Liaison Committee

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord opposite has expressed the dissatisfaction felt by many Members who put in proposals—and maybe others, too—at the result of this committee. The chosen subjects seem anodyne, to put it mildly—motherhood and apple pie. We need to know why they are chosen. I have an interest; I hope it will not be categorised as sour grapes, although I suppose in part it is. Reading the list, one wonders exactly why some other proposals with real meat and real substance to them, which could produce recommendations that would make a real difference in the short term to the lives of people and which might be reflected in legislation, were not chosen, yet others that amount to no more than a talking shop or debating issue came forward. Is there some feeling that the House is already overburdened with Brexit and should not have to take on anything more controversial? I would not have thought so.

In brief, we need transparency. What is the strategy? Why are certain subjects chosen according to that strategy? It needs to be explained. We need more transparency and wider House buy-in. After all, Members of this House will have to volunteer to sit on those committees. A suggestion made to me was that if the Liaison Committee, as it did, whittled the number of proposals down to 10, the whole House should be able to vote on them. Certainly, the situation as it stands has not produced a very satisfactory result. I am pleased to know that there is a wider review of all the committees of this House, which I hope will come up with a more popular and acceptable way of choosing these committees.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I supported the noble Lord in his application, both this year and last, for a committee to look at the issue of—I never like the phrase “identity cards”—entitlement cards or something that would use the new technology. We have just had Liberal Question Time for the past half hour, where many of these issues came up, so it is important.

The reason I get up to speak is to hope that perhaps the noble Lord’s application next year will be successful but also to defend against his somewhat robust attack on my noble friend the Chief Whip. It is true that the Chief Whip told me to sit down last Thursday, but in his defence he has apologised to me and also I had not appreciated that at noon there was a memorial service for the policeman who gave his life for our security. I am sure that what was in the Chief Whip’s mind was that the business was going to run out of control and that he would not be able to attend. So it was not an attempt to muzzle me: the Chief Whip has never attempted to muzzle me, as Members of this House must be fully aware.

I hope that the arguments in principle for discussing this matter will be taken on board and there will be an opportunity for us to take it forward. It seems to me that having some form of identification, for access to services such as the health service or to get into the country or to show when you have left the country, will be an important component of the post-Brexit world, which I look forward to with great enthusiasm.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that being mugged by a Chief Whip is a badge of honour, not something to resile from. First, in what will be a very brief intervention, I pay tribute to the Senior Deputy Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord McFall, who is doing a first-class job in modernising and seeking to reform the system. My remarks are in no way critical, therefore, of his work.

We saw from the Questions this morning, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has just indicated, a real need to be able to prepare for future debates and legislation in a timely manner. The issue of verification of identity will be vital in any new immigration system, not least given what the Minister said in answer to the final Question, that there will be an end to free movement of labour. As a consequence, all kinds of issues will arise in respect of verification of identity and authentication of those measures or pieces of paper that are required to verify that, as underlined by the intervention on the final Question—I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, of the Liberal Democrats who rightly said that there would be both red tape and problems for business. If there has ever been a moment when this issue should have been investigated thoroughly by a committee of this House, it should have been now. As it cannot be now, I hope very much that it will coincide with the legislation that the Government are going to bring forward next year in relation to the changes to immigration policy required by and arising from the decision to remove Britain from the European Union.