Business of the House

Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord True

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, it is probably worth placing on the record what has happened so far today, because it is germane to the argument I wish to put to your Lordships. It is the same argument that I put to my Front Bench last week: your Lordships would make a grave error if they adopted the habit of not adhering to their Standing Orders. Last week I was rather disobliging to my Front Bench, and I apologise if I was a little sharp to my noble friend the Leader of the House. I submitted to the House—and found some support across the House, although notably it was whipped against by the Front Bench opposite—that it would be wise for your Lordships to wait for a report from the appropriate committee before taking a grave and important decision. The Government declined to do so. What transpired afterwards was that no doubt the Government took advice from wiser people than me, and wiser people outside the House. The Government actually adjourned the House the next day to do precisely what I had asked them to do the previous day and waited to hear the report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. I condemn the Government’s attempt to set aside Standing Orders, but I congratulate them on listening.

Today we have a similar but even graver attempt to set aside our Standing Orders, which comes not from the Front Bench of the Government but from Her Majesty’s Official Opposition. Let us be under no illusion here: that side is whipped and is acting not at the behest of the slightly risible figure of Sir Oliver Letwin. It is the Labour Party that provides all the votes for Sir Oliver Letwin—the bulk of the votes—that is moving this procedure today and that is seeking to abuse the procedures of the House, with the support of the Liberal Democrats. I believe that when the Official Opposition seek to usurp the role of the Government and to set aside the proper procedures in this place, they should submit themselves to the same scrutiny as the Government are required to do, which we glory in every day. Why do we come here every day?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I am beginning to wonder—

[Lord True]

What did the noble Lord say? Would the noble Lord like to stand up and repeat what he said?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

No.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I said I am beginning to wonder why the noble Lord comes here every day.

[Lord True]

The noble Lord is a great wag, is he not? I have often thought the same about him, but I find him too engaging to have said such a thing.

I return to my argument. One thing I regret about the amendment I have tabled—but it was necessary because of the nature of the Bill before us—is that it mentions the House applying,

“unprecedented procedures to this Bill”.

I believe my amendment would be better if it said “any non-emergency Bill”. I think your Lordships are teetering slightly on the edge of a different dangerous place from that which was put to us earlier in the debate. In this part of our proceedings, the argument is ultimately about procedure. That may be arcane, but later in my remarks I will develop why I think that that is extremely important.

Our first discussion today was when my noble friend asked us to go into Committee. I would like to have spoken on that and I will now develop the points that I would have made then because they are absolutely germane to the point. My noble friend was responding to a situation where the Official Opposition, at the behest of the Labour Party, has come to the House and for the first time is asking your Lordships to accept this unusual procedure: the combination of the Bill before us and what happened in the Commons yesterday. That deserves to be examined. Why did my noble friend suggest that we should go into Committee? The reason was shown to us. When the former Leader of the House, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, tried to intervene on the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, based on all of his experience—my noble friend Lord Strathclyde enjoys great respect on both sides of the House because he is a great servant to this place—he wanted to ask for an explanation from the noble Baroness, acting for the Official Opposition, about usurping the role of the Government and demanding that this House pass legislation which is not approved by the Government in one day, she declined to take his intervention.

That showed me why my noble friend was right to ask that we should go into Committee. Why should not the Official Opposition or anyone else who might want to use this procedure in the future not be required to make the same response to the House on the whys and wherefores as a Minister of the Crown who comes before noble Lords has to do? What is it about the Official Opposition with this bogus cry—

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[Lord True]

My noble friend is entirely wrong. That is not the point before the House in this Motion. Indeed, the procedure I have suggested would still allow the Bill to be passed. However, since when has it been the function of this House to say “Yes, sir” to any piece of legislation suddenly rushed down the Corridor? That is the proposition being put to us by my noble friend Lady Altmann: “The House of Commons has asked us to pass this, so we must be pass it. Get on with it”. Every time someone comes to this House bearing papers with a green ribbon on them, they are asking us to agree. Of course they want us to agree and they would probably prefer us to do so quickly, but we do not have to. That is called freedom and it is called scrutiny. It is also called consideration, but none of that is allowed for in the procedures that have been put before us today. The Bill comes with no Explanatory Notes and not even a name on it, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, admitted, yet we are being asked to pass it in a hurry or we are behaving badly. The day when the House of Lords is behaving badly because it is giving proper due consideration to a proposed Act of Parliament in the time that is sufficient and necessary for it to do so, as the noble Baroness asks in her amendment, is the beginning of the end for the House of Lords. That will be when the House of Lords says, “Yes, sir, we all want to go home”. I am sorry, but we need to be mindful of the importance of proper procedures.

I do not care for tweeting but I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is a great tweeter. I was sleepless last night, thinking about what I might say today, so I had a look at what she had been tweeting. Your Lordships will be interested to know that on 24 February—you can look it up—she sent out a tweet complaining that the Government might want to get the withdrawal Act through in 10 days. She tweeted that the House of Lords does not have programme Motions; the House of Lords needs time to consider things. That was on 24 February.

It ought to be 1 April today—it is 4 April—because the noble Baroness has come forward with a programme Motion in which she says that the House of Lords cannot have more than one day to consider this matter. I do not eat Devonshire clotted cream, but I find the noble Baroness’s position as rich as that.

While I am talking about the noble Baroness, I feel I must say how discourteous it was to the House to table this Motion so late. We heard from the putative Prime Minister, Sir Oliver Letwin, yesterday morning that he had been discussing matters with his friends down the Corridor—who are here in person—so why could she not have tabled this Motion before that? She tabled it before the Bill had arrived from the House of Commons and knew what was there. She could have given better notice to the House but failed to do so. She tried to bounce the House at the very last minute and then came up with this trumpery that something has to be passed quickly when the Prime Minister has already said that she will do what the Bill asks her to do.

What nonsense is this? Why are noble Lords going along with this nonsense and being prepared to set aside their Standing Orders?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Talking about Standing Orders—

[Lord True]

I have taken one intervention from the noble Lord and that was enough. All right, I will be different from his Front Bench.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Talking about Standing Orders, the noble Lord, Lord True, will recall from when he was bag carrier for the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that the Companion to the Standing Orders recommends that speeches should not exceed 15 minutes. He has now been speaking for 17 minutes. Would it not be appropriate for him to draw his remarks to a close?

[Lord True]

My Lords, I am introducing an amendment to a Motion, which is a different matter. I ask the noble Lord and others to consider that this is a matter of extreme importance to the House. In this little book—I do not know if the noble Lord has ever read it or knows what it is—are the Standing Orders of your Lordships’ House, which have been established over centuries to protect our procedures and to help secure the liberties of the British people. They should not be lightly set aside. We set them aside frequently when there is an emergency, but on no basis of credible argument can what is going on today be considered an emergency. It is a charade—“chicanery” was the word used earlier—to enlist this great House in the political activities of the Labour Party, with which certain useful people in other parties, such as the Liberal Democrats, may go along.

The Liberal Democrat Leader should have been heard. Why did the noble Lord, Lord Warner, tell the House to choke off debate when the leading member of the Liberal Democrats wanted to follow the important remarks of the Leader of the House? It was wrong. That procedure of closure is also in our Standing Orders but it is not without reason that there is a note saying that it should not be lightly entered into. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, entered into it rather lightly.

What we have here is a pre-cooked plot—the gaff was blown by Sir Oliver Letwin in the other place yesterday—but it is the tip of the iceberg. One of my colleagues said earlier that if your Lordships consent to this kind of procedure being standard, what will happen when another Government are formed and a different person on the Front Bench says, “We set aside these Standing Orders. Your Lordships may consider this to be a scrutinising House but, no, it all has to be done in a day”? That is where we are heading.

That is not my surmise or what I am suggesting; it is what we see from the Official Opposition. As to the person who may be sitting here in a few months’ time if there were an election, what demur or doubt would she have in bringing forward such a Motion to frustrate your Lordships’ ability to consider and scrutinise legislation? Once you begin with a little sin and a little lie, big ones readily follow. We should be extremely cautious in assenting to this setting aside of Standing Orders.

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[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, in the Statement that the Chief Whip just made, he said that he expects subsequent stages to be concluded on Monday. Given the proceedings we have seen all day today, is he giving a guarantee on behalf of the Government that they will be concluded on Monday?

[Lord True]

My Lords, if I intervene perhaps I might help the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. My interventions in this debate, as they were last week, were simply on procedural grounds. I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her Motion so that we do not have a precedent for such a Motion on the Order Paper. We have an agreement in the usual channels. We have an undertaking that we will complete Second Reading today and all other stages on Monday. I can speak only for myself, but I welcome the agreement in the usual channels. It is how we should have proceeded from the start. I will not table any amendments on the Order Paper for Committee or Report, in the spirit of co-operation that there is in the House. I ask the noble Baroness to consider, in these circumstances, whether she should not withdraw her Motion so as not to create the precedent of a Motion being forced, because I would feel obliged to divide the House on principle against it. I thank the usual channels and those wise heads on all sides of this House who have come to this agreement. Let us get on with Second Reading and, as we have just heard, consider the Bill properly on Monday. Everybody will want to get this Bill considered with dispatch. Looking around the House, I do not see any noble Lord dissenting from that. So I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the Motion.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I think the noble Lord was trying to be helpful. Unfortunately, without my Motion we would remain unable to deal with more than one stage; we would have to use the normal intervals between them. Therefore I am afraid that we do need my amendment to the Standing Orders to do that. Therefore I wish this Motion to be put to the House.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord True

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I had intended to intervene after an hour to don a Wigan shirt against the Manchester City team arrayed in this Chamber. But then my noble friend Lord Lamont rose and scored the goal in a very interesting speech, which went to the core of the matter. I apologise, like my noble friend Lord Hailsham, for having been unable to be present at Second Reading, but I assure your Lordships that I intend to be present for however many days it takes to achieve what my noble friend said he would wish to frustrate, with the result that Brexit will go through as the British people requested.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, took exception to the word “instruction”. As a democrat, I am not quite sure from whom our Parliament should take its instructions except from the British people. I quote the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, who said after the referendum that,

“when the British people have spoken, you do what they command”.

What powerful words and instruction. Another gentleman said—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord True]

I have only just begun. I will give way later to the noble Lord. If I may continue this section of my remarks, I would like to do so. There were many interventions on my noble friend Lord Lamont, who spoke for the Wigan team, but there have not been so many interventions on the Manchester City team.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

This is material to what the noble Lord is saying.

[Lord True]

I will give way to the noble Lord later if he is kind and polite and stops interrupting. I will put on the record what another gentleman said:

“There are people in the party who don’t accept the outcome, who feel incredibly angry and feel it’s reversible, that somehow we can undo it. The public have voted and I do think it’s seriously disrespectful and politically utterly counterproductive to say ‘Sorry guys, you’ve got it wrong, we’re going to try again’, I don’t think we can do that”.


That was Vince Cable, since elected leader of the Liberal Democrat party. I hope that he will stand by those words as leader.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

For those of us who sat through nearly 180 speeches at Second Reading, it is rather galling, when we are dealing with amendments, to hear people who could not make it give Second Reading speeches. If the noble Lord was a Member in another place, he would be drawn to order by the Speaker. Can he not bring himself to order and address the amendment?

[Lord True]

My Lords, the noble Lord goes directly to the point. He wishes to know why I was unable to be here.