Leaving the European Union

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am afraid that I will sound like a stuck record but, as I said, we have said that there will obviously be discussions and debates on a second referendum during the passage of the withdrawal Bill. If MPs wish to vote for a second referendum, that is their right, but they have not shown a majority in the House of Commons for one. We do not want a second referendum but, through the course of the Bill, MPs will be able to decide whether that is what they want.

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

My Lords, last year there were two marches, with 100,000 to start with and 700,000 later in the year, all of them pro-Europe and pro remaining in the EU. In March this year, 1 million people marched with the same objective in mind. Is that not the real reason why the Government are afraid to admit that the hard Brexiteers are terrified of yet another march—and, indeed, a people’s vote?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I do not accept that. I gently remind the noble Lord that the 2016 referendum was the biggest democratic exercise in our history, where the British people voted to leave the EU.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

My Lords, we in this House are understandably modest about the impact we may have on the general public, as the press usually cover our deliberations only when there is trouble down at t’mill. We know our place, compared to the elected Members in the other place who, rightly, take priority in these complicated matters.

However, we have at last reached a point of useful harmony, as it is alleged that there is now powerful justification that, allowing for the free vote principle—which is so often undermined in the Commons—there is a natural, built-in majority in both Houses for continuing membership of the European Union. This was brought out in a number of speeches yesterday. I was especially impressed by the offerings of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, who is in his place, the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who is an erstwhile leaver who has changed his mind, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the hard-working noble Lord, Lord Wigley, who is not here at the moment.

Indeed, if the total tragedy of Brexit were to proceed either in the grotesque form suggested by the Prime Minister in her self-inflicted fantasies or in any other way as yet not explored, we should have to have a new anniversary date called national self-harm day as a national mourning day to remember it. Fortunately, this now looks less and less likely to be the woeful outcome of the three years of chaos and nonsense unleashed by David Cameron, who has apparently very wisely avoided coming to London very often since 24 June 2016.

I stress that I in no way minimise the rights of the Brexiteers who voted thus then. Indeed, I deeply sympathise with them for being put into this hideous quandary by the Government without access to any detailed information on, first, the way the EU functions —it is a complicated matter—and does its work for all the sovereign member states of the club and, secondly, the full implications of leaving the most successful socioeconomic grouping in world history.

It was hideously wrong of an ambitious and foolhardy Minister to term this vote as an instruction. It was a piece of advice from an electorate utterly fed up with the cruel Tory austerity effects and misled by Home Office Ministers, including the now Prime Minister, who refused for years to use existing strong powers of the Treaty of Rome, now renamed the TFEU, to limit immigration by those without a prior employment opportunity, as they did in other member states, and the new transitional limit system after the 2004 accession of 10 new countries. It is interesting how the extreme right-wing newspapers owned by tax exiles not paying UK personal tax never wanted to mention that awkward reality. I wonder why.

However, now we see that public opinion and the sociology of the modern, up-to-date electorate, has changed since that date. For example, the latest poll from YouGov—a reputable firm with a seriously large sample—published at the end of last month revealed that support for staying in is now at 55% to 45%. This lead rose to 14% if the choice was framed as one between accepting Theresa May’s dubious deal and staying in. Moreover, five times as many modern voters now think that leaving will weaken the economy as think it will strengthen it. I presume that those figures will expand even more in that direction if 16 and 17 year- old new voters are permitted to take part and, crucially, if all the UK expats in other countries, including those who have lived there for more than 15 years, were also to be involved.

There is an even more crucial point for what I call the Erasmus generation of younger electors who are already or aim at working elsewhere in the EU: the uniquely precious asset achieved in the Maastricht treaty by a courageous John Major—a much braver PM, of course—of EU citizenship. That was a precious asset accorded for the first time in the Maastricht treaty: the citizenship of your own country but also citizenship of the whole EU, which is a massive asset—unique in the world. The new modern, dynamic younger generation of British workers of all kinds, manual and intellectual, who wish to work, travel, play and learn in other countries is massive and growing.

Fortunately, most of their parents and grandparents agree that their opportunities are more crucial than those of retired people, but even the latter are increasingly enjoying their place in the sun—here too, when the weather is better—as they get to know other EU countries. I have had many chats with London black cab drivers with properties in Spain who attest to this new reality.

I also very much admire the efforts of the In Limbo project, which has briefed us all on the dire effects of being excluded from full civic rights if we come out of the European Union. I also commend the brilliant efforts of the leading English-language monthly newspaper, Connexion, to highlight those anxieties for them, as well as for other EU countries’ citizens living and working here. They are getting very worried indeed.

The present Brexit deal is an example of all the promises made being undermined by the new realities. Now we know what the deal looks like. It is a disastrous plan that has been attacked even by long-standing Brexiteer politicians as even worse than staying in. If the Commons, in what I hope will be a free vote this time, cannot exert its own powerful sovereignty in numbers sufficient to satisfy the public that this should be the final decision—as we used to do in the old days, with no referendums—then the public should have the opportunity to decide whether our present membership, with 40 years of achievements and a hugely successful single market, is better than all the phantasmagorical and dotty examples put forward so far elsewhere.

European Council

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

No, I do not think that is the question. As I have said, we are committed to the Good Friday agreement and to ensuring no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Leader of the House for repeating the Statement today. A month ago, there was a previous Statement with the same amount of self-deception in it, which the Prime Minister issued in the Commons three days after her Mansion House speech. I agree with one of the sentences at the top of the conclusions page:

“We cannot escape the complexity of the task ahead”.


Later, in conclusion, the Prime Minister said that,

“foremost in my mind is the pledge I made on my first day as Prime Minister: to act not in the interests of the privileged few, but in the interests of all our people, and to make Britain a country that works for everyone”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/3/18; col. 28.]

How on earth is that possible if we leave the European Union?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

It is perfectly possible and we have a very bright future ahead of us. That is why we want to work with the EU to have as close a partnership as possible and to have a balanced and wide-ranging trade agreement; that is why we are going out into the world to develop new trade partnerships. We have already opened 14 informal trade dialogues with 21 countries, from the United States to Australia and the UAE, and we have a presence in 108 countries. We are looking forward to the opportunities now and we will be working with our friends and partners in the EU to make sure we continue to have a strong and positive relationship with them.

House of Lords: Procedures and Practices

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow those comments and the others that reflect the need for modernisation in this place. As a conservative with a small “c”, I also had the feeling when I first came here 10 years ago that one should not really utter any suggestions or ideas about these things for the first 17 years because that would be very pushy and presumptuous, and people would, rightly, tut-tut. However, things move on and accelerate, and this place is changing. The sociology of the House of Lords has changed enormously. Taking a foreign example, I have always been impressed with the system in Denmark. It is a single-Chamber system where a perpetual minority Government are on their knees, constantly begging MPs in Copenhagen to support their latest legislative proposal. I do not detect that Denmark is worse run than Britain; in fact, it is probably the other way round. Denmark also has a high-taxation system, both indirect and direct, which produces efficient economic results.

Secondly, on arriving here I treasured the story of the old days when, about 50 years ago, the Chief Whip said to a hereditary Peer who had just joined the House, “It is a great honour for you. You’ve got to appear to be very enthusiastic and deeply honoured to be here. On the question of making your maiden speech, you shouldn’t be pushy but you should be enthusiastic about doing it, eventually”. The new Peer asked, “How long do you recommend”, and the Chief Whip replied, “Three and a half years”. Nowadays, it is three and a half weeks, which is considered to be quite a long time.

[Lord Trefgarne]

When I first came to this House, I was told that I should wait 10 years before making my maiden speech.

[Lord Dykes]

I am grateful for that correction and for the excellent suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the points that he made today. I do not have the time to go into them. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for initiating the debate, and for some of his suggestions as well.

We had the example of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, intervening on the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, and the confusion that that caused. It was only a small occasion, of course, and the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, with his customary skill, solved it very quickly. If we had a Speaker with the power to call someone or ask someone to sit down, would that not be better? Is that not more modern? I see the Leader of the House indicating that she is against that idea, but maybe she will change her mind later. That would not necessarily happen quickly because she is a new Leader and needs time to think about these things.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler. It is always a great joy to see the gamekeeper turning operational poacher, going through the thickets of all these problems with some excellent suggestions. Having been in the Commons for 27 years myself, I am almost in despair at the terrible Bills that now come this way. The noble Lord mentioned a famous example in the last few days of a badly drafted, silly Bill that is all to do with “manifesto-itis” rather than any deep legislative urge on behalf of the Executive. Other badly drafted Bills have come through that were not properly considered by the Commons because of the timetabling of every Bill nowadays. They come here to the House of Lords, with insufficient time for them to be dealt with properly, but it is an excellent revising Chamber none the less. That is good and needs to be built on.

However, the modern sociology of this place—men and women—demands that it modernises itself much more fundamentally than that. Whether or not it is elected in the future, this place must represent the people of this country more directly, legitimately and instantaneously, too. There is no harm in being quick about these things; we do not want to appear to be slow. It is very unfair that the press continually just use the famous photograph of us wearing robes. That is what people think we do every day, partly because of the antics of some of our colleagues, tragically, but also because of some mischievous reporting. We have a wonderful, enlightened press, owned almost exclusively by foreign owners who do not pay UK personal taxes, but lecture us on the need for British patriotism. It has caused trouble by giving the impression that people clock in here for a few minutes and then leave. There may be a small number of those but I doubt it. Most people here now, maybe 350 to 400, are what I describe colloquially as FTWPs—full-time working Peers. They are really active people who are here every day, working very hard for long hours on behalf of the public. But do the press give us any attention as a result of all that activity and cerebral work that we do in trying to improve some very dodgy Bills and sending them back to the Commons?

Incidentally, why does ping-pong always have to end in a Commons victory? It may perhaps concern a strong leading manifesto item, on the basis of which the Government may have won an election. But of course, mostly they cannot win an election on their own; it has to be a coalition, as we see now. Normally Governments here in Britain are elected by less than a genuine majority of the public, and a percentage of seats. If ping-pong is always to be defeated, we should say that we will have one ping-pong stage, as for some JHA stuff that is now coming up, and that will be enough. We will have made our point and can then defer to the Commons. I am not sure that that should always be right. It would probably be mostly right but not always.

Question Time should definitely be longer. It could be up to an hour, or maybe 45 minutes might be better as an experiment and to see how that would go. It is very frustrating that so many colleagues want to get in on Questions and are prevented from doing so repeatedly—not only because of the difficulty of not having a Speaker who is able to call Members to put a question or stop putting a question, and so on. There are other things we can do around that to modernise this place. Some people are traditional and feel very affectionate about the past of the House of Lords. They want to keep it that way: old-fashioned and very endearing but not really doing a proper job.

Press Regulation

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Dykes (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I have, of course, studied the Media Standards Trust report. The whole basis of the design of Lord Justice Leveson’s report is precisely for the independent Recognition Panel to opine on whether the criteria in Schedule 3 of the royal charter have been adhered to. That is the key point of the independence: it is for the Recognition Panel to decide. The idea that the Secretary of State should intervene misses the point about the independent arrangements that we have put in place to ensure that we get a decision that is independent of Parliament and government.

[Lord Dykes]

Is it not appalling that the irresponsible tabloids have completely forgotten the victims, whom they promised they would help first of all, as did the Prime Minister at the outset of this long debate?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I am very clear that the country and your Lordships have not forgotten the victims. If one takes oneself back as to why the Prime Minister asked Lord Justice Leveson to produce his report, it was precisely so that the things that had happened would not happen, but if they unfortunately did happen there were proper means of redress, and that is what we want to achieve.

House of Lords: Size

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes (LD)]

My Lords, I am sure noble Lords are all grateful for the explanation of the age paradox from the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I hope I am correct in saying that the main speaker in the debate so far who has not been worried about size in the future was the noble Lord, Lord True, whose points I can understand. The general sense of the debate so far, as far as I can tell, is that size is a problem and that something needs to be done.

The Bill from Dan Byles MP in another place has 11 very able and senior members of all the parties acting as sponsors, including some of course who are also in favour of an elected House of Lords. When it comes to this House, it will have a very tight timetable for us as well, as it will follow the European Union (Referendum) Bill, with its equally stringent timetable. I hope that there will be ample time for discussion. The Dan Byles Bill is really the intellectual and psychological follower of the four earlier Steel Bills—which were, incidentally, ignored by two Governments, not just by one. If we add Peers who do not attend during a Session and do not apply for a leave of absence under the Standing Orders, ceasing membership would be an important part of any future elements.

All the way through the efforts that I have detected to make rational progress on the successive Steel Bills, as I will call them, the hope was entertained that the Government of the day would pick up the Bill and make it central government business. There is still an opportunity for that and I think more and more Peers would support that aspiration. Although the three or four measures for reducing individual membership seem to be very modest and at the margin, the practical effect would be quite rapid over time. It is crazy that we contemplate the fact that this Chamber is literally too large with some calmness at the moment—although I hope not too much. It is around the size of the entire European Parliament, which represents 28 member states. The latest text of the Bill, which began its Second Reading before June 2010, in February 2009, added the helpful provision of non-attendance producing disqualification.

Whatever the fate of the fundamentalist parts of these ideas—mostly having elected Members in the future—in the Joint Committee’s plans published at the end of April 2012, the stage has now been decisively and helpfully set to bring about a reduction in numbers if this legislation becomes government business. To my mind, the Commons would never have accepted the election plan. Although there was a huge majority on Second Reading of the fundamental reform Bill, ironically it began to unravel almost immediately after that. Many members of the leading coalition party refused to ordain new laws which they feared would inevitably lead to the upper House challenging their unique powers and legislative primacy. Eventually, beyond the inaugural Session of a new elected House of Lords, they would presumably want to turn themselves into an ambitious senate in no time at all. There were articles about this saying that there would eventually be senators in the House of Lords demanding office facilities and staff expenses of £1 million per office to deal with all the correspondence and work that would now arise as a result of being elected. The House will indeed be large and expensive if attendance claims rise, even if, as we hope, they rise because of expanding membership rather than individual claims as the number of days goes down.

This has been a long, drawn-out, painful episode of various bits and pieces. The provisions of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill of July 2009 that covered the suspension, resignation and expulsion of Members were taken out of the text in the final version; hence the reintroduction pledge by my noble friend Lord Steel. He repeated his view then that the Bill did not deal with future composition. The Bill also provided for the end of the hereditary Peers’ by-elections, which were described as farcical by some, but that section was later taken out.

All these matters lead to the fact that a good number of non-Tory Peers have always agreed with Tory traditionalists in both Houses that an elected senatorial peerage would be bound to challenge the superior powers of the other place. In the mean time, the size problem has acquired the ominous characteristic of an almost grotesque situation, with Parliament being unable to make rational progress on these matters, in a perverse and ridiculous setting, which gives rise to very great public dismay. The most recent intake of nominated Peers, we remember, had to be announced deliberately after the House rose for the summer holidays. There was an outcry in the press and it is very difficult for the public to accept the seeming illogicality and absurdity of yet another large increase.

It gives me no pleasure to say these things about the financial side of it but the reality that we now face is that the incidence and weight of the Tory party’s very large tribe of donor Peers gives much offence to the public—I am sorry to say that but I have to—especially among those who happen to believe that the House of Lords does a pretty good job as a revising and improving Chamber, which I feel is definitely the case. Of course, all parties have donors so I will avoid smugness. I will only mention in passing that we Liberal Democrats have donors only from time to time; they do not come along in serried ranks. Labour, too, has a good crop nowadays, which only underlines one of the great weaknesses in British politics, which is the failure in recent times, mainly in the Commons, to reach consensus on vital factors affecting Parliament as a whole.

We should think of the damage that has been done by the terrible imbroglio over the MPs’ expenses saga and our own expenses saga, when the Times took the lead because it was annoyed that the Telegraph had the priority with the previous articles, and the fact that there was not any consensus between the party leaders. I understand the pressures but the competition between political parties is now so excessive that no party can admit that it believes in anything that the other parties are suggesting—apart from the coalition parties, of course. The pressure is very strong.

We should work to persuade people in the Commons to listen to this and to revive the suggestion of £5,000 maximum personal donations with, if necessary, further restrained sums of public money for essential party infrastructure spending. The opposition leader’s offer to break the trade union membership nexus is a concrete, positive step, which might help to get the parties around the table soon, but this has been going on for an awfully long time and it is about time they reached agreement on this matter.

The only time when an independent recommendation for a salary increase for MPs was accepted was when Edward Heath was Prime Minister in 1972. All the others were blocked, once again because of the lack of consensus. This is doing damage because these are parliamentary matters rather than matters of different policies and competition between parties on policy. If we can separate those two things out and see how the Dan Byles text makes progress in our House and goes back to the Commons in unamended or amended form, we can begin to see the beginnings of common sense in size reduction. I hope that the Leader of the House will be able to give us some guidance today.

Press Regulation

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Dykes]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they expect to achieve final all-party agreement on their proposals for a royal charter on the supervision of ethical standards in the United Kingdom press.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, a cross-party royal charter has been agreed and published. On 4 July the Culture Secretary updated the other place by way of a Written Statement, as I did in your Lordships’ House, on developments since the cross-party agreement on 18 March. On 30 April the Press Standards Board of Finance petitioned the Privy Council with an alternative charter. The PressBoF charter will be considered by a committee of the Privy Council and a recommendation made before any recommendation is made regarding the cross-party royal charter.

[Lord Dykes]

I thank my noble friend for those details. Will he confirm that the priority now is to look after the past, present and future victims of press harassment and bullying and definitely not to appease international proprietors who do not pay UK personal taxes and insist on treating Parliament and people with continuing contempt?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I understand fully, as I have in many of the exchanges we have had on this matter, that the priority is to ensure that there is a resolution in place so that the victims can be reassured that it can never happen again. It is clearly in everyone’s interests that the committee acts swiftly to consider the charter in a manner consistent with delivering a robust and justifiable decision.

Iraq: Chilcot Inquiry

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Dykes]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will hold discussions with the administrators of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war to ascertain a date for publication.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the Government do not have any plans to hold such a discussion with the Iraq inquiry. Sir John Chilcot advised the Prime Minister last July that the inquiry would be in a position to begin the process of giving those subject to criticism in the report the opportunity to make representations by the middle of 2013, and that the inquiry would submit its report once that process had been completed.

[Lord Dykes]

With thanks for that Answer, can the Leader of the House reassure the House on a very important point—that high official circles in the UK and the US have not sought to interfere with the independent findings of the Chilcot inquiry, especially on the crucial decision to go to war together?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I can give that assurance. It is extremely important that this inquiry is independent; it was set up very deliberately to be independent and it must have that independence. It must consider the evidence that it has and reach its conclusions, which we will all be able to see in the fullness of time, but it must have a free hand to do that.

House of Lords: Membership

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, in moving my amendment to the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, I mean no criticism of the noble Lord. Indeed, I—and, I am sure, all Members of the House—are grateful to him for his determination to bring this matter back to your Lordships time after time.

The substantive point, surely, of what the noble Lord has said is that we have a pressing issue today concerning the size of the House, appointments and recruitment. We need to deal with this matter now, rather than let many more years go by before we engage, as the noble Lord has said, in sensible housekeeping.

The failure of Mr Clegg’s substantive Bill on reform surely means, as the noble Lord has said, that it will be a matter of years before a substantive proposal for reform could be put into practice. Indeed, if one took the proposals of the current coalition Government and those of the previous Government, it would be 2020 even if a substantive Bill were presented and passed after the next election—both of those being subject to some uncertainty given the history of Lords reform over 100 years.

We need to make progress on incremental, sensible changes to your Lordships’ House. I detect a real consensus for some progress to be made today. We are already experiencing considerable tensions as a result of our size. We have had the proposals from the Chairman of Committees, speaking for the Privileges Committee, on reforming the system of Oral Questions because of the problem of the number of Peers wishing to ask them. Often noble Lords are not even able to get into the Chamber for Question Time, which is surely much of the focus of our daily activity.

It is disturbing that there are rumours around this place that the Government intend to appoint dozens more new Peers in the next few days or weeks. I am sure that the noble Lord the Leader of the House will point to the coalition agreement. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, has also referred to it. We were certainly not party to any such agreement before the last election. I am mindful of the paper from Meg Russell, the distinguished academic from UCL, who wrote in April 2011 that the objective of a House of Lords membership that is proportional to general election vote share is unrealistic. She said then that it would require the appointment of, at a minimum, 269 new Peers, and that this would have disastrous consequences for the operation of the Chamber, would be unpopular with the public and would be a foolish and unsustainable course to pursue. It if were continued as a principle at every subsequent general election, the size of the House would spiral ever upwards unless some mechanism for removing Members were also adopted.

I understand that there clearly is a need for fresh blood to be introduced into your Lordships’ House from time to time. I certainly also understand that if the coalition Government were finding that their core legislative proposals were not able to get through your Lordships’ House, their case for making more appointments would be stronger. However, that is not the case. The coalition is winning most of the votes that take place. My understanding is that, in this Parliament so far, the Opposition have won about 22% of the votes. That compares to the Opposition winning about 30% of the votes against the previous Government. Even from the Government’s point of view, it is difficult to see the argument that they need a huge number of new Members because of difficulties in the process of getting their legislation through.

[Lord Dykes]

Is the idea of large numbers coming in even not more reprehensible when a very high incidence of those would be financial donors from the business community, which is tantamount to giving bribes to political parties to become Members of this House?

Business of the House

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

If the Statements are to be taken this way, would it then be in order for the noble Lord, Lord McNally, to question the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on his Statement, and for the noble Lord to question the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on his?

[Lord Dykes]

I am sure that my noble friend wishes to help the House in this unusual situation. Will he give the example from the 1930s where a precedent was established?