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.