European Union (Future Relationship) Bill
Lord Falconer of Thoroton ExcerptsWednesday 30th December 2020
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020 View all European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 30 December 2020 - (30 Dec 2020)
Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the staff of the House of Lords for making this important debate possible. I thank the noble Lord, Lord True, for his engagement since the agreement was announced. Since the Bill was published, he has been truly helpful to all noble Lords in trying to understand it and making this debate meaningful.
I offer my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Austin of Dudley. He is a friend and a courageous politician who stood out against anti-Semitism when many others did not. He made a very moving maiden speech today. This House will discover what I know about him, which is that he improves and shakes every organisation of which he is a member. I very much hope that I will be able to call him my noble friend fairly soon.
I also say a sad farewell to the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness. Everyone who know him knows that he is an absolutely lovely human being, whose care, decency and straightforwardness have served this House very well for many years. He will be much missed.
We should not lose sight of the pandemic, which has claimed over 900 lives today, with 50,000 new infections. I associate myself specifically with the remarks of my noble friends Lady Royall of Blaisdon and Lord Judd. We live in an interdependent world; if we want to fight the pandemic effectively, it has to be done by co-operating right across the world.
There have been many insightful and worthwhile interventions in this debate. It has been a good debate, but it has been an absolute travesty of parliamentary scrutiny. It did not have to be like this. The deal that was done by the Prime Minister and the European Union involved provisional ratification. Both sides agreed, in Article 10 of the final provisions of the agreement, that ratification did not have to take place until February 2021. In the meantime, a process of provisional enablement would take place. We have chosen not to do that.
Instead, the Prime Minister has produced the 1,250-page agreement and an 80-page Bill which he has put to this House in one day. That 80-page Bill will not only be the framework of our relationship with the European Union but will deal with, for example, extradition, criminal records and social security. It is all being done without any parliamentary scrutiny at all, as is recognised by the fact that both Houses have, in effect, agreed that there will be no Committee stage for the Bill in either House. Why has it been done like that? Could the noble and co-operative Lord, Lord True, explain why the Government chose to have only an executive process in relation to this, instead of a parliamentary one?
I echo the words of my noble friend Lady Taylor, who chaired the committee that produced an excellent report highlighting that it was provisional ratification only that the parties envisaged, when she said this represents a new level of executive abuse. This is a new low in the Prime Minister’s sidelining of Parliament. He did not need to put Parliament in this position.
The ideological ERG, without a trace of irony, convened what they called a “star chamber” not to decide what whether the agreement was good for this country but whether it satisfied their self-important lawyer’s view of sovereignty. Many noble Lords will remember that Parliament abolished the Star Chamber in 1641 because Charles I used it as a means of gaining support for his policies without having to go to Parliament. The Star Chamber allowed Charles I to get away with a series of disastrous policies. As you probably know, it ended rather badly, both for King Charles and for the Star Chamber. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said Parliament is going to regain control over the process. That remains to be seen. There has been a bad start with this Bill and this agreement.
The debates about whether to Brexit at all, and whether we should leave the single market or the customs union, are over. The country—remainers and leavers—has little stomach for them anymore. As long as they continue, we cannot move on as a country, and we must move on. I agree with all those who said we should put past divisions behind us. I agree that this deal is, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, the best of a bad job. I agree with noble Lords who say, like my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, they will vote for it with a heavy heart.
I understand why the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, cannot bring themselves to support this, but I believe we should support this Bill and this deal. We have been urging the Government to get a deal. The chaos we would face if we broke from the EU without a deal is acknowledged on all sides. We accept the deal because it is better than no deal and avoids massive friction with the European Union for years.
For our country, it is the future that matters. The country needs transforming investment and new economic policies to address the grinding inequalities and lack of opportunity and hope that so drove Brexit. The Prime Minister’s incantation of the phrase “levelling up” has to be exposed for its total emptiness. We need to make the economy work for the many; that is our task now.
This is not a good deal. The Government understand that. It is a Christmas sack of broken promises from the Prime Minister, who deals with the problem by misleading the country about the deal he has done. The Prime Minister, on Christmas Eve, said
“there will be no non-tariff barriers to trade.”
Rules of origin, customs, VAT, plant and animal health: the list is endless. As so many noble Lords said, an ocean of new paperwork is on the way.
The Prime Minister said, on Christmas Eve,
“we will be an independent coastal state with full control of our waters”,
and in the Commons, this morning, he said:
“in five and a half years’ time, we will be able to fish every single fish in our waters.”
No, the agreement will reduce the rights of EU fishermen to fish in our waters, but the deal is a haggle about percentages, not a fundamental change in our relationship on fishing. It goes on, in perpetuity, after those five and a half years. The Prime Minister is wrong to pretend otherwise.
The Prime Minister, on Christmas Eve, also said:
“We will be able to decide how and where we are going to stimulate new jobs”.
Again, this is wrong. The agreement provides that if the European Union thinks a UK state aid subsidy causes, or risks causing, a significant negative effect on trade or investment with the EU, the EU can unilaterally impose tariffs. There is no need, in that case, to await any arbitration. That is only related to labour, climate and environment regulations. So do not mislead us on what this agreement says.
The Prime Minister also said on Christmas Eve that
“it means certainty for business from financial services to our world-leading manufacturers, our car industry, certainty for those working in high skilled jobs in firms and factories across the whole country.”
Wrong again. This agreement is, explicitly, the beginning of long years of negotiation. On access for financial services, as this House knows, the deal offers nothing, and the Government’s own summary of the financial services deal is as follows:
“The Parties will discuss how we move forward on specific equivalence determinations. The Parties will codify the framework for regulatory cooperation in a Memorandum of Understanding.”
That is not certainty. Listen to my noble friend Lady Donaghy, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr: it is a bad deal on financial services.
There is a whole annexe to the agreement that sets up a structure to try to promote agreement on regulations for the car industry. This agreement does not provide certainty; it provides only the certainty of an endless haggle, with constant end-of-negotiation-cycle cliff edges like what we have just gone through.
I will quote one last misleading comment on this agreement made by the Prime Minister on Christmas Eve:
“It means certainty for the police and the border forces and the security services and all those that we rely on across Europe to keep us safe.”
He has done well on DNA, fingerprint and car registration databases, but we now know that he has done incredibly badly on the SIS database. When a wanted person is travelling around Europe, it will not be providing the information—as it does now—about where that wanted person is going. The list of misstatements is endless, and we have heard so much about them: Gibraltar, Erasmus, museums and, what is more, musicians, who, for example, cannot now tour Europe without first getting a range of visas.
What happens to our relationship with the EU in the future is the key. This depends on how our country implements this agreement. If the UK Government want to plunge to the regulatory bottom, determined to make the UK the cheapest place to do business through deteriorating labour, climate and environment protection relative to the EU, this agreement allows that—and diverge they want to. Within an hour and a half of this deal being announced, the Prime Minister was keen to stress to Mr Harry Yorke of the Sunday Telegraph that the UK will now be free to diverge from EU standards. Mr Johnson told Mr Yorke that he has achieved what his critics said was impossible:
“That you could do free trade with the EU without being drawn into their regulatory or legislative orbit.”
He failed to draw attention to the terms of the agreement, which do precisely that.
The question for the UK is whether we should recognise and embrace the need for alignment, using it to ensure that our standards are at least as high as the EU’s and then to promote our trade with the EU and the rest of the world. I have no doubt that we should. Or should we constantly lower our standards to levels at or beyond the point where the EU can retaliate under the many provisions that allow that under this agreement, or so that we are constantly in dispute with the EU on just how low we can go? We would make a different choice from this Government, choosing high standards, not low-regulation profiteering. We accept Brexit and must now deliver the economic reform that the public expect.
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill
Lord Falconer of Thoroton ExcerptsMonday 14th December 2020
(3 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 View all United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 158-I Marshalled list for consideration of Commons reasons and amendments - (11 Dec 2020)
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, this is the last knockings on Part 5 of the Bill. It has been a sad and sorry saga from beginning to end. The Government understandably drew huge opprobrium, both domestically and internationally, for being prepared to break the law. They have now withdrawn in the best way they can, but the truth is that they have done so with their tail between their legs. I am extremely pleased that we have reached this point, but sorry that the Government ever put Part 5 in the Bill in the first place and that it needed your Lordships’ House to help kick it out.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)
The noble Lord, Lord True, has been true to his word. He has produced Clause 43A, which does not contain any element of illegality, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said. I also agree with the noble and learned Lord that it is a sensible provision and we welcome it. It brings to an end a saga for which this country has plainly paid a price. Everybody commenting on the position of the European Union at the moment is saying that the reason it is currently seeking the arbitral and consultation provisions, and the threshold for the ratchet up, is that it does not trust us—and one of the reasons for that is the internal market Bill and its illegality.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord opposite always has a delightful habit of ending his eloquent speeches with a couple of sentences that I find it hard to agree with, and I do not agree with his interpretation there. But I thank those who have contributed to this short debate. I am grateful for the welcome for the Government’s proposal—I do not talk about tails between legs—and that the other parts of Part 5, to which your Lordships objected before, have been accepted. As perceived from this side of the House, that was the correct action.
I need not repeat the essence of this. Clause 43A is required in the Bill because, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said, it is an important part of implementing the protocol. The clause places a duty on the Secretary of State to provide guidance. I welcome the fact that the EU has clarified that subsidies are within the scope of Article 10 only under the conditions that I described—a genuine and direct link to Northern Ireland and a real, foreseeable impact on trade between Northern Ireland and the EU. This addresses the risk of reach-back and must be reflected in the guidance that the Government will provide.
I am also, of course, grateful for the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. In concluding, I will emphasise, as he did, that this approach is fully in accordance with the United Kingdom’s commitments under the Northern Ireland protocol and international and domestic law.
EU: Negotiations
Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord True
My Lords, I hear what the noble Lord says and understand where he is coming from, but I must repeat that both sides remain fully committed to these negotiations and to continuing them. Of course we are looking at the possibility of videoconferencing and conference calls as he suggests. That is the resolve of both parties in this negotiation.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)
Can the noble Lord tell the House whether the emergency legislation that we will be considering, either at the end of this week or the beginning of next week, will contain power for the Government to amend the withdrawal Act?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill
Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bridges of Headley. Far from seeming like seven years, it seemed like about six minutes; that was such a good speech. Thank you to the usual channels for making it possible for me to speak in the debate.
I do not think it is for this House to thwart, or seek to thwart, Brexit because we would have preferred a different outcome. There may come a time when opinion manifestly shifts, but now is not the time, this is not the Bill and this House is not the Chamber to make that judgment. Parliament must therefore act to give effect to the referendum. This Bill is necessary in principle to incorporate EU law into our domestic law, as the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, said. It is also necessary to ensure a proper and orderly process is followed in Parliament, to ensure that Parliament agrees the terms of the withdrawal Bill.
The necessity of the Bill is matched only by the disastrous attempt to implement both of those purposes. The Bill provides for no meaningful vote for Parliament on the withdrawal Bill. It gives the Executive unnecessarily wide powers to change our laws in ways that would be regarded as unconstitutional in any other Bill. It leaves the judges to make key decisions that should be made by the legislatures. It uses the Bill as an illegitimate means of amending the devolution settlements. I will say nothing further about the devolution settlement except that I was deeply impressed by the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead.
In this House, we should be willing to amend the Bill extensively so that the House of Commons may think again. From the speeches we have already heard, there appears to be widespread support on a whole range of issues. The bigger the majorities in this House and the more they are supported by Conservatives, the more likely it is that we will influence the outcome and the more likely it is that post-Brexit Britain will be better. I place particular importance on ensuring that the Bill makes provision for a meaningful vote in Parliament—meaning the Commons. In my book, a meaningful vote means a vote that in effect mandates the Government to take a particular course. There is no point in a vote that can take place only at the end of the process; the consequence of the Commons voting down the deal that the negotiators come back with is that we then have no deal, which is almost the worst outcome we could have. It must be made clear that before any deal is finalised, the Commons should get the opportunity to mandate the direction of the negotiations. By that, I mean that if the Executive wants a Canada-style deal but the Commons wants a Norway-type deal, it must be clear that the Commons view should prevail, not that of the Executive.
With every day that goes by, that becomes a more important consideration in the way the process goes. We have a Prime Minister who is home alone in No. 10, without any allies at all—as far as we can see—not willing to tell anybody what our negotiating stance is. When asked by Chancellor Merkel of Germany what the UK’s position was on the trade negotiations, she replied, “Make me an offer”. I can understand why she would not want to tell anybody what her precise bottom line was, but I would have thought that a point would be reached at some stage where she has to tell the counterparty what she actually wants from them. So we have a Prime Minister who is not able to lead and a Cabinet, some of whom appear to think they are in the film “La La Land”, engaged heavily in either cherry picking or having their cake and eating it, while the others appear to think they are—and it is good to see the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, in his place—in “House of Cards”, where their only concern is how to manoeuvre in a forthcoming leadership arrangement.
Leadership must come from somewhere, and the only place it can come from is the Commons. If the Government know that they must get the approval of the Commons to any deal or basic framework that is introduced, it will focus their mind and make it clear that they will go to the EU only with a proposal that will get through the Commons. It will also give this country a stance that has credibility in the eyes of the 27. More and more, when you speak to people in the 27 who are engaged in the process, they say, “What is the point of dealing with a Government who have no life left in them?”. If they see that the deal definitely has to be agreed by the Commons, they will think that there is some focus of power that gives political credibility to the deal. It is very important that we look at that point. Clause 9 is the relevant provision in the Bill and it does not provide for a meaningful vote.
I mention only one other point in these short remarks. Everyone agrees that these Henry VIII powers are excessive, unnecessary and unconstitutional. I have heard many suggestions about what we should do and I support many of them, but there are two key points. First, the Bill must be amended in relation to all the Henry VIII powers so that they can be used—we need some of them—only where “necessary to make EU law work in the context of domestic law” and, secondly, where they have “only a technical effect”. Anything wider goes beyond our constitution because it requires the Executive to make significant policy choices through secondary legislation. The corollary of that not being the approach of this Government is that I have no doubt that this House would be much more willing than previously to reject secondary legislation under this Bill to ensure that there is proper use of primary legislation. If the Government choose to change the constitution, so can this House.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Faulks
The noble Lord will know that both Houses of Parliament have had a chance to consider this issue on more than one occasion. The House of Commons has decided by a significant margin that it does not wish prisoners to have the vote, and that remains the position.
As I indicated, the Government have a clear mandate, but I want to address some worries that have been raised and talk about what our proposals will not do. Our reforms are not about eroding people’s human rights. They are not about walking away from the list of fundamental rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights. The Government are and will remain committed to the protection of those rights.
The problems that have been highlighted by many—all over this House and in the other place—about the way in which human rights have been applied are not to do with the text of the convention itself. Rather, they are to do with its interpretation, which has been extended far beyond what those who drafted it ever planned.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)
Can we take it from that incredibly encouraging part of the Minister’s speech that the Human Rights Act as currently in our law will continue to reflect in its wording that of the European Convention on Human Rights?
Lord Faulks
What I in fact said was that the Bill when it emerges will reflect all the rights contained in the European convention, not the Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Act indeed reflects the convention. The way in which the convention has been interpreted is our quarrel with the Human Rights Act, not the contents of the convention itself.
We have seen claims brought by people who have themselves shown a flagrant disregard for the human rights of others. Even where claims are unsuccessful, the fact that they can be brought at all serves to undermine public confidence in the Act. So we will bring forward proposals for a Bill of Rights to replace the Human Rights Act. We want our Bill to protect fundamental human rights but also prevent their abuse and restore some common sense to the system. Our proposals will focus on the expansionist approach to human rights taken by the Strasbourg court. These are of course matters of great importance and there will be passionate views on different sides of the debate, but I hope that noble Lords will approach our proposals with open minds when they are brought forward for detailed consultation.
In that context, I was disappointed to read that Alistair Carmichael MP, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesman, said last week of the Bill of Rights:
“We will try to torpedo this plan in the Commons and Lords”.
First, we have not yet published our proposals, so it is a somewhat premature observation. Secondly, it is a clear manifesto commitment. Surely scrutiny, rather than destruction, is appropriate in the circumstances. Thirdly, if a torpedo is to be fired, the Liberal Democrat numbers mean that its arsenal is located here in Your Lordships’ House, the unelected House. I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Marks, when he comes to wind up for his party, would reassure your Lordships that, however rigorous the scrutiny of our proposals might be, it will not amount to an attempt at wholesale destruction. The public who elected this Government surely deserve better than that.
I shall now address the Government’s priorities on matters of home affairs. First, I turn to the Investigatory Powers Bill, which will govern the use of those powers by law enforcement, the Armed Forces, security and intelligence agencies and other public authorities. The Bill responds to three independent reviews of investigatory powers, including the statutory review conducted by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson QC. The two other independent reviews, conducted by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament and the panel convened by the Royal United Services Institute, have also been carefully considered.
Last autumn, a draft Bill was scrutinised by three parliamentary committees, which received a significant body of written evidence and heard from government and many other groups. The revised Bill, along with further explanatory material, reflected the majority of the recommendations of all the committees and reviews.
I reassure noble Lords that the Government appreciate that these powers, which have an impact on privacy, must be used with great sensitivity. Privacy is at the heart of this Bill, as it provides for greater protections and safeguards for existing powers and ensures that any misuse is punished. Powers are necessary to uphold the security that allows the public to enjoy that privacy. In the revised Bill we made privacy safeguards stronger and clearer, incorporating additional protections for journalists and statutory protections for lawyers. We have provided the time needed for a full parliamentary passage to ensure that Parliament gives the Bill the scrutiny that such an important piece of legislation deserves.
I am sure that noble Lords will agree that our pluralistic values make Britain a civilised country in which to live, but extremists with dangerous views try to undermine those values. We cannot tolerate this promotion of hatred and intolerance, which divides communities and sets people against each other. People in Britain today should never have to suffer hatred and violence because of their race, religion or sexuality; women should not be denied equal access to rights; and children should never be taught to despise the values that we all hold dear. We have delivered the counterextremism strategy to defeat all forms of extremism. As part of this strategy, we will bring forward new legislation to ensure that we are equipped to confront extremists and protect the public.
The gracious Speech also includes the Policing and Crime Bill, which will continue our reforms of the police. Since 2010, a radical programme of police reform has been under way. It has seen the introduction of directly elected police and crime commissioners to ensure greater accountability and transparency in policing. I pause there to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bach—not currently in his place—who was recently elected a PCC for Leicestershire. Although I am not sure that the party opposite wholly welcomes police and crime commissioners, it is good to see that they are joining in the system and embracing it fully.
The programme of reform has driven through efficiencies of £1.5 billion in cash terms. Crime has fallen by more than a quarter since 2010, with 2.9 million fewer crimes a year, according to the independent Crime Survey for England and Wales. The Bill will make the police more efficient and effective, enhance democratic accountability, build public confidence and ensure that the right balance is struck between the powers of the police and the rights of individuals. By providing police and crime commissioners with the ability to create more collaboration between police and fire services, the Bill also enables both emergency services to make significant savings in the delivery of their back-office functions.
The gracious Speech includes a Bill to introduce important changes to the way that this country tackles money laundering. This country has a robust anti-money laundering regime, but we must ensure that we can tackle the increasingly complex mechanisms used to launder illicit funds in order to allow our law enforcement agencies to identify and seize criminal assets. These changes will result in greater disruption of money laundering and activities that finance terrorism, as well as the prosecution of those responsible and the recovery of the proceeds of crime.
The gracious Speech sets out measures on how power is to be distributed across the UK and how decisions are taken. The Government are committed to establishing a secure settlement for the constitutional arrangements across our country—arrangements that provide the different nations of the United Kingdom with the space to pursue different domestic policies should they wish to do so, while protecting and preserving the benefits of being part of the bigger United Kingdom family of nations.
We said we would move quickly to implement the further devolution that all parties agreed for Wales and Scotland and deliver the Stormont House agreement in Northern Ireland. That is what we are doing. The Wales Bill would make the devolution settlement in Wales clearer by introducing a reserved powers model, like the system already in place for Scotland. The National Assembly for Wales will be able to legislate on any subject unless specifically reserved to Parliament. This Bill will also reflect the permanence of the Assembly and the Welsh Government in statute.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, for his exposition of what was in the gracious Speech. He is a fine advocate on a sticky wicket. Looking at his profile on the Ministry of Justice’s website, I noticed that he used to work for the literary agents Curtis Brown. I am glad to say that my very good friend Ed Balls has chosen Curtis Brown as the agents to promote his new book, Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics—available in all good bookshops from 16 September. I would be happy to arrange for the noble Lord a signed copy and the opportunity to learn whatever lessons are going. In exchange, I wonder whether he could get me a copy of another book currently being promoted by Curtis Brown—The Churchill Factor, by Boris Johnson.
Moving on from works of fantasy, I turn to the gracious Speech. It seems a long time ago that it was delivered. Hardly was the ink dry on the vellum than the Government were willing to regret the contents of their own gracious Speech by agreeing the TTIP amendment. Historically, as noble Lords will know, the last time that a gracious Speech was amended was in 1924 and the then Tory Government, led by Baldwin, fell.
That doomed gracious Speech has echoes of the speech that we debate today and included the following line:
“You will be asked to develop the … system of dealing with offenders”.—[Official Report, 15/1/1924; col. 8.]
The gracious Speech had a more direct tone in those days. That gracious Speech lasted just six days before being defeated on 21 January 1924. Three weeks later, Ramsay MacDonald, having deposed JR Clynes as the party leader after the general election, then became Prime Minister. I hope that this does not give political plotters on either side any ideas.
I know that noble Lords in this House are sure that the Conservatives are currently entirely focused on the national interest and not on badmouthing each other. One should completely discount the Minister, quoted in today’s Sun, who said:
“How the f*** are they going to put the party back together after all this?”,
or the reports in today’s Daily Mail of a senior Back-Bencher who said:
“People want a date when they know that he”—
I believe that to be a reference to the Prime Minister—
“will be gone. There is real anger”.
I am sure that the Daily Mail has got it completely wrong this morning with its headline: “Knives out for Cameron”. It may well be that we are the only part of the political system that is taking the trouble to analyse this gracious Speech in any detail. I very much look forward to the winding-up speech from the noble Lord, Lord Bridges of Headley. I note from his website that he was the assistant political secretary to Mr John Major from 1994 to 1997, so he is a bit of an expert on blue-tinged civil war. He will know that his then boss between 1994 and 1997, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, the former Leader of this House, chose to leave the country in anticipation of what is happening.
My final point in introduction is that it is so encouraging that the current Lord Chancellor, Mr Michael Gove, has remained above the fray. Take, for example, his claims that the European Court of Justice is undermining the security of the United Kingdom. Those were described by the former Conservative Attorney-General, Mr Dominic Grieve—who turns 60 today, so we wish him a happy birthday—as “unfounded and untenable”, “simply wrong”, and that the Lord Chancellor was,
“labouring under a very serious misunderstanding”,
of the way the European Union worked. Or take the Lord Chancellor’s claim that up to 5 million new immigrants would arrive in the European Union from Turkey and four other alleged new joiners by 2030. This was based upon the proposition that Turkey would have joined the European Union by 2020—a view to which nobody, apart from the Lord Chancellor and other committed Brexiteers, appears to subscribe.
I turn to the gracious Speech.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I knew that noble Lords would be pleased.
First, there was the reference to a British Bill of Rights, which has now featured in the gracious Speech for two years in a row, and in almost identical terms. The Human Rights Act 1998 has effected a fundamental change in the relationship between the overmighty state and its citizens. The effect of the incorporation of the convention into our domestic law has been to force Governments and state organisations to think about the citizen in a different way. Examples of this are legion. The second Hillsborough inquests would not have taken place without the Human Rights Act; the Government’s attempts to introduce oppressive security laws after 9/11 were struck down in the Belmarsh cases because of the Human Rights Act; and the decision of a local authority that tried to separate a couple who had been married for 60 years into separate care homes was struck down as contrary to their basic human rights.
There can be no going back on the rebalancing of the relationship between citizen and state. The Tories have run a campaign against the Human Rights Act since it was introduced. They have found powerful allies in elements of the media who are happy for there to be human rights—but only for those people they like. If as a nation we are serious about human rights, there must be human rights for all, not just for those that the Executive wish to bestow them on or for those of whom the Daily Mail approves.
The Tories came out of the general election in 2015 suggesting that they could leave the European Convention on Human Rights if that is what it took to reform the Human Rights Act. The Prime Minister appears to have retreated from that position, as evidenced by the briefing around this gracious Speech. Not so the Home Secretary, who gave a speech very recently saying that we should withdraw from the convention for the express purpose of reducing some people’s human rights.
As for the Lord Chancellor, who knows? The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, was careful to give no insight into his thinking. The Lord Chancellor’s evidence to the European Union Justice Sub-Committee of this House led it to say:
“The proposals the Secretary of State outlined did not appear to depart significantly from the Human Rights Act—we note in particular that all the rights contained within the ECHR are likely to be affirmed in any British Bill of Rights. His evidence left us unsure why a British Bill of Rights was really necessary”.
So I invite the noble Lord, Lord Bridges of Headley, to give this House some clue—not in detail and not breaking any confidences—about what is proposed.
It is a very strange concept: a British Bill of Rights that would be likely to be refused legislative consent by the Scottish Parliament, to be opposed by the Welsh Assembly and would frustrate and complicate the Good Friday agreement. It may be that those rights would remain unchanged; I do not know and the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, has not told us. It may be that the Government will say that the United Kingdom courts should be supreme in determining what the convention means in UK law. Of course, that is what the Human Rights Act already says. It may be that the so-called British Bill of Rights will declare the supremacy of the UK Parliament—but of course that is already the position under the Human Rights Act, as the prisoner voting rights issue demonstrates.
We so damage ourselves as a country by the inability of our Government to accept human rights in a constitutional settlement that works. It goes without saying that the Lord Chancellor should be the champion of human rights within the Government. A commitment to the rule of law carries with it a commitment to defend people’s basic rights. It is a fundamental weakness in the Government that the champion of the law will not be straight in his defence of its most basic rights. My plea is that the Lord Chancellor and the Government make it clear that they accept that the rights that Winston Churchill insisted be agreed by Europe after the Second World War are now beyond argument both in their terms and in the fact that they will be enforced by our courts in this country. We on this side of the House stand by the Human Rights Act 1998 and we implore the Government to do the same.
The prison and courts reform Bill contains many measures that we welcome. We welcome proposals to give prison governors more autonomy and to increase the focus on rehabilitation and prisoner education. I congratulate Dame Sally Coates for the impressive work she has done as part of her review into prisoner education and I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s commitment last week to review the plight of prisoners serving IPP sentences. But the prison reforms, billed as the centrepiece of the gracious Speech, have no prospect of success unless the fundamental crisis in the prison system is addressed.
First, there is chronic understaffing in our prisons. Secondly, there is chronic overcrowding. Thirdly, there is a chronic rise in violence and self-harm, with 7,000 fewer officers and a prison population which has risen by nearly 3,000 since 2010. There have been six murders and 100 suicides in prisons across England and Wales in the past 12 months—the highest levels seen for at least 25 years. Assaults on staff are up by 36% from the previous year, and overcrowding in prisons is forcing inmates to double or even treble up in cells. I worry, as do many informed observers, that we are on a road which led 30 years ago to the Strangeways riots. I look forward to the speech later of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, who issued a seminal report after those riots.
The Prime Minister lost his nerve the last time a Justice Secretary tried to reform our prisons and we ended up with Chris Grayling as a result. Until we tackle those issues and see a reduction in the prison population, these reforms are tinkering while Rome burns. I welcome the announcement today of an extra £10 million to spend on safety in prisons. The extra £10 million is to be made available,
“to prison governors for extra prison staff; more training, including on suicide awareness; additional equipment, including body cameras and CCTV; and on additional drug testing, including for legal highs”.
The announcement was no doubt timed to coincide with today’s debates in your Lordships’ House and the other place on prison reform. In the face of the scale of the prison crisis, the £10 million looks risibly small.
If the Lord Chancellor is serious about prison reform, the first step he must take is to reduce the prison population—dealing with IPP prisoners as a matter of urgency. He can take two further steps: first, reduce the number of prisoners who are remanded in custody and then do not get custodial sentences; and, secondly, reduce the length of sentences for non-violent and non-sexual offenders. Not taking these steps makes me worried that prison reform—the centrepiece of the gracious Speech—is not serious but rather an eye-catching initiative designed to distract attention from the troubles of this Government.
The Lord Chancellor speaks of his personal commitment to the issue of prison reform. He gave a detailed interview to the House magazine on 13 May of this year, which stretched over five pages—I have to say that one page was a very large photograph of the Lord Chancellor—but he did not mention the question of prison reform once.
I turn now to court reform, and welcome the commitment to it. We should not underestimate the crisis in our courts. Lord Thomas, the Lord Chief Justice, wrote in January this year:
“Our system of justice has become unaffordable to most”.
He is right. What is more, this Government and the coalition Government before them presided over the decimation of our justice system. In 2009-10 more than 470,000 people received advice or assistance on social welfare issues. By 2013-14, the year after the Government’s reforms to legal aid came into force, that number had fallen to fewer than 53,000—a drop of nearly 90%.
The Briggs report on the civil justice system puts it as follows:
“The single, most pervasive and intractable weakness of our civil courts is that they simply do not provide reasonable access to justice for any but the most wealthy individuals, for that tiny minority still in receipt of Legal Aid … In short, most ordinary people and small businesses struggle to benefit from the strengths of our civil justice system … The civil courts are, by their procedure, their culture and the complexity of the law … places designed by lawyers for use by lawyers”.
This is the crisis with which we need to deal. Access to justice depends on a level playing field. The cost of going to court needs to be reduced and the availability of legal aid needs to be increased. It must be wrong that abandoned spouses, whatever their means, cannot get legal aid to sort out their financial position or continued relationships with children unless they can meet stringent tests to prove that they are victims of domestic violence. The whole issue of legal aid needs to be properly reviewed. That is why my noble friend Lord Bach and his legal aid commission are asking hard questions about how to address these problems, including how technological change can be seen as a benefit to be grasped rather than something to be afraid of.
I am surprised by the reappearance of an extremism Bill in the gracious Speech. The key issue there will be the definition of extremism. The Government must be very careful. We welcome the criminal finances Bill—better late than never. The Wales Bill is important. We need carefully to scrutinise the detail to determine whether it does propose the long-lasting settlement that we all want to see. Labour, as the party which established the Welsh Assembly, welcomes the devolution of further powers. That is why we opposed the disastrous draft Bill that was before us last year. The First Minister—I am glad to see him back in that role—was right to say that that process had been, “an avoidable mess” and that the Government,
“need to get into the habit of treating Wales and the National Assembly for Wales with proper respect”.
The Strathclyde proposals have all the hallmarks of the Government’s approach to human rights: “We say we like them but if they cause any difficulty we then try to take them away”.
This is a gracious Speech overwhelmed by the sound of blue-on-blue gunfire, with the Lord Chancellor right in the thick of it. At a time when our prisons and our courts are in crisis and there is real suffering as a result, he is on a front line fighting a different war. I will give him, as will all on this side, full support for genuine and properly thought through proposals to reform our prisons and our courts. My goodness, we really need such proposals. Unfortunately, the proposals in the gracious Speech do not meet the hurdles either of genuineness or of being properly thought through. We do not know whether the Lord Chancellor will ever return from his current war—but if he does, I urge him to lay off human rights and devote his very considerable energies to the progressive reform that is so desperately needed.
Lord Bridges of Headley
My Lords, I am sorry about that. I will need to refresh my memory and write to noble Lords on that point.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Before the noble Lord leaves the subject of the prison system, can he tell the House by how much the education budget will go up?
Lord Bridges of Headley
I do not have that statistic straight to hand; I will certainly write to the noble and learned Lord. Let me pick up an earlier point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, about legal aid. I understand that we are committed to a review of LASPO, as we have said on several occasions. He rightly raised that point.
I turn briefly to policing and crime. The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, raised the issue of neighbourhood policing. I commend to her the provisions of the Policing and Crime Bill, which the Government believe will help to drive further efficiencies and joint working between emergency services and to deliver more funding for the front line, including for investment in neighbourhood policing.
I touch on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, in his interesting speech about the growth of our population. He spoke powerfully, and the Government are acutely aware of the pressures that population growth is placing on our society, which is why we are focusing so heavily on building more homes and roads and improving our rail network, quite apart from investing in schools and hospitals. On this point, we are not complacent; we are very seized of the challenges we face.
I am sorry for a ramble through those points. As I said, I apologise to those noble Lords whose questions I have not addressed; I will endeavour to do so in writing after this debate. I thank all noble Lords for the energetic and interesting discussion we have had and am sure that I speak on behalf of my fellow Ministers when I say that we all look forward to debating these matters with your Lordships in the coming months.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, these amendments in effect fall into two categories. First, on dealing with the carryover of the register up to 2016, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, will be aware that an amendment similar to the one that he has put down was moved in Committee. We of course welcome the fact that he has extended the carryover period to 1 December 2016. I welcome it for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, gave in his speech and the reasons given in the speeches heard before.
Given the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, I am slightly worried that he is starting from the predilection that the Government will exercise their powers to stop the carryover at 1 December 2015. I would be anxious about that and would hope that the Government, whichever Government they were, looked at the matter with an open mind rather than saying, “We hope that we will be able to use the powers”. One thing that has emerged during these debates is that everybody expects there to be a real diminution in the number of people who are on the register, at least the first time around. I very much hope that it is looked at from an objective point of view rather than a biased one.
In connection with that, I should say that this is an incredibly important issue for our democracy, again as I think everybody accepts. It would be much better if Parliament definitely had to debate this issue, which would be the effect of our Amendment 9 to government Amendment 8. We achieve that by saying that there has to be a positive vote in Parliament before the carryover is moved back to 1 December 2015, rather than having the negative procedure, which would mean that somebody would have to object in either House.
It would be useful if the Minister could explain why something that goes right to the heart of our democracy can go through by default. I was deeply disappointed and injured by the fact that my new friend the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, did not feel able to support me on this, although I know that in his heart he really does—I should make it clear that he has not said that to me. Will the Minister explain why he thinks it is not appropriate that this be dealt with by, in a sense, a compulsory prescription to Parliament where the Government—whoever they may be—think they have to in relation to the level of coverage in the register? That seems an appropriate matter for a Government to report to this House on.
Lord Tyler
The noble and learned Lord suggested earlier that he has some misgivings about the motivations and independence of thought of the Secretary of State in December 2015. Does that mean that he does not expect to be in that role?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I have to be frank with the noble Lord: I do not expect to be in the role of Secretary of State. I have no idea who the Secretary of State will be. My anxiety was not what I know would be an open-minded and fair approach should it be a Labour Administration—indeed, a Liberal Democrat Administration as well. My anxiety was the coalition’s predilection, should it remain in power, to say, “We think the position is that we should try to bring it back to 1 December 2015”. That is all I was thinking of. That is our position on the carryover.
On proxy and postal votes, my understanding of the logic behind carrying over for one extra year is that you recognise that even though there will be much publicity and support for people to register themselves individually, it will not work with everybody. If that logic applies to individual registration, it is bound to apply to those whose proxy or postal vote you have to carry over. We are surely in a position where we wish to encourage people to vote. If you believe that you have a proxy or postal vote, and then you discover you have not, the likely effect is a reduction in the number of people who can vote.
To my immense disappointment, for reasons he did not adequately explain, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard—this is not a criticism of him—said that he was persuaded by the logic. He did not say why, and I was therefore unable to know why one should be persuaded by the logic. I would be grateful for an explanation from the Minister as to why the logic applies to extending registration to 1 December 2016, where there will be help, but it does not apply where there is a proxy or postal vote. This is an important matter that goes to the heart of our democracy.
However, I do not want to sound churlish, and I am very grateful that there has been extension for the other bit of the carryover to 1 December 2016.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for contributing to this short debate. The statement made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, that everyone expects a diminution of registration in the process of transition is not one that I accept. As I have stressed throughout, we are facing a number of problems with electoral registration altogether. We have the difficulties of identifying potential electors; we have the difficulties of keeping, in particular, young voters on the register; and all the research that I have looked at in the past two years demonstrates that we have the problem of disillusionment with politics as such, which leaves a number of people positively to wish not to be on the register. As I take part in local politics in Bradford, I come across large swathes of people who have no interest in politics whatever and simply do not wish to be on the register. They are very often in Labour-held council wards.
I think we all recognise that what needs to accompany the process of transition is a range of activities by the Government, but not just the Government, to make sure that everyone understands what is going on, that people are alerted to the need to move through to a process of individual registration, and that we work with schools, colleges, universities and others to persuade people that it is part of their engagement with our civil society to register to vote. I hope that the Labour Party will play an active role in this. I recall discussing with a senior Labour figure the desirability of a Labour Party electoral registration drive, to which the answer was, “You know very well we can’t do that these days. We have too few members, and most of them are retired”. That is a problem, incidentally, which all political parties now face, of course. We have fewer members than we used to have. We are not so good at getting out and rounding up the marginal people. The Government certainly intend to be out there in schools, colleges and elsewhere, drawing attention to what is going on.
The reason for the Government’s position on Amendments 6 and 7 is that the largest area for electoral fraud in recent years has been postal vote fraud. We know that a certain amount of this has not proceeded through to prosecution. Talking to electoral registration officers, as I was last summer, I was told that a great deal is known that is not provable and, as such, is not prosecuted. However, we are clear that, particularly in local elections, postal vote fraud has been the largest area of electoral fraud.
If we are thinking about the accuracy as well as the completeness of the register, we wish to hold to ensuring that those who have existing absent-vote registration renew that registration as they go through this process. This will be accompanied by making sure that those who are in sheltered accommodation, and those in particular areas where absent-vote registration is concentrated, are aware of what is happening and are encouraged to renew their absent-vote registration. This is a question of the accuracy of the register, and not just the existence of voting fraud but the perception of a high level of voting fraud. For that reason, we resist Amendments 6 and 7.
On Amendment 9, the question is how confident one is that we will manage the transition with a degree of success. We all recognise that the completeness level of the register we have today has fallen and that, as we go through this process, we will have to work very hard to ensure that we improve on the levels of completeness. However, the safeguards that we have provided and the concessions that we have made in the government amendments in this group are sufficient to give the assurances that are needed. We therefore encourage the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, to take confidence in the reassurances that I have offered and not to move his amendments.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, so many noble Lords are leaving—this is a disappointing reaction to such an interesting Bill, which goes to the very heart of our democracy. And still people leave, in such numbers that there is a blockage at both doors.
We on these Benches support the principle of individual electoral registration, as we indicated at Second Reading. Indeed, as has been pointed out on a number of occasions, we legislated for it in the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, in the last Parliament. We believe that it is desirable to have a complete and accurate electoral register. We also believe that individual electoral registration is a system compatible with modern society, and we recognise that it is outdated to rely on the head of the household. In essence, the issue between us and the Government in this respect is how you introduce it, and the timing of how you introduce it. You have to make very sure that you are not losing too many people off the register before you introduce it.
Moving to individual electoral registration is a significant change; it is the right change, but it must be implemented correctly. The risks to British democracy if it is not are too great. So despite supporting the principle, as I have made clear, we have genuine concerns. Our amendments, to be debated over the coming three Committee days, have been tabled to reflect those concerns.
Data published by the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Reform Society and acknowledged in the Government’s impact assessment for this Bill show that anything between 3.5 million and 7 million people are missing from the electoral register. That is an unsatisfactory base to start from, but the Electoral Commission also predicts, and the Government have acknowledged, that the shift to individual electoral registration could see an initial further hit to the completeness of the register by up to 30%. Experience from Northern Ireland bears this out, although I accept that there may be special factors that apply in relation to Northern Ireland that may not apply on the mainland.
We need to do all that we can to address these issues and to ensure that the electoral register is as accurate and complete as possible. So the guidance provided for in Clause 1 is good, especially during the transition from one system to the other and in the early stages of the operation of individual electoral registration. We welcome the specific requirement on the face of the Bill, but our concern is over why the role of the Electoral Commission has been undermined. The Government’s Bill gives a very significant amount of decision-making power to the Minister while bypassing the Electoral Commission and Parliament. We feel that a five-year transitional period for issuing guidance may be too short; the Bill’s Explanatory Notes are no more certain than deeming it “likely” that the new system will have reached a “steady state” in five years. And how do the Government define “steady state”? Given the levels of uncertainty associated with the transition, we argue that at the very least the Minister should be advised by the Electoral Commission on whether the system is operating effectively before guidance is withdrawn.
The Electoral Commission is an independent statutory body operating outside the political system with responsibility for electoral matters. We feel that it has a proper role in reaching an objective decision on these issues and that this should be written into the Bill before us today. Amendment 36 calls for annual registration reports to be produced by the Electoral Commission, presented to the UK Government and laid before Parliament with time set aside for Parliament to debate each report. In keeping with the theme of this group of amendments, which is related to improving the accuracy and completeness of the electoral register, Amendment 36 also addresses our concerns about unchecked ministerial power and the bypassing of the Electoral Commission.
Finally, Amendment 59, which is the third amendment in this group, calls for the results of the ongoing data-matching pilots, to which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, referred in his opening speech at Second Reading, to be reported and evaluated before the full transition from the old to the new register takes place. According to the Government’s implementation plan for the Bill published in July, data-matching pilots have been running since August 2012, and data-mining pilots to identify potentially eligible voters who are currently missing from the register will begin in early 2013. I anticipate that the Minister will reject our call for a delay until the results of these pilots are known but will argue that a second set of data-matching pilots be commissioned. We accept that the second set of data-matching pilots should be commissioned but will the Minister acknowledge the concerns of the Electoral Commission about the findings from the first? In its evaluation report, the commission wrote:
“Our main conclusion is that these pilot schemes do not provide sufficient evidence to judge the effectiveness of data matching as a method for improving the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers”.
We are serious about the status of the electoral register and believe that all action should be taken to ensure that it is kept as up to date, complete and accurate as possible. We are serious about the most appropriate bodies and individuals being given the power to advise and issue guidance. We are serious about proper parliamentary scrutiny of an exercise of ministerial power, particularly in an area that is absolutely crucial to the effective working of our electoral system, as everybody agrees. We look forward very much to hearing what the Minister has to say in response. I beg to move.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I did not have an opportunity to participate at an earlier stage in this Bill but these amendments, particularly Amendment 1, which relates to the role of the Electoral Commission, about which the noble and learned Lord has spoken so eloquently, is very important.
The Bill sets out the rules that would apply for Great Britain. In replying to these amendments, will my noble friend give us guidance on where the Government are in respect of the changes which are being promised by the Scottish Government in the conduct of the referendum on independence? This is important because at the Scottish National conference the First Minister of Scotland said that he would bring in a Bill which would provide for a new electoral register which would include 16 year-olds. It would not provide for 16 year-olds being able to vote in the referendum who were already on the electoral register: that is, the so-called attainers who reach the age of 18 at a subsequent election in respect of the existing roll. My understanding is that the publicly declared policy of the Scottish Government is to create a new register, which would be based presumably on individual registration by 16 year-olds, expressly for the purpose of the referendum on independence. This seems to me to drive a coach and horses through what this Bill is about, which is establishing a uniform system throughout Great Britain. I just wonder what the Government’s attitude is.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Will the Minister remind the House of the legal provision in the Bill which would allow the Government to retreat from compulsory individual electoral registration if everybody agrees that the transition has not worked and there is an unacceptable reduction in the completeness of the register? The Minister is talking as if the transition is bound to succeed, but everybody accepts that it might not. What happens if it does not?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I said at the beginning of my speech that we have been suffering from a decreasingly complete and accurate register over the past 15 to 20 years. The current register is very imperfect. That is the reason why I hope that we all agree that we need to make this transition. If we were to come to a point halfway through the process where we recognised that there were some severe problems, we would have to look at those problems because the current register is increasingly suffering from inaccuracy and incompleteness.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Will the Minister confirm that there would need to be a new Act of Parliament at that point?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I will have to consider that and come back to the noble and learned Lord. I recognise that part of the reason that we are resisting this is because if you then say no to the transition, what do you go back to? That is something that we clearly need to think through.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
Before the noble and learned Lord either withdraws or presses his amendment, perhaps I may say a few words. I have held back to hear the noble Lord speak from the Front Bench. We have had a very interesting debate. We have covered all sorts of aspects, from the Scottish aspect to whether we should return to the debate about central register and identity cards. We have discussed the nuts and bolts and the administrative problems that arise from the Bill.
The noble Lord said something very interesting about the motivation to vote, which is what concerns me. In a real democracy, the motivation should come from the heart and the mind, and because people believe that it is worth getting on the register and worth going out to vote. I am of an age when the register was about 90% accurate of those who were entitled to be on it. However, that has fallen considerably. People were on the register then because they wanted to be on the register, and they insisted that they were on it—and God help the registration officer if his or her name was not on the register.
Something has gone wrong, because people now do not do that. I go back—because I have fought many elections in my life, as other Members of this House have done. I remember the election of 1955 when in Reading Ian Mikardo was under pressure. In that election, because people were motivated to go out to vote and to be on the register, we got an 85% turnout—and of course he won. He was not supposed to win, but he won because of the people’s motivation. That was a good word that the Minister used. It does not matter what we say about going around and getting people on to the register; what we really need is the motivation of the people themselves to go on to the register and to believe that it is worth going out to vote because it makes a difference. At the moment, they see no difference between the political parties. They believe that it does not matter what they say or what they do because the Westminster and Whitehall elite will do what they think. As well as being concerned in this Bill about the nuts and bolts, the administration and even Scotland, we should really be thinking about whether the political class is doing sufficient to make people enthusiastic about getting on the register and going out to vote.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, refers to a golden age when he himself sought office by election and when everybody was very keen to vote. Now we are in a different age, or so he identifies—maybe because he is no longer seeking election and, as a result, there is not that motivation on the part of people to vote.
It has been a very interesting and important debate. At its heart was the issue of what steps would be taken to ensure that the move from household to individual electoral registration would not lead to an undue reduction in the number of people registered. At the heart of our amendments was the idea that you have to have independent assessments made of that. What emerged in the debates was that the Government were so supremely confident that all would be well that they were removing the involvement of the Electoral Commission in giving independent advice, and there is no mechanism, other than a new Act of Parliament, to ensure—
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
It is important to understand that the concern is to prevent a further reduction in the completeness and accuracy of the register. I stressed very heavily in what I said at the beginning that part of the problem that we face is that the register has lost a good deal of completeness and accuracy over the past 20 years.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I agree with that, which makes it even more significant to ensure that there is no undue reduction in relation to the number of people who are registered.
The debate was very marked by the forensic power of some of the interventions. That of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was very effective, because I have to say with respect—and I do not blame the Minister for this—no answers were given to the points that he raised. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, gave a very well informed analysis of what the effect may be. My noble friend Lady Jay indicated what the constitutional importance of it is, while the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, urged us to vote in the way in which we vote in “Strictly Come Dancing”, although that may not necessarily be what we have in mind. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on his 71st birthday, for not flagellating myself for my own historic failures. I can see that that was what he had in mind, and it would have been a birthday treat.
“( ) The Minister must ensure that a formal appeals process is in place for any person in respect of whose registration a determination has been made under subsection (1).”
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, this is a small but important point. It is a probing amendment, but I would very much like some assurance from the Minister.
Schedule 1 is about the registration and removal of electors on the register and Amendment 2 relates to an appeals process. We on this side of the House believe that people who are excluded from the register under the new system should have a legitimate right to appeal against the decision made by the electoral registration officer. The ability to cast a vote is a fundamental right and a key part of civic society. As the Government’s own implementation plan states:
“Registering to vote matters. It is the building block of our elections and an important civic duty. It provides people with an opportunity to elect their Member of Parliament, their local Councillor or Member of the European Parliament and is used as the basis for important activities like Jury Service”.
We believe that as many people who are eligible to be registered should be. I believe that the higher the turnout at elections, the better. I say that not just because I speak for a political party. As we have already mentioned today, and as I am sure will come up again as your Lordships’ scrutiny of this Bill progresses, there are known risks associated with the move to individual electoral registration. People will fall off the register, especially in the interim, and especially under this Government’s plan as so many of the safeguards that were in the 2009 Act, which my noble friend Lord Wills was instrumental in introducing and was referred to in the debate, have been scaled back.
In the spirit of tackling voter fraud, which we know is the key motivation behind this Bill, and behind its speeded up implementation plan, some of those who fall off the register will do so legitimately because they should not have been there in the first place. Of course, that is right and that is what should happen, but some people will be removed in error. Given the importance of the right to vote, and so the importance of being registered, those who do fall off should have an opportunity to appeal. Given the importance of the method, I would like to say a few things about the appeal.
At the moment, under the current system of registration, there is a clear appeals process. It derives from new Section 10A(3) of the Representation of the People Act 1983, and regulations set out in 2001. The relevant legislative base is sufficient for the current system but will these provisions be suitable once the transition has been made to individual electoral registration? Could they be fully applied, will any amendment be needed to the appeal provisions, and does the Minister see any merit in incorporating the 2001 regulations into the Bill, so as to provide assurance that there is a valid appeal process that Parliament has dealt with and approved? It is a probing amendment and I should be interested to hear the Minister’s answers. I beg to move.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I want to contribute briefly to the discussion of this amendment on the appeals process but, before I do so, perhaps I should put the record straight in relation to the 2009 Act. There was not unanimity, despite what was said earlier, about the previous Government’s timetable for the introduction of IER. Both my noble friend Lord Rennard and I, during the Second Reading of the Bill on 18 March 2009, made it clear that we hoped there would be an acceleration of the programme, which is of course what the present Government are doing. Since then we have found that the previous register was so incomplete that there was a greater case for accelerating the process.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for highlighting the important issue of individuals having a right of appeal if they feel that they have been incorrectly removed from the register. This is similar to an amendment tabled by the Opposition in the other place, and on that occasion Wayne David accepted that there is an appropriate appeals mechanism in place. Indeed, he said he was pleased that the Government’s reassurances were clear.
I therefore confirm that Sections 56 and 57 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 already make provision for appeals against the decisions of registration officers in Great Britain, including decisions to remove electors from the register. Paragraph 17 of Schedule 4 to the Bill makes the necessary amendments to ensure that this continues to apply under the new system. I refer noble Lords in particular to the proposed insertion of new paragraphs (azd) and (aa) into Section 56(1) of the 1983 Act dealing with appeals against decisions under new Section 10ZE.
My apologies to noble Lords for the technicalities involved in that. However, there is provision within the Bill which I hope will reassure the noble and learned Lord and, on that basis, I ask him to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I am not only reassured but moderately crushed by the reference to Mr Wayne David. On that basis, I will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Maxton
My Lords, first, I take the opportunity, if I may, to say to my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench that I was not suggesting that we should vote in the same way as on “Strictly Come Dancing”. I was suggesting that we are still voting in a very conservative and old-fashioned way, whereas in other forms of national life, we do it differently.
I am a little concerned that there has been great opposition to my idea of a national register of some sort, but we are now talking about national insurance numbers. Who holds them? Where are they registered? Who keeps them? Who says, “That is your national insurance number”? Is that not a form of national register?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, this is an interesting and important debate. The original draft of the Bill in effect allowed the Minister to determine, without parliamentary scrutiny, what the identifier should be. The amendment advanced now by the Government in effect says that Parliament has to approve the Minister’s choice, as it must be approved by the affirmative procedure. Our Amendment 7 would provide that Parliament has to decide in primary legislation what the individual identifiers must be.
Everybody agrees, including the Government, that the first proposal is not acceptable and that it would be wrong for the Minister to be able to determine it. People would be worried about the extent to which it might be used for political advantage. The second option has the problem that statutory instruments are rarely rejected by Parliament, so it gives pretty big power to the Minister. The third option has precisely the problem identified by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—it is very inflexible. I recognise completely that the identifiers chosen might turn out not to be sensible at the end of the day, depending on how the system operates.
This is such an important issue that we on this side are loath to give the Minister the power that comes from being able to determine it him or herself or by statutory instrument. Subject to the Minister’s no doubt persuasive arguments, I currently favour our amendment, but I wait to hear what the noble Lord has to say.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill. This is a constitutional Bill. It comes out of the coalition agreement, which mentions reducing,
“electoral fraud by speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration”.
This Bill is important. Once bitten, twice shy, as far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned. We understand from what the Liberal Democrat leader says that, depending on what happens in relation to House of Lords reform, they may renege on one of the other Bills that came out of the coalition agreement, namely the now Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act. I do not know whether this Bill fits within the same category. The two other constitutional Bills that have come out of the coalition agreement are the House of Lords Reform Bill, which is widely regarded as poor, and the now Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which is also widely regarded as poor.
The significance of these points—apart from a little dig at the Liberal Democrats—is to indicate that this House has an especial responsibility in relation to a Bill such as this because we know it is the product of a rather unsatisfactory political arrangement. Therefore, the role that we should perform in this House is to see whether it has a detrimental effect on our democracy or genuinely promotes a proper democratic situation. I am glad that we will hear from noble Lords from Northern Ireland who have had some experience of individual voter registration. I am glad that we will hear from my noble friend Lord Wills, who had responsibility for introducing individual voter registration. I am also glad that we will hear from people on all sides of the House who have been engaged in the process of running election campaigns on behalf of individual political parties.
The Bill does two things. First, it changes the timetable and the approach to the introduction of individual voter registration. Secondly—and separately—it makes provision for the administration and conduct of elections. I will restrict my remarks to the first, which is the first part of the Bill. There is no dispute between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party about the fact that individual voter registration is desirable in order to reduce the possibility of fraud. Indeed, the Labour Government introduced individual voter registration. The issue is not the merits of that. The issue is how one introduces it and how one strikes a balance between reducing fraud on one hand and ensuring that there is not a significant reduction in the number of people on the register on the other. I anticipate as well that there is agreement right across the House that the level of reduction in registration will have a damaging effect on democracy.
The current registration process is essentially a combination of household registration and rolling registration. With household registration, a form is sent to each household and one person fills it in with the names of all the people there. Once the form gets back to the electoral administration, all those names remain on the register for as long as the ERO believes that the people still live at that house. There is also a process of rolling registration whereby individuals can either change their existing registration or make a new application if they are not on the register. That system involves producing no proof as to who you are; it involves very little trouble to be on the register.
Individual electoral registration means that you have to fill in a form individually and produce proof—including a national insurance number, date of birth and something else—that you are the person who lives at the particular address. This is much more difficult—not remotely impossible but more difficult—and the consequence is almost bound to be that fewer people will register.
What is the wrong that we are seeking to right by making it more difficult to register? We are seeking to deal with electoral fraud. Mr Mark Harper, the gentleman in the other place who is responsible for promoting this Bill, describes electoral fraud in this country as “rare”. Anecdotally, the feeling is that electoral fraud does take place in this country but it is much rarer here than in almost any other country—
Lord Dobbs
I believe that what the Minister in the other place said was that “proven electoral fraud” was rare, which is very different from suggesting that fraud itself is rare.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, my recollection is that he said it was “rare” but I will check that, if I may, and see precisely what he said. My reading of Mr Mark Harper’s case was not that there was actually a lot of fraud; his point was that one wanted to increase confidence in the system. My recollection of Mr Mark Harper’s speech was that he was saying that fraud was rare, but an opinion poll says that 36% of people are worried that there is fraud in the system. The Bill is to deal with confidence in the system. We on this side of the House are not averse to trying to increase confidence. As long as it does not have a damaging effect on the number of people who participate in our democracy, it is a sensible way to go.
The proposal—indeed, it became law in 2009—was to allow individual registration on a voluntary basis. Each year the Electoral Commission would report on how that was going; then in 2014, after the process had been going for some time, the Electoral Commission would give advice to Parliament on whether or not to move from a household system to an individual electoral registration system. This House could then make a decision as to whether or not the risks to our democracy in terms of the number of people who were not registered were safe enough for the move to be made. I respectfully submit that that is an extremely sensible way of dealing with it.
When this House last debated the issue of how many people were not registered, we proceeded on the basis that the register was probably 91% or 92% accurate. To their great credit, the Government financed the Electoral Commission to do further research in relation to that. This was published at the end of last year and showed that in fact we were underestimating the level of under-registration. From my reading of that research, at its peak the level of registration appears to be 82%, meaning that at certain times of the year, depending on how far away you are from an annual canvass, as many as 18% are not registered in this country. By my calculation that is some 8.5 million people. I would have thought that the consequence of making registration more complicated is bound to increase the number of people who are not registered.
What is wrong with making sure that, before one gets there, one has done as much as one can to get as few people as possible to drop out? Why has the programme been changed? Why are we not taking care of this? We will propose first, by way of amendment, that there should be monitoring as to how the process is going; and secondly, that we as a Parliament should get advice from the Electoral Commission as to whether it is sensible to do such a thing.
Following the points that the transition is being made too fast and that there is no monitoring of its effect, the next point is the boundary review. As I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, there will be a canvass during 2014, and the only people who will be knocked off the register will be people who the electoral registration officer is satisfied are not resident at the address. Even if you do not make an application and even if you do not provide any identifiers, you will not get knocked off the register in 2014 unless the ERO believes that you do not live there. Can the noble Lord confirm that in his winding-up remarks? However, as I understand the position, in 2015 those who can be data-matched with the DWP material will be put on the register without having to make an application. Again, I hope that the noble Lord will confirm or deny that in his winding-up remarks.
In relation to the noble Lord’s estimate, which I have no basis for challenging, from 1 December 2015 the one-third of the electorate who are not data-matched with the DWP material will get knocked off the register unless each one of them makes an individual application and produces the necessary identifiers. That is my understanding of how the transition and the system will work. If I am not one of the two-thirds of the electorate, if I am one of the one-third, I will have to fill in a form and provide the individual identifier—indeed, I think it will be three individual identifiers, one of which will be my national insurance number. If I do not do that, I will get knocked off the register. Have the Government made an estimate of how many people they think will not go through that process? If so, could they tell us what it is?
Am I not also right in saying that the boundary review that will take place for the election in 2020—if the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 leads to five-year elections—will be based on the electoral register that will come into existence on 1 December 2015? In those circumstances we will have new constituencies brought into existence on the basis of the first shot at individual electoral registration.
There is no dispute, from anybody who has looked at this, that the people who are least likely to register are the young, the very old, the disabled, those from black and minority-ethnic communities, and those in private rented accommodation. The danger of all this is that you end up with your social class, your colour or your capacity determining whether you are registered or not. We should be doing our best as a nation to have individual electoral registration—but surely on the basis that it applies right across the board. Everybody agrees that it is worth while, but I am completely unable to understand why a sensible, monitored introduction is not taking place. What is the motivation for not doing what people regard as sensible, in a sensible way? The Liberal Democrats say that the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act is a piece of legislation that was designed to help the Conservative Party—and that came out of the coalition agreement. Is this the same? We need an explanation as to why this important building block in our democracy is being dealt with in what appears, on the face of it, to be a rather cavalier way. Would the sensible thing not be to stick to the timescale, with annual monitoring and the report to Parliament, so we know where we stand in relation to it?
There are three other matters. First, I am unable to understand why those who are currently registered for a proxy or postal vote are not carrying forward their right to a proxy or postal vote for the purposes of the 2015 election. That appears both an unnecessary regulation and one that is very difficult to justify.
Secondly, additional resources will presumably be required in order to achieve the handover or transition that we have been talking about. The Cabinet Office has been kind enough to publish something called the high-level implementation timeline, which involves this year, 2012, for local authorities. Those involved in local delivery will be asked to plan for the introduction of individual electoral registration at a local level, which will include working out what resources they need. They will also be asked to play an important role in developing and testing the new capability to be rolled out more widely in 2013. Will the Minister tell the House how that is going? That is at paragraph 7 of the notes accompanying the high-level timeline. For 2013, the timeline envisages that:
“Electoral Registration Officers and Electoral Administrators will have IT systems put in place, other resources acquired and capabilities—including staff training—built during this phase”—
in 2013—
“in readiness for go-live in the following year. All local capability needs will be ready by the end of this phase”,
that is, by the end of 2013. Can the noble Lord indicate what budget has been set aside to put those capabilities in place, what progress has been made in relation to the development of the IT systems required, and whether he anticipates any teething difficulties in relation to it? Can he also tell this House the extent to which the Government’s proposals depend on their IT systems working properly?
Finally, we on this side of the House will take care to examine these proposals in considerable detail. If they go wrong, there could be a substantial reduction in the number of people on the register. Currently, it could be as low as 82%. What would be the consequences to our democracy if it went to somewhere in the low 70s or even the high 60s? That would be extremely damaging. The question that underlies our approach to this Bill is: why on earth are the Government taking this risk with our democracy?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I shall do my utmost to reassure the noble Lord by the way that we handle the Bill as it goes through. I regret that the level of Cross-Bench participation in this Second Reading debate was not higher, because there is a lot of expertise on those Benches about the groups we most want to reach—the most vulnerable and marginal groups in society who are least involved in politics. We share a common interest in trying to get those people re-engaged in politics, and we recognise that we all have a problem in getting them re-engaged. I spent some time over recent weekends on big estates in Bradford where the level of turnout was astonishingly low and the level of registration fairly low.
To suggest—as I think I also picked up from some noble Lords on the Benches opposite—that somehow these people belong to Labour and are naturally Labour, even if they do not vote or even register, is stretching the argument. They belong to no party, and we all share the problem of how to get them re-engaged in society, politics and community life. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that in this respect we have many problems. We are struggling against a deeply cynical media that reinforces the instinctive scepticism of rising numbers of voters. We all have to demonstrate that we share a concern for the quality of our democracy and of our democratic institutions.
Perhaps I may make one more partisan remark before I return to being my usual entirely non-partisan self. In the 2005 general election, the Labour Government returned to power on 35% of the votes cast—barely a quarter of the electorate—and the majority of the media and the Opposition did not cry, “Illegitimate and improper”. However, it was close to the bounds of democratic acceptability.
How will we engage young people? The noble Lord, Lord Bates, in particular asked how we are working with Bite the Ballot and Operation Black Vote. We have not looked very far into the question of whether we should have campaigns which involve personalities and celebrities. However, we have looked at using social media more. We are looking at the experience in Northern Ireland where working in schools with what are called the “attainers”—16 and 17 year-olds—has provided better civic education. Taking registration forms into schools has clearly had a very positive effect. As we move to individual registration, we very much hope to follow this experience to ensure that we catch the attention of young voters, many of whom are not terribly interested in politics at that time.
The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, raised the issue of elderly and disabled people. We are consulting Scope, Mind and a number of other bodies on how best to make sure that access is maintained and how to improve access to polling stations where possible. The levels of suspected fraud for postal votes and proxies are much higher than for those giving personal votes in the election. Therefore, asking people to reassure us during the transition that postal and proxy votes are real is a justifiable way of improving the accuracy of the system.
Perhaps I may talk about the difference between this Bill and the previous Act. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, referred to a “ruinous timetable” as if this were being rushed through unannounced. I remind the noble Baroness that this Bill has been through pre-legislative scrutiny and through the other House. We have listened and changed the Bill. When the Political Parties and Elections Bill was introduced in the Commons, it contained no provisions for individual electoral registration. However, when the Conservative Opposition tabled a reasoned amendment and voted against the Bill, relevant clauses were added in the Lords. These were not discussed fully in the Commons, except when the Bill returned from the Lords. It is, therefore, grossly unfair to suggest that we are rushing into this or, indeed, as I understand the opinion of the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that the previous Bill was perfect and this is somehow imperfect.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, asked me about the statement on the invitation on the civil penalty and how prominent it would be. The Electoral Commission will design the invitation form and will test it with users to achieve the best possible form to encourage registration. I know that there is much concern about differences between local authorities in the duties of the electoral registration officers. These duties will be clearly set out in the Bill, secondary legislation and in Electoral Commission guidance. We are working closely with the Electoral Commission to ensure, as far as possible, a consistent approach across local authorities. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, will no doubt return in Committee to how large the civil penalty should be and how often it should be applied. If an individual has been issued with the penalty and subsequently applies to be registered, we intend that the penalty will be waived. We are not persuaded by his suggestion of multiple fines in a single year—whatever it might do to assist the Treasury.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, asked what we are doing now to increase registration rates. I have already said a little about that. We are closely studying the experience of Northern Ireland. We have seen the excellent work there and we hope to learn from it to ease the transition, which I have already described in my opening speech. The Cabinet Office is leading a programme of work to maximise electoral registration among the groups on which we all agree—that is, the ones that are currently under-registered or identified as at risk of falling off. However, we recognise that under-registration is not the responsibility of Government alone. We will work closely with partners across the public, private and voluntary sectors. I hope that we will all engage in this effort and encourage people from voluntary organisations to engage in it as well.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, also asked me what evidence should be required. We dropped the requirement for a signature on the grounds that a date of birth and a national insurance number would be adequate in themselves. We propose to require these to enable online registration. We hope that people will gradually move forward with the technological change. I was struck by the DWP evidence about the speed at which people are moving to interact with the state online. Within the next five to 10 years, the overwhelming majority of people, including those of our generation, will be likely to interact with the state online. That is why we are moving in this direction and why it is proper to take in this Bill a power to suspend the annual canvass at some point in the future, as has been done in Northern Ireland, when it seems that the number of people dealing with registration online has reached an appropriate level.
The noble and learned Lord also asked me questions about the budget of the high-level implementation plan. I am sorry that he did not pick up from my opening speech that there is £108 million allocated over the spending review period. We are also making excellent progress in developing IT and we are pleased by the engagement of electoral registration officers of the Association of Electoral Administrators—
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Although I am very encouraged to hear about the excellent progress being made, perhaps it would be possible to write and say precisely where we have got to because it is not easy to make an assessment when things are going fabulously. One needs a little more detail, if that is possible. I accept that it may not be for now.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I was just coming to the further detail. Perhaps I may issue a personal invitation. A number of parliamentarians have already seen a demonstration of the website that is to be used for registration. I am happy to offer a further demonstration of the prototype if any noble Lord, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, would like to see it. Progress is being made, but it is being tested as we move forward.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, and others suggested that the data-matching pilot had not yet been evaluated. The Electoral Commission and the Cabinet Office have evaluated the pilots undertaken so far. A further exercise is taking place this year, and that will be evaluated over the next few months. The first pilots were very valuable in testing the usefulness of data matching and what is required to share and match data effectively. The evidence suggests that we can simplify the transition for existing electors by using data matching to confirm their details as accurate. As I have already explained, it produces a floor of around two-thirds of people, which enables us to concentrate our efforts on the remaining third to make sure that we get them back on the register as well. Later this year we will run a second set of pilots to confirm the conclusions of the first round and to refine the process of matching data.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, suggested that we should use data mining on private databases as well. I have to say that we would begin to get into issues of privacy and access to data if we were to go too far in that direction. As I have been learning about this process—and in regard to the census—I can hear Liberty and some other groups at my back as they begin to worry about it, so there are questions of privacy. However, we are speaking to organisations that hold potentially useful data, including the credit reference agencies, to establish the most useful data for the purposes of finding people who are not registered.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, asked about the publicity campaign. That will be the responsibility of the Electoral Commission, which of course will play a major role in the entire process. I do not accept the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that there is an apparent downgrading of the role of the Electoral Commission. Perhaps we can discuss that further before the Committee stage, but if it is a concern then clearly we need to meet it. I anticipated the question about risk registers. The Government do not publish risk registers, and we can return to the point at a later stage.
I was asked why we are abolishing the annual canvass. I again suggest that we have no intention of abolishing it until we are sure that we are getting sufficiently good results by other means.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Rennard
Indeed, but the question must be put as to why the party stood on that manifesto in 2010 as clearly and unequivocally as it did. The Conservatives stood on that basis over 10 years, with three manifestos— whether there would be a substantially or predominantly elected element or changes to the House of Lords. It was on that basis that they were elected. That is a matter for others to judge them on.
It will be to the relief of the House that I will not quote every Labour manifesto on the subject of House of Lords reform. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, tried to refer to 11 of them in brief. I will quote just one, which happens to be the one on which the last Labour Government were elected. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is not in his place. He suggested that whenever the Labour Party advocated Lords reform, it lost. I seem to recall that the Labour Party won the 1997 general election, and did so decisively with a majority of 179.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My recollection is that we also won in 2001 and 2005. I think the noble Lord said that it was the last time that we won.
Lord Rennard
It was the beginning of the last Labour Government. The manifesto said in 1997 that,
“the House of Lords must be reformed ... to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative”.
In particular, the 1997 Labour manifesto said that,
“the legislative powers of the House of Lords will remain unaltered”.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, I apologise to the Leader of the House, my noble friends Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Wills, the noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord Wakeham, and the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, who, sadly, is not here to receive my apologies, for being absent when they made their speeches. I have read them in Hansard and I shall return to them in my winding-up remarks. I also apologise to the noble Lords, Lord Stoddart of Swindon and Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, because I was having my supper at the time that they made their speeches. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath has told me all about their speeches and has spoken about them in the warmest possible terms.
Over two days, we have debated the constitutional aspects of the gracious Speech. We have devoted the vast majority of that debate to the proposals for reform of your Lordships’ House. I anticipate that in this Session of Parliament, this House will do very important things about constitutional reform and that that will have nothing to do with Lords reform.
Before I turn to wind up the debate from our side of the House on Lords reform, I wish to comment on the particularly important things that the Government will do. First, the royal succession is important and we support the proposals being made by the Government to do away with male primogeniture. We will do everything in our power to help those proposals go ahead. We agree that these must be done in such a way as to preserve our relationship with the Commonwealth. We believe that there is a degree of urgency in relation to those proposals.
Electoral registration is the second important constitutional issue that will be faced by this House in this Session. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, says but there is a more important point in relation to that as well. However much we debate the importance of the House of Lords in our constitution, the one thing on which no one disagrees is that the Commons is where the pivot of our democracy takes place.
As my noble friend Lord Wills mentioned in his excellent speech on electoral registration, the Electoral Commission has said that if the Government’s proposed reforms go forward in their current form—introducing individual registration without tying it to a comprehensive improvement in the amount of registration—it is possible that the number of people who are registered could go down from 90 per cent to 60 per cent. We have focused very much on Lords reform and not on that issue, which has an immediate and definite effect on our democracy.
I ask the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who I understand will be winding up on behalf of the Government, what their response is to what the Electoral Commission says on the effect of individual registration. What steps are the Government taking and what expenditure are they making to ensure that electoral registration does not go down significantly as a result of proposals that are being made? It is important to emphasise that the people who are most affected by a lack of registration are the poor, the disabled, the young and those from the black and minority ethnic communities among us. So it is an important issue for the Government to address.
The next issue on constitutional reform that I believe to be important is judicial diversity. It is of immense importance as far as the country is concerned that we have a judiciary that reflects our society. There is no doubt that our judiciary, which is excellent in very many respects, does not reflect in its gender and racial balance the country that it judges. We would be very keen to see detailed measures and, in particular, those that move away from the situation in which the person at the top of the class gets appointed to judge, to one which looks at merit in a much wider context, as we believe it should be. That is the basis on which the Constitution Committee of this House addressed the issue, and we strongly support that approach. Could the Minister tell us when we can expect a Bill to deal with that?
Another issue to affect the constitution is the defamation Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, was right that it will have a significant impact on freedom of speech. The committee that the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, chaired was an important one, and we should try to give effect to the proposals that it made.
The final constitutional issue, before I come to Lords reform, is that of Europe, which is not referred to in the gracious Speech, save in the mention of proposals to be put before the House to admit Croatia as part of the European Union. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, and the noble Lord, Lord Owen, in what was an exceptional speech, and my noble friend Lord Giddens are right to say that there are things happening in Europe that are of greater importance than many of the other things that we have to debate. What do the Government say is the UK’s position on the change in arrangements and structure of Europe that is being proposed in some quarters and which will inevitably have to be given effect to deal with the eurozone crisis?
Those are the issues that we will be dealing with in the course of the next year, the issues that will affect our constitution, and the issues on which I hope we will have a role and voice in this House. They affect our country much more than Lords reform.
Where are we on Lords reform? Although I missed all the speeches that I indicated, I had the pleasure of listening to the other 46 speeches during the course of the Thursday and Monday. It is true to say that there were some very exceptional and penetrating speeches in relation to the issue. Without being invidious, I wish to single out the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, which completely encapsulated the relationship between electoral mandate and the powers of the House. I refer also to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who expressed very clearly that our electoral system is based on the fact that we have a Government in the Commons, and if you do not like that Government you throw it out by election. The effect of changing that is that you fragment—to use his word—accountability.
Then there was the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, who completely got right the fact that it is obvious that the work has not been done on this Bill. She did not say it in capital letters, but I felt that it was in capital letters, and her message to the Government was, “Do the work”. That is obviously right. The Leader of the House said, “Well, hold on, it is proposals from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and Jack Straw, on which we are building”. We both put forward proposals which foundered on the fact that we could not deal with the powers and electoral accountability issue. We learnt from that. We thought that if the Leader of the House was going to come forward with proposals, he would have a solution to that problem. I waited in anxious hope for such an answer to come. Unfortunately, although I was not present when the noble Lord delivered his speech, all that I got from it was effectively abuse of the Labour Party. As I understand it, he said that if we did not support his proposals—the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, floated this—the failure to get reform would be,
“entirely due to Labour’s conniving and collective spinelessness”.—[Official Report, 10/5/12; col. 31.]
I was very surprised to read that. If I were trying to build consensus, I asked myself whether the way to do so would be to abuse the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and all his colleagues. No, so I wondered what the noble Lord’s motivation was for abusing me. Then I reached for the previous Saturday’s Financial Times and read that the noble Lord the Leader of the House had wagged his finger at the Commons, saying that the moment we had an elected element we would be much more assertive against the Commons.
I completely agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, said. Was the noble Lord trying to encourage dissent in the Commons? He points at himself and shakes his head in his inscrutable way. The most telling aspect of the whole story is this: if he really wanted consensus, would he not resort to his normal oleaginous charm? Would he not talk to us in that deferential way that we have come to love in the House of Lords? We know that he does not believe in almost everything he says, but at least he tries to persuade us. However, that is not the case on this occasion; he has switched to a completely new mode.
Where are we then on Lords reform? I cannot hope to match the quality of some of the speeches that have been made but I shall seek to analyse where we have got to. Everybody, including the proponents of the Bill, now agree that it is unlikely that the relationship between the two Houses would remain the same if we kept everything the same, except for making all or the majority of the Members of this House, elected. The Joint Committee said unanimously—this is not the alternative report; every single person on the Joint Committee said this—that,
“following election the increased assertiveness of a reformed second chamber will affect the balance of power between the two chambers in favour of the House of Lords”.
The alternative report expressly agreed with that position. If we have had the opportunity to read the Financial Times of two Saturdays ago, we will know that the Leader of the House of Lords also agrees with that proposal.
The Government’s proposals were advanced on the proposition that we do a good job in the House of Lords and that everything should remain the same except the method of entry. In the light of the unanimous view that election will affect the balance of power between the two Houses, it is plain that the aim and stated purpose of the reform—namely, to leave everything the same except method of entry—has not been achieved. The approach of the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, with which everybody agrees, is that more work needs to be done to address the question of powers. According to the noble Lord the Leader of the House, the Conservative Party is divided on whether there should be Lords reform and, if so, what the form of that reform should be. My party is not committed to supporting the current proposals. It believes, as do many people, that the problem of powers is unresolved and that a hybrid House of the sort proposed would reduce the validity of non-elected Peers, who would tend to give way to the elected Peers. We are committed to there being a referendum before any significant proposals for Lords reform can proceed.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I wonder if the noble and learned Lord could be clearer than was his noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in our debate last Thursday, in which he seemed unclear as to whether or not, if this Bill were presented to this House absent of a clear codification on the issue of powers, the Labour Party would vote in favour of it. Can the noble and learned Lord enlighten us? If the Bill comes in that form, without a clear codification, will the Labour Party vote in favour of it, or will it not? Yes or no.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My noble friend Lord Hunt was absolutely clear. We will not vote for a Bill that does not solve the problem of the powers. We do not believe that the draft Bill does that. As my noble friend made clear, we will have to wait and see what is then produced. There was absolutely no lack of clarity in what my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath said in relation to that issue.
Our position is clear. The Conservatives’ position is clear. I should also make it clear that I thought that two of the parties were divided internally as to what to do—the Conservatives and Labour—and that the Liberal Democrats were united. Imagine our surprise when we saw them today. First, we had the greatest exponent of Lords reform, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who, to his great credit, did not even mention Lords reform. We heard the excellent noble Lord, Lord Phillips, give an inspirational speech on how well the Lords performs now; we had the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, saying that more thought was required; and the two proponents of Lords reform were the noble Lords, Lord Ashdown and Lord Rennard.
The passion of the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, for reform was so great that he did not allow history to get in his way; he did not allow foreign comparisons to be drawn accurately; and he was, on two separate occasions, corrected on the facts in relation to his speech. Nobody, particularly those in the Egyptian Parliament, could have doubted his enthusiasm for Lords reform. I wonder whether enthusiasm is enough. Surely it would be much more sensible if we got down to the arguments in relation to it.
I continue on the propositions: there is no doubt that the Joint Committee was divided on the way forward. The Lords is, by a very substantial majority, I would opine, opposed to the Government’s reforms. The Liberal Democrats, however, are, by a majority, in favour of reform but appear to have nothing to say on the detail. The current position is obviously a very bad basis for reform. I am very sympathetic to the position of the Leader of your Lordships’ House, who everybody admires and likes. Like him, I embarked on proposals for reform—but they foundered. The right thing for the noble Lord to do is to come forward with proposals that have some prospect of success.
We know that we all agree on certain things. The speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, went much further than the Steel Bill, and we can implement those proposals as quickly as possible. The answer for us, in terms of ensuring that we retain our effectiveness and status, is to come forward with detailed proposals that would be attractive to people. It is ultimately not enough to have the excellent passion of the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, and the position of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord for giving way, but does he not agree that we cannot move on this subject in a sensible way until we know whether the constitution of the United Kingdom will remain one, or whether Scotland falls out—in which case, a completely different House of Lords or second Chamber would be required?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I think that we could move on some proposals for reform—for example, the ability of Peers to retire, the ability to expel particular sorts of Members to deal with the hereditary Peers, and various other proposals made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. If there were a consensus and a genuine feeling that the Commons desperately wanted a democratic House of Lords, we should probably move on that basis, but that is obviously not the position. That being so, I completely agree that we need to consider what may happen in relation to Scotland before any final conclusions are made. However, the ball is very much in the Government’s court.
I want to comment on the way that the Government are behaving in relation to this issue at the moment. I particularly have in mind the remarks made at the beginning of this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who is preparing to lay the blame for the failure of these Lords reform proposals. If one starts to prepare the way for failure and to wonder where the blame lies, then we are really wasting our time looking at these proposals. Let us give up now if there is no commitment from the person who is supposed to be leading the process of reform on behalf of the Government. There could not be a clearer signal that the Government are wasting the time of this House and the other place and bringing the whole of Parliament into disrepute than that they should try and fail to amend the arrangements for the constitution.
I should be very interested to hear from the Minister when we can see a Bill on this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, made it clear that we have not yet seen the Bill that the House will consider when it comes from the Commons. I should be interested to hear whether the Government intend to impose a timetable Motion in relation to the Commons’ consideration of this constitutional Bill. My third question relates to the extent to which the door is closed on a referendum. If the door is closed and we are not going to have a vote on whether the second Chamber should now be elected, why did we have a vote on whether admirable places such as Doncaster should retain their mayors? Can the Minister explain the Government’s position on this?
I regarded myself as one of the greatest enthusiasts for the topic of Lords reform. However, having listened to 46 speeches stretching from Thursday to Monday, I have to say that my enthusiasm has waned a little. If the enthusiasm of an anorak such as myself has waned, imagine how the country will view the issue.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I recognise the noble Lord’s concerns and I compliment him on the speed with which he has moved from being—as he described himself—a House of Commons man to being very clearly a House of Lords man. Of course I will report back to the Deputy Prime Minister, and the Cabinet Office Bill team had read Thursday’s debate when I discussed it with them this morning. We are listening, but we have not only the opinion of this House to take into account as we move forward.
I move on to the question of a constitutional convention, which appears in the alternative report as a strongly proposed idea and has met with a lot of sympathy around this House. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, went further and suggested that we should approach constitutional reform “from first principles”. The only time that I can recall that the English were tempted to rethink our constitution from first principles was between 1647 and 1650. It was a revolutionary period when the king was beheaded, the Putney debates discussed fundamental principles of authority and democracy and some of the parliamentary army mutinied. Since then, the British have prided ourselves on our unwritten constitution, which changes through evolution rather than revolution. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Norton, entitled the chapter in one of his books “Our Uncodified Constitution”.
The alternative report says that constitutional conventions are a well known process in other countries and cites France’s National Convention of 1792 and the American conventions of 1786 and 1787 as appropriate examples. But in France and in the USA these followed revolutions. They beheaded the king in France too.
Alfred Dicey stated in his introduction to Law of the Constitution that it rests on two pillars: parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, in his book, The Hidden Wiring, quotes the first Lord Esher summing up that the underlying principles,
“of our written constitution rest on precedent and reasonableness”.
Reasonableness or restraint expressed through conventions has, in our constitution, moderated the primacy of the Executive and their use of the doctrine of the primacy of the Commons.
Some of those who support the arguments of the alternative report are in effect highly radical, wanting to shift the United Kingdom towards a written constitution. The Americans, mistrustful by far of any Executive, produced from their convention a written constitution designed on the principle of mistrust and unreasonable behaviour. It was designed therefore to lead to deadlock on occasions between Congress and the President and between the two Houses of Congress, as we see now. None of us wants a constitution like that.
The question of costs has been raised. The Government have not yet been able to produce their estimates of costs partly because of the size of the House. The Government’s draft Bill proposed 300 Members and the Richard committee proposed 450. Of course, that makes a difference. If we have 450 part-time Members, it might cost little more than 300 full-time Members. The costs of a constitutional convention proposed by the alternative report would themselves be very considerable. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, asked about the Government’s thinking on severance payments for retiring Peers. I am not aware of any discussions within the Government or any proposals on that basis, but that raises questions of costs as well.
The question of how we search for consensus is rather like hunting for the Snark. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, reminded us all of the immensely constructive work of the Wakeham commission 10 years ago. I found the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, to this debate constructive and wise. He reminded us that his report was received with much hostility at the time. More than 10 years later, it seems more acceptable because it is less radical than the draft Bill, just as the Steel Bill which was so strongly opposed in this House when it was previously presented, has now become much more popular now that it appears to be the lesser evil.
The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, said that the Labour Party,
“has to think again about the idea that it can have 100% elected membership. It is quite simply unrealistic. A consensus outcome will not produce that”.—[Official Report, 10/5/12; col. 49.]
Perhaps I may quote one more remark made by the noble Lord, which I think all noble Lords would do well to consider. He said:
“I suggest that we use with some humility the position that we are somehow superior in public perceptions and in our judgment of the public good”.—[Official Report, 10/5/12; col. 50.]
We have to remember that the way this Chamber handles proposals for its further reform will reflect on its reputation outside. We have to understand the likelihood that at some point the sketch writers and tabloid columnists will look to see how they can make fun of this House as well. I would suggest to the noble Baroness, Lady Knight of Collingtree, that it is unwise to describe membership of the Lords, as I think I heard her say, as “peaceful retirement”. If the image of the Lords becomes that of a retirement home for former MPs, and that were to catch the attention of the popular press, the prestige of this Chamber would not be raised.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, one of the ways in which this House has gained a reputation is because there is proper debate about the issues. Many noble Lords have asked the Government to give their answer to the issue about the change in the powers and assertiveness of this House. From the Dispatch Box, the Minister has given absolutely no reply. He appears not to be willing to address what anyone who has been in this Chamber for the past two days would have regarded as the central issue. That is disappointing and it demeans the standard of the House.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I was just coming to the issue of Commons primacy. The issue of primacy is partly a matter of whether one wishes to have a written constitution or one operates on the conventions of an unwritten constitution through restraint and reasonable behaviour. Of course we acknowledge the view of the committee that Clause 2 is not capable in itself of preserving the primacy of the House of Commons, which a number of noble Lords have cited, but we should listen to the committee in full when it said:
“A majority, while acknowledging that the balance of power would shift, consider that the remaining pillars on which Commons primacy rests would suffice to ensure its continuation”.
The primacy of the Commons rests on many pillars. These include the conventions governing the relationship between the two Houses, the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, and the fact that the Prime Minister and most of the Government of the day are drawn from the House of Commons. The whole of the House of Commons will be renewed at each election, and that will clearly be the election in which the Government are chosen. The second Chamber will have, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, termed it in her interesting speech, a “different sort of legitimacy” as the second Chamber. The relationship between the two Houses is not a zero-sum game.