House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I can quote Hansard in a different sense, but that is not the important point for today’s discussion. As my noble friend Lord Steel has pointed out, everybody in your Lordships’ House, including some of the most important participants in those debates, anticipated that this arrangement would last for a maximum of a couple of years—that is all.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Does the noble Lord not accept that we have had the Second Reading of this Bill already? He is making a Second Reading speech. The best way that the House could be assisted now would be for my noble friend Lord Trefgarne to desist his mischief, withdraw his amendment to the Motion and get on with the amendments to the Bill.

[Lord Tyler]

I was actually speaking to the amendment to the Motion but I was diverted by my friend down the other end. The amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, has promoted is upside down. The case for removing these absurdities is strengthened by the Burns committee report rather than the reverse. That is simply my point and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for bringing me back to it.

House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, speaks with huge authority, of course. I am only trying to point out that the team led by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, in refusing to take the opportunity to put forward any sort of legislative proposal, has made the case that much weaker—not so much with the present Prime Minister but with future Prime Ministers. The noble Lord may not agree with me but, Members of the House having reiterated this point all day, I think that we should take it very seriously.

Secondly, the absence of any legislation prevents the normal constitutional process taking place. This has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, himself and by the noble Lord, Lord Elder, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and the noble Lords, Lord MacGregor, Lord Birt, Lord Jopling and Lord Judd. We were forewarned in the debate last year by the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane—and he should know—that,

“for some heavy duty things—perhaps a cap on appointments—legislation would be necessary”.—[Official Report, 5/12/16; col. 549.]

Not only will MPs have no formal say in a major constitutional change but their constituents will have no opportunity to lobby them to express their views. It is extraordinary that in a debate that has lasted for most of the day so few Members have referred to the views of the public. At one point, one noble Lord referred to “the people who send us here”. No people send us here, but the people have a considerable interest in the composition of the legislature. I think that only the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Hunt, referred to this as an issue that we should address.

I find it ironic that those who have previously argued so vociferously for the primacy of the Commons should now acquiesce in a scheme which deliberately excludes its Members from any effective say in the composition of this House of Parliament. Here, I am with the noble Lords, Lord Sherbourne and Lord True. It is very interesting that we got to this stage of the debate before this point was raised from the Conservative Back Benches.

This would be an entirely internal—some would say incestuous—process, decided upon by the institution itself and implemented by it without all the usual checks and balances of the United Kingdom’s constitutional conventions. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. I think that the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Sherbourne, are right to draw attention to this. To our fellow citizens this will look like—

[Lord Cormack]

The question is: does the noble Lord agree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby?

[Lord Tyler]

Absolutely. He saw my speech when I drafted it and I saw his, and I am in absolute agreement. I will come to the point that I think the noble Lord wishes me to address in a moment.

Trade Union Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I was very glad to add my name to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, because it seeks to translate into the Bill the substance of that admirable report that we debated in some detail a week ago. I said then that I had had my misgivings about whether it was right to establish a Select Committee with a very strict timetable; I also said that my initial reaction had been wrong, because the committee did an exceptionally diligent and thorough job and produced a very coherent and convincing report.

I have made plain all along my misgivings about these two clauses because of what I believed was their inherent—though, I am glad to accept, unintended—unfairness. I was gently chided last week by a colleague for wearing a red tie; I deliberately wear a blue one today because I believe that in what I say I am being entirely true to one-nation Conservatism and not in any way reneging on party commitments. I say to my noble friends on this side of the House, as I have before, that if our party and its philosophy stand for anything it is for fairness and choice. I believe that one should do to others as one would wish to be done by and I do not wish to be party to a move that would seriously disadvantage one of the great parties of this country, particularly at a time when it is going through its own special problems, which I hope will soon be over. But what the noble Lord, Lord Burns, is suggesting is fair and consistent with the recommendations of his report. There were two alternatives in paragraph 142 and, effectively, we are advancing paragraph 142(a), which was the majority choice of the committee. Clearly, paragraph 142(b), which advocates a long transitional period, is also worthy of consideration.

This is a sensible, modest proposal that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, is advancing and it deserves support in all parts of the House. It in no way invalidates the manifesto commitments of my party, which were somewhat loosely worded, as the noble Lord, Lord Burns, has made plain, and I do not think it damages in any way what the Government are seeking to do. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, has made it plain that he believes, as I do, that opt-in is the better solution. But we do not have to advance on that at such a pace that we seriously disadvantage one of the great parties of the realm and unbalance our democracy in the process. I very much hope that this modest amendment can be accepted by my noble friend the Minister without a Division but if a Division is called, my name is on the amendment and my vote will be with my name.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I am one of the signatories to this amendment and I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. The amendment incorporates important improvements, unanimously agreed by the Select Committee, to ensure that Clause 10 will make certain not only that the political funds of the unions are dealt with more realistically and less expensively bureaucratically but that they are fairer, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said. I hope very much that the Minister has been listening to what has been said because she could be in quite a small minority, judging from our debate on this last week, if she seeks to resist these improvements.

The Select Committee said in paragraph 134:

“It is clear to us that clause 10 will have an impact on party funding and that it is very far from commanding the consensus which we have said is desirable in such situations”.

This was unanimously agreed by the Select Committee. Of the 20 or so Peers who took part in that debate last Wednesday, almost every one endorsed in terms that recommendation. Indeed, the Minister herself departed from the original ministerial pretence that there was nothing to do with party funding in this clause.

There is widespread acceptance that the Government should be assisted in their determination to deliver their whole 2015 manifesto in this respect. Perhaps I should remind colleagues that there were two parts to this commitment. The first was that,

“we will legislate to ensure trade unions use a transparent opt-in process for subscriptions to political parties”,

and the second was:

“We will continue to seek agreement on a comprehensive package of party funding reform”—

two parts, but they stick firmly together. The recommendation of the Select Committee on Clause 10 has to be taken in that wider context. Indeed, it was agreed unanimously by the Select Committee, because we were broadly supportive on all sides, as we were last week, and this was incorporated into paragraph 138 of our report:

“Whether or not clause 10 is enacted, in whatever form, the political parties should live up to their manifesto commitments and make a renewed and urgent effort to seek a comprehensive agreement on party funding reform. We urge the Government to take a decisive lead and convene talks itself, rather than waiting for them to emerge”.

That was clearly the view right across the House in our debate last Wednesday and I hope that any colleagues who were not there have now read Hansard because it is critical to this discussion as well.

I cannot emphasise enough that whether or not Clause 10 is improved by this amendment, or indeed at further stages of the Bill, that is not the end of the matter. Unless and until the Government stop sitting on the fence and blaming the party leaders for taking no initiative on this issue, clearly these modest changes are still in contention. The logic of the whole report leads to the inescapable conclusion that the legislative proposals in Clause 10 should not proceed, even if improved, if that latter manifesto promise is not being actively pursued at the same time. In other words, as so many Members of your Lordships’ House have repeatedly urged, at several stages of the Bill, unilateral legislation in this area is simply not acceptable—a point just made so eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.

Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, briefly, I support what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has said. He made some extremely telling points, which should certainly be taken into account, but I want to confine my own brief remarks to another point. The elected House has spoken. It has spoken not just once but twice. It has not whispered or murmured but spoken very clearly, with an emphatic majority. At this late stage in the Bill, it is not for us to go into what has so often been called piecemeal constitutional change. It is for us to accept the limitations on our role and power: to concede, above all things, on the franchise to the elected House; to accept that we perfectly properly used the right that this House has to ask Members in the other place to think again. They thought, and they spoke emphatically. We now need to listen.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I want to speak briefly—

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Monday 14th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, that is not absolutely true. First, it has not specifically rejected the amendment proposed by your Lordships’ House. Secondly, as I thought I had just explained, the issue of an amendment in lieu means that it is no longer necessary. If the Government had decided on such an amendment to express their apparent view that a general review is required, and that it should not be in this one Bill, financial privilege would not have been triggered in any way. That is the process that should have been undertaken.

The issue before your Lordships’ House today is no longer simply whether the electorate for the EU referendum should or should not be expanded, important though that is. I have given a lot of time and effort to trying to make sure that this referendum is one that we can be proud of because it has the same electorate as the one that was so successful in Scotland on a similar issue of the future of that generation. However, this matter has now been deliberately escalated by Ministers into an insidious attempt to undermine the constitutional role and responsibilities of your Lordships’ House. We must stand firm, pass Amendment A1 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and reject this attack.

[Lord Cormack]

We have heard a frankly terrible speech from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. How does he have the brass nerve to lecture your Lordships’ House, coming, as he does, from the most grossly overrepresented party, which, moreover, allegedly believes in proportions and proportional representation and most of whose members, including the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, would, like Samson, like to bring this Chamber down about their ears? Indeed, I heard a noble Lord from those Benches say only recently, “It does not matter what we do so long as we destroy the House of Lords and replace it with an elected House”. However, those of us who do not believe in an elected second Chamber and believe passionately in the supremacy of the elected Chamber at the other end of the corridor, believe that what we are now embarking on is an extremely dangerous course of action. If we accept the supremacy of the elected Chamber and accept that your Lordships’ House, of course, has the right to invite the elected Chamber to think again, but, if the elected Chamber, by a majority far in excess of that enjoyed by the Conservative Government, says no, who are we to persist, particularly in a matter concerning the franchise?

Many noble Lords on the Labour Benches do believe in this House and believe that an unelected and appointed House, with its accumulation of experience and expertise, adds value to the constitution without challenging the unambiguous elected authority of the other place. I appeal to those Members on the Labour Benches, many of whom I am privileged to count as personal friends, not to play this game and not to go along with the destructionists on the Liberal Democrat Benches, most of whom do not believe in this place and would use almost any spurious and specious reason and excuse to damage it.

We have exercised our right and a number of my Conservative colleagues voted for votes at 16. I did not, but a number of them did. I respected their integrity but now the time has come to say, “You haven’t decided to think again. We must move on”. I urge all your Lordships to recognise that we have reached the limit. We should not seek once more to overturn the mandate of an elected House with a majority of 50. As I said earlier, that is far larger than the 12 that the Government nominally enjoy.

Noble Lords may have a brief moment of euphoria if the Government are defeated tonight, but it will be followed by the danger of a real constitutional crisis arising between our two Chambers that could do enormous damage to the standing of Parliament in general, and of this House in particular.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

Yes, indeed: she thought that was inconsistent, and I agreed with her; of course it was. I do not think that one needs to prolong this argument. We should be getting the Bill on to the statute book as soon as possible. I hope that we will have a referendum in which I will be able to campaign for membership of the European Union by the middle of next year. This thing is dragging on far too long. We should look separately at the question of the franchise and the question of maturity and decide whether we have got it right.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I am a signatory to Amendment 3, in common with not only the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely, but Members on the Conservative Benches and Cross-Benchers. It is genuinely across the House that we now feel that this moment has arrived. Having deployed the argument for this extension of the franchise so often in the past, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, so kindly said, I can be very brief. I certainly do not need to repeat the noble Baroness’s excellent exposition of the advice we have now had from the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators about the practicalities.

In Committee, I thought that the most persuasive contribution of many was from the Conservative Benches, from the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, who said:

“So the question I am struggling with is: how can it be right to allow 16 and 17 year-olds to vote in a referendum on Scotland but not in a referendum on Europe? There has to be some sort of consistency”.

We are back there again, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has so admirably emphasised. The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, went on to rubbish the official explanation that somehow the extension of the franchise in the Scottish independence referendum did not originate with Conservative Ministers. He said,

“although the coalition Government and the Prime Minister did not specifically approve votes for 16 year-olds, they did acquiesce in votes for 16 year-olds”.—[Official Report, 28/10/15; cols.1227-8.]

He and others, notably now an increasing number of Conservative MPs, have warned that we simply cannot pretend that Scottish young people are somehow more mature, well-informed, responsible or capable of exercising common sense than their English, Welsh and Northern Irish counterparts. Several colleagues from this side of the House have challenged anybody from the other side to produce that argument, without any success.

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, referred to the United Kingdom. He is right: in the long term, we have to address the consistency of the franchise, the bedrock of our representative democracy across the United Kingdom, but we have a particular issue at the moment. We have a Bill. We have a referendum coming. It is on that issue that we need specific consistency. That was very much the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, and he had no problem whatever with my quoting his contribution in Committee. As an avid fan of both versions of his “House of Cards”, I am very disappointed that he is not able to be here today. I do not know whether I am being as cynical or conspiratorial as some of the characters in those great productions, but I wonder whether there has been some encouragement for him not to be here today. I wonder whether the Government Whips may have encouraged him to stay away, reassuring him that nothing controversial was to be discussed or decided.

One of the key lessons of the Scottish referendum was that the 16 and 17 year-old age group registered—well over 100,000 of them—and voted in larger numbers than those aged 18 to 24. Why? It is very interesting. The reason why that has been identified is that the younger cohort were often still at school and in their local, family environment, where they had much more encouragement to take the issues seriously. When they got away from home to their first job or further or higher education, they lost touch with some of the issues and concerns that might otherwise been part of their consideration.

There is hard evidence—looked at very carefully by Bite the Ballot and others—that there is a good case for a direct link between citizenship courses and electoral registration. Indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said, there has been a successful pilot in Northern Ireland in that regard.

Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2015

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

Yes, but I am not in charge of Government business. The other House has the opportunity to accept or reject. As the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, perfectly rightly pointed out, so do we. All I am doing is saying that we should be particularly careful when exercising judgment on an issue that pertains wholly and entirely to the elected House. We need to bear that always in mind. I will give way to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, as has been made clear by a number of Members of your Lordships’ House this afternoon, the immediate concerns about the electorate are nothing to do with the other place. This is about the Scottish Parliament, the London Assembly, the Welsh Assembly—the other bodies that will be elected in 2016. They have not been consulted; they have not even been asked their views on this extremely important issue. The noble Lord is precisely wrong.

[Lord Cormack]

No, I am not precisely wrong at all. We are dealing with the electoral register for the United Kingdom as a whole, a country in which I believe. I have to say again, with great charity—difficult as it is to summon it up on occasions—that the party that prevented the boundary changes going through, in a fit of petulance and pique, has no right to talk to us on this.

House of Lords: Membership

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords—

Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, the noble Baroness’s last remark has really irritated me because I have worked hard to prevent the views of the House being treated as not significant simply because, at the moment, we are unelected. I have worked hard to achieve some election. Indeed, if there had been slightly different circumstances in 2012, the previous Government’s Bill would have been sorting out this issue by now.

In the mean time, I am extremely grateful to colleagues on all sides of the House for the serious way in which they have approached this issue. I am particularly grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, because he went to the heart of the matter. I can reassure him that in Scotland this issue was treated seriously; the debate was very thoughtful, and when the Scottish Parliament came back after the referendum they recognised that young people had taken the issue seriously. Given his experience, I hope he will agree that it is a fact of life that if you give people responsibility they will become more responsible. Anyone in your Lordships’ House who thinks that suddenly we are going to be swamped with huge numbers of irresponsible, immature 16 and 17 year-olds who will swing elections should worry about older people. I am 73 and I do not pretend that I am always entirely logical on all issues.

[Lord Cormack]

The noble Lord believes very strongly in elections—he said that again a few moments ago. If this Bill had followed the normal course and had come to us from another place, and the other place had not inserted an amendment on votes for 16 year-olds, would he think it appropriate to do so?

[Lord Tyler]

I would. As the noble Lord constantly reminds us, we have a particular responsibility to think carefully about the way in which our constitution should operate. I entirely agree with what he said during his speech that what happened in Scotland is a precedent that is difficult to resist. I agree with him; I think that is absolutely true.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, that it is precisely because we are in a position with this Bill to encourage the other place to think about it that the best way to do that is to pass the amendment. That is what Parliament is all about, a conversation between the two Houses.

I do not accept that the Bill is an inappropriate vehicle for thinking hard about the foundation stone of our democracy. As the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, has said on many occasions throughout the Bill, this is an exciting moment in which to revive local democracy. What better way to do that than to explain to young people that the future of their local communities is at the centre of this proposal? As I said earlier, the Bill specifically refers to the governance of local authorities—and therefore this would be appropriate.

We have had an interesting debate but, at the end of it, no Member of your Lordships’ House has sought to answer the two questions that I posed in moving the amendment. I believe that the young people of England and Wales are just as mature, responsible, well informed and ready to take on some of the responsibilities of adult citizenship as the young people of Scotland. It has been proved in Scotland and all parties in Scotland have now accepted that it has been proved. It is time for us to catch up with them and demonstrate to the young people of England and Wales that we have confidence in them, too. Therefore I wish to test the opinion of the House.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I am very sympathetic indeed to Amendments 1 and 2 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for the very specific reason that I have followed the progress of the Bill throughout its stages in both Houses and I can confirm to your Lordships that a whole number of implications which have arisen in this House were not addressed there—for one very simple reason: all the votes were on a free vote. I am very enthusiastic about free voting in both Houses, but of course when there is a free vote there is not the same guidance from the parties about the full implications of the measures in front of the House—whether it is this House or that House.

I can confirm absolutely the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Hughes of Woodside and Lord Howarth, that this issue of what could easily happen—in the terms that have been so forensically analysed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours—in the Standards Committee, simply were not addressed in the debate in the other place. I suggest to my noble friend Lord Forsyth that if the recall mechanism was in place, for example, I do not believe that party leaders would feel that it was appropriate to appear to prejudge the outcome of an inquiry by removing the party Whip. I think that they would be inclined to leave it to the commissioner, the committee and then to the recall process—and eventually, of course, to the electorate, as is the intention behind the Bill.

On those grounds, I hope that my noble friends on the Front Bench will be prepared to think very carefully about how we must give the House of Commons another opportunity to think through the implications of this part of the Bill.

[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.

Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedules 4 and 5 and Transfer of Functions to the Scottish Ministers etc.) Order 2015

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Thursday 26th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend will be astonished to hear that I agree with him on one of the main points that he has been making. However, it is about time that somebody from another part of the United Kingdom commented on my noble friend’s very proper regard for the consequences that he has identified for other parts. I am a fellow Celt, but I cannot pretend to be speaking on behalf of Scotland. He is of course correct that this is not something that can simply be left across the border. We would not be speaking about it in your Lordships’ House if it did not have wider implications.

I want to return—this is why I felt the need to speak—to the Constitution Committee’s report, particularly to the contribution of the chairman, my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton. The critical sentence in the report is the warning about this potentially piecemeal and incremental approach to changing the voting age. What the committee should have gone on to do—this is the missing sentence, if I may humbly submit this to members of the committee and its chairman—was say that the Government should have picked up my Private Member’s Bill, the Voting Age (Comprehensive Reduction) Bill of the previous Session, which received a Second Reading in your Lordships’ House with encouragement from Members on all sides.

I thought that the Minister very neatly put on one side the implications of this order for other parts of the UK, as I will come back to in a moment. Obviously, it is unacceptable in the UK that the critical foundation stone of our representative democracy—the franchise—should be quite different in different parts of our United Kingdom. If Scotland had decided to separate from the other nations of this country, this could have been a discrete issue for the Scottish Parliament, but it is not, they did not and therefore it is of relevance to us all. As my noble friend has indicated very effectively, there has already been a very practical demonstration of the maturity of young people in the Scottish referendum campaign. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Cormack is here because it was he who gave a practical example during the previous debate of the way in which his granddaughter took a very active and well informed part in the debates.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I apologise for intervening—I missed the first part of this debate—but I must make it plain that, although I have the highest regard for my granddaughter’s intelligence, I do not believe in votes at 16, for all the reasons that my noble friend Lord Forsyth cogently made in one of the best speeches I have heard in this House for a very long time.

[Lord Tyler]

I also enjoy my noble friend’s speeches, whether or not I agree with them, because he takes us back to Wolf Hall and other Tudor examples of the behaviour of Governments. In this case, we can look at more recent history. It is not true, as was implied by the Constitution Committee and my noble friends, that this matter suddenly appeared on the political agenda; that is simply not true.

I shall take just one example. I am amazed that no one else in your Lordships’ House seems to have read the excellent Youth Select Committee report from last autumn, published soon after the example that we were given in Scotland, which was very properly given some extra credence by Mr Speaker in the other place. In that report, the very cogent argument for reducing the age of the franchise to 16 is set out in great detail, answering a lot of the points that have already been made in your Lordships’ House. Also, as my noble friend Lord Purvis said, at the end of their secondary school experience with citizenship, in the parental circumstances that they are likely still to be in, young people are much more engaged in the issues that affect them than they are when they go off to work or higher education at 17 or 18. That is why, interestingly, the turnout in Scotland was better among the 16 and 17 year-olds than it was among the 18 to 24 year-olds. Not only that, and I do not know whether everyone in your Lordships’ House will agree with this, but they also voted by a majority to remain in the United Kingdom, while middle-aged men—I emphasise “men”—voted by a majority to separate. It was young people who saw with maturity the advantages of remaining in the United Kingdom.

Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, we have plenty of time. When two noble Lords stand up, perhaps one of them could be courteous to the other and decide to give way.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

Would my noble friend indicate to the Committee where in the Bill, let alone in the amendments before the Committee, the circumstances to which he refers would apply? Where could it possibly be relevant? There is no possibility in which this Bill could in any way call that MEP to account with a recall petition. It just is not there. I hope that my noble friend, who is assiduous in reading Bills of this sort, will look very carefully at it because he is chasing a will-o’-the-wisp.

[Lord Cormack]

I do not think so, with great respect to my noble friend, because I talked about the Bill—as did my noble friend opposite—as a slippery slope; and it is. While there may not be anything in this particular Bill, it creates a precedent that is inhibiting to the freedom of a Member of Parliament. An MP, unless he commits an offence that is so heinous that he is out—which happens from time to time, sadly, as we know from recent years—should be answerable to one group, and one group alone, which is those in the whole of his constituency voting at the next general election. That is a fundamental principle of our British constitution and that principle is partially eroded by this Bill. Although I do not intend to play a great part in this, I deeply regret it and it is an issue that a future Parliament should look at again.

Wales Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, in speaking to the amendments in my name in this group—Amendments 3 and 19—I can be relatively brief, since I proposed similar improvements to the Bill in Committee, as those who participated then will recall. The principle of including 16 and 17 year-old fellow citizens in the franchise is now an accepted fact. All parties in this Parliament have endorsed this change. Contrary to the doom mongers’ forecasts, a very high proportion of this age group registered to vote in the Scottish independence referendum—nearly 110,000, which is a remarkable figure. Incidentally, I received the Answer to a Question today indicating that nearly 500,000 young voters in the age group 16 to 18 are currently registering under the new system, so this is a success story under IER.

On 18 September, a very large percentage of those—thousands of them—voted in the actual referendum. In the words of the Intergenerational Foundation newsletter,

“16 to 24 year-olds actually favoured staying in the union by a small margin (35% to 33%) ... the idea that the vision of an independent Scotland would appeal to an iconoclastic streak among the youngest members of the electorate appears to have been misplaced”.

That is putting it mildly. Curiously, it seems that middle-aged men, not women, were the most influenced by the fantastical claims of the separatists. Therefore, if we were to exclude the less mature, the less well informed and the less rational, we might wonder just which cohort we should be excluding from the franchise. It is not the most young; it is others.

There was another testimony from the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell of Coatdyke:

“Does the Minister agree that the quality of debate among 16 and 17 year-olds during the referendum debate was astonishing? I admit I was wrong; I was one of the people who thought that it was wrong for the franchise to reduce the voting age to 16. I was comprehensively proved wrong. I heard some of the best debates I have ever heard in a lifetime in politics from 16 and 17 year-olds”.—[Official Report, 16/10/14; col. 295.]

My noble friend Lord Cormack, whom I am pleased to see in his place, made a similar confession on 29 October:

“My eldest grand-daughter voted at the age of 16. I do not necessarily agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, on that, but I know that my grand-daughter and all her classmates took this matter exceptionally seriously”.—[Official Report, 29/10/14; col. 1261.]

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Of course they did, and I will say something about that if I have an opportunity later. However, I did not, do not, and do not think I ever will, agree with extending the franchise to 16 year-olds universally.

[Lord Tyler]

My noble friend is the personification of constitutional rectitude, so I will not be surprised if he finds my argument absolutely conclusive, that having extended the franchise to this particular group in one part of our United Kingdom, we should look at the relevance of that to other parts. That brings us to the heart of the matter: it is surely unthinkable that this hugely successful precedent could or should be simply overturned. I ask my noble friend to think about this: if my brother, long-since resident in Wales, had a grand- daughter aged 16, and there was a similar referendum vote there, which Member of your Lordships’ House—including my noble friend—would deny her the franchise? Which noble Lords would dare to suggest that Welsh young people are less mature, less well informed or less rational than their Scottish counterparts?

Anyone who still doubts that we have moved on—that the dam has broken—should read the excellent Youth Select Committee report, published last week, entitled, Lowering the Voting Age to 16. With remorseless logic, the committee examined all the familiar arguments and then arrived at this clear conclusion:

“We recommend that the Government introduce legislation to set the age at which people become eligible to vote in all elections at 16”.

As the Select Committee makes abundantly clear, we are no longer discussing theories. Any of my Conservative friends who retain misgivings must now accept the facts: the time to resist on principle has passed. The precedent is unanswerable.

My two amendments deliberately distinguish between elections to the Welsh Assembly, on the one hand, and any future significant referendum in Wales on the other. The latter, of course, is even more relevant after the Scottish experience than the former.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

Does my noble friend not accept that, if there is to be a comprehensive exercise involving a royal commission, a convention or whatever, it will take quite a long time? I think that he and I will both wish to make representations to it, and on past form the whole process could take several years. Would my noble friend be kind enough to address the question that I put specifically to him and to others in the House: if there is to be any sort of referendum, in the terms of the Bill, within that period, is he prepared to deny to my notional great-niece in Wales what his granddaughter experienced, enjoyed and took such good advantage of in Scotland? During the period before the comprehensive exercise is complete, is a 16 year-old in Wales to be denied what has been permitted to 16 and 17 year-olds in Scotland?

[Lord Cormack]

I do not favour votes at 16, so I would be hypocritical in the extreme if I said, “Yes, of course”, to the idea. I think that we made a mistake in Scotland, and the whole thing needs looking at very carefully. If, as a result of that careful deliberation, the consensus solution—as my noble friend Lord Crickhowell puts it—is votes at 16, so be it. But I do not wish to move further in that direction at the moment. I do not think that is a necessary part of this Bill; that is a further answer to my noble friend Lord Wigley. I therefore hope that the Government will resist these amendments, however persuasively they have been put by people for whom I have real regard and affection.

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

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I regret the position that we seem to have reached now on constituency limits. Your Lordships’ House may recall that I proposed a very simple amendment on this issue in Committee and on Report. I suggested then that only election materials directed at electors or households in particular constituencies, or telephone calls to electors in those constituencies, should count under the specific constituency limit. That was very simple.

The Government argued that that approach was too simple and excluded too much activity, particularly the potential for handing out leaflets in a town square. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has been diligent in attempting to deal with that problem, but I think that in the process we have been sent round in a circle. Sending information to a household is an easy test, because it is easy to know where a household is and therefore in which constituency its occupants are likely to vote. However, handing out information in a public place is different, as has been indicated, because people move around and could be from all sorts of different constituencies.

In the amendment in the name of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, we are faced with a further test: can it reasonably be inferred that the third party selected the relevant electors or households, or both, or otherwise distributed the material wholly or substantially to contact electors in the particular constituency or constituencies and not a wider section of the public? In other words, did the organisation, in doing what it was doing, mean to do it? That is quite a difficult question for anyone to answer, let alone the Electoral Commission. I am still not convinced by that and I am particularly not convinced about it in relation to election materials that are sent to households. It is perfectly clear that such materials would be constituency campaigning, and no extra test should need to be applied for such campaigning to count under a constituency limit. So this is a muddle.

The Bill as it stands says that,

“the effects of controlled expenditure are wholly or substantially confined to any particular constituencies or constituency if they have no significant effects in any other constituency or constituencies”.

I had hoped that the issue of so-called “significant effects” could be done away with—it is extremely difficult to adjudicate on that—but neither the amendment nor the Government’s position appears to do so. The amendment adds the additional test I referred to just now, and I certainly do not think that it helps in terms of clarity and transparency.

I want to put on record again my continuing concern that in raising the threshold for registration, which was welcome on a national basis, we have got ourselves into a further muddle on the application of constituency limits. This is a classic case of unintended consequences resulting from a late-stage concession.

Mr Andrew Lansley, the Leader of the Commons, put this very clearly in the other place just last week:

“Campaigners may now spend the entire constituency limit of £9,750 at any time during the regulated period, or just in the last few weeks before the election if they so wish. That makes it less restrictive and easier to comply with”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/1/14; col. 352.]

What he did not acknowledge is that campaigners who are spending entirely in just one or two English constituencies could still spend up to just below that limit—£9,749.99—in each of the two constituencies and not even register because the threshold is £20,000.

A trade union, a maverick millionaire with an anti-European bee in his bonnet or, even, another group wanting to influence the outcome in a marginal constituency could spend serious money without anybody knowing until it was too late. So much for transparency and accountability. Under the radar, such intervention could take place without either the amount spent or who paid for it being disclosed. That remains a mistake, an unfortunate loophole weakening these measures in the Bill.

At Third Reading, I set out a simple way in which to improve the position so that those campaigning in one or two constituencies would have to register at £5,000 or, if that was thought to be too low, at least at a lower figure than the £9,750 spending limit. That would have made for the continuum that I described in that debate, where registration occurs at point X and the limit on spending occurs at point Y. The Electoral Commission, on whose advice we have to rely in matters of this sort, specifically advised that X and Y should not be in the same place, and I very much regret that the Ministers in both Houses have not been able to address that point.

These issues can really now only be dealt with in guidance from the Electoral Commission, and I wish it luck with that. As my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness said earlier, we look forward to some very substantial round-table discussions, and I hope I may be able to play a small part in them because I think this is an extremely important issue.

The introduction of a constituency limit on non-party expenditure is an extremely important principle, and really the most important measure in Part 2. I am sure Members of the other place, when they are faced with very considerable sums of money being invested in trying to unseat them, will agree with that. I welcome it for the fact that it is here in the Bill, even though I think there were two improvements that could still have been made to it. I believe those issues will now be central to the post-legislative review of the Bill after the 2015 election. I look forward to that review.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, this is a case of confusion worse confounded, so I am very much in sympathy with the points made by my noble friend Lord Tyler in that respect. I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness. He has been exemplary in the way that he has sought to respond and consult, but he has been in a bit of a straitjacket for two reasons.

First, as has been said so often during the course of this Bill, if ever a Bill needed pre-legislative scrutiny it was this one, but it did not get it. That decision was taken probably at a pay grade above that of my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, but it was a mistaken decision.

The other problem that we face, and here I make a plea to the Minister, is that we passed these amendments in this House last week and within 24 hours they were reversed in another place. That is no way to treat your Lordships’ House. There should have been wider consultation and discussion. Clearly, my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness had fruitful, although not totally successful, discussions with the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. For that we should all be grateful, because the noble and right reverend Lord did so much with his commission and in other ways to try to improve this Bill. However, those discussions, however well meant and however protracted, were not enough. There should have been a proper opportunity for real discussion before we had to face the answer from the other end of the corridor. This is no way to treat your Lordships’ House.

As far as this particular series of amendments is concerned, we now have to rely on those round-table discussions. I am glad that the Minister felt that that was a useful suggestion and am grateful to him for acting on it and discussing it with the Electoral Commission already. I hope that those discussions will take place and that they will take place soon, but that they will not be rushed, because this is an extremely complex and difficult situation.

I know very well why the Minister said what he said this afternoon, and I also understand the argument elegantly put by my noble friend Lord Tyler. This is complex. All of us who have stood for election to the other place, or indeed for election to local councils, know that the distribution of leaflets is an inexact science. When you are doing it outside a shopping centre or a railway station or other places where people congregate, you have no idea to whom you are giving the leaflets and which constituency they come from. You have a rough idea that most of them may come from your own constituency, but many of them will not.

Let us have these discussions. Let us hope that they are fruitful. Let us hope that they can build upon the imperfect base that this Bill provides for them. Therefore, let us move on this afternoon.

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

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

I suppose that the answer to that question, which is a perfectly reasonable one for the noble Lord, Lord Martin, to ask, is that some would perhaps be eligible but others would not. We know from what we have debated in this Bill that not every such body can become a registered charity; it depends on what the aims are. It is possible that some could, but certainly not all of them.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, in respect of the comments made a few moments ago by my noble friend Lord Cormack about the Electoral Commission, perhaps I should put on the record that I sit on an informal cross-party advisory group for the Electoral Commission. It is not a pecuniary interest, but it means that I take very seriously its advice.

As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, Amendment 11 builds on my own amendment on Report last week, and on Amendment 170A in Committee, and I welcome the fact that it is still here for our discussion. However, I believe that too much building has taken place, and I regret to say that I think that the lawyers have been too clever by half. The purpose of my amendment was to simplify drastically the operation of the constituency limit. I wanted to do away with any need for anyone to work out what did or did not have a significant effect on whom. That was the previous test, which I thought was extremely ineffective and very difficult for small organisations to address without great bureaucracy.

In my estimation, if election material that can reasonably be regarded as seeking to promote or procure the electoral success of a party or candidate has been sent directly to an elector in a constituency, it should be counted under the relevant constituency limit. That seems to be a very simple test. Likewise, if unsolicited telephone calls are made to ascertain or influence voting intentions, it is easy to know where the people whom you are calling live and to allocate those costs to a constituency limit. The amendment on Report was about simplicity.

However, my noble and learned friend the Minister made a compelling point on Report last week. He said that materials could be distributed within a constituency other than by delivering them directly to electors’ homes—they could be handed out in town centres, for example. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, has rightly tried to meet that point in proposed new sub-paragraph (1) of his amendment, but the complication of considering whether materials handed out in a town centre are trying to influence a constituency result has led him and his advisers to complicate the amendment with proposed new sub-paragraphs (2) and (3) of the amended schedule. Therein lies a problem.

The cumulative effect is to ask those campaigners—many of them small operations, as we have been constantly reminded—to consider their spending against not one test, as I advocated last week, but three. First, there is my test, which I have already given: are the phone calls and election material directed at a particular elector or household? That is easy. Then we have in this amendment, secondly: does the material have a significant effect just in the constituency to which it was sent? Who can tell? When can they tell? Perhaps they can tell only after polling day. Therein lies another problem. Then there is the third qualification: can it reasonably be inferred that the third parties selected the electors in order to contact electors in that constituency,

“and not a wider section of the public”?

Who will adjudicate on that and when?

I do not know how one can be sure of either of the latter tests, either in terms of the Electoral Commission and its very proper responsibilities, to which my noble friend Lord Cormack has just referred, or of the organisations that have been in touch with us over the past few weeks. I can see that it may be necessary in relation to the narrow issue of handing out leaflets in a town centre. After all, leaflets handed out in the town square of my old North Cornwall constituency would almost certainly be directed at North Cornwall’s results and voters, but leaflets handed out in Trafalgar Square might not be directed only at voters in the City of London and Westminster.

That is a problem—one brought about by the Minister’s legitimate concern about the distribution of leaflets in a town square. If we had more time for drafting, I would be able to find some additional tests, but only for this additional activity of handing out leaflets rather than for all deliveries that could take place. It is a rather complicated point and I apologise for that to Members of your Lordships’ House—but it is an important one.

As the amendment is drafted, it means a loophole is created, permitting direct communication with voters outwith the constituency limit because it could somehow be deemed under sub-paragraphs (2) and (3) of the amended schedule that the materials sent to them were not really supposed to influence the constituency result. I do not buy that, and at this stage it leaves a real lacuna. If you write to a voter in a constituency to promote or procure the electoral success of a party or candidate, I am confident that you are trying to promote or procure their electoral success in that constituency. That is a simple rule, and one it would be simple for campaigners big and small to follow.

At every stage of the Bill, from Second Reading right through to Report last week, I have been concerned to simplify and clarify the requirements placed on campaigners, reflecting what they—the campaigners, who are charities and other organisations—have said consistently to me and my Liberal Democrat colleagues in both Houses, and no doubt to many other Members of your Lordships’ House. None the less, I regret the position we are now in since I have pursued this issue right from Committee.

I return to the point made by my noble friend Lord Cormack: the Electoral Commission still says that it has concerns about the enforceability of a constituency limit. There needs to be a constituency limit. A revised amendment along these lines would make that more effective and much easier to enforce. Combined with the sensible changes to the constituency threshold that I outlined in the debate on the previous group of amendments, the whole regime would be much tighter and more workable, which is what the Bill sets out to achieve.

Following up on the point made by my noble friend Lord Cormack, I promised to refer to the advice given to us by the Electoral Commission. At the end of its advice to us for today, referring to Amendment 11, it said:

“We think this amendment would reduce this problem, but in practice it will still often be difficult to obtain adequate evidence of a breach at a constituency level and deal with it before polling day”.

That is an extremely important point. To that end, I hope that my noble and learned friend the Minister will respond positively to this amendment, even if it means that some simplification must be achieved in the other place tomorrow.

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

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I very much hope that the comments made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, will be taken seriously by my noble and learned friend, as I am sure they will be. However, I will direct some very brief comments to Amendment 34, which was moved with commendable brevity by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth.

We live in a very different age from people who were active in politics even 20 or 30 years ago. I do not know whether the mass membership political party is a thing of the past or not, but it is certainly not a thing of the present. We live in an age in which single-issue groups and associations predominate and have a collective membership far in excess of the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat party put together. One can illustrate that with one statistic: the National Trust now has over 4 million paid-up members. In this new age, we have to be very conscious of the fact that we should pass no legislation in this House that in any way inhibits the expression of legitimate opinion. The Bill endangers that expression of legitimate opinion.

If ever there was a Bill that cried out for pre-legislative scrutiny, it is this one, but it has not had it. In saying that, I level no criticism at my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who has been exemplary in the manner in which he personally has sought to meet and discuss with people who have legitimate concerns and interests. Therefore, I exonerate him from all blame, but I still say to him that this is a Bill that is far from perfect. It is a Bill that should never have been presented in this form to either House of Parliament.

Another thing that makes the present age different from very recent ones is the dynamics of the fixed-term Parliament. Until a future Parliament has the good sense to repeal that Act—which I hope will not be too long distant—the fact is that we know when the next election will be and the election after that and so on. So we have a year of purdah as far as interests groups, charities and others are concerned. The simple aim of Amendment 34 is to try to alleviate some of the problems that that creates.

I very much hope that when my noble friend responds to this brief debate—and I hope that it will be a brief debate because we have a long day before us and many important issues to discuss—he will acknowledge the powerful arguments put forward by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, which are supported by many of us. If the Minister cannot give the assurances that we seek, I hope that he will at least give the assurance that he will reflect on this matter, have further discussions and come back at Third Reading, because we need to make this very, very imperfect—no, this very, very bad—Bill a little more palatable than it is currently.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. In preparing my notes, I had intended to say precisely what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, said just a few minutes ago. It is the responsibility of this House to try to make sure that anything that leaves us is as good as it can be and as perfect as we can achieve. Today, therefore, we are all together in seeking modest amendments in most cases, but important ones that make the Bill more workable, more acceptable and more democratic.

Before I come to the two specific amendments on which my name leads, I should very much like to support the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, in his Amendment 34. It is important for the sake of civic society that we enable people to get fully involved in the dialogue with Parliament about the legislation that goes through the two Houses. I hope that, in one way or another, my noble friend will be able to make that absolutely clear. It must surely be right that, when legislation is going through both Houses of Parliament, our fellow citizens are in a position to campaign without let or hindrance to improve that legislation. I very much hope that we will have reassurance on that point.

Amendment 40, which stands in my name and in the names of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, my noble friend Lord Cormack and the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, is quite simply about bringing the concept of supporter up to date. I echo here a point made by my noble friend Lord Cormack a few minutes ago. When I was first involved in politics, those of us who wanted to engage in the political process, in the main, joined a political party. I did so as a student and I suspect that many others in your Lordships’ House did the same. Some then drifted off into other occupations. I stayed with politics, to my obvious detriment in terms of income compared with the lawyers in your Lordships’ House. From that period to now there have been dramatic changes in society. Many then did join parties; others might have joined campaigning groups. Some of those groups are still with us and still have a mass membership. In those days, it was very much the culture of the age, particularly among young people, but people today support campaigns à la carte. They do not get involved in just one campaign and stick with it to the exclusion of all others. They are involved for a time but their priorities change, just as in the consumer world people expect now to pick and choose. You go to one supermarket for one purpose and to another for another, to one airline for an outward flight and another to come home again. You do not necessarily feel that you have to join up to one hospital even—you choose. It is part of the culture of our age.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I strongly support the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, on this amendment. Indeed, we had very co-operative discussions about how best to tackle this problem. I am grateful to him and, indeed, to others who effectively endorsed an amendment we tabled in Committee on this crucial issue.

Given that there was much quotation of the Electoral Commission’s advice earlier, it is important that it has very explicitly said that Amendment 45 offers some advantages over the current position in the Bill. With this amendment, at least, we have that endorsement.

As I said in Committee, the Electoral Commission actually thinks that counting staff costs for political parties’ election expenses would be an appropriate way to proceed. Of course, that is not in front of us today; it may be for another day and another Bill. For the purposes of this Bill, the NGOs have been dealing with a considerable problem: namely, that the Bill includes not only staff costs on direct campaigning but what are called “background costs”.

As my noble friend will no doubt point out, staff costs for non-parties are already regulated for the production and distribution of election material. Our amendment suggests that this should continue but that costs should also be accounted for if they are incurred in direct relation to canvassing voters. In that context it seems that it would not be very difficult to identify the particular costs; equally, however, we do not want to increase the difficulties that could be caused by burdensome regulation on background costs that are not in any way so easy to account for. For example, the costs in relation to organising meeting rooms, travelling to a venue or setting up a press conference might be a matter of a few minutes of somebody’s time—and therefore, for many small organisations, a considerable absurdity.

Bluntly, I do not think that anyone cares if a policy officer, whose job for the rest of the year is something completely different, spends a little time booking a room for an election rally, or incurs costs travelling to it. These matters cannot be said to be likely to greatly affect the outcome of an election in that particular area, or nationally. However, if the regulations go through without us thinking about the implications, they could unnecessarily tie up campaigners in accounting for their time—and, worse still, could deter some from campaigning at all.

As was said so forcibly earlier, there are many organisations in this country—and thank God for them—that rely entirely on time being given voluntarily to this sort of activity. Would it be necessary to try to cost that time, or would it be difficult, in any case, whether they were employed or volunteers? Many a charity and many a non-charity would find that totally inconsistent with the Government’s intention of avoiding unnecessary spending on unnecessary bureaucracy.

This amendment, along with some of the others, helps the Government to do what they say they want to do. I hope, therefore, that my noble and learned friend will be able to find some way of making a sensible compromise on the whole issue of staffing costs.

The Government have moved sensibly in so many ways to try to meet the concerns and anxieties about the so-called chilling effect that many of us have understood to be the case with organisations with which we are involved. Many noble Lords are active members of charities and non-charities that do such important work in civil society today. Surely, the last thing that we want to happen is for the time, energy, enterprise, inventive activity and, indeed, the cost of those organisations to be unnecessarily distorted by new bureaucracy of the sort that could occur. Therefore, I very much hope that the Government will see that this is a sensible compromise on the whole issue of staffing costs.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I have attended a number of meetings which the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has convened and I, for one, am extremely grateful to him for the leadership that he has given and the amount of time he has devoted to the Bill over the past few months. Last week, following those meetings, I met with the chief executive officers of two important charities. I do not intend to name them because I did not say that I would, but when I asked them, “If we could get only one amendment through the House next week, where would your priority be?”, they said that it would be on staffing costs.

Any regulations imposed as a result of the Bill should be clear, simple and, above all, fair. The problem with this is that we would be faced with regulations that would be far from clear or simple, and which would most certainly not be fair. Because I do not want to take the time of the House when we have already had a clear and brief exposition from the noble and right reverend Lord, all I will say is: let us this evening make sure, as far as we can, that that clarity, simplicity and fairness is in the Bill.

I, too, am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness and to the other Lord Wallace, my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who we are all delighted to see back—but I urge them to go this one further step. They have done a great deal to try to make a bad Bill better; they can take another step this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

I have a separate amendment in this group. We all welcome the way in which my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire and my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness have responded to the request for an increase in the registration thresholds. This was a key recommendation of the commission headed by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and it certainly deserved to be listened to.

In this last-minute change to the Government’s position, however, there is one new outstanding problem. The interaction between the national thresholds for registration and the constituency limits in the Bill simply do not hold together. As we will discuss in the next group, I believe very strongly that the constituency limits are a very important part of this Bill. Indeed, I am sure Members on all sides of your Lordships’ House are aware that if we did send back to the other place a Bill that did not deal with this point, many people there would think that we were not doing our duty.

For the constituency limits to be effective, those who spend at a constituency level will surely need to make an expenses return about what they are spending. The rules in the 2000 Act and in the Bill rightly also ask where the money is coming from. There is, however, a problem. As the Bill will stand in the light of these new government amendments, someone could be spending £9,750 in a constituency, or indeed could spend £19,500 across two English constituencies, yet would not have to register. The registration limit is now raised to £20,000, and therefore that spending and its sources would be totally opaque. It would not be transparent even though £9,750 could have a significant impact on the constituency result.

In my own amendments on thresholds in Committee, I suggested that this problem could be dealt with by stipulating that the threshold should be at a particular level which would take that into account. The Government have chosen £20,000, and that is fine, except that all the spending could be concentrated in one target marginal constituency. A group could spend a significant sum—I am suggesting £5,000 in my amendment—all in one place. Surely in those circumstances it should have to register.

The Government’s answer has been that somebody who spends more than £9,750 in one constituency will be committing an offence under their proposals. If that someone does not have to register, because he is below the new registration threshold, how can anyone know that he is committing that offence? I cannot think—and I know a little bit about these things—of any other part of electoral law in which someone who is subject to a spending limit is yet not required to produce any paperwork on what he is spending. Introducing that concept now would make for a completely absurd anomaly.

[Lord Cormack]

Will the noble Lord not agree with me that there would be more logic in having a figure that was close to that which an individual candidate is entitled to spend? No individual candidate is entitled to spend as much as £20,000 in any constituency in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Tyler]

My noble friend is right. He and I have relatively recent experience of these things. The normal figure is around £12,000 during the election period. As I will come to in a moment, that could be swamped under these proposals, and therefore this is an absurd anomaly. I understand why the Government have arrived at their position. Their formula sounds simple, but it may be so simple as to be unequal to the task in hand. Equally, the move in Amendment 53 to do away with different limits for constituency spending seven months before an election, and constituency spending seven days before, seems to me to lose what is an important and not particularly complex distinction in the name of simplicity—and I am not sure the Government have got this right.

I ask the Minister to consider carefully the horror story that could emerge. Imagine: a campaigning group could come into a constituency and spend £19,999.99 in the last seven days of the campaign with the aim of affecting the outcome in that constituency, and it would not need to register. A second group, unrelated to the first, could, during those seven days, do the same. It would not register. A third group, unrelated to the other two—not a coalition, not working together— could do the same. In the last few days of a campaign in a marginal constituency, just under £60,000 could be spent, completely swamping the amount permitted for a candidate and a party, which is around £12,000, in one constituency. The candidates are, as I say, limited in those final four to six weeks.

Because this spending would not be registered, it might not be revealed until after polling day. Think of the mess that that would cause to our electoral law. Because such groups, though technically in breach of the law, would not need to register, no one would be any the wiser about what they had been up to. My noble and learned friend has said that he is looking at this section with a view to some clarification, and I think he will have to agree that there is a major loophole looming in front of us. I therefore request that he look carefully at Amendment 46ZA. He may find a better solution but a solution must be found, otherwise political parties and those who will be looking at this legislation when it goes back to the other place will not have seen this particular problem, because until now the registration threshold has not been so high. It is only under the present Government’s changes in this House that it has been raised to this height.

I hope that my noble and learned friend will be able to give some reassurance to those of us on all sides of the House who are concerned about such spending that the Government are not prepared to accept this loophole.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

My Lords, Amendment 46A in my name concerns the spending cap for England. First I would like, on behalf of the commission, to warmly welcome the raising of the registration thresholds by the Government. I think that has done more than anything else to reassure the smaller charities; we give the Government a very warm thank you. We also warmly welcome the raising of the spending cap for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The spending cap for England, unlike that for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, has been reduced by 60%. That reduction has taken place with an increase in the number of activities to be regulated and without taking inflation into account.

It is true that not many campaigning groups and very few, if any, charities would spend a high figure coming anywhere near that. The one I have checked that does spend quite a lot of money is Hope not Hate, which campaigns against racism all over the country. It is not a charity but a campaigning group. In 2010 it spent £319,231. That is very nearly the limit for England as we have it under the Bill, which is £319,800.

There was no evidence of abuse with the previous spending caps for England, and no rationale has been given for this reduction by 60%. Even if the Government are not willing to revert to the PPERA limits for England, I ask the Minister whether he sees any scope for some kind of compromise between the drastic reduction which has been brought about by the Bill and the spending limits there were for PPERA.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

I very much welcome the initiative that my noble friends have taken on this. It is vastly preferable to a sunset clause, precisely because it will start at the right moment. The timing is going to be critical, as the noble and right reverend Lord and my noble and learned friend said, because it will see right through the process of the next election and beyond. For that reason it is preferable to a sunset clause.

I, too, wonder whether the precise definition of a “person” is appropriate to this, but we will have to judge it on its results. Because my noble and learned friend has put into his amendment that a copy of the report will be laid before Parliament, the process thereon is extremely interesting. If major changes are required in this legislation, we will need to know quite quickly in order that we do not run into another period of rapid digestion, as we have on the Bill.

I particularly want to underline the point made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, just now. We should have this review of the 2000 Act. I take some responsibility, because I sit on a little, totally informal cross-party advisory group for the Electoral Commission. We were never forewarned of all the problems with the 2000 Act that have now come to light—not least, the coalition issue to which the noble Lord has just referred. It has been 13 years; the Electoral Commission never forewarned us of the difficulties it was encountering in giving appropriate advice to organisations that wished to campaign in this field. The Minister has taken elaborate and proper precautions to make sure that the situation never arises again, and I congratulate the Government on that.

[Lord Cormack]

Briefly, I add my congratulations and thanks. Those who criticise—and I have been very critical of aspects of the Bill—should always praise when the right thing is done. I am exceptionally grateful to my noble friend and his ministerial colleagues for putting this amendment into the Bill. It is a very satisfactory outcome and I agree entirely with what the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and my noble friend Lord Tyler said.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

Of course—I was going to say “my noble friend”, but he is my friend—the noble Lord may well be right. However, I remember the famous words of Jack Straw, when a lot of people in the other place voted for an all-elected second Chamber on the advice of the Labour leader of the campaign for an appointed second Chamber, although he then acknowledged that he had made a tactical mistake. Jack Straw kept saying, “A vote is a vote, and that’s all that counts”. That is what will be said tonight. The noble Lord should reflect very seriously on that.

We also have to consider whether the Bill is the right one in which to insert such an amendment.

[Lord Tyler]

I am very grateful to my noble friend and I know that he shares with me the same objectives. I think that he is advancing the old, old argument of unripe time, which we hear in this House so often. If you wait for the ripe time, it is usually when it has gone bad again, when it has gone beyond ripeness. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, by saying that the actual introduction would not take place until beyond the next general election, is simply insisting that we should put down a marker of the direction in which we wish to go. If we are not permitted to do that, what are we allowed to do in this House?

[Lord Cormack]

Of course we are permitted to do that, but at the same time it is not unreasonable to talk about the practicalities. The fact of the matter is that if we have a vote tonight, this amendment will be very heavily defeated. It will not advance the cause. Whereas if we do not have a vote tonight, the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, which I believe not to be hyperbole but to be accurate—that there are many, many members of your Lordships’ House who are sympathetic to this point of view—will stand on the record. What will stand on the record if we have a vote is that because of a very, very small number of people, for a variety of reasons—one of them being that this may not be the right vehicle for such an amendment—the figures will not be encouraging to our cause.

I end by pleading with noble colleagues in all parts of the House that we seek in our respective parties to begin a campaign to advance this and that we talk to our colleagues in the other place as well. That is crucially important, as they are the people who get elected. Tonight is not the moment to be heavily defeated when we know, and the noble Lord in particular knows, that there is such widespread sympathy for the principle that he has very reasonably advanced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

I am glad to add my name to the amendment. I was delighted to hear what my noble friend Lord Horam had to say, but I see no harm in putting this provision into the Bill. I hope that when my noble and learned friend the Minister replies, it will not just be with honeyed words but with a promise of a taste of honey.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, this will be my shortest contribution through the whole length of this Bill, as I hope the night shift will appreciate. I want to make just one point: I am not sure whether the solution suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, is right; I am absolutely convinced that there is a problem. I instance that by saying that, as somebody who has been involved in this area for years, I have never had advice or guidance on the problems that we have heard about so often in recent weeks from anybody in the Charity Commission. The first time that I ever heard from the Charity Commission was at 6.30 last night. There is a clear need for comprehensive, careful and co-ordinated advice from the two organisations. It has not been there in the past. They have not fulfilled their responsibilities to Parliament, to which they are responsible, over many years, and it is about time that they did. Throughout today’s discussion, it has been apparent that this lack of co-ordinated information from the two organisations has been one of the major problems that many organisations have had to face, as well as parliamentarians.

House of Lords: Membership

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Thursday 28th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

I understand and sympathise with the point made by my noble friend, but the fact is that there are issues like royal prerogative that have to be taken into account. We do not want to precipitate—this was implicit in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt—a major constitutional crisis. What we want to do is address the housekeeping issues in this House. That is a simple and reasonable aim. This is declaratory, of course it is, but, if we have a vote at the end of this debate, I hope that the House will declare that it really is concerned about these matters. We are asking the Leader to do what he can to bring some common sense to bear.

Surely it is wrong that a particular person should be the stumbling block in the face of sensible reform. Mr Clegg has many admirable qualities, but he should not be allowed to be the arbiter of our constitution. That is wrong. He introduced a Bill, which failed. I am proud to wear this morning the tie made by the 91 stout Tory rebels who frustrated that Bill in July by saying, “You cannot get this through because we will not give you the time to do so”. Mr Clegg recognised that, and he should now recognise that if he believes in parliamentary democracy, and if he believes in this House as being a fundamental part of this democracy as it is the moment, it should be as effective as it possibly can be. If we continue to appoint new Peers without addressing the issues so eloquently talked about by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, we will run the risk of making this House fall in public repute and indeed become something of a laughing stock, which it should not be. That would fly in the face of history and of what has been achieved by so many, particularly over the years since 1958 when life Peers were introduced. If this comes to a vote, I urge Members to vote in significant numbers to show that there is indeed a consensus in this House on these modest proposals.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I want very briefly to put a couple of points to my noble friend the Leader of the House before he responds to the debate. I wonder whether he might reflect on the fact that in the previous Labour Administration, some 40% of the new recruits to this House were added to the Labour Benches, compared with 21% to the Conservative Benches and 15% to the Liberal Democratic Benches. Even more significantly, in May 2010, immediately following the general election, there were additional recruits to your Lordships’ House—28 Labour Members, 18 Conservative Members and nine Liberal Democrat Members. Will my noble friend reflect on the very interesting Pauline conversion, if I might put it like that, of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who suddenly seems to find the overpopulation of this House such a terrible problem? Apparently it was never a problem under the previous Administration, nor was it a problem even in May 2010. I am the last person to turn against a sinner who repenteth, but there is an important question to put to the opposition Benches about their change of attitude.

Would my noble friend also note that some of the Members who now object so strongly to further appointments were indeed the most vociferous when the Government came forward with a proposal to end a fully appointed House? My noble friend Lord Cormack, who is a very staunch defender of the primacy of the House of Commons, may have forgotten that the Government’s Bill received a considerable—indeed, a uniquely—sizeable majority at its Second Reading. That was an attempt to sort this problem out. It had indeed built very firmly on the proposals put forward by Mr Jack Straw, in which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, played a very important part. Again, he seems to have changed his attitude.

I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, that this Motion as amended would still be inappropriate at this time. Having had, I accept, an expression of concern on all sides of the House about this problem, I very much hope that the Motion, even amended, is not put to a Division because I think it will have more power if it is not seen to be something that is divisible and therefore divisive in your Lordships’ House.

House of Lords: Reform

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Thursday 21st June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords—

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords—

House of Lords: Reform

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords—

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords—

Parliament: Elected House of Lords

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Monday 16th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords—

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords—

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Monday 16th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

No, my Lords; I think that that is over-simple. It does not give the House of Commons a proper, responsible role and I think that there would be circumstances in which it certainly would not be appropriate.

[Lord Cormack]

Would not the circumstances where it would not be appropriate, to which my noble friend has just referred, almost certainly be coalition circumstances? Is not the real fear of many of us that the Bill has been designed to perpetuate the opportunity of coalition? Would not the public have the right to feel cheated if, as I devoutly hope does not happen, the present coalition collapsed and the leaders of the Liberal Democrat Party and the Labour Party sought to form a pact and a Government—a Government who would certainly not have commanded the support of the majority of the country last year? Do we not have to bear that in mind? Has not this been devised in a coalition climate to perpetuate a coalition climate?

[Lord Tyler]

I can only say to my noble friend that I was advancing the case for precisely this legislation long before there was ever the possibility of a coalition. It is extremely important to come back to my absolute core principle that the arithmetic of the House of Commons should be of issue. If, for example, the circumstances to which my noble friend refers occurred and there were in the House of Commons a solid majority for a change of Government in the midst of the present economic crisis, in order for that change of Government to take place without a general election it would be the House of Commons that decided whether the Government had the confidence to continue. Therefore, I do not think that that circumstance is an appropriate or proper reason for changing Amendment 20, which I think would be a useful amendment to the Bill.

The Bill recognises that, if it were acceptable or even necessary to call an early general election, the final decision should be left to Parliament and not to the individual whim of one party leader who happened to occupy No. 10. Even if there were not near unanimity among MPs, the safeguards in the Bill would ensure that, in the circumstances I have described, a vote of no confidence would lead to an early poll once it became clear that no alternative Government could be established and enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons. Amendment 20 deals very well with this problem. It deals with the questions that were raised last week, although clearly some people on that occasion and now might say, “Well, we know what a Motion of no confidence looks like when we see it”. Frankly, I think that the amendment deals with the problem of definition rather better than that.

I think it was my noble friend Lord Forsyth who made the point that in almost all the circumstances that have been described—defeat on a Finance Bill or some big issue of that sort—the leader of the Opposition would be likely immediately to table a Motion of no confidence in the Government. Therefore, to some extent, the suggestions that have come from other parts of the House may be superfluous. I and my colleagues tabled a probing amendment suggesting that such a Motion should always be in the name of the leader of the Opposition, which would reflect that point, but in the real world that will almost always be the person who tables the Motion.

The Government have moved substantially and my noble friend has put his name to Amendment 20. I think that the very serious problems enunciated earlier by previous Speakers of the other place have been dealt with, and removing the Speaker from a potentially very invidious position is very important.

I turn to the other amendments briefly because I suspect that they are not going to be pursued with quite the same enthusiasm as Amendment 20. The amendment in the name of my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lord Hamilton seems largely to enshrine the status quo. However, I do not think that the status quo is acceptable, as it involves all sorts of problems. I suggest that under their amendment a Prime Minister, instead of simply going to the Palace, as now, could engineer a vote of no confidence and therefore cut and run for an early election, which would destroy one of the major objectives of the Bill.

The proposal maintains the unfair partisan advantage conferred on one party leader as opposed to another. It is remarkable that when faced with the prospect of the first Prime Minister in history prepared to give up this important power to Parliament there seem to be some people in your Lordships’ House who say, “We do not want to be given this power. We would rather you kept it, Prime Minister. We do not want the responsibility”. I think that that would be a retrograde step.

The issue is also present in Amendment 22ZB in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, who has explained why he is not able to be here. Amendment 22ZB contains an extraordinary provision that any vote deemed a vote of no confidence by the Prime Minister, and party leader, should be a vote of no confidence. Rightly, the Bill and, indeed, Amendment 20 seek to avoid that. Those in your Lordships’ House who lived through the Maastricht debates in the other place, particularly former Conservative MPs, will remember the pressure that was brought to bear night after night by the Whips threatening that it could be deemed a Motion of confidence that could bring the Government down and trigger an immediate general election. MPs should have the capacity to vote down the details of legislation they disapprove of without being pressurised by a Government trying to force them to take a view that is not truly theirs. I fear that Amendment 22ZB could be defective for that reason, if for no other.

There is a definite problem with that amendment since it might well be open to judicial challenge. The judicial challenge to the role of the Speaker would be very difficult but when the head of the Executive takes a decision, I think a judicial review might well be a prospect that we would have to face. I mentioned that in Committee previously and a number of Members of your Lordships’ House, who are much more learned in the literal sense than me, seemed to agree with that. There is also an implication for Clause 3 and the issue of how a Dissolution should take place in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong.

I am slightly baffled by the amendments in the name of Members of the Labour Party and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. I may just be being stupid but it seems to me that perhaps quite a major constitutional change is in prospect. The burden of their amendments seems to be that when a Government are newly elected—or, strictly, a Parliament—some special mechanism should be introduced in the days following the election.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, will hardly be surprised that I find myself very much in agreement. I am sorry that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, suggested that I sang a siren song; I do not think that I did, but I will risk a siren encore. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, demonstrated with impeccable logic that there is nothing contradictory in the present Government, having said that they wish to serve for a full five years, doing that, and, having sent a piece of legislation to this House and asked for our opinion, in our saying, “Okay, if you want to do that, do it, but thereafter we believe that it should be four years”. That seems to be an entirely reasonable position to take.

Every moment of our debates on the Bill—and I have been present for almost all of them—has illustrated to me that this is an unnecessary and unfortunate exercise. I also think that every word uttered by the noble and learned Lord, as well as the intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, underlines the need for pre-legislative scrutiny of a Bill of this sort. Had the Government had the good sense to subject the Bill to such scrutiny, all the evidence to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, has just referred would have been heard and perhaps Mr Harper would have made up his mind rather differently. He might even have concluded by asking what the point of this exercise is.

The point of the exercise is that the Government, having brought themselves together as a coalition—I admire the courage of all the parties in doing that and I support the coalition, as I have made plain on many occasions—wanted to try to reinforce that position by making a statement or declaration that they would serve for five years. That declaration would of itself have been quite sufficient, and I am glad to see the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, nodding assent at this point. We did not need to take up time with this legislation—a point already referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and by me—and I regret that it is taking so much time. However, if we are to fulfil the constitutional duty of this House, we must try to put the Bill into somewhat better order than it was in when it came to us. That has not been an easy task with any of the Bills that we have recently had the privilege of examining, and the same will apply tomorrow.

Therefore, I will take the same line in the Division Lobbies, if it is necessary so to do, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. I do not think that the position to which I referred at an earlier stage of the Bill was illogical or unsound, and I shall stand by that, but I shall certainly vote for the sunset clause that stands in the name of the noble Baroness and her noble friends on the Cross Benches.

[Lord Tyler]

The noble Lord has been a doughty defender of the constitution for many years in both Houses. I respect him very much for that and I have expressed that view previously. Can he explain to your Lordships why he now thinks, after 100 years of experience of a quinquennial maximum for Parliament, we should suddenly make a radical change to a maximum of four years? What particular experience over those 100 years has changed his attitude?

[Lord Cormack]

My memory does not go back throughout the whole of that century, as the noble Lord knows. In a sense, I have already answered that question because I do not think that we should be wasting our time with this Bill at all. I consider it to be unnecessary but, as the Government have determined that we should have fixed-term Parliaments, it is right that we should address the term. It is perfectly reasonable to say, “All right, you’ve made your statement that you wish to have five years. Please have them, but we believe, having weighed the evidence placed before committees of both Houses, that for the future it should be four years”. However, I know as well as the noble Lord and every noble Lord present today that no Parliament can bind its successor, and the first Act of a new Parliament could be to repeal the whole shooting match—it might be the best thing that it could do, but that is another matter entirely.

The point that I was about to make when the noble Lord intervened was that I believe there is a lot to be said in almost every constitutional measure for a sunset clause. It would provide the opportunity to take stock, to reflect and to say, “Is this really what we want to do? Is this really the way forward?” Therefore, unless my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who is a very fair-minded man, is able to meet us on that point, I would find myself in the illustrious company of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, and her friends at the appropriate time, but not before.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

Who is going to challenge the decision of the Prime Minister? Will it be the Leader of the Opposition? Will it be one of his own supporters? If the Prime Minister has come to the conclusion that particular legislation is essential to the Government’s survival, it is hardly likely that he will be taken to court over that.

[Lord Tyler]

I do not agree with the noble Lord. There are people who will always want to subject the decisions of a Prime Minister to judicial review. As I understand it from the legal advice that I have received, such applications are much more likely to be considered by a court and to take time. That is the situation described earlier in the Committee. I hope that everyone will accept that the certification by the Speaker is a parliamentary act, but the executive, political decision of a Prime Minister to say that he or she considers a particular Bill to be a matter of confidence is open to much greater interpretation by the courts.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, quite rightly said earlier that we should avoid artificial certainty of definition. I fear that that is precisely what the distinguished authors of the amendment have produced. For example, how many parliamentary Questions would be tabled along the following lines: “Will the Prime Minister define the Miscellaneous Provisions Bill as essential to his continuing in office under Section 2(2)(b) of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act?”. Would the Prime Minister always say no? What would he say? There could be endless entertainment in the other place on this position.

I am sure that the amendment is well intentioned but it will take us down a dangerous route. I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, says about the subsequent decision of the Speaker following such a decision by the Prime Minister in an attempt to force a vote of confidence, but I still think that the amendment, with or without his subsequent amendment, is extremely damaging and potentially dangerous.

I noted what my noble and learned friend Lord Howe said about not being particularly enthusiastic about the amendment to which he had put his name, any more than he was about the Government’s position. I accept that there is some lack of enthusiasm for the amendment, even by its authors, but it is a dangerous route for us to take. It would be justiciable and challenged in the courts—and that would be extremely dangerous.

I and my colleagues have put forward an alternative which is a great deal simpler. It is that rather than trying to codify the status quo, as the amendment attempts to do, we should have one specific rule—that the Motion of no confidence should be tabled by the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. It is difficult to think of any circumstance—even when the second and third parties are of comparable size—when the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition would not in practice have to table that Motion. It would be so firm and clear that it would ensure that Governments could not use such a vote as a way of cutting and running early. That is one of the key purposes of the Bill. The cut-and-run tendency is not good for the governance of our country, but we have seen it happen in the past.

The amendment undermines the purpose of and hollows out what is an already modest Bill. Some noble Lords on these Benches, and perhaps in other parts of the House, think that the fixed term should be even firmer than it is under the Bill—after all, it operates perfectly well in the United States. The Bill is already a compromise from that position; I suggest there is no need to compromise it further.