European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Exit Day) (Amendment) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Cormack and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Sadly, Robert Peston is such a good journalist that he does not name his sources. I would love to know just as much as others.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Is not the lesson that the Cabinet should cease to talk about Cabinet meetings to anybody outside of Cabinet?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I certainly share that view, although just occasionally it is very useful. The real point is, of course, the political one: the Government briefing that they will not go along with the MPs’ choices and then, just now, trying to defeat the Business Motion so that the indicative votes do not have to take place seems to suggest they do not want to heed what elected Members say. It is for that reason that the last part of the amendment has become more significant than when we originally drafted it.

I hope the House will support the amendment and regret the shambles that got us here from not listening to the noble Duke, therefore causing some of this uncertainty for business and citizens. Of course, we agree that the instrument is necessary to ensure we have clarity on our statute book. As the Law Society of Scotland says, it is,

“essential to ensure consistency in the operation of UK law with that of EU law”.

Without it,

“there would be great uncertainty and confusion in the operation of UK law”.

We agree with the instrument, but we do not agree with the method that got us here. I beg to move.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I have felt all along that this is a very ill conceived, ill thought-out Bill, and one that does no credit to Parliament in general or to the House of Commons in particular. I have briefly made similar points to those made by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, in previous debates.

I feel that this is such a bad Bill that it is, frankly, unimprovable and unamendable, but I salute the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. He is sometimes a controversial figure but nobody can deny that he is a parliamentarian of real status who is deeply concerned about the reputation of Parliament. He is trying very hard with this amendment and, in so far as anything could improve the Bill, it is probably this, if it were passed, because it would give that chance for another place to think again.

What concerns me more than anything else—I alluded to this a few seconds ago—is the status and standing of Parliament. This great and free country of ours depends above all on two things: the rule of law and the sovereignty of Parliament. In eroding the sovereignty of Parliament, we do no one any service. This Bill is in fact the erosion of the sovereignty of Parliament Bill. This House is clearly not going to stand in the way of the elected House, but it does behove us constantly to remind the Members of that elected House that by their lack of confidence in themselves they are doing no one any service.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, your Lordships will know that we do not support the amendments that stand on the Marshalled List today, despite the arguments that have been made by people who, as I think they all said, fundamentally do not like the Bill.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, an amendment that can produce a joint letter from the National Secular Society and the Christian Institute clearly deserves careful consideration. When they take into account that the Electoral Commission also believes that there is good sense in this proposal, I hope that your Lordships will feel likewise. I hope that we will not have to exercise ourselves by going into the Lobbies. I hope that my noble and learned friend will be able to indicate at least a significant degree of sympathy with this and, if he cannot accept these precise words, that he will undertake to come back at Third Reading next week with something similar.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, we also strongly support the amendment. It is not the provision’s intention that we have problems with but its workability. It will add an enormous bureaucratic burden. When people campaign against the proposed path of HS2, flight paths around Heathrow or fracking and so on, that is not divided up by constituency. It is strange that a Government who are cutting red tape elsewhere, and who on Monday said that they could not possibly ask special advisers to list their meetings with lobbyists, seem to want this for really small organisations. Amendment 52, which limits the requirement to telephone calls and literature aimed at households, is immensely sensible. I hope that the Government will do one of two things: either accept the amendment or put off their new rules until after the next election.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Best, has made a powerful case. He made it very gently but forcefully. I was also struck by what the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, said. As one who held MPs’ surgeries for about 40 years and saw people come in who were often in considerable distress, I know that it is not just the feckless who get into financial trouble. Many decent people get into financial trouble. The ability to say that this money should go direct to the landlord could be of enormous help to someone who suddenly has a sick child and feels that they must spend the money on that child. If the money has gone to the landlord, the landlord is secure and the tenant is secure. That must surely be wholly desirable.

Those of us who have been constituency Members of Parliament know how difficult it is to persuade private landlords to consider tenants in this general category. We need an abundant supply of privately rented accommodation. Anything that may detract from that is to be regretted.

I admire my noble friend, because he is thoroughly the master of his brief and because his underlying aim, which is to create a more responsible society, is one to which we can, surely, all subscribe, but there are exceptions and times when it is right to give a choice.

Another point, which the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, made, struck a chord with me. There are many elderly people in receipt of benefit who get confused. I am not talking about people who suffer from dementia, but we all know—the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, knows from his constituency experience—that elderly people sometimes get confused. They think, very genuinely, that they have paid something when they have not. It would be a great blessing to give those people that choice.

I would urge my noble friend the Minister to give very careful thought to this. I hope that the House will not divide on it tonight, but I hope that he will be able to give some thought perhaps even to putting down an appropriate amendment at Third Reading.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, dinner beckons. Nevertheless, there are seven good reasons for accepting this amendment.

First, it is cost free. The facility to pay rent directly to landlords is there for certain beneficiaries, so it would simply be a case of using this for others.

Secondly, it helps to give financial responsibility and decision-making to claimants, as it would allow them to choose to have the rent paid in this way.

Thirdly, it is what the rest of us do with our mortgages or rent: it goes straight out of our bank accounts, normally the day after payday—in my case, usually the same day—so that we cannot get our hands on it in the mean time. The difference is, of course, that many of these claimants do not have bank accounts, or a joint bank account if they are a couple, and therefore do not have the ability to make such arrangements for direct payments. Furthermore, if they have a basic bank account, such accounts cannot go into the red, and so if there is not money to pay the rent, it simply will not be paid, even with a direct debit mandate, leading to the build-up of arrears.

Fourthly, this amendment is strongly supported, as has been said, by housing associations and by local authorities. Both know that arrears will build up more quickly without this amendment. For housing associations, the interest on borrowing will increase as their assured-rent income will decrease. To give the example of one housing association, 85 per cent of Riverside tenants choose to have their rent paid directly, as many of its tenants do not have bank accounts, and many more fear the bank charges if they go overdrawn. This is an important way for low-income households to manage their finances. If this existing facility is withdrawn, pilot studies show that, as has already been mentioned, rent arrears are likely to rise sharply, putting tenancies at risk. In addition, funders have indicated that they are likely to regard lending to housing associations as higher risk and thus to increase the cost of funding. In the long term, it will mean that social housing providers will simply be able to do less. Income streams to local authorities will similarly be threatened if direct payments, which exist now without any problems, are ended. CoSLA, the association for local authorities in Scotland, estimates that this will cost about £50 million a year in Scotland alone.

Fifthly, many vulnerable families will be at risk. To quote again from CoSLA:

“COSLA is deeply concerned that Housing Benefit paid direct to claimants without sufficient safeguards will result in an increase of rent arrears and evictions, sending households spiralling into debt and facing homelessness”.

We know the families for which the risk of not paying the rent directly will be the greatest: those with debts, where the pressure to pay these off—whether to the gasman or to the loan shark—will be pressing; those with a family member with a drink, drug or gambling habit, where temptation to use the rent money will be high; and those with immediate demands, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has said, for money to feed their children and yet who want to ensure that the roof over those children’s heads, albeit not today’s problem, is equally vital, so want to have that rent assured. While we know some vulnerable groups will have their rent paid directly, we can see no reason to wait until borderline cases get into problems, struggle and get into rent arrears, before we allow them to have the rent paid directly. Why risk that for no good reason?

Sixthly, it will make sure that we do not dissuade private landlords from coming into this sector.

Seventhly, the strongest argument: the noble Lord, Lord Best, who chairs the Local Government Association and has forgotten more about housing associations than most of us will ever learn, tells us it is the right thing to do. We concur.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I want to group Amendment 37, which stands in my name, with Amendment 34. The officials have been advised. The Minister has also had a little notification of that.

Amendment 37 would replace 14 days with five days. The Constitution Committee accepted 14 days as reasonable. However, would the country accept it? A 14-day limbo seems excessive, not least to the bankers and to what we used to call the gnomes of Zurich—now the genomes of the internet or something. As everyone else discusses whether an election will take place, it could be a long wet fortnight. As David Laws acknowledges in his most helpful book on the five days, there has to be early reassurance of the market. In his wise words:

“neither the British media nor the financial markets nor the public would tolerate a prolonged period of uncertainty”,

as a,

“failure to form a stable government could have a real impact on the UK bond market and on the UK interest rates, as well as on confidence in the pound”.

He well describes how:

“The British press and the British people are used to seamless and swift transfers of power”.

He admits that, anyway, more time would not guarantee a better coalition agreement.

All this, of course, is without thinking about the implications of Ministers from a defeated Government going off to negotiate for Britain in key EU, G20 or IMF meetings over that period of 14 days. In her evidence to the Constitution Committee, Professor Oliver said that she thought that it was against the public interest for there to be no effective government of the country, and even the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, Mr Mark Harper, admitted that,

“it would become clear pretty quickly that the government could not put together an alternative government”.

Similarly, David Laws—I am sorry to quote him again, but he is very helpful—testified that David Cameron himself wanted negotiations to be over in days, not weeks, and preferably before the markets got jumpy. Nick Clegg believed at the time that the deal could be done in two to three days.

Therefore, I have to ask why the coalition, which was put together in just five days, thinks it needed longer for that task. Was it too pressed in May 2010 to take sensible decisions? Some of us would say, of course, that the evidence of the coalition agreement supports the idea that it is right in that assumption. Perhaps the chaos caused by the raft of unco-ordinated constitutional changes, of which I believe the present Bill is just one, is evidence of a rather over-hurried deal. Perhaps coalitions anyway should be about domestic and economic policy, not about the country’s constitution, which is far too precious for late-night bargaining.

Certainly, while the price for the Lib-Lab pact was electoral reform—the Lib-Conservative pact; I am sorry, I am too old, although they did not get quite so much out of us, I have to say—it is clear from David Laws that the issue of fixed-term Parliaments was not an end in itself as a real democratic need but was, to use his words,

“to avoid a second election”.

So is it uncertainty about their relationship that leads to this Bill and its 14 days? The coalition expressly does not want to rule out the possibility of a House changing its mind within 14 days. “Changing its mind”, of course, is a euphemism. I shall quote the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, at Second Reading, as it is so good:

“As for introducing a 14-day cooling off period, the mind boggles ... imagine the cornucopia”—

a wonderful word—

“of inducements, together with the bullying, which a future Government might carry out during those 14 days. We might even get a few more Dukes in this House”.—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. 1030.]

My noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton, a former Chief Whip, said:

“Are we to have 14 days so that Government Ministers can offer jobs to rebels or inducements or threats”,

or is 14 days,

“simply designed as a mechanism for one partner in a coalition to try to persuade a different partner to enter a new coalition and form an entirely different kind of majority in the Commons without an election”.—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. 1035.]

An academic rather than a practitioner of the dark arts, my noble friend Lord Plant contemplated,

“a series of coalitions arising during a fixed-term Parliament, without a straightforward appeal to the electorate, that would be club politics of the worst possible kind”.—[Official Report, 1/3/11; col. 1033.]

Is that what the coalition favours: a sequence of groupings, anything to keep in power? Is it knowing that five days will not suffice next time round? Only a coalition with parties bent on staying in office could have dreamt up the notion of two weeks of haggling to cling to power. The Conservative and Liberal Democrats commenced and consummated their relationship in just five days. They seem very happy, so are they repenting at leisure or do they feel that they needed more time for that coalition agreement? Perhaps they are beginning to worry about the commitment to early legislation to recall an MP, as Mr Clegg is somewhat unpopular in Sheffield. Is it because the commitment to the binding resolution in the other place that an election would be held in May 2015 has already fallen apart, and that has made them realise that they need more time? Is it perhaps the commitment to PR for the House of Lords, given that they have yet to even get a yes for AV in the Commons, and that they are now wondering whether they did that right? Or is it that they wanted time to include in the coalition agreement, “We will cause chaos in the health service and totally upset the BMA, patients and the public by unnecessary reorganisation”? Instead, of course, the agreement says that the Liberal Democrat and Conservative ideas are stronger when combined, such as on the NHS. The agreement states:

“Conservative thinking on markets, choice and competition and add to it the Liberal Democrat belief in advancing democracy at a much more local level, and you have a united vision for the NHS”.

I am not sure that the good noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, has read that.

Those are just some comments on the present coalition agreement. My worry is the essence of the 14 days, because democracy is about more than just numbers; it is about being able to vote out a Government. This measure seeks to entrench one. For that reason, it should be avoided.

I have two questions for the Minister. Why, when this coalition was put together in five days, does he now think that it would take 14 days to repeat the exercise? How does he think that markets and our allies, or indeed our foes, would respond to 14 days of dithering, bargaining and negotiation?

[Lord Cormack]

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has made an interesting speech and has raised a number of fascinating questions. But there is a danger that we will have a bit of confusion because Clause 2 is concerned wholly and specifically with holding an “early parliamentary general election” during a fixed-term Parliament in the event of the Government of the day coming unstuck for some reason or other. Although the remarks about the time taken to form the present coalition are intensely interesting, this clause does not affect what happens after a general election when there could be—perish the thought—unlimited time.

I believe that this clause is wholly misplaced. It needs to be deleted and replaced with something far simpler, more specific and more precise. At a later stage in the Committee’s deliberations, I shall seek to move an amendment to that effect.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, this amendment would mean that an election to the other place could not take place on the same day as an election to this House. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place suggested that the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill should be discussed with the draft Bill on reforming the House of Lords so that the two fundamental constitutional issues could be considered alongside each other. Indeed, that somewhat wise committee noted:

“Elections to a reformed House of Lords may well prove a further complicating element”.

Let us pause for a moment to see what considerations and complications might arise. There are two assumptions. The first is that the elections to the other place and to your Lordships’ reformed House would take place on the same day. If that is the correct assumption, I assume that the elections to this House would also be for the same five-year fixed term—if that, rather than a term of four years, is accepted. One has to assume that the term would be shortened should an election be triggered in the other House. In the mean time, what should happen? Will Members of this House be able to resign, for example, to fight a seat in the Commons? Maybe they will be able to resign from this House, having been elected here, for any other reasons via—presumably—the equivalent of the Chiltern Hundreds. If so, what if the following by-elections to this House changed the composition of this House so that the Government in the Commons could no longer get their programme through this House but were unable to call an election in the other place because that is not allowed for in this Bill?

The second assumption is that elections to the two Houses would take place on different days. It is interesting then to ask the question: for how long would Members elected to this House sit and would that be for a fixed term, regardless of what elections were to take place in the other place? What will be the gap between the general elections in which people are elected to the two Houses? On the assumption that they are held on different days, halfway through a Commons parliamentary term your Lordships’ House could change hands so that there was stalemate, but with the upper House perhaps claiming the legitimacy of a fresh mandate and—if elected by proportional representation—a more representative mandate. If this House claimed a fresh mandate in light of current affairs, where would that leave the Commons—unable to challenge it or to refresh itself by virtue of a new election and mandate? Could the equivalent of a no-confidence vote in this House then trigger a response in the other House, to enable it to call an election?

It is worth recalling that our Select Committee on the Constitution noted that, in regard to the triggering of an early general election for the Commons, the Bill should contain a form of safety valve in case the Government lost,

“the confidence of the Commons or where a political or economic crisis … affected the country”.

However, either of those, should they happen, might be felt most quickly in your Lordships’ House—should an election here come swiftly after, or even during, such a crisis—and change its composition so that this House felt it more truly reflected the current views of voters. The new elected House might then almost make things ungovernable if it felt that it had to restrain the Commons from action that the electorate had demonstrated would displease it.

These are exactly the sort of questions that will in due course be debated with regard to the plans for this Chamber. However, it seems odd that we will entrench the date for the elections to one part of Parliament without any reference to elections to the other part. Perhaps, therefore, at the very least, the Minister will simply clarify whether the first tranche of the elections to this place is also envisaged for 7 May 2015, and the next tranche for May 2020. If not, what are the ideas about the harmony of the two Chambers, given the provisions of the Bill? I beg to move.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has done us a real favour in introducing her amendment. It is a mischievous one, as she knows, but she has brought before us a subject that may come again. Personally, I hope it does not. As one who believes strongly in the virtue and value of a non-elected second Chamber, I hope that this Chamber will not be abolished and replaced by another. The noble Baroness has indicated the sort of things that could happen if there were two elected Chambers. There is the challenge over which is the more legitimate, and the challenge as to whether you can possibly—even though you may wish to—retain the supremacy of the other place if a second Chamber here is elected. Many of us believe that you cannot. Many of us believe that it is far simpler, better and less ambiguous to have one mandate held by one House, rather than a mandate divided between two.

It will be interesting to see whether my noble and learned friend the Minister can give us some of the answers that the noble Baroness sought. He ought to reflect, as should others in government, on the wise words of Ernest Bevin, one of the greatest Foreign Secretaries that our country has had in the past century. Talking of some political problem, he said:

“If you open that Pandora’s box, you never know what Trojan horses will jump out”.

I urge the wisdom of those words on my noble and learned friend before he replies.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, 66 per cent of the House of Commons voting on an occasion when we may expect a turnout of well over 99 per cent is not, in my respectful submission, a very high threshold. The thresholds are different in kind, and my noble friend Lord Cormack knows that perfectly well.

In the recent Welsh referendum we had a turnout of 35 per cent, which was seen as somewhere between respectable and high. Not only do thresholds detract from the view that referendums are valuable, because they involve telling the electorate that we propose to ask for its view and then reserve the right to turn around and reject it after the event, but thresholds of this magnitude, which are mandatory in this way, do nothing for the cause of democracy.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I apologise to your Lordships for intervening at this stage when I was not here for Second Reading, not least because I missed the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, which I have had the pleasure of reading since then.

The reason why I was not here on St David’s Day when the Second Reading happened was that, thanks to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, I was at the New Zealand Parliament, which I had the great pleasure of visiting with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, although he made it home rather faster than I did. When I was there, I discussed the three-year terms that they have in New Zealand, and how business and elections could best be organised around that period. It is true that many people in New Zealand, politicians and civil servants, consider that four years would be a better period. I have to say that they do not even go to five years; it was not on their agenda at all. The interesting thing from the point of view of this debate is that, despite the fact that many would like to move to a four-year period, they have never dared to test that in a referendum with the electors, because from their sample polls and from listening they know that the move from three to four years would be rejected. That is a lesson for us to learn about extending a Parliament’s life. The Government should perhaps heed that.

There is a broader lesson with this amendment, and that is to note the incredible significance that the legislators in New Zealand attach to their electorate. They would not dare even to ask them to extend their term of office without a referendum. They will not do that until they think they can win it. So we should ask the people their view before we entrench anything new in our law. I would even like to put the option of three years as well as four years and five years in that referendum, but I would certainly favour at least going out to ask people for their opinion to find out what suits them rather than suits the politicians who will be elected in those elections.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, when I was first elected to the other place, I was a very staunch believer in parliamentary democracy, full stop, and did not like the idea of introducing the referendum into our system. But the fact is that we have done so, and on a number of constitutional issues. We had the referendum on what was then the Common Market, or European Union, in which I participated on a platform with friends and colleagues from the Labour Party, urging a yes vote, while I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was doing the opposite. Now of course I find myself in virtually total agreement on almost every subject of a constitutional nature with the noble Lord, and that is a very happy relationship. But it is a bit like the atom bomb or the internet; you may have strong views, but you cannot uninvent things—and you cannot uninvent the importation of the referendum into our constitutional system. And you should not treat it capriciously.

The noble Lord, Lord Marks, uttered his honeyed words. I have not been a Member of your Lordships' House for long, but I have heard the noble Lord’s felicitous utterances on a number of occasions and he is very good on honeyed words. But I could not help but think of Pickwick Papers and the case of Bardell, where there is “a weak case and an abused plaintiff's attorney.” It was a bit like that, with the capricious favouring of one referendum rather than another. By what turn of logic anybody could suggest that the creation of an elected senate does not involve the abolition of this House I do not know—unless it is a Liberal desire that the two Houses should sit separately or work alternate days. That is a fundamental constitutional proposal. I believe, along with the noble Lords, Lord Howarth and Lord Grocott, that the issue that we are discussing this evening is at least worthy of consideration for a referendum.

I hope that my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness will be able to explain what the coalition Government’s philosophy is on referenda. I prefer the word referenda to referendums, as I am sure the father of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, the High Master of St Paul’s, would have done. What is the Government’s philosophy on referenda, and what is the list of subjects that merits that constitutional accolade? It was reasonable to suppose that AV should be the subject of a referendum, although as I indicated in my intervention the only reason that we are having one on that is that it was not considered possible to get it through the House of Commons. Is the Government’s definition of a referendum that if you cannot get something through the Commons you have a go by going to the people? Is that the definition? If so, there is a certain cynical logic in it and I am sure we would like to hear that. However, if the other definition is that we will have a referendum only on an issue of supreme constitutional importance, is not the alteration of our electoral system to have fixed-term Parliaments, to which I am not intrinsically opposed, a very fundamental constitutional change? As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, indicated, it will mean that the people have less frequent chances of voting. If that is to be the case, should they not be given the opportunity of saying whether that is what they want?