Scotland Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, I have great sympathy with the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, because it appears that we are putting the cart before the horse. Nevertheless, I have to say that I do not think that the full implications of what is proposed have sunk in for people. I have a very simple question. If the people of Scotland were to leave the United Kingdom, how can we have a United Kingdom if one of the kingdoms has left? What will we be called? What is Great Britain without Scotland? What will that be called?

A lot of comment has been made about the First Minister personally. I think we should get away from that and forget about the individual. We are talking about the future of more than 60 million of us. We are literally all in this together in every sense. Think of the situation that my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, and I would be in. We would have a foreign country on one side of us and a foreign country on the other side of us. We would end up like West Pakistan. We are all hewn from the same rock. Imagine the circumstances we would be placed in. We have just spent decades overcoming nationalist terrorism and we have gradually, after years and years, managed to settle down our community. I do not wish to exaggerate, but if the Scottish nationalists were to succeed it could reignite the difficulties that we have just managed to overcome. I do not say that lightly.

Having spent many years negotiating with Irish nationalists of different stripes, I have to say that we have got to get the tone of the debate right. We should not hector nor bully the Scottish people. We must not, we cannot; if we do, we do so at our peril. We will not win the argument by saying, “You’re going to be impoverished here”. Any group of people who are determined enough can be independent. They may not have the same standard of living, but they can be independent and survive.

UK: Union

Lord Empey Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I certainly think that one simple question that focuses on whether Scotland should or should not be a part of the United Kingdom is key. We should avoid any attempt to muddy the waters—as I think one rather influential academic put it last week—in suggesting a second question. That is spot on. I do not think that that would bring the clarity that we need on an issue such as this. I assure my noble friend that United Kingdom government Ministers have been pressing the Scottish Government to come clean as to their timings and, more specifically, what they mean by independence. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has posed a number of questions and we are still waiting for answers.

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord accept that a point will come shortly where the uncertainty created by the Scottish situation will impact negatively on investment opportunities in Scotland? When will a proper pro-union argument be put firmly not only to people in Scotland but to people throughout the rest of the United Kingdom?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

It is interesting that the noble Lord should mention the economic impact of the uncertainty. He may have seen a report published earlier this week by Citigroup on the very important issue of renewable energy, which made the point about the dangers of investing in Scotland while there is uncertainty about the future of the constitutional position of Scotland. The other side of that coin is that there are considerable benefits of a united kingdom in taking forward that agenda to ensure that we meet our climate change targets. It is not often that I have the opportunity to quote with approval a Daily Record editorial, but today it says:

“In the meantime, it's hard to disagree with pro-UK politicians who claim green energy is a great example of Scotland and the rest of the Britain working together”.

Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

I ask the noble Lord to consider carefully at this point. A sunset clause is like a great sulk. It is like retiring to our castles after the battle is lost and pulling up the drawbridge. The world is not like that any more—although, gazing along these Benches, I see that there may be one or two noble exceptions with castles and drawbridges. Our duty today in this place is clear. We are here not to indulge our own interests, but to serve the people. I mentioned that great film “Casablanca” on Monday. There comes a point in the film, after the usual suspects have been rounded up—it is the most important point of the film—and as the plane is waiting to take off, when Bogart turns to Bergman and reminds her that there is a bigger game to play that overrides their own interests, and that if they fail to recognise that, they will come to regret it: maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of their lives. There is a higher cause here—a bigger game to play. It is the future of the European Union. It is in question as never before and only the people can rescue that future. That is what this Bill is all about: giving the EU back to the people.

It is also much more than that, for in a sense it is not about Europe but about us and about this country. It is not about little England but about the great British people—about how we govern ourselves and how we show the people, at last, that we give a damn about what they think. The principle of placing our trust in the people is something that is eternal and indivisible. It is not just for a few days or for a single Parliament—and most certainly not for the convenience of politicians who have failed to carry the argument. We have a duty to listen to ordinary men and women of great common sense. If we do not—if we refuse—we deserve to be thrown on that rubbish tip that Mr Clegg is even now preparing for us.

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, I was amazed that the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, is not on the amendment. I was also surprised at the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who is well known throughout the country as a very wise head. However, the effect of the amendment, and the idea of a sunset clause, would be to give those who want to sever any relationship between this country and the European Union an opportunity at least every five years to have a platform with a specific objective in mind and to achieve it. That would be unwise. I am not sure whether anybody in the Chamber has not made up their mind on the Bill, but I will assume that one or two noble Lords are subject to persuasion. There could be nothing less attractive for somebody who believes in European Union than putting in a sunset clause. It would turn every election into a referendum on the European Union. Nothing would do more damage to the European cause because everybody would come out of the woodwork to oppose it and to run single-issue campaigns. We know that they work, because campaigners for hospitals, and environmental campaigners, have won seats in different countries. Single-issue elections are the most dangerous type, and I fear that we would open up a Pandora's box. Those who passionately oppose the Bill are shooting themselves in the foot with this amendment.

The noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, made the point that he had seen the Irish constitution in action. The Irish are very proud of their constitution. The Irish Government accepted, after the first referendum on the Lisbon treaty, that they had provided an overcomplicated form of information to the people, and subsequently corrected this at the next referendum. Nevertheless, people are still passionately in favour of their constitutional rights. If one goes to anybody in the Republic and says, “This is too complicated—the Government put forward all this stuff and we could not understand it because it referred to treaties and articles”, and then asks them whether they want to retain the right to have the final say, they will say yes. Even though there is a complication in a referendum on a single issue—it can be very difficult—the people in the Republic passionately believe in their right to choose. You would not find anybody in the political establishment in Dublin who would challenge that.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

The noble Lord has the advantage of coming from the northern part of the island of Ireland. As I said, I have the advantage of having lived in the southern part for many years as a blow-in. Is he aware of the fact that the reason that the constitution has been interpreted to apply so indiscriminately to so many referenda is not that the Irish people decided that but that a very narrow majority of the Supreme Court of Ireland so decided, against the powerful dissents of others? In other words, it was a curious judicial decision and not a popular one.

[Lord Empey]

I take the point that the noble Lord makes. However, he will also know that if there was any groundswell of opinion to change the constitution, proposals would come forward in the Dàil for that to occur. I know of no current or recent Member of that Parliament who would stand up on a platform to advocate it. While the noble Lord is no doubt correct in his judicial interpretation, there is no support in the Republic for removing the right of the Irish people to make decisions on these issues.

The underlying danger of the proposed new clause goes back to the reason why we have the Bill in the first place. It is the “we know best” syndrome: in other words, in both Houses of Parliament, we know best. In many cases that may be true: I believe in parliamentary democracy. However, the reason that we are in this position is that the usage of that right to represent the people has resulted over time in a breakdown in their confidence in the decisions of Parliament on this subject. That is why, as I understand it, the Government are putting forward a proposal which they hope over time will bring a resurgence in that confidence. Noble Lords have suggested reviews. Perhaps, in time, if that confidence is restored, such measures may no longer be required. It is a response to a particular set of circumstances that we face today.

I do not wish to put words into the mouth of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, or to apply a motive to what he said or to his proposal, but this is effectively a kill-the-Bill amendment. The Bill would be better not passed than passed with this clause in it. What we are actually saying to the public is, nod-nod, wink-wink, “We’ve found a way round this. By the time we get to the next general election, we’ll be able to tear it up again and go back to our old ways”. That would further undermine people’s confidence that we are listening to them and taking this issue seriously. Therefore, I see this as a kill-the-Bill amendment, and I sincerely hope that we do not include it because it will affect every subsequent election. We would open Pandora’s Box. Let us suppose that Brussels, as it is perfectly capable of doing, comes out with a proposal a few weeks before the election requiring us to have straight bananas or something stupid. It could turn the election into a referendum on Europe. Everybody who believes in the European Union, and many here are clearly passionate about it, would not be serving their cause. I hope under these circumstances we will vote not content on this amendment.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

I have not taken part in these debates, which have been going on for a considerable time, but I have been listening with great interest to the speeches that have been made in this debate. The noble Lord made a very seductive argument against this amendment when he said that if we were to pass it, it would make continued membership of the European Union a cause célèbre at every general election. I wonder whether that is right. There was a proposal to bring in legislation of this kind in the Conservative Party’s manifesto at the last general election, but not, I think, in the manifesto of the Liberal Democrats, but I am not aware that membership of the European Union was a major topic during that election. I do not think it featured in any of the television debates. Having initially thought that this was a very seductive argument against this amendment, on thinking it over, I am not quite so sure that it is.

[Lord Empey]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments. While it was not an issue of huge significance at the last general election, if you put this into the statute book, at the beginning of every Parliament, this issue would be one of the first items on the agenda. It would have to be, otherwise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, said, nobody in Europe would know where the United Kingdom stood. If you put it into law that this must happen at the very start of every Parliament, I assure the noble Lord that it will become an issue. If that is so, why should we take the risk, even if he is right and I am wrong, because the next Parliament can do what it likes anyway?

[Lord Dykes]

It is unusual, and I find it surprising, but the noble Lord, Lord Empey, appears to have misunderstood completely the purpose of this amendment. I hope that Members of this House who are listening to this debate or who are outside but will come in later on will reflect carefully on the reality of this amendment. This new clause does not in any way damage any other part of the Bill. Whatever one’s views about the Bill—and I do not much like it—there is no damage to be done intrinsically and internally to the text of the Bill. The only differences are the three government defeats so far and what may happen with this amendment when the vote is called. That is all. The rest of the Bill goes through intact. That is part of the Government’s programme, and no one can gainsay that. The noble Lord is raising fears that should not exist in anybody’s mind. I hope he will reconsider because it is very important that the review process that my noble friend Lady Williams referred to, in such a step in the dark with this legislation, is essential at the end of this coalition period to start with and later on too.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, Amendment 27 seeks to leave out subsection (1) of Clause 2. My purpose is to tease out the reasons for this provision.

Although this is termed the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, it is not a measure providing for fixed-term Parliaments. It stipulates a fixed term unless certain conditions are met. There may be deviations from the set term of five years under Clause 1(5) and Clause 2(1) and (2). The Bill thus seeks to move from a flexible to a semi-flexible or, if one prefers, a semi-fixed Parliament in terms of its duration within a maximum life of five years.

The Bill proposes two safety valve mechanisms enabling a parliamentary election to be held prematurely. One is the Dissolution Motion introduced by Clause 2(1) and the other is the vote of confidence covered in Clause 2(2). In evidence to the Constitution Committee, Professor Robert Hazell, director of the Constitution Unit at University College London, said that he was,

“slightly puzzled why the Government sees the need for a dual threshold”.

Although the committee concluded that it was appropriate to include two different safety mechanisms, I wish to probe why we need this particular mechanism.

I know the argument that this provision ensures that the House, in the event of some unbreakable deadlock, does not have to engineer a vote of no confidence in order to ensure an early election. However, the problem with this provision is that it sets the bar at a high level and, as a result, the Bill fails to deal with the situation where there has been a breakdown within the Government but the Opposition are not prepared to support a Dissolution Motion. The Opposition may not be able to muster enough votes to pass a Motion of no confidence, but they may find it politically advantageous not to vote for a Dissolution. If the Government resign without either a no confidence Motion or a Dissolution Motion having been passed, then the 14-day trigger is not engaged. We could have a period of instability, with no Government but with no election in prospect either. I appreciate the situation is unlikely but, as long as it is not impossible, we need to consider it.

I am not clear why there needs to be the two-thirds hurdle in the context of the Bill. I am familiar with the fact that some legislatures have a two-thirds provision, but to what extent does this exist in the context of a dual as opposed to a single safety valve? Is it not the case that the two-thirds provision in other legislatures applies more often than not in respect of a confidence Motion? Perhaps my noble and learned friend can tell us which other national legislatures utilise an extraordinary majority for the passage of a Dissolution Motion.

[Lord Empey]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. If my memory serves me correctly, the Northern Ireland Assembly needs 70 per cent of its Members to vote to bring the life of the Assembly to a conclusion, albeit subject to the assent of the Secretary of State.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. His very thoughtful amendment is obviously designed to assist the devolved Administrations. There are of course other aspects to the amendment. It would mean that those regions would be in a prolonged state of electioneering for additional months, for obvious reasons, and of course the parties would face additional costs because one election would follow the other. The question would also arise as to whether it would be possible to get the people to come back out again so shortly after being at the polls. Therefore, a series of issues arise here. It is a very thoughtful amendment and I know that the noble Lord has many years of experience in these matters. We are obviously dealing here with very sensitive issues and therefore the Administrations should certainly be consulted to get their views on the ideas that the noble Lord is putting forward.

There is also a possibility that local government elections could collide with some of the elections in certain places. Of course, depending on the circumstances, we also have the ever-present European elections, although they will not clash with that date. I thank the noble Lord for bringing forward the proposal. I think that there should be consultation with those most directly affected to test their views on it.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, not for the first time in this Parliament do I find myself urging the Government to take care of our constitution, which I regard as a precious mixture of documents and conventions that need looking after. I think I know something about the basis on which this Bill was put together. It has very much the fingerprints of the Deputy Prime Minister on it. I know the base from which he operates, because he has told us frequently enough; it is to describe our parliamentary system as involving “broken politics” and to say that we have a “broken constitution”. I am paraphrasing what he has said, but the word “broken” frequently appears in his speeches.

I simply do not accept that our political system is broken; nor is our constitution. If you want to look at broken politics, where the word “broken” really applies, there are plenty of parts of the world where you can find it—not least in the Middle East. Politicians, and particularly Deputy Prime Ministers, need to be careful about the language that they use. We, on the contrary, in my view, have a constitution and democratic system of which we can be proud. I cannot be the only Member of this House who has travelled to various countries in the world, including those recently emerged from dictatorships, where they tell us that they admire our political system. They want to know more about it and about how we reconcile the differences between the two Houses, when they occur, as well as how our elections take place and how our electoral law operates. A whole range of things that we have developed over many years, often with great difficulty, are not viewed by countries overseas as being part of a broken political system—absolutely on the contrary. So I simply do not start from the same premise as the Deputy Prime Minister.

This is the only party political point that I shall make, but I think that the Prime Minister needs to be careful about dressing up in grand constitutional argument a political arrangement that guarantees that he will be Prime Minister for five years and about putting a Bill before Parliament to ensure that it lasts for five years. That comes not very convincingly from a Prime Minister who in arithmetic terms has a weaker parliamentary base of his own party than any Prime Minister since the Second World War. If he stays there for five years, he will be one of the longer-serving Prime Ministers, as I think the average for the 20th century was five years. It will not be a bad stint for someone without a parliamentary majority of his own party.

I have two sets of questions. The first is surely the most important, and I do not think that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, addressed it. What are the faults that this Bill tries to rectify? The strongest argument—and I can see it—is that it stops the Prime Minister from starting the race, and that it gives undue power to Prime Ministers over Parliament—and, if you like, over the country—to decide when a general election should be. Rather than look at the books on political theory, let us look at the facts. Of the 18 general elections held since the Second World War—and I shall assume that determining the date of the general election is a huge political advantage and that, if the Prime Minister wins the election, he or she has made a good judgment and that, if the Prime Minister loses, he or she has made a bad judgment—10 general elections were won and eight lost by the Prime Minister who called them. Of the 10 where the victories occurred, four of them were either by Mrs Thatcher or my great friend, who also seemed to keep winning elections. Mrs Thatcher is the best example; Tony Blair and Mrs Thatcher between them account for four of those 10 elections—and you get the feeling that whenever they called an election they would probably have won it. It therefore does not seem to me that as a matter of historical fact it is a colossal advantage to be able to determine the date of a general election.

The second fault it is alleged this Bill will put right is that flexibility in determining elections is wrong in principle. I cannot accept that. I could give any number of examples, as could other Members of this House. When an early general election was called in 1951 by Clem Attlee, would it have been better if he had been forced to have a fixed term that saw that Government continue for the full five years, or was it not entirely proper—although sad from my perspective as a lifelong member of the Labour party—that, because he felt his Government was tired and that some of the great characters had died or were unwell, it was right to ask for a further mandate from the public, which actually he won but was then beaten by the electoral system?

Would it have been right to have prevented Mr Heath from calling his election in the middle of the miners’ strike when he judged that that was the right time to call for an election to renew his mandate in a most difficult set of circumstances? I do not think that that was a failure of our constitutional system; it was a strength of it.

I am not at all convinced that flexibility in the way in which we hold general elections is a bad thing. The system whereby a general election is immediately held once a Prime Minister loses a vote of confidence is nothing other than a splendid part of our constitution. That is the most telling point of all and one mentioned in the splendid speech by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. It is far from broken.

For reasons of nostalgia I read what Jim Callaghan said—and those of us who were there will never forget it—after he lost a vote of confidence by one. He said, in the simplest and shortest of speeches:

“Mr. Speaker, now that the House of Commons has declared itself, we shall take our case to the country. Tomorrow I shall propose to Her Majesty that Parliament be dissolved … and I shall then announce … the date of Dissolution, the date of the election and the date of the meeting of the new Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/3/1979; col. 589.]

Those are splendid words. They almost bring tears to my eyes because shortly after that I was unemployed. I would go as far as to say there was majesty in the simplicity of those words. I dread to think what he would have had to say if this Bill had been an Act of Parliament at that time. He would have said, “The House of Commons has now spoken. I therefore invoke Section (2)(1) of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act”—or whatever Act it would have been. I suggest that the kind of detail involved in this Bill diminishes our constitution.

The Minister’s speeches are splendid and very persuasive most of the time, but it took him quite a long time to explain Clause 2 and the circumstances in which Dissolution on a vote of no confidence would take place. Why change it? What is wrong with the system? It has not only worked well, it has worked absolutely perfectly and majestically, so for heaven’s sake leave it alone. I do not think there are any serious problems to which this Bill provides a solution.

I want to make a couple of specific points about what is bad about this Bill. A couple have been mentioned before but it will do no harm to rehearse them briefly. Many of us here have either been in Parliament during four or five-year Parliaments or, in my case, have watched from outside when the electorate made their decision. There is no doubt that the fifth year of a Parliament, in our constitutional history and experience if not in theory, is nearly always a completely unsatisfactory year. It is one in which everything is winding down, and it is ludicrous to suggest that a Government in their fifth year of a five-year Parliament would be doing anything other than providing for the general election, the date of which they knew, both in their legislative programme and in the decisions that they made. Importantly, it extends the whole period of electioneering. I do not want to overstate the case, but again do we really want a system like the one the United States has in which the preparation for an election takes at least a year? That is what would happen if everyone knew in advance.

I have already demonstrated that this does not give a Prime Minister a huge advantage. Do we really want a 12-month period in which expenditure presumably had to be controlled and in which everyone knew that we were simply waiting for the date to come? I remember, as many others here do, that we have only once had a six or a seven-week election—I think that was the 1997 one. There was pretty universal agreement that that was too long for an election period. The public get bored rigid if it goes on for too long. The present period is pretty good: four or five weeks between the calling of an election and the public making their decision.

[Lord Empey]

I sit on an institution that has a four-year cycle, and I assure the noble Lord and the House that in the past months as we are now approaching our four-year deadline, the pre-election process creeps into that four-year cycle. However, in trying to find a balance and to know the right thing to do we also have the example of the European Parliament, which is on a five-year cycle. It is very hard to discern or divine what the right time is, because I assure the noble Lord that, even in the devolved regions, the four-year cycle produces a period when people are obviously preparing. I suspect that that is inevitable in any democracy. Let us hope we do not have a Bill that proposes a two-year cycle, like the House of Representatives in Washington.

[Lord Grocott]

I would certainly prefer a four-year cycle to a five-year cycle, but my strong view is that there is no need to change the present arrangements, which provide for a short sharp election in which the public are focused and where colossal sums of money will not need to be spent to extend it over 12 months, or however long the preparation period for the election would be.

My final point on what I dislike about the Bill is that it inevitably weakens Parliament. Part of the drama of Parliament and the Commons is knowing that almost any Division on any Bill—certainly, if the numbers in the Commons make it possible—could precipitate a drama that could result in a general election. Parliament needs to be dramatic and it is important that it is. It is not nine to five, for however many months per year, within fixed terms or within fixed Sessions of Parliament within those fixed terms. That makes for boring tedious politics, and we all know how difficult it is, even under the present system, to make it of interest on a wider basis.

To conclude, this Bill weakens Parliament. It weakens the House of Commons and makes it more predictable. It does not solve any problems that have been identified in any satisfactory way. I hope that my party, when it comes to draw up its manifesto for the next general election will, assuming that this Bill becomes an Act, at the very least say that we should revert to four-year Parliaments, but I would like it to abide by the oldest maxim in the book; if something is working, there is absolutely no need to fix it.