Immigration: Housing
Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Pearson of Rannoch(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, do the Government believe our National Health Service and our social care arrangements can survive—
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I have never denied that we need migrants; it is just that we do not want to go on letting in Bulgarian and Romanian gangsters at their will. Do the Government believe our NHS and social care can survive this sort of increase with their present funding arrangements, or do we have to consider something more radical for the longer term?
Liaison Committee
Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, I have been able to give brief and informal notice to the Chairman of Committees of my intention to query the wisdom of the selection of our new ad hoc committees. Let me say again, and in agreement with the noble Lord, that the findings of your Lordships’ ad hoc Select Committees are one of the most valuable contributions of your Lordships’ House to British public life. The experience and knowledge that resides in your Lordships is perhaps unsurpassed by that in any other community in the United Kingdom.
However, at least three of the four selected ad hoc committees, if not all of them, fall into a rather similar category of inquiry, which one could loosely describe as social science. This appears to be at the expense of other important topics. I do not have time to go into all of them, but there is the hugely important and possibly catastrophic subject of antimicrobial resistance, proposed by the former Secretary of State the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. There is better regulation as proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, which would have gone to the heart of our democracy and how it is working or, rather, how it is not working, with the resultant disillusion among the voting public.
Above all, I would single out the problem of Islamism and the spread of Sharia law in this country, so forcefully and tragically brought home to us yet again this morning in Brussels. I submit that it is wrong of our Liaison Committee not to have picked one of the three proposals to examine this perhaps greatest threat to our present culture. We could, for instance, have had an inquiry proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on global jihadist movements and the international fight against terrorism. There was a proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for an inquiry into our Prevent strategy, whether it is working and, if not, what perhaps can be done about it. Perhaps most simple of all, we could have had from the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, a committee to examine the spread of Sharia law in communities in the United Kingdom and to assess its social consequences. I feel that the noble Lord and his committee owe the House something more of an explanation as to why these and other committee inquiries were not chosen from the very large number of suggestions that were put forward.
Noble Lords would of course be disappointed if against this background I did not once again protest at the fact that we have no fewer than seven committees looking into our relationship with the European Union, in the form of one main committee and six sub-committees. I know that Europhile noble Lords will say that these committees are hugely valuable and that the reports that they produce are treated with awe and admiration in the corridors of Brussels, but I have to say that I see no evidence of this. In fact, if we take even the influence of the British Government in the deliberations of the Council of Ministers, we can see that since 1996 the Government have opposed 55 legislative measures in the Council of Ministers and were defeated on every single one of them. If the Government have such little influence in Brussels, I would have thought that the reports of your Lordships’ Select Committees have even less. Even if they do have influence, can it be right for us to fund seven of these committees when all these other subjects need to be looked at by your Lordships with the wisdom and authority that our committees bring to bear on every subject that they address?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, perhaps I may say a few words, since my name has been mentioned. Indeed, I have received a commendation from a rather unexpected quarter—I am not sure that it is all that welcome, but it is interesting. The topic mentioned by the noble Lord that I put forward was one of six that I suggested, none of which was accepted by the committee—and I am a member of that committee. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Laming. The members of the committee are all constructive and thoughtful and I go along completely with committee’s recommendations. The noble Lord, Lord Laming, conducted the discussion exceptionally well. He allowed full consideration of all aspects. There was no dissent. It was perhaps one of the most constructive ways of coming to a consensus that I have ever experienced in any committee in this House. I hope that the House will accept the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Laming.
European Union Referendum Bill
Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Pearson of Rannoch(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
When the noble Lord is talking about democracy, what does he think of the democracy where a party—the UK Independence Party, say—gets a large percentage of the vote but only one seat in the Parliament? Is that the vibrant democracy that he believes in?
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, no, of course not. If the noble Lord would care to read my peroration on this subject on 15 September, he will see that I opined that our first past the post system no longer produces a vibrant democracy in this country. The system which sends Members of Parliament to the House of Commons should be changed. Then one might find that the UK Independence Party would get one or two more seats.
As I was saying, Europhiles still try to frighten us that jobs would be lost if we left the EU. However, we would keep our free trade with the single market because we are its largest client. We have some 3 million jobs selling things to clients there, but it has 4.5 million jobs selling things to its clients here. Our Europhile friends then conveniently forget that only about 9% of our economy goes in trade with the single market, declining and in deficit; some 11% goes to the rest of the world, expanding and in surplus; but 80% stays in our domestic economy. Yet Brussels overregulation strangles all 100% of our economy.
Another Europhile silly one is to point out that we would still have to obey single market rules if we left the EU.
European Union Committee
Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
Noble Lords appear to be aware that in recent years I have regularly raised the balance, effectiveness and number of our European Union Select Committees before we agreed their appointment. For students of this important but perhaps refined subject, I last raised it on 16 May 2013 at col. 544 and on 12 June 2014 at col. 528.
As to balance, this proposed new committee appears to be just as Europhile as its predecessors. I do not pretend to know all their views, but of its 16 members I can detect only three who I would describe as mildly Eurosceptic and six who are among the most ardent Europhiles in your Lordships’ House. This is more important than usual in a year when we are approaching an EU referendum. Your Lordships’ other Select Committee reports are widely respected, and if our EU reports suffer from a Europhile slant, that will not be helpful to any fair outcome. I want to put the public on alert now, and I hope that I do not have to come back to this point too often in future.
I admit that the second part of my amendment, that our committees should be balanced between those who want to leave the EU and those who want to stay in, will not be easy to achieve. I put it down to underline what a Europhile place your Lordships’ House is when compared to public sentiment on this matter. In fact I can think of only perhaps a dozen of your Lordships who would be prepared to say publicly that we should leave the European Union whatever the outcome of the current negotiations. However, we should at least try to make our committees as balanced as we can, and at the moment we do not.
Our committees are there to hold the Government to account on the legislation that emerges from Brussels—that is what I am constantly told by noble Lords who favour the present arrangements. However, the trouble remains that that is all that these committees can do: they can only scrutinise, and the Government regularly ignore their findings.
I remind your Lordships of the scrutiny reserve, whereby successive Governments have promised not to sign up to any piece of legislation in Brussels if it is still being scrutinised by the Select Committee of either House of Parliament. Yet since July 2010, the Government have broken that promise 303 times in the Commons and 266 times in your Lordships’ House. Some 238 of those overrides were on measures being considered by both Houses. Each override means that a new EU law is being forced upon us without the consent of Parliament, because the EU juggernaut rolls on regardless. I hope the respected chairman of our EU Select Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, will not mind if I remind your Lordships of his disappointed interventions on that subject on 4 December 2014 at col. 1400 and on 17 December 2014 at col. 95. I do not know if he can reassure us now that, as a result, the scrutiny reserve is no longer broken.
I fear that our EU Select Committees do not and cannot hold the Government to account in Brussels. Since 1996, up to last year, the Government themselves have objected to and forced to a vote in the Council of Ministers 55 new measures, and they lost the vote on every single one of them. I add that the situation is just as depressing in that democratic fig-leaf, the European Parliament. Of its 1,936 most-recent Motions, a majority of all UK MEPs voted against 576 of them, but 485 still passed—a failure rate of some 84%. So it does not seem that our Select Committee reports carry much weight there either. None of that should surprise us. The big idea behind the EU has always been that member states should be diminished in favour of the unelected bureaucracy, under the pretence that that would maintain peace in Europe, which was of course, in fact, always sustained by NATO, not Brussels—but that is still at the root of our powerlessness in the EU.
Finally, my amendment would reduce our EU committees from seven to three, freeing up four committees for other work. It is those other committees that are so widely and rightly respected by the public, and which we as a House are uniquely qualified to deliver, yet we are only being allowed three new ad hoc committees and have turned down requests from noble Lords for no fewer than 42. I refer your Lordships to HL Paper 127 from our Liaison Committee, which details all those 42 committees which we will now not have. I understand that we may be making progress on a committee on foreign affairs, which would be a step forward. However, noble Lords’ suggestions from within 21 other areas of our national life are not being adhered to—the House will not be given those committees and the British public will not have your Lordships’ wisdom upon them. I therefore propose that we have four fewer, somewhat pointless EU committees, and four more to draw on the vast array of your Lordships’ knowledge and experience. I beg to move.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I do not think that we should let the noble Lord get away with a caricature of the committee and its operation. I had the privilege of serving on the committee for the last three years and I found it very interesting. I also found it very interesting that, although Members who are not on the committee are entitled to attend, at no time did the noble Lord come along to sit in. In fact, not only can Members attend but they can ask questions. However, as I said, at no time did he take the opportunity to come. If he had done so, he would have found his caricature of the committee to be entirely wrong. Some of the people who I believed to be critical of the European Union were in fact very positive members of the committee and its sub-committees. I do not like to single out people but the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who has a reputation for being very critical and might have us out of the European Union, was a very positive member of the committee.
We had regular sessions with the Minister for Europe, who incidentally did an extremely good job and answered our questions very well, but we put him under particular scrutiny. He came after European Council meetings, although we thought that it would have been better for him to appear before attending those meetings so that we could tell him what we thought this Parliament felt and he could represent those interests and our views at the meetings. It is interesting that the people who suggested that—I was one of them—are perceived to be more in favour of the European Union, but we wanted there to be more criticism.
I also wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, has read any of our reports. Many, if not all, contain substantial criticisms of the UK Government and the European Union, and they make suggestions again and again about the way in which the European Union should improve. The suggestion that before people are appointed to a committee we should work out whether they are in favour of or against the European Union is, in my view, manifestly unfair and total nonsense. We would have a Star Chamber that you would have to appear before, saying whether you are in favour of or against the European Union. As we know, there is a whole range of views on the European Union in this Chamber, as there is elsewhere.
I think that what we have heard from the noble Lord is complete nonsense and I hope that it will be thrown out comprehensively.
EU Council June 2014
Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Pearson of Rannoch(9 years, 10 months ago)
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European Commission: Staffing
Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Pearson of Rannoch(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Liaison Committee
Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, the noble Lord is very generous. The point I made was that we have seven European Union sub-committees whereas the House of Commons makes do with one. I also made the point that the conclusions of our seven European Unions sub-committees carry very little weight in Brussels. Furthermore, the scrutiny reserve has been overridden over 400 times in the last two years. Of course I agree that the other committees of your Lordships’ House are hugely valuable. They are taken very seriously nationally and we should have more of them. However, I believe that we should have fewer European Union sub-committees. I do not see why we cannot make do with one, as the House of Commons does.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, I think I was too generous to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. I have been in Brussels twice recently. Everyone I came across there—the officials and commissioners—without hesitation or exception said that they recognise and respect the work of the House of Lords European Union Select Committee and its sub-committees. That came out loud and clear and I pass it on. The trouble is that we are limited. We wanted to travel more but cannot because of the limitations on cost.
Perhaps I may now deal with the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. I was really astonished by the response from the Liaison Committees here and in the other place. There is a National Security Council, which the Government have set up to take an across-the-board look at all aspects not just of defence and foreign affairs, but of energy security, cybersecurity and a whole range of things. The National Security Council is a powerful body in the country, and the Joint Committee is the parliamentary scrutiny and control over it. The committee just wanted to set up a sub-committee, but because of a lack of resources it is not allowed to do so. The committee consists of people with great expertise—chairmen of Select Committees in the House of Commons, people who used to be heads of, or used to work for, intelligence agencies in this country, and people who worked on the Intelligence and Security Committee. The Joint Committee is one of the most influential committees and is being constrained in its work.
European Union Bill
Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Pearson of Rannoch(13 years ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, I support the amendment moved with such charming and disarming modesty by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. Only someone with a highland title could be so disarming and modest as well as eloquent in moving such an amendment.
I speak with reluctance because I was waiting to see who was going to spring up to defend the Bill and speak against the amendment. As my noble friend Lord Kinnock says from a sedentary position, “There won't be many of them”. I have been trying to find out over the past few days and weeks who is behind the Bill, who is the architect of it, who is the genesis of it, who is pushing it, who is keen to see it go through. I even had a conversation with the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and he certainly did not claim any responsibility for the Bill. At Second Reading, we had a number of contributions, almost none of them in favour of the Bill. Even those who were in favour were somewhat embarrassed and reluctant.
I wonder why we are taking up so much time in this House and in Parliament when there are so many other things that should be occupying our attention. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made a very eloquent Shakespearian beginning to his speech. If I can get a little bit of Shakespeare right, it made me think:
“Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
Keep law and form and due proportion …
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,
Her fruit-trees all unpruned”.
A lot of things are happening outside in our land, this sea-walled garden, that need our attention, but we are being asked to spend so much time on this, it is really quite unbelievable.
I did not speak on Second Reading because I was at my first meeting of the European Union Select Committee. Excellent work is being done there scrutinising legislation that comes from the European Union. It is generally acknowledged that this House, in this Parliament, in this country scrutinises European legislation better than any other house of any other parliament in the European Union, something of which we should be proud. That makes it even more ridiculous that we are being asked to consider this Bill.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, can I test the noble Lord’s pride? Can he give us any examples of any proposals or changes to European legislation, put forward either by your Lordships’ Select Committee or the Select Committee in the other place, that have been accepted in Brussels in, shall we say, the past 10 years?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I am really grateful to my noble friend. That is exactly the kind of thing that I was seeking. I know this House, and I have the greatest of respect for the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who I have known for many years and who has been very helpful to me on many occasions. I really feel sorry for him that he has been asked to pilot this Bill through the House. I think it says a great deal for his dedication and his commitment that he is willing and able to do so.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, perhaps it is time to have the smallest voice against these amendments. I shall do so by commenting on what noble Lords who have spoken so far have said. Can the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, tell us of any treaty changes so far that have not actually conferred power? I do not much like the word “competence” because it implies someone doing something competent, whereas we know that the European use of the word “competence” means power, which is nearly always exercised with great incompetence.
Political and Constitutional Reform
Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Pearson of Rannoch(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I am most grateful. I should like to put a question on behalf of the 2.5 million people who voted for minority parties, the largest of which I have the honour to lead. The Government state:
“Surely when dissatisfaction with politics is so great, one of our first acts must be to give people their own say over something as fundamental as how they elect their MPs”.
However, the Statement goes on to “take it or leave it”. It is the AV system or nothing. What is wrong with AV plus, which is, after all, a system that is good enough for Scotland, Wales and the London Assembly? Why is that system not good enough for the country?