Food Supply: Sustainability

Debate between Lord Elton and Lord Howarth of Newport

Monday 14th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords—

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords—

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Elton and Lord Howarth of Newport

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton]

The noble Baroness has put forward a very attractive proposal, at which I hope my noble friend will look carefully. I do not doubt that it will need a lot more work on it before it can be in statute. I hope that the length of the interval between Committee and Report will make that possible.

I have a question for the noble Baroness, having only cursorily looked at the amendment. It seems to me that it depends very much on the quality of the sentence or referral that the panel makes. There should be a requirement that any child or young person who is put into its orbit should not be able to fall out of the system so that they simply have to report at intervals. I would like to see the word “monitor” in there somewhere. A responsible adult or organisation should be required in the statute; otherwise, we will get people fading away, as they have done in the past under probation.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I was extremely happy to add my name to the amendments in this group, tabled by my noble friend Lady Meacher, and I pay tribute to the work that she does as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform. She is deeply knowledgeable in this field, and I know that the House will always listen with great care to the proposals that she makes. She is right, of course, to make the point that injunctions on their own will achieve nothing, and that people with a drug dependency or who find themselves in the ambit of drug-related gangs are people who need help. She is right to suggest that the help that they need should very likely be help in terms of their health. It is better with these young people to treat their predicament not as a criminal but as a health issue. That is the model that has been established in Portugal since 2001, as my noble friend said, initially amid some considerable controversy—because Portugal faced an appalling crisis of drug trafficking and addiction and a whole generation of young people in very great danger. It was to many people countercultural primarily as a health-related issue rather than as a criminal issue. But the evidence shows that, over the years, the approach has paid off and results have been very good indeed.

I commend to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and others the report on the Portuguese experience published by the charity, Transform, and available on its website. It looks very carefully at the evidence of what has happened in Portugal. I add to the highlights that my noble friend Lady Meacher mentioned the facts that drug use has,

“declined among those aged 15-24, the population most at risk of initiating drug use … Rates of past-year and past-month drug use among the general population—which are seen as the best indicators of evolving drug use trends—have decreased”,

and that,

“Rates of continuation of drug use (i.e. the proportion of the population that have ever used an illicit drug and continue to do so) have decreased”.

On all these important indicators, the policy has been vindicated. However, it is also important to say that this Portuguese strategy is one of investing very considerably in support services for the young people who are brought before disuassion commissions. The young people come to an agreement with the disuassion commission about a course of action that they will take. Not only will they seek to co-operate willingly with what is recommended in terms of their health, but there are many other courses that the disuassion commission may recommend for them, including job training and all kinds of activities and processes to help them to integrate successfully with society. This strategy came at a time when Portugal was broadening the range and depth of its welfare state and of its support services for vulnerable and fragile young people. Of course, Portugal has been under very serious fiscal pressure in recent years. It may well be that the quality and extent of these services are not what the authors of the strategy would ideally have wished; none the less, the results have been very good.

It will be necessary, if we are to adopt a constructive, positive, humane strategy of the kind that has been pioneered and demonstrated in Portugal, for the Government of the day in this country to be willing to invest in the resources needed to make a full success of that. We all know how very difficult that is going to be for a Government now or in the foreseeable future to do. That is a kind of caveat; but it would not at all invalidate the adoption of a strategy such as the one my noble friend has commended to the Committee. I very much hope that the Committee will favour what she has suggested.

House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Elton and Lord Howarth of Newport

Friday 21st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I recognise the grievance expressed by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. I understand why they feel as strongly as they do. Indeed, they erect their grievance into a point of principle. With great respect to them, I do not think that it really is a point of principle, but even if it is, there is a more important point of principle: a principle that we were reminded of a little earlier by the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby. We need to consider the reputation of this House. I speak as someone who holds individual hereditary Peers in enormous respect and personal affection. I recognise the quality of the work that they do as working Peers in this House, but I believe that the people of this country cannot see a rational justification in 2011 for the hereditary principle as a basis for membership of the legislature. It is 12 years since that agreement was made. In the interests of the reputation of this House, we need to reconsider the position. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, has been entirely right to include the provisions in the Bill.

I also note that the Bill would treat hereditary Peers who are Members of this House with the respect and courtesy that is proper. There is no suggestion that they should all be swept away in one fell swoop. The proposition is that over time, as nature takes its course, the hereditary Peers would disappear from the legislature. That is a decent, practical and proper way to proceed. I very much hope that the House will agree with the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood.

[Lord Elton]

My noble friends Lord Trefgarne and Lord Caithness have made points that resonate strongly with me and with several other noble Lords. It is perfectly true that we are now in this position by the consent of a large number of our former noble friends—they are still our noble friends but they are no longer Members of this House—on the strict understanding that the rearguard would remain until a satisfactory position had been reached. That is a point of principle. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said very nice things about hereditary Peers, but fine words butter few Peers. We are here on an honourable understanding built on the understanding of many others who served this House for a very long time.

Why, therefore, do I support the Bill—as I do with a heavy heart? It seems to me that the real basic principle is not to do with undertakings that we have been given or the perception of the British public at the present time, it is the protection of the British people from their future Governments down the generations to come. The House of Commons, for various reasons, is now on occasion firmly in the grip of the Government of the day. We saw that very clearly in 2003. I would love to expand on that, but your Lordships want to get on.

The same circumstances would automatically arise if this were to be an elected House. We have to try to find a means by which an acceptable House remains without being replaced by an elected House. Reform is necessary, but it must not be a House made up of people who can be removed by the Whips of any governing party at their whim by deselection. That being so, we have to find something that is workable and acceptable. It seems to me quite possible that my noble friend Lord Trefgarne’s heroic efforts to forge something acceptable from the draft Bill at present before his Committee may fail. What emerges may not be acceptable; in fact I very much doubt that it will. That being so, the search will be on, if time permits, for something else. If that something else is already here and working, there is a good chance that it will last. Therefore, I have to swallow my pride in the past and my affection for the present and leave my loyalty to the British people and to this sad but necessary device.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

It seems to me that the term “senate” has a republican ring about it, and I am not sure that that is what the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, may seriously intend for the future.

[Lord Elton]

I may well be wrong, because my Latin is rather out of date now, but I think that the root of the word is the same as that for “senex”, which means an old man. That is very appropriate to this House.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Elton and Lord Howarth of Newport

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton]

With respect, the previous Government had all-night sittings as well and we did not change the rules.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I do not know whether I may be permitted to resume these brief remarks that I want to offer to the Chamber. It is difficult when noble Lords on the other side of the House digress into procedural matters and interrupt to waste time. Perhaps I might try to make progress. On the general consideration—

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Elton and Lord Howarth of Newport

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Soley proposes that the number of constituencies for the future should be determined by an independent commission and the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Lipsey prefers that the recommendation should be made to Parliament by a Speaker’s Conference. I do not think that the difference between these two manners of proceeding is necessarily very great. Indeed, an independent commission could turn out to be a Speaker’s Conference. However, I prefer the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Lipsey because my noble friend Lord Soley has thrown into his amendment a stipulation that the number of constituencies to be determined by the independent commission should not in any case exceed 650. If we examine the arguments on whether there should be more or fewer Members of Parliament, there is a strong case not for reducing the numbers of Members of Parliament but for increasing them. But whichever device were to be adopted, both of these modes of proceeding are designed to be reasonable, to gather evidence, to enable all concerned to work towards consensus and for their conclusions to be perceived to be unimpeachable. That last point is extremely important.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, in responding to the earlier debate—he did so entirely admirably—defended a case that is very difficult to defend. He reminded us that in the approach to the previous general election both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrat Party signalled their view that there should be a smaller House of Commons. He suggested that there was therefore a mandate, but, of course, no mandate for a smaller House of Commons was provided by the electorate because neither the Conservative Party nor the Liberal Democrat Party won the election. Certainly, the coalition agreement has no status as a mandate at all. Of course, there needs to be a coalition agreement and of course this House treats with the greatest seriousness what the coalition agreement has put forward for the country, but this House is not intimidated by the coalition agreement, nor does it consider that it has some special quality.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, was of the view that in the end the size of the future House of Commons had to be a question of judgment. That is possibly so but, as the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, reminded us, when you are making a judgment it is your responsibility to make it on the best basis of evidence and of reasoning. Moreover, it is essential that the judgment is perceived to be disinterested. That is where the Government are in some political difficulty as they wax indignant at any suggestion that they are tilting the system in the political interests of one party or another. I will not impugn their sincerity in that matter but their political problem is in part that there is a perception that they are not objective in this matter. Irrespective of whether an independent commission or a Speaker’s Conference were involved, at least the matter would proceed reasonably, whereas the proposition that we have before us in the Bill—that the House of Commons should in future consist of 600 Members of Parliament—is not really even a product of judgment but of an opportunist wheeze.

The Prime Minister was of the view that Members of Parliament were unpopular and that there was a large deficit, which needed to be reduced. It occurred to him and his advisers that it would be a good wheeze to propose to the people that we should therefore have fewer Members of Parliament. That is the kind of opportunistic gimmick that political parties devise and resort to to get them through their relations with the media for a day, but it should be forgotten just as quickly as that.

You need a better basis for determining the appropriate size of the House of Commons. You have to start by looking at what those who elect Members of the House of Commons expect and, indeed, require them to do. Above all, they expect them to debate the great issues of the day, to scrutinise legislation and the propositions of the Government and to hold the Government to account. It is very important that there should be enough Members of Parliament who are not members of the Executive and not Parliamentary Private Secretaries on the payroll vote to be able to hold those independent debates. Such Members will take the Whip and they will have their party loyalties, but when push comes to shove those who elected them expect them to exercise a certain independence that is rightly not permitted to members of the Executive.

I was very interested in and listened very carefully to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn. Any of us must listen carefully to the views of a former Speaker of the other place. He favoured a reduction in the number of Members of Parliament on the basis that it might make for better debate, because he recognised that there is a problem for Members of the other place in getting into debates and having the opportunities to speak as often as they would no doubt like. That is true and relates to the procedures that the other place, in its wisdom, has developed over many years. It is interesting that Members of your Lordships’ House, who are more numerous and every day becoming significantly more numerous than Members of the House of Commons, can all individually get into debates when they wish. Indeed, there will be ample opportunity this very evening for noble Lords on the other side of the House to expound their views at length on this extremely important legislation. No Member of your Lordships’ House can say that they do not get the opportunity to contribute to debates. Therefore, it is just possible that the other place, in considering its procedures, might consider how it is that this House, which is more numerous, enables everyone to participate.

My noble friends Lord Soley and Lord Rooker were both of the view that it would be better if the size of the House of Commons were to be reduced. My view is that the House of Commons has great difficulty in performing all the functions that the citizens of this country want of it. It is getting more difficult as more and more Ministers are appointed. We are told that we have to look forward to there being more frequent coalition Governments—heaven forefend, but that is what is anticipated by quite a lot of people. We have seen that, when a coalition Government are formed, there have to be jobs for lots of the boys and girls in each of the parties that form the coalition. We now have an Administration in the House of Commons who have more Ministers than any other Administration have ever had. We are going to need more Back-Benchers who will still have an independent voice of their own.

[Lord Elton]

Can the noble Lord refresh my memory? I thought that the number of Ministers in the House of Commons was regulated by statute.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

The noble Lord will find that, one way or another, Members of the Administration, including Parliamentary Under-Secretaries and Whips, have become even more numerous than they used to be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

But even before we saw this unfortunate growth in the size of the Administration, it was commonplace that the House Commons had great difficulty in examining all the legislation that came before it with the care that everyone would wish. For example, the Commons found it very difficult to find the time to scrutinise European legislation with any adequacy. It is an important part of the history of government in this country that over several recent decades there has been a vast increase in the quantity of secondary legislation—statutory instruments—which the House of Commons is entirely unable to scrutinise as much as would be desirable.

Legislative committees, which used to be known as Standing Committees, are set up ad hoc to scrutinise pieces of legislation, but so difficult is it for very busy Members of the other place to give their detailed attention to Bills that these are now routinely programmed. Members of your Lordships’ House will also wryly acknowledge that important pieces of legislation such as this one come through to us without having been exhaustively examined in Committee in the other place.

Separate from the scrutiny of legislation is the work of Select Committees. Departmental Select Committees did not exist before 1979. They are a source of great pride to the other place and to us all, but it is not disrespectful to the other place to note that attendance at Select Committees is less complete than perhaps it should be and that, because Members of the other place are legitimately very busy on a host of matters, sometimes one has the possibly erroneous impression that not all those participating in the work of a Select Committee have entirely mastered the papers before them.

The Public Administration Select Committee, chaired in recent years with enormous distinction by Mr Tony Wright, has persuaded not only the other place but the Executive that there should be greater independence for Select Committees. That raises hopes for the future work of Select Committees. It raises expectations about the amount and quality of the work that they will do. That is a large responsibility that falls on the other place and it may need more rather than fewer Members of Parliament to do full justice to it.

Party committees are a very valuable presence in the life of the other place because they enable the Executive and the Back Benches to explain themselves to each other. However, these meetings take time and, again, their attendance is not always as full as might be ideal. There are also all-party committees that come and go. All noble Lords have a view on whether it is necessarily a good thing that there are quite as many all-party committees as there are at any given moment. However, the best of them have enormous value. I will mention, for example, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Disablement, in which the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, when he was a Member of the other place as well as when he became a Member of your Lordships’ House, played an outstandingly distinguished part. I see the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, in his place opposite. When he was the Member for Daventry in the other place, he inaugurated the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Archives, in which I, too, had the pleasure to serve. It is a very valuable committee, which brings together from all sides of both Houses Members of Parliament who have a particular interest and some expertise in a topic and, through the work of the committee, are able to relate to professional interest groups and others outside. This is extremely important in the representative work of both Houses of Parliament and very important for ensuring that there is a depth of knowledge on a range of specialised topics.

I mention also the All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group, which I have been involved with. I promise the House that I will not recite the entire list of all-party groups, tempting though it may be. The noble Lord, Lord Allan, when he was a Member of Parliament—I think it was for Sheffield Hallam—was a distinguished, active and expert member of that group. That is important. However, the reality is that it is very difficult for all-party groups to get a sufficient number of Members in the other place to take a full part in their meetings because there are not enough colleagues to carry out all the work that needs to be done. I could mention the all-party groups that are necessary to enable the House to function, such as the House of Commons Commission, for example, which has to be staffed and served. There is also the Speaker’s Panel. The enormous volume of legislation, particularly from the coalition, that is churning through Parliament creates a lot of demand. There is the international work of the other place. For some years, I was a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. We have an important job to do on behalf of the Parliament of this country.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords—

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I know that the noble Lord is going to remind me of the Companion, and quite right, too. That is one of his valuable sentinel roles in this House. Is that right?

[Lord Elton]

I did not quite catch what the noble Lord asked, but would he accept that we have a general idea that there are a lot of committees in the House of Commons which have a lot of things to do. The noble Lord thinks that there should be more people to do it. He has made his point; we have got it.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am infinitely obliged to the noble Lord. He is always rigorous and helpful to the House in exactly that respect.