Ukraine

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am afraid I do not agree with the noble Lord. NATO does not pose an aggressive threat to Russia.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister’s Statement ends with some important words:

“I believe that all Russia’s fears could yet be allayed and we could find a path to mutual security through patient and principled diplomacy.”


That is the way. I do not associate myself with all the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, but one has to remember that 26 million Russians were killed in the last war. One has to remember that many Russians have folk memories and folk fears, and it is therefore very important that patient diplomacy, showing, as the Prime Minister says, that we understand those fears, provides the only real, sensible way forward.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

Certainly, I agree. In fact, NATO stands absolutely ready to engage in constructive dialogue with Russia to discuss mutual security concerns and has invited Russia to further sessions of the NATO-Russia council—it had its first meeting in two years recently—to discuss arms control, risk reduction and transparency measures.

Coronavirus Grants: Fraud

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I do not have an answer to that; I will have to get an answer to the noble Lord. I say again that the schemes brought forward during those very difficult times were designed in response to a pronounced market failure, particularly with the UK’s smallest businesses struggling to access the finance that they needed to survive at the start of the pandemic. Voices from across the spectrum, including from the party opposite, were shouting at us to be sure that we acted quickly. We were already doing so, but we continued to do so.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I express sympathy for my noble friend: yesterday he took the letter and today he has drawn the short straw. Does he accept that this matter really is important now? This was an Answer to an Urgent Question in the other place, and it is important that we have a definitive Statement from the Government giving as many figures as possible. While I acknowledge that fraud is more difficult to detect than to denounce, we need to have these facts.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My noble friend makes a very good point. As I alluded to earlier, HMRC and BEIS are working very hard in conjunction with the lenders to recover as much as we possibly can. I reiterate that the figures, as noble Lords will tell me, are big. We have paid out altogether more than £400 billion to support the economy. It is fair to say that to that extent it has been a great success, because the economy is in very good shape.

Covid-19

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I apologise to the noble Baroness and will certainly take that back to government colleagues. I recognise what she says.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, there does not seem to be anything about future plans for boosters. We all acknowledge that the vaccination campaign has been a triumph, but we still do not know for how long the vaccine is efficacious. Are there plans for booster doses to be given annually or at other intervals?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My noble friend puts his finger on it when he says that at this stage we do not know. However, I can reassure him that this will continue to be monitored. If it becomes necessary to deliver further boosters, we will of course do so. We will also need to be alive to the potential for different variants, which may involve other actions. I can assure him that we now have a wealth of evidence and experience and know, as in this very announcement today, how important vaccines and boosters are. That will certainly be at the forefront of our mind as we continue moving forward.

Parliamentary Partnership Assembly

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, before I speak to the Motion, I extend my condolences to the family and friends of my late noble friend Lord Denham who, as the Lord Speaker announced earlier, died at the weekend. Lord Denham served this House with great distinction for more than 70 years, including as Government Chief Whip for 12 years.

The Motion standing in the Leader’s name invites the House to agree in principle to its participation in the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, or PPA. The House of Commons agreed a Motion in the same terms on Monday this week, and the European Parliament decided its intention to participate on 5 October. The House of Lords Commission discussed the participation of this House at its meeting on 16 November and in its first report of this Session set out some background to help inform the House’s decision today. That report was published on 25 November.

The Motion is the culmination of many months of careful and patient dialogue between the two Houses and with the European Parliament, much of which has been carried out on behalf of this House by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I would like to put on record my thanks for the work that he and his team have done to help get the PPA off the ground. I beg to move.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Would it not be very appropriate if, on this occasion, those Members from this House and the other were elected by their colleagues?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, this is not a Committee of the House. This is the way that all parliamentary delegations are appointed, and we see no reason why this should be different from the NATO Parliamentary Assembly or the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

House of Lords: Governance

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Buscombe who has given a splendid analysis of that report and in the process said some very disturbing things that should concern anybody who loves this place. Any noble Lord who feels it has a valid role, as I do, must be concerned.

As far as I am concerned, this debate really began not on 25 October but last year—or was it the end of the previous year?—when we were suddenly confronted, without any warning, with compulsory training in how to behave. That, for me, is when it began. It was compounded when we had that extraordinary business of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, the former Deputy Prime Minister my noble friend Lord Heseltine and so on being lined up for criticism. I really felt that it was a place where things were happening without our being prepared in any way. It made me question the governance of the House.

My noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach made an excellent speech about this extraordinary document produced by the Library. We are very grateful for it, just as we are very grateful for the Library and those who serve in it, but it is about as comprehensible as the manual which came with my computer. Not having had a computer before lockdown occurred, I relied on two half-hour sessions on the telephone with someone from the wonderful Parliamentary Digital Service. This document is gobbledegook. We need to refine, as well as define, exactly how this House should work and what it should do.

I jotted down a few things. A number of colleagues have referred to the wigs issue. It is entirely reasonable to believe that the traditional dress is right or that it needs changing, but the way in which it was changed was utterly unacceptable. We now have a degree of formality in the uniform, and I am pleased but, as my noble friend Lady Noakes said, it is slightly spoilt by the fact that the clerks sit on call-centre chairs. If the old chairs are not brought back, surely in our wonderful Gothic Chamber we could have some made that fit in with the spirit of the place.

There are so many other things. We had that vote on 25 October. I spoke and voted on that not just because a different voting system was suggested. I was quite in favour of a reader for the cards as a temporary expedient, but when you read the report, you realised that they were trying to do away with the Tellers and change our system of voting in perpetuity. A temporary expedient was being used surreptitiously to change something fundamental.

I am afraid that has been a hallmark of the Covid period. Covid was a reason for many things, and I warmly congratulate all those staff who made it possible for us to function, but others have made it an excuse, rather than a reason. We will have to live with this scourge for a very long time, and we must live in a way that is consistent with the dignity and the proper practices of the House.

I am delighted and grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, is here. He is chairman of the Services Committee, and he is a man who has truly listened to a number of concerns and complaints that some of us have made—and very grateful we are for that. I hope he will be able to do something about the payment system, to which a number of colleagues have referred, because it is quite absurd that we cannot have a monthly account paid by direct debit. Instead, if we have a coffee, we have to pay for it; if we have lunch, we have to pay for it. Sometimes, it is a little embarrassing when one has guests. It would be far better to go back to that system, and I hope we will, just as I hope we will reinstate, when the necessary use for Covid tests—I use it twice a week myself—has been dealt with, we need the Bishops’ Bar as it was. We need the Long Table in the private room, the Long Room. That will help us to have more guests in, anyhow.

I shall refer to two things that have not been referred to at all. I am deeply disturbed that the House is signed up to Stonewall. A number of government departments have detached themselves; I believe the Commons has now detached itself, but we are dependent on Stonewall. Stonewall came into being for a particular reason, but a number of those who brought it into being, such as Matthew Parris, have denounced the way it has embraced the gender issue in a very disturbing way, and I do not believe your Lordships’ House should be signed up to it. We should have the opportunity to say we do not want to be signed up to this.

Another thing has come to my notice. In the other place, they have a doctor on duty. We do not. We decided, apparently—or those who decide for us decided —that it was not a justifiable expense. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, has been campaigning on this and feels it is a justifiable expense. I very much hope that he will be able to persuade his colleagues on the Services Committee that, in your Lordships’ House, where the average age is over 70—and I am well above that—there should be medical attention on hand. I urge the noble Lord to continue his campaign.

Who does what was again illustrated today, because when my noble friend the Chief Whip read out the Motion about the appointment of the European liaison group, or whatever it is called, I got up briefly—I did not want to detain the House on a busy day—to point out that it might be a good idea if this unique, new body were chosen, elected, by us, those who will serve there. I truly think there should be more opportunity for us to decide who serves us on a variety of committees.

I will end there, because I have gone over my time, for which I apologise, but I hope some of these points will be taken to heart.

Tributes: Sir David Amess MP

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I was also elected in 1983, but I first discovered Sir David’s fundamental decency, integrity and courtesy when I was a junior Whip. Later, I was David’s Chief Whip for four years. I held him in the highest regard because he was the sort of MP we Chief Whips liked and rated—not because he sycophantically voted for us 96% or 97% of the time, but because he always told us well in advance on the 3% of occasions when he could not because his conscience and constituency priorities prevailed. Chief Whips can live with MPs who have that level of courtesy and decency.

As has been said, he was deeply religious. That clearly influenced his views on political issues, but he was always capable of seeing the other point of view. He always disagreed with the viewpoint, not the person making it; that is a sign of greatness and generosity of spirit. He followed the great commandment of Jesus to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself. Well, David loved 70,000 neighbours —all his constituents in Southend West—and people further afield in the UK and even further afield around the world, as has been said. In fact, those suffering in the world were David’s neighbours—and not just people; as the great hymn by Cecil Alexander says:

“All things bright and beautiful,


All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.”

If the Lord God made them, David Amess defended them.

I say this carefully: I think that David died a Christian martyr. I mean “martyr” in the proper Greek derivation of the term meaning a witness and nothing else. He died a witness to his belief in the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity and to their practical realisation, including in working for others until the very end. He did his duty to his God, his family, his constituency and his country. What truer passport is there to eternal life? I am reminded of the opening to the anthem “In Paradisum”, which was sung at the funeral of Lady Thatcher. It begins:

“May the angels lead you into paradise”—


but there will be no resting in peace for David Amess in paradise, for even now he will be campaigning among the angels and archangels for heaven to be granted city status.

I pass on my sincere condolences to Lady Amess, David’s children and all those others who may have been traumatised by his awful murder. It was a privilege to know him and I really liked serving with him.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, there is one aspect of Sir David’s work that is perhaps not widely known. Every year for the last 30 years, he took into his office a young American student from the Catholic University of America. I had the honour of arranging the programmes over those years, so I worked closely with him. He gave those young people a wonderful insight into British parliamentary democracy. Those young people, who had perhaps met the Senators or Congressmen they had worked for on the Hill only once in a three or four-month period, saw Sir David every day. He took them to his constituency. They saw at first hand what it meant to be personally represented. They all benefited from that experience, and he made an intangible contribution to British-American relations in the process.

Health and Social Care

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am sure the noble Lord will make his own judgment on that. I repeat that the Prime Minister was perfectly honest about it in his Statement. He said that

“no Conservative government ever want to raise taxes”,—[Official Report, Commons, 7/9/21; col. 155.]

which is absolutely true, but he wanted to be honest and accept that this will break a manifesto commitment. I am sure that even the noble Lord would agree that, having provided more than £400 billion of support for jobs and livelihoods, businesses and public services at the start of the pandemic, we have particular challenges around our public finances. And that was not in our manifesto.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, do not the questions asked in the last 20 minutes or so illustrate the need for a thorough debate in your Lordships’ House? I say with great respect to my noble friend that the point raised by my noble friend Lord Forsyth needs addressing in detail. Can she give the House an assurance that, when we come back in October, an early, full-day debate will be devoted to these issues?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I can say to my noble friend that the Health and Care Bill will come to this House when we come back, which will allow a lot of debate on this subject matter. He will be pleased to know that, now we have returned, we have many more opportunities for Back-Benchers to put down the titles of debates they would like to bring before the House. I am sure he will take advantage of that.

Afghanistan

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I have heard every speech in this very sombre and sober debate. One thing that has come out in almost every speech is the abject failure of leadership by the greatest of all democracies. That failure has made the world a much more dangerous place than it was even 10 days ago. The muddle, chaos and confusion of the last 10 days has given a boost to the power and influence of the second great power in the world, one which represents the greatest threat to democracy and human rights in Asia and Africa, following its belt and road initiative, and indeed throughout the world.

We have to face that fact that the bombast of Trump, followed by the ineffectual decency and demonstrably catastrophic incompetence of President Biden, has caused this terrible situation. The USA, guarantor of civilised values for the last century and more, stands humiliated before the world—and so do we. “Go it alone”, “take back control” and “global Britain” mean evacuating from Afghanistan without a coherent plan or a clearly defined purpose. Our future as a nation—a nation that still has some influence in the world councils—will depend upon our having such a plan and a purpose.

I agree with almost everything that has been said about handling the refugee crisis, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, said, it is important that we keep our embassy in Kabul open and do everything in our power to sustain and protect those aid workers, BBC journalists and others who wish to stay. We should therefore table a resolution at the Security Council of the United Nations to test the good faith of recent Taliban statements, urging them to accept the presence of a United Nations peacekeeping force, a council of reference drawn from Muslim nations—particularly including those that have had women as Head of State—and another council, drawn from leading universities around the world, to ensure that women continue to receive a decent education in Afghanistan. These are absolutely vital issues, and I hope that, when he winds up, my noble friend will refer to our tabling such a resolution in New York.

We are going through a moment of shame at the moment, but we need an inquiry; I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, and others. It should be a parliamentary inquiry, composed of Members of both Houses.

Procedure and Privileges

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to take part in this debate. I begin echoing the well-deserved tribute from my noble friend the Leader of the House to all those who have made it possible for us to continue during these difficult times. I should like to make a particular vote of thanks to the digital support team. As one who had not used a computer before, I have been able to take part in your Lordships’ House when I have not been present—although I have been present most of the time—entirely because of the team’s patient tuition. The team has been marvellous.

I must begin on a note of dissent from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. He made a persuasive case, but I am afraid I think it was a superficial one. It did not take sufficient account of the fact that we always almost boast about our expertise, and one of the reasons we can do that is that a significant number of Members of your Lordships’ House do other things before they come in at 2 pm. There is also the important point that there is a clash with committees—both party committees and Select Committees, which we should prize. I also say to the noble Lord that—although perhaps he does not eat as many luncheons as I do; it does not look as though he does—to lunch with people before we sit at 2.30 pm can be extremely helpful.

It is for the convenience of a large number of Members of your Lordships’ House that we revert, as the committee is proposing, to sitting at 2.30 pm on Mondays and Tuesdays, 3 pm on Wednesdays, 11 am on Thursdays and, if we sit, 10 am on Fridays. Therefore, I cannot support that amendment. When the noble Lord generously invited me to support it, I let him know that I could not.

I want to concentrate my remarks on Questions. I am delighted to know that UQs, Statements and PNQs will be taken in the old way. But I do not think it is a good idea to have a printed list for the main Question Time of the day. It destroys spontaneity. Often, I have come into your Lordships’ House—and I know this applies to others because I have discussed it—not thinking I would take part in a particular Question, but I am provoked to do so by some ministerial or other remark with which I could not associate myself, or to give support to a colleague who has had an unsatisfactory answer from the Minister. I believe that spontaneity is a tremendously important part of your Lordships’ House’s proceedings. Therefore, I strongly urge that we discard the list.

I know it was done for the best possible reasons but I was a little troubled by the fact that we had an opinion poll. A lot of people did not know about it. I spoke to two Members of your Lordships’ House with whom I keep in regular touch, and I do not mind mentioning them: the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. Until I warned them that this opinion poll was being taken on PeerHub, they had not heard of it. There are others I have discovered since. It was also a pity that it was a binary question, because there are other ways of doing this, as my noble friend Lord Balfe will point out when he speaks to his amendment to the Motion in a few minutes’ time.

I come back to spontaneity, which is a very important part of our proceedings. It is crucial that we hold the Government to account. This has not happened over the last 16 months. That is no one’s fault—but it has not happened, and the Government have been the beneficiaries. We have not been able to intervene on a Minister or to get up and challenge a ministerial statement. As I say, I blame no one, but the sooner we can get back to that, the better, because your Lordships’ House, a House of scrutiny and of holding to account, wishes to be able to fulfil those functions to the full. It is truly important that we are able to do that and at the moment, under this printed list system, we are not able to. So I am urging, in my amendment, that by 31 October at the very latest this is reviewed, because I think we are going to lose a very great deal.

I shall end on a very different note. The committee that has been looking at these things has been reviewing our procedures. It has said that it will continue to review our procedures, and one of the procedures I hope it will continue to review—I mention it today because there is no chance of debating it next week—is Standing Order 68, under which, on Wednesday next week, without any debate or discussion, this House that wants to value everybody is not going to value three of our colleagues by voting to half-suspend them from the facilities of the House. I think that is shameful and I hope that my noble friend will take this message back to her committee, and that high on the agenda when it next comes to review our proceedings will be reviewing Standing Order 68. For a man or a woman to be condemned without any opportunity to explain, or have his or her colleagues explain, is a denial of natural justice.

--- Later in debate ---

Tabled by

[Lord Cormack]

At end insert “but that this House regrets the recommendation to have speakers’ lists for oral questions and believes further consideration should be given to this matter by 31 October at the latest.”

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am rather gratified by that result, but not for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, indicated. I feel that one thing that will now survive is the Long Table. One of the greatest features of your Lordships’ House is its collegiate spirit, and nowhere is that better exemplified—and nowhere is there better conversation, which often influences many people—than at the Long Table.

I listened very carefully to the debate and, like many of your Lordships, I heard every speech, and I am persuaded that, because we will have Statements and Urgent Questions taken in the old manner, there will be a proper opportunity for the House to compare and contrast. I accept the assurances given by both the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and my noble friend Lord Gardiner of Kimble that this will be kept under review.

I accept the good reasons why the opinion poll, as I called it, was taken. It was not a decision of the House, but I think that it would be more sensible not to press this amendment to a Division today and to allow the review to take place. I very much hope that this will show that Questions are not the bear pit that some have suggested and that it is possible to run them in a very civilised and sensible way, as they normally were, although they occasionally got out of hand. I therefore will not move my amendment.

Lord Cormack’s amendment to the Motion not moved.

House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Howe. He has spoken clearly and persuasively and there is hardly anything he said with which I would disagree. I tabled this resolution because a number of colleagues, particularly those who have been attending regularly, have spoken to me and discussed these things. We thought it might be a good idea to have a resolution before your Lordships to give a little more point and purpose to the debate. I reserve the right to divide the House, but I shall listen very carefully indeed—as will others. Whether there will be a Division at the end of this debate or not, I genuinely do not know, but I certainly accept that there is a great deal of good sense in what my noble friend Lord Howe said a few moments ago.

The period since 23 March last year has been one of the most remarkable in our long parliamentary history. To those who made possible first the virtual and then the hybrid House, we all owe a great deal, as my noble friend said. As someone new to the technology, I would like to add a very personal thank you to the digital support team, who have been truly remarkable in the 24/7 service that they have offered. It would be very easy to be seduced into the comfortable way forward: to continue to speak from our homes and even to vote from our beds, as I understand some have done. It would be easy, but it would be wrong—emphatically wrong—for the House we have at the moment is one dimensional. As the Constitution Committee has made plain in its latest valuable report, the first of this Session, there is no opportunity for spontaneity or intervention and no real opportunity for human contact between colleagues, without which no institution can work effectively.

Parliament, and that means both Houses, must be at the centre of any thriving democracy. Good governance means that the Government must be held effectively to account, both formally in the Chamber, in committee and, as my noble friend touched on, informally, in conversation and personal meetings. One of the great deficiencies of the present system is that statutory instruments pile up—the Constitution Committee referred to this in its report—leading to retrospective legislation and to confusing the public by blurring the difference between legislation and guidance. That is thoroughly undesirable. As my noble friend also touched on, debates without opportunity for challenge and intervention become a series of written statements, delivered without any reference to others. They are a series of personal utterances, not a debate; there is no cut and thrust. There is not even the opportunity to know how what one is saying is going down with one’s colleagues. As for the voting system, it is far too easy and remote in every way.

Our Constitution Committee is wise to say that we will need to assess our former normal working methods, but I agree emphatically with my noble friend: first of all, we need to get back to those methods. After all, a significant number of Peers have had little or no experience of our normal methods: those who have been ennobled in the last two years. Some have had no experience whatever of our normal working day. I believe that we need to get back to where we were in mid-March 2020 before assessing what, if any, changes should be made to the working of our self-regulating House. The only practice that we should maintain is that of allowing distant witnesses to appear remotely when giving evidence, but before a proper committee, assembled in a proper Committee Room.

The Commons, we are told, will return on 22 June. The longer after that that we delay the move, the more irrelevant this House will become. Ideally, the changes should be concurrent in both Houses, but I put 6 September as the latest possible date in case there is a general wish to take just a little longer in your Lordships’ House. I hope that there will not be, but it would have the added advantage of making sure that everyone was able to have a vaccination.

Before I finish, I want to give a warning. When we decamp during restoration and renewal, we must not look at the virtual and hybrid House as something we should return to. That would be totally wrong. We would merely deserve the riposte that, if that is the case, what point and purpose is there in a second Chamber? If those greybeards cannot transmit their wisdom other than via Zoom, would the nation not be better served by another television channel? We need to be here—or wherever Parliament is sitting—or we will become an irrelevance, tweeting and twittering into the twilight.

I have just been reading the diary of Alan Don, who was rector of St Margaret’s and subdean during the war years; I commend it to your Lordships. He talks about this House and the other place sitting in Church House, the Robing Room and the Royal Gallery, and the Commons moving here, but meeting all the time during the Second World War—never, never giving up. This has been a very difficult period, but it has been nowhere near as difficult as the Second World War, when the bombs were falling on both Houses. If they could do it then, we can and should do it now.