Liaison Committee

Lord Filkin Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling]

My Lords, not for the first time, I draw the attention of the House to the fact that, inexplicably, the House of Lords does not have a committee that deals with foreign affairs. There is a committee down the Corridor on foreign affairs, of which I had the honour of being a member for 10 years before I came here. We have Sub-Committee C, which met earlier this morning and which deals with European Union aspects of foreign affairs, defence and trade. However, when one looks at the whole world—which none of our Select Committees has a mandate to cover—the rise of China and the growing importance of India and South America, for instance, are issues that Sub-Committee C is not able to cover.

If I may say so, there is infinitely greater expertise in foreign affairs in this House than there is down the Corridor. I find it absolutely astonishing that whenever this issue is raised, we are told that we should not duplicate the work of the House of Commons. That is absolute nonsense. I urge the Chairman of Committees to consider this matter. I have talked to him about it privately. I hope that something will be done about it because it constitutes a major gap in the work of this House.

[Lord Filkin]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the Liaison Committee’s report. This is exactly the sort of steady early success and progress that those of us on the Goodlad committee, which recommended this initiative, hoped for. It is very good to see it.

I thank the House and the Liaison Committee on behalf of my committee, which produced its report, Ready for Ageing?. It was a great privilege to have the opportunity to do that. We are delighted that the membership of the committee was so well supported by the staff and that the issue has caught the public’s attention. However, I draw attention to a small problem with ad hoc Select Committees which I hope can be discussed at a later date. My committee, which published its report last week, has now ceased to exist. If the aim of the House in undertaking Select Committee work is not simply to publish a piece of paper but to have an impact on public policy and debate, that is a fundamental problem. To illustrate it crisply, how the Government respond and how the political parties think about such an issue is of fundamental importance. Although my committee has ceased to exist, it will continue to meet because we recognise that in the next two months or so we need to meet Sir Jeremy Heywood, Sir Bob Kerslake, a couple of Permanent Secretaries and senior figures from each political party. As I say, the clerks have supported us superbly. I know how to use a telephone but, clearly, if you want your ad hoc committees to have an impact, you have to provide the sort of support I have suggested: that is, an administrator for one day a week for six months to support the follow-through.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I would not like the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, for a foreign affairs committee to go unsupported by other Back-Benchers. I fully endorse his view; we need such a committee. My experience as chairman of your Lordships’ Select Committee on the European Union was that we often found ourselves having to draw back from the frontier when there were issues that we felt needed attention because it was simply not within our mandate to go into them. It would be a great comfort for the House to know that the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, will be taken seriously and not just handed on down the line once again, year after year, without any positive response.