European Council
Lord Cormack Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston
No, I am afraid I do not agree with the noble Lord’s description of who benefits most, Europe or us, from the relationship. I shall not take up time rattling through all the statistics, but I say this to the noble Lord: in the end, it is about what is of greater benefit to all of us—to the UK and to the rest of Europe. As a trading bloc, we all benefit from the UK being in the European Union. It is not just about how we benefit in this country—although we do. As for the noble Lord’s questions about sovereignty, I refer him to what I said to my noble friend Lord Lawson. I really do disagree with what he says about that.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, as we begin four months of campaigning, should we not just gently reflect that the most publicly apparent achievement of eight years of amusing, dynamic, flamboyant leadership in London has been gridlock?
European Union: United Kingdom Renegotiation
Lord Cormack Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, as is clear from the exchanges today, and yesterday in another place, many parliamentarians want to play a vigorous part in the forthcoming referendum campaign. Can the Minister guarantee that the timetable of the two Houses will be arranged so that there are not impossible clashes, and there is a proper opportunity for parliamentarians on both sides to conduct an elevated and proper campaign?
Strathclyde Review
Lord Cormack Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. She brings great experience and wisdom to all the debates in which she takes part. I echo what she said about her noble friend Lady Bowles, who made a notable maiden speech. I also echo her perceptive and truly appreciative remarks about my noble friend Lord Strathclyde and the work he has put into what is certainly a thoughtful and constructive report. However, it is not the last word. I am grateful to the Leader of the House for ensuring that this is a “take note” debate and that we can all reflect on what is said in it.
We have to begin by recognising that this debate has come about because of a paradox. Rarely has there been a more popular vote in the country, as far as the House of Lords is concerned, than the one that took place on 26 October; and rarely has there been a greater change of policy on the part of a Government as a result of the vote. I recognise that, even though I voted enthusiastically in the other Lobby. The Labour constitutionalists, as I call them, and noble Lords in other parts of the House thought that this was a step too far. However, because of the enormous financial cost involved, it was understandable that the Government reacted—but I believe that they overreacted.
It is very interesting that wherever you sit in this House you are conditioned by the position of your party. Position lends difference to the view. I well remember that in another place I fulminated—sometimes from the Front Bench as well as from the Back—against some of the changes of procedure to the House of Commons introduced by the Labour Government. I deplored Programme Motions; I deplored the proliferation of what we called Henry VIII clauses on skeleton Bills; I deplored deferred Divisions; and I very much hoped that when my party came into government those things would go. I even said from the Front Bench that they would go—but of course I was not then in a position to do anything about it. But some of those who had made promises became members of, first, the coalition Government and then the Conservative Government and felt it inconvenient to carry them out because all of those changes were helpful to the Executive. This is really what it is all about.
The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, referred to this in a whimsical way. I almost thought that he was going to quote Corporal Jones from “Dad’s Army”—“They don’t like it up ‘em”. The fact is that Governments do not “like it up ‘em”—which is why we are in this position today.
Having said all that, we do have a real problem: what should this House do about, and what should its powers be over, important legislation with financial implications—secondary legislation particularly in this case? My noble friend Lord Strathclyde has pointed the way. It is important that we follow some of his suggestions but address them in a manner in which the House of Commons, the other place, has to learn to behave: with more robust independence when it comes to secondary legislation.
I hope that as a result of my noble friend’s report there will be a realisation on the part of government that skeleton Bills should become a thing of the past. Governments are not there to create Christmas trees on which Ministers then hang balls. I hope, therefore, that following today’s “take note” debate there will be a discussion in government. I also hope that a Joint Committee of both Houses will be established to look at the whole issue of secondary legislation and that it will take on board the wise advice given a few moments ago by my noble friend Lord Naseby. We cannot stay where we are—we have to have clarification—but we have to preserve the position of this House, to which I am passionately devoted, to have a real role in legislation while never subverting the superiority, in legislative terms, of the other place, the elected House.
So let us go forward from here having taken note of this sagacious and helpful report. Let us have a Joint Committee of both Houses; let the Government realise that they were largely responsible for the debacle on 26 October. My position then was very like that of my noble friend Lord Lawson, who said that he was determined to vote as he did—as we both did—but that he had considerable sympathy with the points being made by those who were going to vote in another direction. We have had our lesson, I hope. Let us now move forward constructively so that this House’s position in our country’s legislature is properly recognised and confirmed, so that the supremacy of the Commons is not challenged but legislation, both primary and secondary, is thoroughly scrutinised.
Tourism
Lord Cormack Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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The Earl of Courtown
I think that what the noble Lord is trying to say is how important it is that English tourism has a strong voice. However, this is not a merger. VisitEngland is already part of the British Tourist Authority, which trades as VisitBritain and VisitEngland. All we are doing is clarifying governance arrangements and lines of accountability with the BTA. This will ensure that there is clarity of direction, and will drive efficiency and effectiveness.
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, we do treat tourism extremely seriously, as was made apparent in the recent spending review. DCMS takes 1% of spending but contributes a sixth to the UK economy. We must also remember that employment in the UK tourism industry has increased from 2.66 million to 2.81 million jobs; that is almost twice the rate of non-tourist-related industries. I listened carefully to what the noble Lord said about where tourism’s natural home is, and must admit that I feel it is in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, at a time when the cathedrals and parish churches of this country, some of our greatest tourist attractions, are very much in the news, could my noble friend spare a moment to give thanks for all those volunteers without whom many of our tourist attractions, including those owned by the National Trust, could not properly function?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, my noble friend is quite right in what he says on one of his most important subjects—he continually refers to the cathedrals and churches. He is right to congratulate the volunteer work done by so many people for no recompense whatsoever but for the sheer love of looking after these great areas.
House of Lords: Strathclyde Review
Lord Cormack Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston
Like the noble Baroness, and as I have already said, I feel very strongly and care passionately about this House having the right to scrutinise and challenge the Government and to do what it is here to do as far as primary and secondary legislation, and policy more generally, are concerned. I welcome what she said about my noble friend’s report.
However, by her contribution she has also illustrated what I am trying to say to the House. I do not want to debate the substance of the policy, because we are talking now about procedures. Back in October, the noble Baroness was at pains to tell the House that her amendment was not a fatal Motion but that it would allow the Government to think again. But it was never established in fact that what she was doing did not amount to a fatal Motion—we were in disagreement about it. There is no definition of these things in the Companion. We have a choice: we either withhold our consent or we give our consent. It was not possible for this House, using the method that the noble Baroness chose, to ask the Government or the House of Commons to think again, because we do not have that facility. We either approve or we do not.
If the noble Baroness is arguing for this House to be able to ask the House of Commons to think again, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, in his paper, is suggesting a way which would provide the very thing that the noble Baroness is arguing for today and argued for back in October.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, I am sure the House would wish to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Richard, but it is the turn of the Conservative Benches.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I am most grateful. I am sure we are all grateful to my noble friend for what she has said, but I would ask her two things. First, it is right that we should have a full and extensive debate. However, as this report has been produced on the eve of the Christmas Recess, can we have a week or two after we come back where we can talk together informally, across the House, and then have a well-informed debate? Secondly, can that debate be informed by the fact that it is the Government who are answerable to Parliament—not the other way round—and by the fact that we are in this mess largely because of the appallingly inefficient way in which the other place deals with secondary legislation? It is therefore crucial—I ask my noble friend to talk to her colleagues in Cabinet about this—that the other place also debates this matter in detail, so that we have a more satisfactory balance in the way both Houses look at secondary legislation.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
As my noble friend may not have had an opportunity to study my noble friend Lord Strathclyde’s report, he might not yet have spotted that it includes a reference to the other place and its role in secondary legislation. My right honourable friend the Leader of the House of Commons is also making a Statement today in the other place about this same topic.
As for when we will schedule the debate in January, clearly we will have to consider the timetabling of it alongside other matters when we return. However, my main commitment to this House is that there will be a substantial debate; it will be in government time; and we will do so early in the new year.
Devolution: England
Lord Cormack Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, as one of those who voted against having a directly elected mayor in London in the referendum, every time I get into my car I wonder whether I was not right?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I think others might disagree with my noble friend.
Syria: UK Military Action
Lord Cormack Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, that was an extremely thoughtful and important speech, and I for one believe that what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said should be taken to heart by leading figures in all political parties. This debate will be remembered I think, above all, for the notable maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Hague of Richmond, who is a very special person in my life. I have served six Conservative leaders, and he was the only one who had the sagacity to put me on his Front Bench.
This is a crucially important debate, in which we are being asked merely to give our views. This morning, I sat in the Public Gallery of another place and heard the Prime Minister make a powerful, convincing speech. In answer to the very important point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, I would point out that he began by saying that he accepted unequivocally that however people voted tonight, they would be voting from sincere and honourable motives. It is important that that is firmly on the record.
Some of us know what it is like to go against the grain. I had the very good fortune of being among a tiny handful of Labour and Conservative Members of Parliament who lined up with the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, in urging action in Bosnia. I have never regretted that, and eventually the Government came down on what I believe was the right side—without, I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, a vote in Parliament.
The Motion before us today and being debated now in the House of Commons is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said, a well-written Motion, from which I will single out two phrases. It talks about,
“post-conflict stabilisation and reconstruction”.
What a pity that the resolution that was before us when we debated going to war in Iraq—which I supported—did not have a similar sentence in it. It seems to me that there would be a wonderful potential role for your Lordships’ about-to-be-established external affairs committee here, because it could monitor that with a degree of expertise and experience that no other body could bring to such a task. I warmly commend that suggestion to your Lordships and to my noble friend Lord Howe, who is responding.
The other part of the resolution that I would mention is the explicit commitment not to put in ground troops. I believe that that is extremely unwise. We have heard what my noble friend Lord King and the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, said. We should not rule out that option, but we have. Unless, as I would like, we go down the road marked out by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, there should be an amendment with a reference to Parliament, because we cannot and must not rule it out. Those who will the ends must will the means.
As my noble friend Lord Dobbs, who explained why he has had to leave the Chamber, said a few moments ago, we cannot make this an unfinished journey. We have to ensure not only that the evil represented by Daesh is eliminated from the face of the earth but that we see a proper, stable, reconstructed Syria at the end of it. That will demand unpalatable truths. We will have to line up with the Russians in a way that we have not in the past, and we will have to fight one enemy, not two—and that means Daesh and not necessarily Assad.
Rugby World Cup 2015
Lord Cormack Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, I am so sorry to intervene. It is actually the turn of the Conservative Benches, which we have not heard from. While I am on my feet, I remind noble Lords that we are now starting to get very lengthy in the questions that we are asking. I would pay particular attention to some of the original supplementaries that are being asked.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that a little goes a very long way in the field of heritage? To a cathedral needing maintenance, £250,000 means a vast amount; it is a tiny drop in the ocean. Would she convey that message to the Chancellor before the spending round is announced?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, my noble friend makes a very strong point. We had the £20 million First World War Centenary Cathedrals Fund, of course; I was in Norwich this very weekend looking at some of the brilliant repair work that has been done. I think that we in this country are great at looking after historic buildings. We should be telling people overseas and they should be learning from our skills in conservation and architecture.
House of Lords Reform
Lord Cormack Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, it is a very great pleasure and honour to follow the right reverend Prelate. I was a member of the Lichfield General Synod delegation that met in the appointments committee to recommend a new Bishop of Lichfield when the former bishop retired. We chose the right reverend Prelate to be our bishop in the diocese of Lichfield and he did not disappoint us. He quickly became known for the exercise of quiet, gentle authority. He will be much missed and fondly remembered in the diocese of Lichfield. I no longer live in that diocese—I now live in Lincoln—but I shall always treasure my connections, in particular the friendship that I enjoyed and I hope will continue to enjoy, with the right reverend Prelate. The House of Lords owes him much, and by his speech today he has demonstrated that there is a real validity and value in having a Bench of Bishops in your Lordships’ House.
I must declare an interest. As many of your Lordships know, some 13 years ago my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth and I founded the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, which only today had a well-attended meeting with more than 50 of your Lordships present. Before the events of July and before the new list, we established a sub-committee, which I have the honour of chairing, to look at the whole question of numbers in your Lordships’ House. This is not a problem that has just emerged; it is one of which we have been very conscious for a long time. It would be wrong for me to come out in favour of any particular solution in this debate because I would be pre-empting the discussion of our sub-group, but there are things that we are looking at and have to look at—some have already been touched on in the debate. I hope that we will be in a position to produce a degree of consensus in a report that your Lordships’ House will be able to consider, along with other reports, later this year.
I am well aware that to go for an arbitrary retirement age would be a simple but slightly crude solution. I am bound to say, along with my noble friend Lord MacGregor, the chairman of the Association of Conservative Peers—who sadly cannot be here today but he asked me to mention this—that I find some attraction in this solution. As the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has already referred to, at the end of this Parliament on 30 March 2020, by which time Dissolution has to occur, 260 of your Lordships will be aged 80 or over, of whom I will be one.
The noble Lord, Lord Steel, has indicated in his Motion that his solution perhaps needs refining—maybe we should look at other things. With the help of the Library I got some figures. There are 140 Members of your Lordships’ House who spoke less than once a year in the last Parliament. Some 17 of those eligible to attend in the last Session did not come at all. In the whole of the last Parliament, 119 voted fewer than 20 times and 47 did not vote at all. These are things that we have to take into account. I believe that there are solutions. I am bound to say that, much as I admire and respect the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, I thought that his solution was a tad complicated, but we could set a limit, a cap, on the number of Members in your Lordships’ House. At our sub-committee meeting last week, there was something approaching consensus in saying that we should try to fix your Lordships’ House at a size no bigger than that of the House of Commons—in other words, 600, as it will be at the beginning of the next Parliament. Maybe we should move on beyond that.
How do we do that? One solution that could commend itself to your Lordships would be that at the beginning of each Parliament the Cross-Benchers—who should be guaranteed 20% of the places—and the various party groups should elect, or select, so many of their number. There are constitutional precedents for this. The Acts of Union 1707 gave the Scottish peerage the opportunity and the duty of selecting 16 of their number to sit at Westminster in the House of Lords. Nearly 100 years later, in 1801, the Act of Union with Ireland gave the Irish peerage 28 seats in your Lordships’ House. Maybe this is a precedent that we should look at carefully. If we had a cap on numbers and did something like this within the Cross-Bench group and the party groups, we would have some satisfaction that it would not be driven by age or any other specific factor; it would take into account the contributions made by the Peers concerned. I also think we ought not to have a situation where the Prime Minister’s patronage is extinguished—that would be completely wrong—but, if at the beginning of each Parliament he were given 10%, he could nominate new or reappoint old as he wished.
My final point in this necessarily brief speech is that there is some merit in saying that a peerage should be for life but membership of this House should be for a defined period. I would make it a genuinely long defined period—perhaps as long as 20 years, but certainly 15—because I do not like the power of the Whips, and if they thought they could exercise a sort of perverse patronage every five years, your Lordships’ House would not be what it is today. I believe fundamentally in a House that does not challenge the unambiguous democratic mandate of the House of Commons and that acknowledges the supremacy of the House of Commons, but that brings together talent and experience from all walks of life in a way that no other second Chamber in the world is able to do.
House of Lords: Membership
Lord Cormack Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The noble Lord points to something which was in the coalition agreement. We are no longer in coalition; this is a Conservative Government and we therefore stand by what was in the Conservative manifesto. I have already made clear my view on the size of the House. The noble Lord directs an interesting point to the Liberal Democrat Benches.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, could not the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and his colleagues lead by example? Believing, as they do, in proportional representation, and having just been inflated into the most unrepresentative party in this House, if he and 40 of his colleagues took retirement, under the advantages of the 2014 Act, then the problem would at least begin to be addressed.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My noble friend is using me as a channel to ask questions to the Liberal Democrat Benches. He is quite right that we are all responsible for the effectiveness of this House and making sure that that happens.