Ministers: Government Business

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I am always careful to question individual reports, but I repeat that we take a leading role on the global stage in countering state threats, and we will continue to work closely on this with like-minded allies and partners to defend UK interests, and the international rules-based system, from hostile activity.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has told us that she is unwilling to talk about case histories and so on, although she has given us a pretty fulsome step-by-step report on the Home Secretary’s resignation and reappointment. In view of the fact that she began by telling us from the Dispatch Box today that this is not a laughing matter—that it is very serious—and the sober words from the right reverend Prelate about his experience of GCHQ and the seriousness of these lapses, can she confirm from the Dispatch Box that to describe what we are going through as a witch hunt is inappropriate?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I note what the noble Lord says, but I must say that I have some sympathy with my noble friend Lord Forsyth: we really need to move forward. I went into detail on the Home Secretary only because she wrote a letter in great detail, which I think is of interest to people who take an interest in these matters. We need to move forward and to support those in the security services and others trying to defend national security and, even more importantly, anticipate the new threats coming at us all the time. The digital world is changing, as I know from my recent trip, and we have to work to strengthen defences, but in a reasonable, sensible way.

Upholding Standards in Public Life

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

I strongly agree with what my noble friend has said. Of course, the issue of trust runs much wider, as he says, than individuals. We in your Lordships’ House were given a great trust by the British people in the referendum in 2016; can we all answer that we held to that trust promptly and fully?

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I have never used the language that has just been adduced in the previous speaker’s question, but I have used the language that was used by the Prime Minister in the reading that he gave in St Paul’s Cathedral, and would hold all people to account by the standards implicit in the words that he read. Does the Minister agree?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the noble Lord to the exchange of correspondence between the noble Lord, Lord Geidt, and the Prime Minister. In his letter to the noble Lord, Lord Geidt, the Prime Minister set out his own sense of his actions—I refer noble Lords to that letter and the way that he has held himself accountable publicly for those actions.

Peerages: Recommendations

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very happy to speak in Comrade Balfe’s debate. Now that I know his true provenance, I feel that he has hidden virtues I was unaware of.

I rise to speak wondering why there is a debate about this at all. It seems so self-evident that people who have undergone due process should have what has happened presented transparently in a proper form to the Crown, and if there is a divergence then the alternative case should be put. I cannot really see that anybody could take a position other than being in favour of all that.

I am, of course, completely new to the world of politics. The wiles and Machiavellian goings-on that I have vaguely become aware of over the years will, I am sure, fit me for that final deliberation at the pearly gates, when I wonder whether or not I am going to get in. Granted that I have, relatively speaking, a naivety on these things, I cannot understand how we are where we are. In 2004, when I was admitted to your Lordships’ House, Tony Blair’s Government had a very considerable majority in the Commons. When I came into the House of Lords there were, roughly speaking, 200 Labour Lords and 200 Conservative Lords. I rejoiced at the fact that someone from my background could come into a debating Chamber where cases had to be won, majorities had to be put together and arguments had to be presented that won the approval of those assembled. No Government, simply because it had even a whacking majority, as the Labour Party did then, could simply assume that it would carry the day all the time in the Lords.

Then, of course, we became aware that things were going on that got into the newspapers. We put together a committee, headed by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. Its task was to try to introduce some order as it was sought to bring the numbers in the House of Lords roughly into equivalence with the House of Commons. The formula was simple; it was debated on the Floor of the House and it was agreed, and I thought that we had something that would sort out some of the excesses and wrongdoings of the Chamber as it was.

All these years later, when we look at the figures, we find that there is no longer a rough equivalence between Labour and the Conservatives, but that the Labour Party has, in fact, followed the advice of the Burns committee —one in for two out—that the Liberal Democrats have done the same, but that the Conservatives simply have not. It is not only that: they have grossly inflated the numbers coming in so that instead of a rough equivalence, we now see that there are 258 Peers the Conservatives might expect to count on for their support and 168 Labour Members. I cannot understand how something that was put together out of the deliberations of the House of Lords and which got approval from all sides of the House should end up with us being in a position—self-regulating as we are supposed to be—that leads to an imbalance of this kind.

I know that in our party meetings we can talk about our record in this respect but I must say to Conservative Members, and those taking part in this debate in particular: please tell us that you are as anxious as the rest of us that the things we have agreed in this way are not followed through on. In one case, someone who was rejected by the commission had that rejection overruled by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is under fire for a lot of things at the moment; he should be under the same kind of fire for the way in which this situation has come to pass.

I am new to politics. I hope to find probity and integrity but something like this puts me on the side of the tabloid press, which thinks that we are all a lot of funny people.

Devolved Governments: Public Expenditure

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, as someone who is very against the independence movement in Scotland, I would agree. We have also to accept that an increasing amount of revenue is raised in Scotland for the Scottish Government. For example, from 2017-18 Scottish income tax rates were entirely devolved, and all revenues from Scottish income tax are retained. Likewise, in 2015, stamp duty was devolved to the Scottish Government. So there is a rising percentage that is in their own gift and I can only assume that some of that is being used for what is, in my view, a mistaken approach.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps I might take a moment to remind the House that, as well as Scotland, Wales has a devolved Government. I believe transparency there is of an order of which we could all be proud. I want to pick up on a point made yesterday by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, during a Question about the Barnett formula. In his opinion—and in the opinion of many of us—it needs to be looked at in a radically new way for a new age. The Answer from the Dispatch Box yesterday was, quite simply, that there was no prospect of such a review. Is the Minister today, who is refreshingly different from the Minister yesterday, of the same mind?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I think we all know that the Barnett formula was something of a fudge, put together many years ago. It is an extremely complicated thing to try to unravel. We know that the amount of funding that goes to individual citizens is favourable to the devolved regions, but the formula is not necessarily satisfactory—so I would encourage the noble Lord to keep up his campaign to push for a review.

House of Lords: Appointments Process

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I suspect that some of us have more agreement with the noble Lord than perhaps he suggested at the beginning. However, I am worried about all the scurrilous references about the dragging through the dirt of this Chamber. I believe that the work we do is of critical importance and I find myself growing increasingly despondent with our situation.

We have heard that the Burns report has been rubbished in recent times, and we can all regret that. For reasons we know only too well—names have been named—the Chamber is rapidly becoming bloated by carelessness and cronyism. No wonder—we cannot doubt it—we attract such negative media attention and will go on doing so.

The overwhelming majority of us were appointed because people had faith in us, thinking that we would give more, impart wisdom and better our laws. The Appointments Commission, if it were on a statutory basis, in the words of the proposal, would I am sure engender trust and achieve improvement. I do not profess to know the intricate workings of our constitution, nor do I see myself as someone with special wisdom on the future of this Chamber, but I believe—in good faith towards each other and towards the British public—that we must not fail with the measures available to us to improve the work of this House.

It matters to me a great deal that I belong to an institution in whose integrity I have total trust. If we fail to keep our own promises that we have made to ourselves then it is only a matter of time before this becomes an irreparable House of corruption. The House of Commons, as we all know, is beset by questions of sleaze. We certainly do not want that to be the case with us as well.

Health and Social Care Levy Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

2nd reading & Order of Commitment discharged & 3rd reading
Monday 11th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is with some trepidation that I add my voice to those who have spoken already on this matter. Some of the speeches will live with me for a very long time, in the way that the case has been put and the evidence put forward, and it seems almost recondite for someone like me to add to the detail. I want to come at it from the point of view of social care but also, perhaps existentially, from my experience with MHA—Methodist Homes for the Aged—the largest charity care provider in the country, which has been doing it for 75 years. It has 70 residential homes scattered across the country, looking after 4,400 people. Three thousand people are being helped to live in their communities, with staffing and support people to do that, and 11,000 in their own homes. MHA has 7,000 staff and 3,750 volunteers. As the cream on top of the milk, it is one of the leading exponents, in such institutions, of music therapy—just to indicate that all is not simply bread and butter.

It has to be said that seeking some guidance from MHA on what it has felt about what has been happening on the ground in the communities that it cares for is what gives me a sense of wanting to contribute to this debate. Things have been dire. Let us look, first of all, at the last 18 months—or whatever it is—since Covid started and see how it has affected the care system in general. If all goes well and things are better than we think and expect, we are talking about waiting two years before a certain amount of money might come into the system and be addressed to social care. The last 18 months have taken so much out of those providing social care that any talk of sustainability begs the question: sustaining what? Things have been dire. A 95% increase in insurance has had to be borne as a result of the pandemic, £2 million per year was needed to purchase PPE, there has been staff sickness, overtime, bank agency staff, restricted movement between care homes and so and so forth. Care homes have barely managed to hold the show together under the pressures that they have been feeling in these last 18 months. So when the Prime Minister got up and made the announcement he did—and we all hope there will be however many millions it is in two years’ time—we have to ask ourselves, “What about now? What about repairing the damage that has just been done and is still being suffered?”

The thought that the mandatory vaccination status for care home staff which is not required in the health service could see a labour shift from care homes to hospitals seems really rather perverse. We simply have to recognise that many of the care institutions that we are talking about are in a dire, dire state. There is a dependency and a relationship between them and the local authorities that are being looked to, to anchor the proposals that are being made. MHA has contacted local authorities to see how to take advantage of the £3.2 billion that was given to local authorities to respond to Covid-19 pressures. Of the 188 local authorities that it works with, only 5% gave a 10% increase, there was a smaller uplift from 35% of local authorities, and 60% gave no uplift at all. You just wonder how much of this money that was supposed, through local authorities, to improve the situation financially for social care got to the front line. The conclusion from MHA is that almost none at all got there.

We also have the whole question of recruiting and retention. On this workforce business, perhaps if there are any HGV drivers who are surplus to requirement now that we are training them all ourselves and producing them for supply chains and all the rest of it, we could get them qualified to work in our care homes, because there is a desperate need. Across social care, so many years of low pay have been compounded by valued staff leaving, due—as I say—to Brexit and exhaustion from the pandemic, and now some staff leaving and moving to the NHS, as I have suggested.

The last 18 months have left the social care sector in dire straits. The next two years—until whatever, if anything, filters through from the latest arrangements—will have to be survived. Clearly, from the evidence I have been adducing, local authorities are not in a position to play their part. Frankly, to talk about the future of the social care sector seems redundant; survival is the very first thing, as well as a carefully thought-through policy. We have heard so many hints of good ideas that have been in circulation in cross-party committees which have worked on these issues. Therefore, this little piece of legislation seems tawdry.

I hope the Minister will recognise that, lovely man as he is, we want him to be the channel through whom we declare our displeasure to the Government he serves.

Standards in Public Life

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Evans, and indeed to take part in a debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Blunkett. He set the case before us, and it has been illustrated widely. My contribution shall be much narrower; I mean to complement what we have heard thus far.

If I may decouple the words “my noble friend”, I shall take the word “friend” out for a moment and release it from its honorific usage when we are in this House, which limits its application to those on our side of the House. Suppose, in a debate like this, we look for what the noble Lord, Lord Evans, has just suggested is the benefit of the committee system—namely, that all of us, on all Benches, have a common interest in seeing this together as a team and not in oppositional terms, although there is plenty of illustrative material that could point the finger here, there or anywhere else.

The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said that he was not a saint. From my professional background, I found saints a pain in the backside and prefer dealing with sinners any day.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

The realities are all around me, as I can hear from that response.

If we consider ourselves a Committee of the whole House and if the word “nobility”, freed from the word “friend” just for a moment, can be a word that sums up all those Nolan principles—truth, integrity and all the other things—we will have a starting point.

I have to say that this House astonished me in recent times in the way it responded to the introductions to the House made by the Prime Minister that took the proportions between our respective parties into such an unhealthy place. The Labour Party, since the Burns report, has tried hard to follow the formula we all agreed as friends, and I think the Liberal Democrats have done the same. However, the expansion on the Conservative Benches is in defiance of an agreed position that all of us took in accepting the Burns report. I was astonished that there was not an uproar. My noble friend Lord Blunkett introduced Machiavelli into these discussions this afternoon. I would introduce Extinction Rebellion, because its tactics are more appropriate for this present age. If we had glued ourselves to our seats or bolted ourselves to the doors, protesting against the mistreatment of this House and of this Parliament by overruling the common, agreed statement of the House on the question of its membership, we would have shown some stamina and spunk and would have had a word we could possibly say outside this Chamber.

Public trust has been invested in every one of us. The electorate have put their trust in every Member of the other place. When the body politic has a rotten head, it will soon find itself infected similarly. I therefore believe that we must take the general points and address the philosophy and constitutional aspect of this case, but it is in the interests of all of us—and of our credibility outside this Chamber—for us to see that we simply must find a way to deal with infractions and diminished responsibility, which are a threat to the public life of this country.

I suppose that, as I sit down, that someone will say, “There we are, he has reverted to type—that was a Methodist sermon.” If it was, let the cap fit.

Brexit: Stability of the Union

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak immediately after a Welshman and sitting directly under the magisterial presence of another one whose speech beguiled us and perhaps raised the level of our thinking to a noble vision of what can be achieved if the will is there.

This time last year, I was cutting my teeth in the brutal world of politics, of which I had no experience whatever, out of my depth, swimming against the tide and trying hard to understand what was happening in what was then the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. What a place to begin to familiarise yourself with due process. It is process that I would like to concentrate upon, picking up on remarks that have been made from around the Chamber about how we go about taking forward a discussion of issues as complex as this. I will not repeat things that have been said in varying ways, although I will want to begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane—a good Welsh place of origin, if I may say so; I can recommend a lovely place for us to eat together some time when I visit there—for raising our sights. We have all been groping around in the dark and plodding along a path whose destination at this stage we have not yet identified, but he has raised our sights and reminded us that, when all this trouble and strife is over, there is going to be a world waiting to be recreated, relationships that have to be mended and an ongoing story that has to be told.

My clear remembrance of some of the discussions a year ago on the withdrawal Bill, Clause 11 in particular, gives me the substance of what I want to share now. When Clause 11 appeared in that proposed legislation, it showed just how out of touch the Government were. Instantly there rose to arms the Law Society, the Hansard Society, the Bar Council and the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House—all of them indicating that it simply could not work. For a long time, having promised us a resolution of the contradictions that had been identified, the Government were not forthcoming with a suggested alternative. It was on Report, as many will remember, that eventually things in fact got rewritten.

The changes were so radical that the original now is lost and for the attention of archaeologists in a thousand years’ time—but the basic element within it was a spirit of compromise in order to reach the new Clause 11. I remember working with David Lidington, Mark Drakeford and Michael Russell, all of us trying our hardest to give our attention to the document on restructuring Wales, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. It was the work of Steffan Lewis, whose memory I too want to honour. This remarkable young man gave us a White Paper showing a negotiating position within six months of the referendum. Is that not what the national Government should have been giving us—material to work with?

As the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, said, that negotiating position was formulated before red lines were drawn. We might have had to come to that, but this was open and embracing. We looked at that, recognising that, in the eventual Clause 11, consideration would have to be given to all those areas where commonalities cross borders. We recognised that, out of the 120 or so areas, over 100 could be managed quite easily with existing modalities, mechanisms and arrangements. There were 20 or so that would need special frameworks within which we would have to sort things out—and we pledged to achieve that. We recognised that the Joint Ministerial Council, to which the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, referred, was really down on its uppers. Nobody was happy with it. The splendid briefing paper we received from the Library mentions the need to beef that up. It needs to be beefed up; it does not have to be second-rate people coming along to it in a spirit of boredom and ennui.

So there we were, discussing, negotiating and coming forward with something which the Government were eventually pleased to put into their legislation. That methodology has been missing from the rest of the discussions between—what is it?—London and Brussels, the European Union and the United Kingdom, or a few individuals centred in No. 10, Chequers or wherever. When the agreement was eventually published, with its accompanying policy document, it made no mention of either Wales or Scotland. The die was cast. That document came out of an entirely different set of preconsiderations. Nobody had been consulted. There was no room for compromise. I do not know how you make your way forward when that is the spirit that has produced the working documents that will affect the future of this country well into the years ahead.

We just have to express our confidence in the methodology used by those who worked on that Bill a year ago, showing that it can be done. David Lidington in the Cabinet Office was magnificent and accommodating; he put his officials at our disposal, checked things for us and looked for extra information. It was an exercise in how to negotiate—which, from my reading at a distance of all that has happened on the official front, has been entirely absent. So here we are. What have we learned? We have learned that because the agreement is so at odds with everything that the restructuring Wales document was about, the Welsh Assembly felt obliged to reject absolutely everything that has come forward through the other channel. We are now in a very difficult place indeed. Scotland will have its own stance and so will Northern Ireland.

What do I read while sitting here enjoying this feast of oratory, rhetoric and wisdom that the House of Lords is famous for? Some of us look at our phones now and again to see what is happening in the real world outside, and I see that the spokesperson for the Prime Minister has said that she is entering into discussions with senior politicians from other parties with “no change” in her basic principles. There will be no market that we can all belong to. There will be no bending of those principles that we have heard ad nauseam. In a Statement made in the other place on Monday, the Prime Minister herself promised, as a concessionary point to the people of Ireland, that they would have a place at the negotiating table as this agreement was taken forward after we left the Union. Well, congratulations to Northern Ireland—but what about Scotland and Wales? What about the discussions on which will depend the ethos and timbre of the kind of country we are when the Brexit thing is behind us? We have had a deplorable lack of consultation. This debate has proved, again and again from various parts of the House, just what might have been done differently. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, paid tribute to the qualities of the Minister, and it is now up to him to live up to those remarks.

Electoral Commission

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to my noble and learned friend. As my honourable friend in the other place said, that electoral rules have been breached is rightly a cause for concern, but that does not mean that the rules themselves are flawed.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, when the mayor of Tower Hamlets was elected because regulations had been breached, it was necessary to rerun the election. Can we be told the substantial difference between a case like that and the case we are talking about now?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The question of elections of MPs or mayors has been raised before. The commission does not have the power to disqualify MPs if they are found to have overspent in an election campaign, and I imagine that the same would be true of mayors. However—and I think this answers the noble Lord’s question—the commission can refer cases to the police or the relevant public prosecutor and generally do so if cases involve an element of deliberate dishonesty. That is the distinction.

Civil Society and Lobbying

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for bringing this field of endeavour and experience to the Floor of the House so that we can enjoy a discussion of its various facets and perhaps focus our thinking about the way we would like things to go in the future. In the years that I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House, I have been only too aware of how poorly I have served the work of this place.

[A Noble Lord]

Not at all.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

Thank you. My noble friend is most generous. This is largely because, having a day job—largely in the voluntary sector, related to so many people involved in charitable work—my field of activity lies there, and I am in no doubt about that. It is, however, a joy to come here when I do, especially on an occasion such as this.

Perhaps I may take up a point that the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, made a moment ago. He correctly said that work in the charitable sector and in civil society often supplements what is done by the state. In an age of austerity and cutbacks, I fear that it is too often becoming a substitute for what ought to be done by the state. The assumption that civil society and the voluntary sector can absorb the outcomes of government policy needs to be checked and tested.

I approach the whole question of charity with very mixed feelings. I am only too aware of how it excites a response on the part of those inclined to be charitable that, if we are not careful, simply maintains people in a position of dependency. Sometimes, of course, such activity is necessary. People who are on the bread line and whose mere existence is under threat need that help, even if they risk becoming dependent on it but, on the whole, I look for activity in the field of charity that introduces the notion of capacity-building, autonomy, an ability to take charge of one’s own life and building those qualities in those on the receiving end, as it were.

Charities ought always in this respect to be free enough to be innovative. The state—even with the finest legislation passed through bodies such as this House—cannot always create the conditions that would impose the right pattern across society, which everyone can then enjoy. In the charitable sector, if there is real freedom to act, some quite startling things can happen, which then become models from which those who provide at a higher level can learn.

Many Members of this House will remember the redoubtable figure of Lord Soper. I inherited responsibility for a lot of his social work for a number of years and have enjoyed after-dinner speaking on the basis of it ever since. I remember my work in a day centre in west London—open 365 days a year and becoming increasingly professionalised in line with modern fashion, as the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, said. It provided a range of services to homeless people, usually street homeless people, who had nowhere else to go—always over 25 year-olds. Youth work is much easier to fund, I can assure noble Lords, than old lads, as these were. Incidentally, is it not a shame that the work that was done by the previous Government—by Members on this side of the House through the rough sleepers initiative—to provide for the needs of the street homeless is being unpicked? We now see more and more evidence of street homelessness occurring than in our day, when we really did think that a solution had been found.

At the day centre, there was one strand missing. We deloused, we fed, we provided advice, housing and all the rest of it—I could give so many stories of incidents and people from those days—but one thing was missing: a psychiatric social worker to help us with the mental problems of so many people living at their wits’ end and on the streets. Eventually, we found the money for that role. My instruction to this long-sought member of our personnel was very clear: “However long the queue of people wanting your services, you will give only 80% of your time to the face-to-face, problem-solving, advice-giving aspect of your work. The rest of your work will be concerned with accumulating notes of the kinds of conditions that you are discovering and statistics about the nature of the problems you are encountering”. I said to her that people like me would need that evidence as the basis upon which we made representations to public bodies and to the Government —it was essential that we did that work and it was integral to her work. I believed that then and I believe that now.

It is so important to give charities the freedom to innovate, to learn and to accumulate experience on the basis of which a view can be brought to Governments—which are often more than one stage removed from the experience of these things—in order that we may form an opinion, frame legislation and take the whole thing forward in a constructive way. I have lots of other experience of institutions where, because they took government money, they found themselves constricted by government pressure to do their work the Government’s way. I regret that, and I want to make a general point at the early stage of this debate. I plead with the Minister—or with whoever is summing up—to give us an assurance that the proper freedoms for charitable bodies will always be respected so that innovation, the accumulation of experience and evidence and a valid point of view put to those responsible for shaping our national life can always be made on the basis of facts that can be proven.

My notes would allow me to speak for another three and a half hours but, at this point, I forbear.