability, arguing for it so forcefully this afternoon. Like him, and in response to the point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, I am very glad that we have this opportunity for the whole House to decide how it wants to move ahead in organising Back-Bench debates. It is good that we have a full House today to discuss it, and it will be good to reach a clear decision later this afternoon as to how we want to proceed.

I am aware that the question the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, and other noble Lords have raised about whether to have a Back-Bench debates committee or not has been hanging around for some time. As a new Leader, I am keen that we should answer it then plan accordingly. I do not want to speak for very long because this is above all a Back-Bench occasion, but I would quite like to do three simple things, if I may. First, I will explain the proposals for the new time for debates that I have made. Secondly, I should like to clear up any misunderstandings that there might be about how our current arrangements work. Thirdly, I will set out what I think is the issue of principle on which we all need to decide today.

When I started thinking about this for my first Procedure Committee meeting, I was struck by the arguments that have been made in favour of having more topical debates and, indeed, for creating more opportunities for Back-Bench Members to initiate debates more generally. I thought those arguments were absolutely right and, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, I am extremely keen to provide opportunities for as many Peers as possible, especially newer Members or those who are not able to attend the House as frequently as others, so that as a Chamber we are able to make the best possible use of the full range of contributions that we have at our disposal.

Therefore, as fast as I could, I came forward with two proposals. One was to create a new, regular weekly slot for a topical short debate on the Floor of the House, which I have suggested could also provide a route for getting a prompt debate on a Select Committee report. This would increase the number of short debates on the Floor of the House by about half. The second was to make more use of the Moses Room for short debates, thereby doubling the number of opportunities for Members to have debates there. So there would be more time for topical debates, guaranteed time on the Floor of the House and capacity for twice as many short debates in Grand Committee.

These proposals for additional time for Back-Bench debates were welcomed by the Procedure Committee and, to be clear, they are not at issue today; they apply equally to whatever the House decides. I think this was the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. The decision before us therefore, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, is how we want this offer of additional time, plus the time that is already set aside for monthly balloted debates, to be used. Do we want it to be allocated in future by a Back-Bench debates committee or do we want it to be allocated broadly along current lines?

Let me say a few words about our current arrangements, as I am not sure that they are always well understood and I think there is a feeling that they are less transparent than perhaps they are. For short debates, Members are free to choose any subject that they want: they simply put their Question down on a waiting list, which is printed in House of Lords Business, and are taken in turn. For balloted debates, Members pick their topic and put the Motion into a ballot which is drawn by the clerks for a particular day. The key feature of these two processes is that neither the identity of the sponsoring Member nor the particular topic that they have chosen has any bearing on their prospects of securing a debate. All entries to the ballot have an equal chance of being drawn. All entries on the waiting list for short debates are offered time in the order in which they were tabled, subject only to a practical constraint that a Minister and shadow Minister must be available to participate and that Members waiting for their first short debate of the Session come before those waiting for their second.

To be crystal clear on this point, there is no selection by the government Chief Whip or the usual channels on merit, personality, party, group or personal profile, or on anything else. This principle—that the views of individual Peers matter and that they should all have an equal chance to pursue subjects they care about and get them debated in our House—is at the heart of how we think of ourselves as a House. It is particularly important for Members who are less well known or who are able to attend less often, who might find it harder to persuade a committee of the merits of the case. Our current approach means that we end up with debates on a wide range of subjects, from the treatment of homosexual men in developing countries to the future of English cathedrals. This allows for the independent-minded, for the quirky and for the whole range of outlooks and experience on which this House is able to draw and which, I believe, is its particular strength.

I agree with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, made—I am sure that other noble Lords will make it later on—in that I do not take the view that everything in our current arrangements is perfect and cannot be improved. I take the point, for instance, that ballots can sometimes produce debates that are undersubscribed. I do not think that our processes are clear enough to the very Members they are intended to serve. However, there are practical steps we could take to mitigate those potential difficulties and which we could discuss in the Procedure Committee. I hope I have made it clear that I am keen to do that if that is what the House would like.

Iraq: Chilcot Inquiry

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

We all know that certain formulations have a certain elasticity, and I take his point. The most recent pronouncement from the Chilcot inquiry itself is that it hopes to finish the report by the middle of this year. Then the process—the formal word is “Maxwellisation”—of giving individuals the chance to comment would follow. That is what the inquiry has said is its current expectation of the timetable to which it is working.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, does the Leader of the House agree that the terms of reference of the Chilcot inquiry are so wide as to be almost infinite, and that the timing of the report’s publication depends not just on the handling of the representations but on the Government’s own clearance of what is to be included in the report? Will he undertake that that process will be done as quickly as the Government can manage?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I take both those points. On the Government’s co-operation with the declassification of documents as the process goes on, the Chilcot inquiry has said on the record that that process is working well. I know that the Government will co-operate as closely as they can to expedite that process of declassification as rapidly as possible.

Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I have listened to all the wonderful tributes paid this afternoon and this evening, and I have asked myself whether there is anything which I can add. There are just one or two aspects which I should like to add. I was not going to speak about the Brighton bomb because her resolution and courage on that occasion has been widely dealt with. However, since the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who I am glad to see in his place, referred to it and to the tragicomic aspect of it, I should supplement the picture that he gave of his crawling to the door, opening it and meeting Margaret Thatcher’s face on the other side. As he may remember, she was gorgeously attired in the blue evening dress that she had been wearing for the blue ball, which added to the absurdity of that tragic situation.

I am very pleased that reference has been made to the kindness shown to Lady Thatcher by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I believe that another person should be added. He is a colleague of mine on the Cross Benches and was a colleague at No 10; namely, my noble friend Lord Powell of Bayswater. He and his wife have been splendid to Lady Thatcher in her latter days. Indeed, I think that on Sunday evening, he was the last person, outside her family, to visit her. About a month ago, my noble friend said that he had been with her on a Sunday afternoon. I asked him what he talked to her about because, of course, in her latter months, she found conversation difficult. He said, “We didn’t talk. We turned on the television and we watched ‘Songs of Praise’ and we sung the hymns together”. I think that that is a lovely picture of those two doing that.

The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, has spoken splendidly about the support which Margaret Thatcher gave him as Cabinet Secretary, and her support for the Civil Service and the esteem in which she held it. I do not want to add to that, except to endorse everything that he said as being the case during my experience in the post which he occupied before me.

I should like to take up what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said about her role as a lawyer. I am very glad he referred to that. I had a word with him outside the Chamber. Another aspect that needs to be emphasised was the way in which she upheld the rule of law, which was a very important principle in her life. I was travelling in a car with the Prime Minister when we saw on a newspaper hoarding that the High Court had found against the Government in the judicial review about the Government’s banning of unions at GCHQ. She was going to the House of Commons that afternoon and it was clear that, quite understandably, the Labour Party would make a lot of this and would be jubilant about it because it had supported the trade unions in opposing the Government’s action. She said, “Well, we must appeal but if the court rules against us, we must of course accept its judgment. We cannot ask the miners to accept the rule of law if we, the Government, are not prepared to accept it ourselves”. That is just one illustration of the principle that she held.

When judicial review was gaining force and I was head of the Civil Service, I suggested to Margaret Thatcher that we might arrange a seminar between senior civil servants and some of the judges so that the judges would know more about the way in which decisions were taken in government. “Absolutely not”, she said. “I am not going to have any appearance of the Executive appearing to interfere with the independence of the judges. We must keep them strictly separate”. That is an aspect of her principles and her Administration that I do not think has been much mentioned.

The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, spoke of his experience working with her as Cabinet Secretary. Although the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, was here earlier, nobody has spoken about the experience of working with her as a Private Secretary. Like the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, I was her Principal Private Secretary, in my case between 1982 and 1985. Inside No.10, having the privilege of seeing her in that intimate setting, we of course saw a very different person from the one that the public saw outside. The public saw the bravura performances and the confidence. She has been charged with being overconfident, even arrogant, but you saw a very different picture, before the great public appearances, inside No. 10—somebody whose motivation and force was not built on overconfidence but was in fact built on lack of self-confidence. I say that because I heard her say it herself publicly, after she left office. She said it was something that the media never really realised about her. I believe that that was the driving force behind her perfectionism in her appearance, in her dress, in her speeches and in her grip on her briefing. All those things had to be perfect before she would appear in public. There was a reference earlier to the conference speech after the Brighton bomb and her sitting in the green room, saying, “I am not sure I can go through with this”. Gordon Reece said, “Of course you can go through with it”. I am absolutely certain that she was always going to go through with it. Many times, I saw her say beforehand that she was not sure she could do something and then go out and give a bravura performance.

When I was Principal Private Secretary, in briefing her for Prime Minister’s Questions, I did not brief her on the facts—other people did that—but regarded my job as being to calm her down, usually by reassuring her that her case was good in answer to a Question and, just occasionally, if she was sleepy after lunch, to work her up a bit and say, “Prime Minister, I think you have to worry about this Question, this is quite difficult”. It was about getting the horse to the starting gate with exactly the right amount of perspiration on the flanks, and then she would perform superbly in the House of Commons.

I was very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, said earlier that criticisms that she never listened were quite misplaced. She did listen, but talked at the same time—she could listen while she talked. It is true that she regarded attack as the best form of defence but she was also always willing to learn. Finally, I just offer an anecdote to the House which I think illustrates these three characteristics. It relates to a time after she had ceased to be Prime Minister and after I had ceased to be Cabinet Secretary. She very kindly came to my college at Oxford to talk. In the course of her remarks to the students, she said that one of the things that she worried about in modern life, and the life facing their generation, was the number of children born illegitimate. When it came round to questions, one of the students said to her, “Lady Thatcher, don’t you think it is a little unfair to use the word ‘illegitimate’ of a child throughout its life when it has had no influence over the circumstances of its own birth?”. Her eyes flashed and she said, “Well, what would you call them? I can think of another word but I think it would be even more unkind”. I thought, “Goodness, what’s going to happen?”, but the moment passed. She came to dinner and chapel, and in the lighter part of the evening we were having a drink in the Master’s Lodgings before she and Denis went back to London. We were talking about other things completely when she suddenly said, “You know, Robin, that young man who asked me this afternoon about the word ‘illegitimate’ had a point didn’t he?”. That was quite characteristic. I will wager that she never used the word illegitimate again. She was always prepared to learn, even from a student. She hit back immediately but then she thought about it and took the point.

Those are just three reminiscences I have out of a treasure house of memories. I never had any doubt while I was working with her as Private Secretary and Cabinet Secretary that I was a witness to greatness as well as to great events. Those are memories that I will treasure all my life.

House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I welcome the Motion’s implication that those unexpectedly reprieved have a special duty to make good use of the extra lifespan allocated to them. I warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, on the superb way in which he introduced this debate.

In the short time available to me, I want to concentrate on the recommendations of the Leader’s Group on ways designed to improved the quality of legislation presented to Parliament. I am a member of the Better Government Initiative, which, before the last election produced a report entitled, Good Government. On 12 November, the BGI is to produce a report on how the Government have performed in relation to the recommendations in that earlier report. As might be expected, it is a mixed picture; but even the best friends of the Government would have to admit that many of their policies and too much of their legislation have been introduced in haste and are being repented of at leisure, and not only by the Government themselves.

As others have said, the instrument that the Leader’s Group recommended to put pressure on the Executive to improve the legislation presented to Parliament was a legislative standards committee. The role that it would perform would be to test each Bill introduced by the Government by whether they had explained the purpose of, and necessity for, the Bill presented, by whether the Government had consulted those who would be affected by the Bill and who would have to implement it, and by whether the Government had taken account of their advice. At the end of the previous debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, on this very issue, made a strong point about the police Bill, now an Act, recently passed by Parliament. Legislation would be judged by whether there had been pre-legislative scrutiny—and if not, why not?

As the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, said, the Liaison Committee, which is composed of Select Committee chairmen in the House of Commons, has thought sufficiently well of this proposal to ask the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee to investigate and report on it. The Better Government Initiative has given evidence to that committee, as has the Hansard Society and other supporters of the proposal. We are hopeful that the committee will report favourably on it.

The Leader of the House is, understandably, waiting to see what the Commons makes of this proposal before putting it to your Lordships. My question to the Leader today is: if the House of Commons Committee supports the proposal of the Leader’s Group will he look favourably on its introduction in your Lordships’ House? I suggest that it would be quixotic not to do so. We devote as many as three Select Committees to scrutinising in one way or another the preparation of statutory instruments. It is odd that we do not put similar effort into pressing the Government to prepare legislation properly. From the contributions to this debate today, I am confident that this recommendation of the Leader’s Group would have the support of this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, I am bound to say that I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, and to other Members on the Labour Back Benches, for giving us this platform for today’s debate, and to all noble Lords who have taken the time to contribute. I am rather a fan of these debates with four-minute speeches. They work extremely effectively; we get a lot of Peers in and it concentrates the mind. I have the luxury of having a little bit more time, which I shall use.

Perhaps the most consistent theme running through successive debates in this House on the Government’s proposals for reform has been our reputation as a revising Chamber, a reputation that Members on all sides take great pride in—and it is right that we should. Just over half of the Back-Benchers who have spoken today have had experience in the House of Commons as MPs. I make no particular point about that except to say that we should always remember that this House is very different from the House of Commons. Because the Executive have such an overwhelming and overpowering majority in the House of Commons, and can therefore do virtually what they like, they need the power of the Speaker to help to control that, and to give the voice of the Back Benches. The Executive in this House have no majority. We have a powerful Opposition, and the purpose of the usual channels—although everybody has poked fun at them—is to represent the interests of the whole House. In the end, the House can overturn decisions of the usual channels, although I hope that it will not do so.

I discovered to my horror, while sitting here musing away, that I have been a member of the Procedure Committee for 20 years. You get less for murder. It is an extraordinary thing. But like the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, I am greatly encouraged by the tone of the debate. I did not agree with everything that every Peer said, but I found something to agree with in bits of what every Peer said. We do our job very effectively in this House, through our committees, including the committees that sit off the Floor of the House, through the reports that we make, and by the standing and reputation of individual Members of this House.

Why were we not reformed by the elected House? In the end, I think that there are two reasons. First, there was a perception outside this House that we do the job that we do extremely well. Therefore, there was not that motivation for a great change. Secondly, I believe very strongly that the more the House of Commons looked at proposals for electing this House, the more it feared that we might end up doing our job rather better than it did. That was one reason why I was rather keen on it; I was ambitious for this House. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, warned us that political parties might find a populist measure, by which he meant further plans for reform of the House. All I can say to him is that I would not tempt them too much on that; they really do not need it.

What does this extraordinary Chamber do? It assists without threatening the primacy of the other place. It discharges its core duties in a manner that seeks to complement, not compete with, the House of Commons. Why does it not compete? Because we do not have the authority of the people as the other place does, and without the authority that direct election of Members might confer it remains the case that the influence that we exert on another place and on the Government of the day rests mainly on the force of the arguments that we deploy and on recognition outside these walls of the experience and expertise that Members of this House possess, individually and collectively. That is what I think the noble Lord, Lord Judd, was getting at when he talked about his matrix. I very much agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said about strengthening Parliament. With both Houses together, we should seek to do that, and to some extent this Government have done that. That reputation is the currency on which we trade. It is therefore only right that we consider, as we have done this afternoon, how best to protect and enhance our reputation and to be able to do our jobs even better.

My noble friends Lord Higgins, Lord Kirkwood and Lord Cormack, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made important passing references to the way in which the House of Commons does business. I will not spend any time discussing the House of Commons. It works out the way it does its business best. It has programming and we do not. On the whole, that is an advantage for this House. The House of Commons has selection of amendments and we do not. Here, every Back-Bencher has the right to put down an amendment to any Bill and it must be heard and responded to by a government Minister. That is extraordinarily empowering for Members of this House.

As the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, set out in his Motion, part of the answer to all this must lie in harnessing the skills and experience of our Members and ensuring that they are deployed to best effect. Like the report of the Leader’s Group before it, the Motion identifies three core functions of the House: scrutinising legislation, holding the Government to account and providing a forum for public debate. There is also being topical, as my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft suggested. I slightly regret that the Motion does not make explicit mention of the revision of legislation, which is in my view the chief function of this House and the cornerstone of our reputation. If you ask anybody what the second Chamber does, almost all will say that it revises legislation. That is an important thing.

One of the most frequently rehearsed complaints in this House is that it is asked to consider too much legislation and that the level of preparation and consultation that precedes the introduction of specific Bills is inadequate. I suspect that that complaint has been made for several hundred years. Certainly, I can remember it being made in the 1980s, 1990s and the last decade. It was made again today. That does not mean that we should not take it seriously or find ways of making life easier.

Let me deal with some important issues to do with the Leader’s Group. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and my noble friends Lady Tyler of Enfield and Lord Tyler said that all the recommendations in the original report deserved to be debated by the House. They certainly do. That is why a debate on the report and the recommendations contained therein was arranged on 27 June 2011. That was in addition to the debate on working practices held at the very start of this Parliament, in July 2010, prior to the establishment of the Leader’s Group, and the debates of 9 November last year and 26 March this year that informed the decisions taken by the House in respect of specific recommendations. Again, there is this debate today.

The other complaint was that only a few of the Leader’s Group’s recommendations have been brought to the House for decision. I fundamentally disagree with that point. The implication is that only a few of the Leader’s Group’s recommendations have been taken forward. That is a myth. The 55 recommendations amount to 43 specific proposals, because some just affirm the status quo and others spread one idea over many paragraphs. Of those 43, 25 have been put to a domestic committee and another four have been partially put forward or have confirmed the status quo and been implemented. By setting up the Leader’s Group and inviting the domestic committees of the House to consider taking forward the majority of these recommendations, I have probably done more as Leader to bring about change to the working practices of this House than any of my recent predecessors.

There are some proposals that have not been put forward, partly because there seemed no inclination for them to be agreed and partly because there were disagreements within the Leader’s Group and within the Procedure Committee. No fewer than six members of the Procedure Committee went on to vote against the report on Grand Committees. Of those Members who voted against the report—the House will remember the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Cormack on the Procedure Committee report—some are exactly the same noble Lords who now say that we should debate and agree all the proposals, such as that on the Grand Committees, which was extremely controversial when we dealt with it on the Floor of the House a few months ago.

I am pleased to say that in one respect at least we may be turning the tide of decades because the Leader’s Group observed that, leaving aside a brief period around 2002, the number of Bills or clauses of Bills published in draft had remained low and the number scrutinised by Select Committees, whether Joint Committees or Commons-only Select Committees, had been lower still. All that has changed over the past two and a half years. In the previous Session, the Government published 11 Bills or clauses of Bills in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny and in this Session we are on course to publish at least nine in only one year. That is good news. At the Government’s instigation, moreover, we have seen a resurgence in the number of Joint Committees conducting pre-legislative scrutiny. There were four in the previous Session and we expect five to be set up in this one. Those trends are no accident: we have deliberately set aside the resources to support an additional pre-legislative scrutiny committee this week.

We have also made progress, as was noted by my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lord Cormack and by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in relation to post-legislative scrutiny in response to concerns that, once legislation is passed, insufficient attention is devoted to its implementation and effects. For the first time, we have appointed a dedicated Select Committee to conduct post-legislative scrutiny of the legislation relating to adoption in England and Wales. The committee is due to report before the end of the Session and the intention is that it should be the first of a series of post-legislative scrutiny committees, each looking at a different area of the law with a membership tailored to the Acts under scrutiny, so as to make flexible and targeted use of Members’ expertise.

Although we have made considerable progress on those fronts, enhancing the quality and reach of our scrutiny at the beginning and end of the legislative process, I know that there are still some in the House who are interested in a legislative standards committee. Many noble friends mentioned this: the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, my noble friend Lady Tyler and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, who I am glad to hear has been receiving so many comments by e-mail—he is no doubt enhancing his reputation by replying to each of them in detail. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons is currently considering the proposal for a legislative standards committee as part of a broader inquiry into ensuring standards in the quality of legislation. Two Members of this House—the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart—have given oral evidence to that inquiry and my right honourable friend the Leader of the House of Commons is due to follow suit. Without wishing to pre-empt either his evidence or the Government’s response to any recommendations resulting from the inquiry, I make the following observations.

There is in my view a tension between this House’s role as a revising Chamber and the idea that one of its committees, composed of a small group of Members, should recommend that a government Bill progresses no further. The analogy with secondary legislation and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee is not apt. Secondary legislation cannot be amended, whereas the very purpose of a Bill’s passage through Parliament is to provide an opportunity for improvement and revision. In that sense, the House is itself a legislative standards committee; that is our primary and principal function. Denying a government Bill that has already passed through the House of Commons a Second Reading on the recommendation of a legislative standards committee would be an extraordinary step. Were the committee’s remit to be restricted to Bills starting in the Lords, it could have the unintended consequence of reducing the number of Bills that start in this House. Even if there were to be agreement on a Joint Committee, as recommended by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, I would remain uneasy at the prospect that a Government in command of a majority in the House of Commons would henceforth need to present a business case for their legislation before Parliament would consider it.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

It would be extraordinary if, on the basis of a recommendation from a legislative standards committee, the House were to decide not to allow a Bill to proceed. That would be the nuclear weapon, and I should be very surprised if it ever happened. Of course, the case of the Bill to abolish the post of Lord Chancellor was a very rare occasion when the Government decided to refer the Bill to a Select Committee. I would expect the committee recommending that a Bill should not proceed to be an equally rare occasion. The point is that if there were criticism of the standards to which a Bill had been prepared, I believe, and I think that other contributions have supported this, that that would have a very beneficial effect inside the Government on the standards to which legislation was prepared, without ever reaching a point where Parliament decided to refuse to allow a Bill to proceed.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I join the noble Lord in always wanting to find ways to improve the quality of legislation. Sometimes, though, we need to be able to decide what has gone wrong, not just in the past decade but probably in processes over the past 40 to 50 years, and find out why legislation has changed so much and why it has got so difficult and complicated. We have seen this week, in having to pass an emergency piece of legislation correcting something that was not done properly 10 years ago, some of what goes wrong. Whether a legislative standards committee would make very much difference, I am not sure. Like the noble Lord and probably the rest of those who have spoken today, I look forward to the report from the House of Commons before we can take this further.

One question that has been raised by noble Lords and was posed by the Leader’s Group is whether we might make better use of our time in the Chamber. In order to free up time on the Floor of the House, the group proposed the introduction of a rule that most government Bills should be committed to Grand Committee and suggested that we might extend the sitting hours of the Grand Committee by introducing morning sittings. A variant of those proposals was put to the House by the Procedure Committee last March, only to be rejected emphatically. That is the point that I was making about members of the Procedure Committee, as well as members of the Leader’s Group, voting against that recommendation. In due course, I am sure that we will have to look at that again.

The next key question that many speakers raised was the attraction of a Back-Bench business committee—or a debates committee, a description mentioned by, I think the noble Lord, Lord Luce—in the expectation that a sifting mechanism for Back-Bench business might increase the topicality and profile of our debates and might serve the House better than the ballot and waiting-list mechanisms through which we currently select topical questions. My noble friend Lord Faulks pointed out some of the difficulties with this idea. It is not that the Back Benches would be deciding; it would be that some Back-Benchers would be deciding. We would have to go with care to decide whether or not this was actually an improvement. Of course we already have a sifting mechanism for most Thursday debates, which are selected by the political parties and the Cross-Bench group. Our debate this afternoon was selected in that way by the Labour group. We therefore already have some degree of intelligent selection, if one can call it that. It is interesting that at its next meeting the Procedure Committee is going to consider whether we should stop having a queueing system for Starred Questions and replace it with a ballot, so ballots clearly have their uses somewhere.

As for Questions for Short Debate and some of the Thursday debates, I see the ballot as a useful complement to the debates selected by the parties and groups. They provide Back-Bench Members with an alternative outlet for securing debates on subjects that, for whatever reason, did not appeal to their party or group. We have only to consider that a few weeks ago my noble friend Lord Maclennan led a balloted debate on the potential break-up of the United Kingdom and my noble friend Lord Lexden secured time for a QSD on the treatment of homosexual men and women in the developing world. They served to showcase the House at its best.

My main concern is that a Back-Bench business committee would in practice place a new obstacle in the way of Back-Bench Members wishing to secure time for a debate. Rather than Members walking into the Minute Room to table their Motion and then waiting their turn or taking their chance in the ballot, they would, if we were to follow the Commons model, find themselves filling in application forms and arranging to appear in person before a committee to plead their case. If they failed to persuade the committee, that would be that. We would have removed the last remaining vehicles for Back-Bench Members to get their debates on to the Order Paper directly and, in all likelihood, all we would gain in return is to become a mirror image of the Commons, debating all the same subjects. I urge noble Lords who are keen on this to come forward with a proposal that the Procedure Committee can examine.

As others have mentioned, one area in which we have taken major steps to make better use of the skills and experience of our Members is in the appointment of Select Committees. We have now established the new quick-fire, in-depth examination, annual, extra, cross-departmental committees. I think that they are an excellent addition. The government Chief Whip has recently told Conservative Peers that they should consider choices for next year’s Select Committees, and I urge the Opposition, my noble friends the Liberal Democrats and indeed the Cross-Benchers to do the same. I think that these will be really good committees. Over a five-year Parliament, we should be able to deal with 10 committees. That will strengthen our reputation for scrutiny.

I hope that my remarks this afternoon have served to illustrate that we have made considerable progress since the start of this Parliament. We have taken forward a majority of the recommendations from the Leader’s Group and, although some of them have been turned down by the House, I believe that I have done more to change the working practices of the House than any of my recent predecessors. I therefore see the withdrawal of the House of Lords Reform Bill not as a turning point in that process but rather as a milestone.

Talking of House of Lords reform, I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds and many others talked about the size of the House and how it should be reduced. I know that bishops retire at 70, but I think that most noble Lords in this House would regard that as a little young. There are possibly ways that we can find to encourage Peers to retire, but Peers ought to be careful what they wish for. They may discover that culling Peers is more popular than culling badgers. The Steel Bill remains in the House of Commons. Let us see where it goes. As the noble Lord knows, I have no in-principle objection to the Steel Bill, and I think it does some perfectly valid things, but the House of Commons has recently voted for an elected House, although it could not quite follow through.

This has been a useful and interesting debate. I have gone beyond my time, for which I apologise. I will try to pick up some of the other issues that have been taken up. I shall finish with this point: one of the most interesting and senior committees of this House is the Procedure Committee. It has a remit to look at and examine proposals that are laid before it. Any Back-Bench Member can put forward proposals to the Procedure Committee and I suspect that in the next few months we will see a lot more representations being made.

HSBC: Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I congratulate the Leader of the Opposition. I know that she has been trying to find a PNQ to put to the House and she has managed to do so. I am very glad to be able to respond on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government.

There is no urgency in this matter. The investigation started more than two years ago. The report in question was published two weeks ago. There was no evidence of personal wrongdoing of my noble friend; indeed, there was no personal criticism whatever of my noble friend. The investigation is ongoing. As for ministerial accountability, my noble friend Lord Green is accountable to this House—to Parliament—for the work he does as a Minister. However, many Ministers have had previous careers. No Minister needs to be accountable to Parliament for their previous career, only for what they are doing as a Minister.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a non-executive director of HSBC during the time when the noble Lord, Lord Green, was chief executive officer and chairman. Is the Leader aware that when I was advising the Prime Minister on calls for ministerial resignations, I drew a distinction—which I think is widely accepted—between accountability and responsibility? While it may be the case that the chairman and chief executive officer of a major international company is accountable for everything that happens in that company, there is no possible way in which they can be responsible for everything that happens in a worldwide group of the size of HSBC.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, with all his experience and knowledge—not just as head of the Civil Service and Cabinet Secretary but having had a more commercial career since he left—the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, has brought a lot of wisdom and good sense to this debate, on which we should all reflect.

House of Lords: Reform

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, it is neither. There is an expectation that there would be a risk of greater conflict between the two Houses because elected Members of this Chamber would, I believe, use their powers more assertively and, perhaps, more effectively. That is an undeniable conclusion of the process that we are going to undergo.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, when on Monday the Prime Minister announced that the legislative programme for the next Session would include a Bill on the reform of your Lordships’ House, was he announcing a collective decision of the Cabinet?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, during the past 10 years, I have been told by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Irvine of Lairg and Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and Jack Straw in another place, that in the next Session there would be a House of Lords reform Bill. So, for the definitive answer, we shall have to wait for the appearance of Her Majesty at the State Opening of Parliament.

Procedure of the House (Proposal 5)

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I was a Minister in your Lordships' House for eight years, serving in both the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence. I know from my experience as a Lords Minister that you have to listen very carefully to what your Secretary of State is saying in another place, because Statements very often get changed from the last time you saw them in your department. It is very difficult for the usual channels to be able to anticipate that. Since we are talking of courtesy in this House, I think that it is courteous for this House to have the same opportunity as another place to listen to a full Statement. If we are talking about the importance of clarity for members of the public, it seems to me quite extraordinary to suggest that, on the one hand, we should have questions in full but that, on the other, that we do not need to have Statements in full. For members of public watching on their televisions, listening on the radio and sitting in the Public Gallery not to have heard a Statement in this House seems to lack the clarity that we have been so keen on elsewhere. For those three reasons, I think that this is a misguided proposal to put before your Lordships.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, the proposal refers to exceptional circumstances and I should like to remind the House of one. I remember a public expenditure Statement lasting an hour and a quarter being made in the House of Commons and then being repeated in full in this House on the following day, when everybody had had the opportunity not only to read the Statement but to read everything about it in the newspapers. I suggest that that is the sort of circumstance in which the time of the House should not be taken in repeating a whole Statement.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, the Leader of the House made clear what happens at Question Time as to which blocs there were. My understanding is that, at Statements, Liberal Democrats are a separate bloc from the Tories, the Labour Party and everybody else. Can he make the position clear?

House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, as a member of the leader’s group, I join the tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, who was brisk enough to lead us through a mountain of ideas—many contributed by your Lordships and others—but liberal enough to allow sufficient discussion to enable us to feel that we had done these ideas justice and also to guide us away from some of the zanier ones.

I also pay tribute to our Clerks, led by Christopher Johnson, who are always efficient, always expert in advice and skilful in drafting. I will not say more about the purposes of safeguarding the self-governing traditions of the House, or of using our time and resources better in contributing to the work of Parliament as a whole because that has been very well said by others.

The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, was very kind in attributing to me credit for the proposal for the better legislative standards committee. He was too generous. The noble Lord, Lord Filkin, has been a champion of it, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, championed it, as did the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, and, indeed, all Members of the Committee. It is not surprising. With great respect, I disagreed with the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, in only one respect—when he said there was a danger of the quality of legislation declining. It is widely regarded that the quality of legislation has declined. One only has to quote in aid the 70 or so Home Office Acts passed under the last Government—many of them amending deficient previous Acts and many containing provisions which have never been brought into force. Even worse, all too often, the Government do not explain why legislation is necessary, what its objectives are, what it will cost and what consultation the Government have had in preparing it. It is common ground among observers—not just the Better Government Initiative, but also the Hansard Society and the Institute for Government—that action is needed to deal with this problem.

Parliament cannot itself make good these deficiencies in the preparation of legislation but it can, through a committee, put pressure on the Executive to go through those processes. That is the purpose of a legislative standards committee. I emphasise that the role of such a committee would be not to deal with the policy in individual Bills but to be a gateway for all legislation introduced, I would hope, in Parliament but certainly in this House, to test whether the Government have gone through the necessary steps to prepare legislation properly and have provided the necessary information to show that they have done so.

Such a better legislation committee would report to the House before Second Reading debates, just as the Merits Committee reports on statutory instruments now before they are considered by the House. I believe that the knowledge in the Executive that such questions would be asked would improve the rigour with which legislation is prepared and presented to Parliament.

Secondly, there has been considerable reference in the debate to the proposals relating to the House's consideration of statutory instruments. As has already been said, the House can pass a fatal Motion against a statutory instrument but it does not do so because it would sink that statutory instrument completely. I commend the proposals in the leader's group report that would enable the House to fulfil its role of causing the Government to think again, while stopping short of destroying a statutory instrument.

Next is the Back-Bench business committee. Here the House would be following a recommendation of the Wright Committee in another place, which has been implemented and has been successful. I believe that it would increase the topicality and profile of our debates here. I particularly hope that here, as in the Commons, some debates would be on a specific Motion that would enable the House to express an opinion on a topical matter. Also on government business, to which not much reference has so far been made in the debate, I hope that the House can make the scheduling of business more transparent by including the Convenor of the Cross-Benchers, the chair of a Back-Bench Committee, and, if I may say to the Leader of the House, providing an opportunity for the House to let off steam from time to time by the Leader periodically submitting himself or herself to a period of questions. Such changes would help to avoid the rupture in relations which occurred on the Voting System and Constituencies Bill.

I join others in hoping that the committees to which these recommendations will be referred will consider them positively and report back to the House in time for those which find favour to be implemented in the near future.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I take it that, notwithstanding the title of this debate, it provides an opportunity for your Lordships to put points to the cross-party committee which is preparing a draft Bill for a partly or wholly elected House. Like other noble Lords who have spoken, that is profoundly not what I want and I think it is a fundamental mistake. Nevertheless, although I do not agree with it, I accept it for the purpose of the remarks I am going to make. I want to put a case rather different from that which other Members of your Lordships’ House have made. I suggest—I hope not entirely frivolously—that the House could find itself going down this route, through the process of so-called reform, having an elected House, and finishing with something not very different from what your Lordships’ House is today. I will explain why.

As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, the starting point is: what are the functions of the House? The Leader of the House answered that question this afternoon. He said that he envisaged that the functions of the House would continue to be as they are now, and its powers very much the same. What are those functions? I suggest that they fall under three headings. One is to provide an alternative forum of accountability for the Executive. The second is to provide the sort of detailed scrutiny of legislation which the other House fails to provide. I was struck by the statistics given by the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, about the times when this House acts against the Government’s advice but its advice is accepted in the amendment of legislation; and by what the noble Lord, Lord Cope, said about that. The third—to which I think the public attach enormous importance—is to act as a partial counterweight to the dominance which the Executive have established in the other place and which, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, quoting from Tony Wright’s report, said, is the fundamental reason why the public have lost so much of their confidence in their Government.

I think your Lordships would agree that that power of the House of Lords—to act as a counterweight to the Executive—cannot be achieved if the Executive have an overall majority in this House. Since voting patterns for your Lordships’ House would be likely to follow closely those for the House of Commons, that can only be achieved if there is a significant independent membership of the House of Lords. I follow the noble Lords, Lord Steel and Lord Rooker, in feeling uncomfortable about having a hybrid House which is partly appointed and mostly elected. However, I do not see any other way of achieving an independent element. If there was a section of the House that was reserved for independent Peers, if I were not to be a grandfather I would stand for it, but I do not see any basis on which the electorate would be likely to know whether to vote for me. I find it difficult to see how an independent element can be produced without the method of appointment.

Then we come to the elected Members of the House. Of course the political parties will continue to exercise great influence. They will determine who will stand in their name. To say that this is people being elected at random is absurd. It will be a method of appointment which goes under the guise of election but will, in effect, be appointment by the political parties. Since the coalition manifesto makes clear that the people who will be appointed will be appointed for a long, single term, with a period of quarantine before they could stand for another place, it is unlikely that there would be people standing for election who have future political ambitions. Contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said, I give the political parties the credit of supposing that they will want to have sitting in their names in this Chamber people of experience, wisdom and weight, and people without further political ambition. That seems a very close specification for the type of Members that we have sitting for the political parties in this House now. I think the best outcome would be if those people were on the list and were elected.

So, what would we have after this period of reform? We would have a significant element—let us call it 20 per cent—of independent Members, who I think would have to be appointed. Eighty per cent would be elected on a party-political ticket and it is likely that they would be senior and experienced members of their parties, who have no further ambitions for the other place. If so, that would be a House very much like we have now. We would have gone through all the agony of reform. Certainly, the people sitting for the parties would have been nominally elected but in fact they would have been appointed. We would have gone through it all and we would wonder what the point of the agony had been.