Elections and Referendums: Foreign Interference

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to my noble friend. We have invested £1.9 billion in the national cybersecurity strategy for precisely the reason that he has outlined: to resist interference in the electoral process. Estimates of the reach of the Russians suggest that 105 accounts reached 16,000 people during the referendum campaign, in many cases simply amplifying arguments in circulation. The majority was 1.3 million. I honestly do not think that one can attribute that majority to the activity of Russian spooks.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, of course it is essential that we have maximum transparency in all organisations involved in referendum campaigns, general election campaigns and the like, but does the Minister agree that we need maximum transparency also on the part of those well-financed organisations whose aim is to reverse the result of referendums? I refer of course to the People’s Vote campaign, which is a campaign to reverse the vote of the people in 2016. It is massively well financed, with opinion polling across the country in individual constituencies and with leafleting and campaigning—I have kept many of its documents because it kindly sends them to me as well. Will he ensure that, in any future investigation into transparency, organisations such as the so-called People’s Vote campaign are included?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Were there to be another referendum, there would need to be primary legislation, which would give an opportunity to the noble Lord and others to see whether the current legislation is adequate. Anybody taking part in any future referendum would have to register as a political party. There are maximum spending limits on such activity and there is the necessary transparency associated with it, but I take on board the warning from the noble Lord.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th March 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Grocott]

That the report be now received.

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, may I say a few words?

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[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, before I speak to my amendment, I say—on behalf of everyone in the House, I am sure—how glad I am that there will be an opportunity for a minute’s silence at 11 am in the wake of the thoroughly barbaric and appalling outrage in New Zealand.

I also very much hope that we will be able to conclude proceedings on this Bill in good time to enable the Bill brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, which potentially affects hundreds of thousands of people in this country, to have a decent Second Reading.

My amendment is essentially a tidying-up amendment and a simple one, and I have discussed it with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who has kindly indicated to me that he is minded to accept it. There are 92 hereditary Peers in your Lordships’ House, but only 90 of them are subject to the by-election provision. I strongly support the Bill—the noble Lord knows that: I have spoken in its favour and may have to do so again—but there are two hereditary Peers who are not subject to by-elections, who are here by virtue of the fact that they hold important offices of state. Neither of them ever participates politically in the proceedings of your Lordships’ House, but the Lord Great Chamberlain has the duty from time to time to deliver messages to your Lordships’ House. Therefore, his membership is important although peripheral. The Earl Marshal has the very real burden of being in charge of notable affairs of state. Again, it is appropriate that he should be a Member of your Lordships’ House, and the measure adopted some 20 years ago accepted that.

All I suggest in the amendment is that we make it abundantly clear that the Bill is dealing with what it says it is dealing with—by-elections—and that those two posts are not relevant to the Bill and therefore should not form part of it. I beg to move.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I firmly support my noble friend Lord Cormack’s amendment but it needs a little tweaking. In moving Amendment 2 I will speak also to Amendments 16 and 31. I am amending my noble friend’s amendment because I believe, contrary to the Bill, that the current royal officeholders—the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain—and their successors should remain Members of the House of Lords.

The Earl Marshal is the eighth of the great offices of state. The Duke of Norfolk’s family has held that position since 1672, being responsible, as my noble friend Lord Cormack said, for organising major ceremonial occasions, the monarch’s coronation and state funerals. He also oversees the College of Arms. The Lord Great Chamberlain is the sixth of the great offices of state, having charge of the Palace of Westminster. The office goes back to William the Conqueror’s reign. It is quite right that these two royal officeholders should remain Members of the House of Lords due to the importance of their roles and duties. Amendment 16 would adjust the Bill’s wording to put that into effect.

Amendment 31 covers a slightly different situation. At the end of last year, I was pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, elected as one of the 90 hereditary Peers through a by-election. However, when Her Majesty dies, the noble Lord will become the Lord Great Chamberlain, as the position rotates between different peerage families on the death of the sovereign. As a result, there will be a vacancy among the 90 excepted hereditary Peers. This situation is not covered by the new subsection (4) proposed by Clause 1(3), which refers only to,

“the death, retirement, resignation or expulsion of an excepted person”.

Hence I believe that in these circumstances, a by-election should be held. I beg to move.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I fear that we may already be losing the dozen people I understand to be following this discussion in the country at large. I will try to expedite things. The retention of these two positions is completely anachronistic. Two hereditary positions remaining in perpetuity when they do not take part in events here is odd, particularly when we are trying to reduce the size of the House to 600. However, it is not germane to the Bill’s central purpose, which is to end by-elections, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said. On those terms, I accept the amendment and hope that we can get on to Amendment 2A.

Amendment 2 (to Amendment 1) agreed.

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I can put it no better. I beg to move.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, someone from this side should perhaps say a few words at this stage. I wholly associate myself—I am sure everyone in the House does—with the remarks made about the events resulting in our minute’s silence at 11 am. I fear that that might be the end of the consensual feeling I am able to express today.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, began his remarks by saying that he thought the Bill was unlikely to become law, and then spent 16 minutes making it less likely to become law. He knows perfectly well what he is doing; he has been here for 34 years, so I imagine that he is getting the hang of it by now. Mind you, he is a newcomer compared with our friends the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who has been here for 49 years, and the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who has been here for 56 years. So they have had 140 years between them, and that is a pretty good innings. Maybe they can listen to some more recent voices.

I simply say this to the noble Lord: it is a pity he was not able to join us in Committee to familiarise himself with what has happened to the Bill so far. It was introduced 18 months ago in September 2017, when I was lucky enough to draw number one in the ballot for Private Members’ Bills, which should give one a reasonable hope of the Bill passing through its stages in the Lords. It had its Second Reading then; it has since had three days in Committee, which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was unable to get along to.

Had the noble Lord made it to the third day in Committee, he would now be aware that the precise amendment he is proposing now was debated at length and overwhelmingly opposed by those who spoke, including no less an authority on procedure—admittedly, not in this House—than the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, who pointed out, quite correctly, that this is a single-issue Bill that I am proposing. It is a three-clause Bill on one page. The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, said, in terms, that to introduce this kind of additional related material into a single-issue Bill of this sort was a rather “generous” way of interpreting our procedures. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows perfectly well that, if this amendment were accepted or debated in any detail now, it would add enormously to the time involved in establishing this Bill, it would add to the costs of the Bill and, most importantly of all, it would do what I am sure his amendment is intended to do and make it even less likely that this Bill will become law.

I am so conscious on these occasions that we have these ragged debates—we have had several on this—that are unintelligible to the public outside. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, suggested that he was a moderniser; well, not in this respect. It needs someone—and it falls to me—to remind the House why we are doing this and why I am introducing the Bill. It is simply to end these idiotic by-elections, which are occurring with increasing frequency, in which only hereditary Peers on the hereditary Peers list, of which there are 211—I remind the House that 210 of them are men—can take part. In the first 10 years of the 20 years for which this system has been in operation, there were 10 by-elections. In the second 10 years, to date there have been 26. There is one pending, which bears a moment’s thought. It is due to be announced on 27 March. There are 28 electors who will elect this new Member of Parliament on 27 March, and 14 candidates; that is two electors per candidate. The cost of the by-election will be £600. Noble Lords might think that is not much, but I think—my maths is not very good—that is roughly £8 per vote. I would do it for less, should the offer be made to me. Needless to say, it is an all-male shortlist, which is quite unusual these days and takes some defending—which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is presumably capable of doing.

Most of what I want to emphasise today is what is happening in this House. In the last 10 days, 63 amendments have been put down to this simple, three-clause Bill, 53 of them by the same two Members—our old friends the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. They have degrouped all the amendments—I will not go into the details of degrouping, because I really would lose an audience if I were to try to do so—but it simply means that today we are discussing 42 groups of amendments. Most Chief Whips will say that if you are very lucky you can get through six groups in an hour—we are certainly not doing that now—so I reckon it would take seven hours of debate to get through those 42 groups. Of course, every one of them needs opposing, because most of them are ridiculous.

I will give two examples; I will spare my noble friend Lord Adonis on this side—I think he would win the prize for the silliest amendment. Actually, I cannot resist; I will mention it in a moment. But there are two that I will mention now. Amendment 47 says that in order for the Act to be implemented there would need to be an approving ballot among not just hereditary Peers here, but all hereditary Peers. There are about 900. I have not counted them, but I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows how many there are. I have no doubt that many of them are living abroad and are in various stages of excitement about the arguments that they can deploy—that is as politely as I can put it. The idea that you can organise a ballot of 900 people worldwide in order to sort this out is just ridiculous.

The amendment that takes second prize is Amendment 54, which says that the Act will be implemented when the number of women hereditary Peers equals the number of women hereditary Peers who were Members of the House of Lords at the time of the 1999 Act—you know it makes sense. There were four women hereditary Peers at the time of the 1999 Act. The progressive series of elections has resulted in the fact that there is now one—so the number has gone down from four to one—and the Act would come into effect until that number got back up to four. Please spare us that amendment. I ask that all the amendments be withdrawn or not moved, but let us concentrate to begin with on the most idiotic amendments. The idea that in the 21st century we should be arguing about whether we should have one woman or four women among the 92 reserved places is beyond satire.

However, I have to give first prize to my noble friend Lord Adonis. He says—

[Lord Cormack]

I support everything that the noble Lord, my friend, has said, but would it not look ridiculous in the country if this debate prevented a proper discussion of the Cohabitation Rights Bill, which is due for a Second Reading and in which many people throughout the country are taking a real interest?

[Lord Grocott]

That is absolutely right. This Report stage is scheduled to finish at 1.30 pm. That is ample time to deal with any reasonable amendments that anyone might wish to put down. It is generous time—but I am losing track of my desire to get to my noble friend Lord Adonis’s amendment. It would provide that, when the next by-election takes place, which we know will be on 27 March, when there are 28 electors, as I pointed out, the vacancy would be filled by a vote of the whole of the electorate of the United Kingdom. I will say that again because I do not think it has quite sunk in; the electorate would be the whole electorate of the United Kingdom. I cannot tot that up off the top of my head, but the electorate is about 40 million, so I suggest gently to my noble friend, who is known for his hyperbole, that to substitute 40 million electors for 28 electors to elect a hereditary Peer is overdoing it, so I hope my noble friend will have enough sense not to press that amendment.

This is all serious as far as I am concerned, but there is a real test here, particularly for the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. It is this: they can decide to expedite these amendments, and move them if they must, to conclude this Report stage by 1.30 pm. The House would then be orderly, it would have given the Bill more than enough time—more than anyone could reasonably expect a Bill of this length to have given to it—or they will be in grave danger of bringing the whole proceedings of this House into serious disrepute if they do not withdraw the vast majority of the amendments.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

Before my noble friend sits down, perhaps I may ask his advice on one point. Surely the Government should end this whole pursuit and provide time for the Bill to conclude during this Session and to be introduced in the Commons and then carried over into the next Session so that we can really make some progress and end this ridiculous farce that is bringing this House into terrible disrepute.

[Lord Grocott]

I sincerely wish it were possible to carry this Bill over into the next Session, because there is no doubt whatever that it has overwhelming support in this House in all parties and, I guess, even among the hereditary Peers—but it is not within the power of the House to do that. The Companion to the Standing Orders is quite clear. I reassure my noble friend that if I should be unfortunate enough, despite having been first in the ballot, not to get my Bill on to the statute book this year, despite the wonderful support that it has had, I shall bring in exactly the same Bill in the next Session of Parliament. I know it will succeed some time. It is just a matter of persistence, and I can be extremely persistent if required.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, it might be for the benefit of the House if I speak to my Amendments 58, 59 and 60, which my noble friend Lord Strathclyde mentioned in his speech. I am glad I am now following the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I do not have my name down to 53 amendments, as he claimed. That was a very misleading statement. He also derided the amendment relating to female hereditary Peers. There is a slightly deeper reason for that. My name is not to that amendment, but I think my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, who will doubtless speak for himself on this matter, has introduced a Bill to change the rules regarding succession to hereditary peerages. I believe that it should be the eldest child. If the eldest child of the monarch should succeed, so should the eldest child of a Peer succeed. I would support any Bill in that direction.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

If it will satisfy the noble Lord, I am happy to declare that I am a hereditary Peer.

A few moments ago, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, described what he sees as the principal shortcomings of the by-elections—namely, that there are very few voters and candidates for the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats as compared with the Conservatives. I hope he therefore agrees that, if the Bill does not become law, voting in by-elections should be done on an all-House basis, which I shall very much support.

[Lord Grocott]

Can we dispose of this matter? One would think that lots of people would vote in a whole House election. I never take part in these things, but I am very happy to report that at the last whole House election earlier this year, 33% of this House took part in the ballot. I think that that is a sign of people voting with their feet—they know how silly the whole thing is. The percentage taking part has steadily declined since the 1999 Act.

[Lord Trefgarne]

No doubt, if there is another all-House by-election, the noble Lord will persuade them otherwise, particularly those in his own party. I will not detain your Lordships any longer unless any other noble Lord wishes to intervene. I simply repeat that I support the amendment proposed by my noble friend.

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[Lord Grocott]

I know that my noble friend is a very keen tweeter. I have had the pleasure of reading one or two of his tweets, although I am not sure how I acquired them because I am not part of the system. For example, I think he is comparing our present situation to the one Britain faced in the spring of 1940. He is given to hyperbole, but as he tweets—and no doubt the wisdom he is expounding will be tweeted out to a large number of people as soon as he leaves the Chamber—could he please promise me that he will tweet the details of the amendment he will propose later and the arguments for allowing 40 million people to take part in the next hereditary Peer by-election? Will he also please give an estimate as to what the cost of that would be? Finally, could he explain to us how he thinks that would reconnect him with the public?

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, let me be completely frank. If it is a choice between the next election to this House taking place with an electorate of—what is it?

[Lord Grocott]

Forty.

[Lord Adonis]

Or an election by 40 million of our fellow citizens of this country, I believe it should be the 40 million. I believe that they would support that in the pubs of Birmingham, too.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, perhaps I may now be allowed to join this debate. I said in my opening remarks that I had not spoken in this debate at all; I had tabled one small amendment on which I was about to reply. If my noble friend Lord Cormack thinks that what he did was a clever little ploy, he has another think coming. As a result of that, I shall now speak on every single amendment that I can. It was outrageous for those who support this Bill to deny me, as the mover of the previous amendment, an opportunity to reply, particularly when the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, had electrified the debate on the purposes of the Bill and, frankly, had shot the fox of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, in explaining exactly what its motivation was. That is why I am deeply shocked that so many Peers voted against that amendment, which would have provided for a statutory appointments commission.

I would like to calm things down while we go through the rest of the amendments. When the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, asked Peers to declare whether they were hereditary Peers, I rather cheered that he could not tell the difference. That is the point. I know exactly why I am here. I am here as a result of legislation passed at the end of the last century and by election. I am an elected hereditary Peer under law. More than 200 hereditary Peers voted for me, and in that list I came second.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords—

[Lord Strathclyde]

No, my Lords, I am not going to give way to the noble Lord until I have finished this point. I was proud to have come second to my late noble friend Lord Ferrers—I hope that my noble friend Lord Trefgarne is not going to argue with me about that—and my noble friend Lord Trefgarne was third. I hope that the next time the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, gets up, he will tell us in some detail, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, did, why he is a Member of this House. Let every other noble Lord who is going to speak declare their interest and explain what brought them to this House and who ticked that box. I am happy now to give way to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott.

[Lord Grocott]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for lowering the temperature. Perhaps we have had just enough of this faux anger. I was going to point out how lucky he was to be elected with 200 votes, because when I first stood in Lichfield and Tamworth I got some 25,000 votes and lost.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, ducked the opportunity to explain to this House why he is a Member.

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[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, briefly, I think we should look at rejigging the balance between the parties represented here, because freezing the 1999 position is silly. I suspect that when we get to Amendment 9, that is the one I shall support. They are not grouped properly, but I pre-warn noble Lords that I think they are interesting and we should look at them.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, this is the fifth amendment of 61 that we have to consider. What has been happening is a complete abuse and I am shocked that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who has been here since he was very young and has held high office on many occasions, should be party to this filibuster. I am not going to waste the House’s time by responding to every amendment; I am simply going to recommend, as the sponsor of this Bill, that every single amendment is resisted. I appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne: even at this stage we have an hour and a quarter left, which should be easily enough to dispose of these amendments, all of which wreck the Bill. He has the opportunity to wreck the Bill quite legitimately by voting against Third Reading after this stage. That is the proper way to do it: the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will perhaps nod in assent to that. If you object to the Bill in principle, you vote against Third Reading. So, please, I appeal to him—for anyone who is watching to make sense of what is happening here—that he does not move the rest of his amendments and we get on with the next business.

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[Lord Grocott]

It obviously does not even begin to solve the problem, because the elephant in the room is that the only people eligible to fill these vacancies will continue to be those who have inherited titles. The noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, said that if you happen to have inherited a title, that gives you a dispassionate view of the world. Let me put it in more personal terms. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is an hereditary Peer. The noble Lord, Lord Howard, is a life Peer. Explain to me the crucial difference. I thought that they were both Tories who normally voted Tory and are indistinguishable from one another in that respect, but according to the noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, there is a fundamental difference between people who inherited the title and others.

How can it possibly continue to be right that 900 people, in this country of 60 million plus, who happened to have inherited a title have a one in 900 chance of becoming a Member of Parliament by being successful in an hereditary Peers’ by-election; whereas the rest of us—not us life Peers, but the remaining millions—have a roughly one in 75,000 chance of being a Member of Parliament? They have to get elected to do it. Why on earth should the descendants of Messrs Trefgarne, Colgrain, Caithness and Strathclyde have this assisted places scheme, as it has been referred to, which is denied to the rest of the population? Unless someone can give me a sensible answer to that, we will have to agree to disagree and, I hope, vote very soon.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I am not aware that anyone has made an argument in favour of the hereditary peerage since the end of the previous century. That is why, as I briefly tried to explain, the hereditary peerage came to an end in 1999. We are dealing with the dissatisfaction with the Labour Government. Let us remember who created these by-elections and introduced the Act: it was a Labour Government, whom the noble Lord supported. It was unsatisfactory at the time. I know that it was intended to continue to stage two. That has not happened yet, but we are patient and should continue to be. After all, it was in 1911 that the Liberal Prime Minister promised us reform on a popular basis, and no doubt we will get to that debate later.

I hope that that clarifies for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that no one is trying to defend the current position, but we do not want to create a wholly appointed House.

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[Lord Adonis]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for explaining the amendment. I now understand it and will hold in my mind the complex formula that he has just set out. However, my fundamental point is that it does not matter one whit whether this House has 600, 700 or 800 Members; it will be equally legitimate or illegitimate, whatever your view on how many it should have. Those are still very large numbers. I think it will function more effectively with its existing remit if it has a larger number of Members. That will mean that we have a steady flow of new appointments to the House, rather than drying up the appointments. However, all that is fundamentally beside the point. The current House of Lords is illegitimate. It will be just as illegitimate as the existing House, and arguably more so, if it is wholly nominated. The right thing is not to do any tinkering—either of the sort proposed by my noble friend Lord Grocott or any other variant—but to set up a constitutional convention and get to grips with fundamental reform, which, in the context of Brexit and the governance crisis across the United Kingdom at the moment, is long overdue.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Adonis repeats his arguments on successive amendments, he is getting more and more fluent but that does not make him any more persuasive. As it is now 1.15 pm and we have been going for three hours, it is up to me to say a sentence about what has been happening here today for the benefit of a baffled public, should anyone have been watching.

We have had three days in Committee and a Second Reading, and the Bill has been going for a year and a half. On Report, we have now reached Amendment 13. We have 62 amendments to consider. We have made ridiculously slow progress due to quite deliberate tactics by less than half a dozen Members of this House, of which I am sad to say number one is my noble friend Lord Adonis. Another culprit—I am shocked rather than sad to say—has been the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. The number of amendments is almost entirely the responsibility of Messrs Caithness and Trefgarne—of course, they are noble Lords not Messrs. I know and assert that what has been happening is a clear abuse of the procedures of this House. I do not have to worry about that too much; Members must answer for themselves whether they have been abusing the procedures of the House. But the net result is that Bills with overwhelming support will not reach the statute book. It is a bad position for any assembly to be in, when half a dozen people can thwart the direct wishes of hundreds who have expressed themselves in sundry votes on this issue as well as numerous people who are not here.

[Lord Howard of Rising]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. What does he think about the House of Commons opposing the will of 17 and a half million people?

[Lord Grocott]

I do not see the direct relevance of that to what I am saying. I have expressed my views on the 17 and a half million people ad nauseam in this House; to be absolutely clear, I am very much on their side.

What has happened is not just an abuse of the House, a waste of its time and, to a degree, a waste of taxpayers’ money. To be personal about it, it is also a waste of precious Private Members’ time. We rarely get the opportunity to introduce a Private Members’ Bill. It is bad for the House to appear threatening to any future Member who wants to introduce a Private Members’ Bill.

We are closing the debate at 1.30 pm, when I will conclude. But this is a Bill that will not go away; I want to make that quite plain. They all know they are playing King Canute. This Bill will pass. I say that with absolute confidence, although I occasionally wonder whether it will be in my lifetime. The House needs to look very carefully at its procedures to ensure that the farce that we have endured today is not repeated. I hope that the Procedure Committee will see whether there are ways of dealing with this. Otherwise, the risk of further disrepute being brought on our House will only grow.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, once again mentioned my noble friend Lord Trefgarne and myself. I did put my name to a small number of amendments, but the noble Lord cannot accuse either my noble friend or me of filibustering by talking for far too long. We have talked very little, to make a short point. When the noble Lord accepted my amendment in Committee, I sat down immediately, as he will recall. I think he has forgotten one person who has prolonged the proceedings today, and that is the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.

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[Lord Strathclyde]

Okay, my Lords, I can see that I have lost that particular argument with the noble Lord, Lord Snape.

At the end of the last amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, wanted to place on the record exactly what was going on. That was his version—his truth. But what is also going on here is an attempt to create an all-appointed House with no guarantees of representation from anywhere in the UK, as laid out in this amendment, which of course would be solved if we had an independent statutory appointments commission. It is in no way an argument to say that, just because the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, believes he is right, no one from any part of the House should be able to argue against him. I have witnessed the noble Lord arguing many times on Bills, and it would be an absurdity to change the rules to stop him, any more than it would be to stop my noble friend Lord Caithness.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am absolutely in favour of every Member of this House expressing their views on whatever subject is before us in a reasonable way and for considerable periods of time. The problem we have here is that it is not only me who wants this Bill to go through but the overwhelming majority of people in this House. There is a tiny minority, all of whom we have heard from today. They are perfectly at liberty to speak—I fully support that—but I do not support their right to use procedural tricks to thwart the will of the majority.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I do not look forward to the next Labour Government, but there will be one. When that Government come in, I look forward to seeing, in their first Session of Parliament, a House of Lords Act, or a fully formed constitutional reform with this change at its heart. That is how things happen in this country: you win elections and control the legislative agenda. There is an opportunity for Private Members’ Bills, but this is a major constitutional issue and I do not think it is appropriate for the Private Members procedure. That is the underlying problem. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I disagree on most things, coming from opposite sides of the political fence, but we share a birthday and stand shoulder-to-shoulder on opposing this piece of legislation, because it is the wrong thing to do.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, before I—and, I suspect, many others in this House—lose the will to live, I declare an interest: Lloyd George knew my great-great-grandfather, and that is why I am here. I also share a reflection from my great-grandfather, Stanley Baldwin. When he arrived in this House, he said, “It is one of life’s great ironies that I am arriving in a place to which I have sent so many people, devoutly hoping never to see them again”. I suspect some of their descendants have contributed to these proceedings. This is the law of intended consequences, rather than the law of unintended consequences.

There are 90 hereditary Peers in your Lordships’ House. I would suggest that the fact that so few of us turn up at these proceedings, following this Bill, and an even smaller number take part is not an accident. Most of us have absented ourselves quite deliberately, first, because there is an obvious conflict of interest, and secondly, because, although I have not taken John Curtice-type soundings on this, I suspect that the great majority are strongly in sympathy and in favour of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I wanted to put that on the record.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am profoundly grateful for that intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Russell, which is one of the most effective contributions that we have heard in this long discussion. I stand now because we are close enough to 1.30, when we had agreed that this would finish, to move that debate on amendments be now adjourned.

[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, I am thankful to all noble Lords who spoke. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Constitutional Convention

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I am really grateful to my noble friend Lord Foulkes for his characteristically entertaining speech, though I did not particularly like his trip down memory lane to 1979, which, as he said, was one of the happiest days in his political life. It was one of the grimmest in mine, when the people of Lichfield and Tamworth decided that I should spend more time with my family.

I echo everything that has been said about the contribution that the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, has made over the years. How I envy the way the House clearly empathises with him, the tributes being paid to him and the warmth felt towards him, which so contrast with my experience when I involuntarily retired in 1979, when, I am sad to record, at the count there was much rejoicing in my departure. Those are two speeches that I shall not forget.

There is time for me to address only two issues relating to the debate. One is the state of English regional and local government, which my noble friend Lord Foulkes referred to as a dog’s breakfast. That is not a bad description. I also want to say a word or two about the dreaded issue of referendums, which have been an integral part of the various constitutional changes that have been made in Scotland, Wales and the north-east of England.

First, my noble friend said that the structure of local and regional government in England is a dog’s breakfast. There is such a variety of provision, with challenging and different powers and methods of election that are unintelligible to anyone without a degree in local government. How on earth are people expected to travel from one part to another in a unitary state and understand the completely different systems of local government to which they must turn for planning, housing, education, social services or any of the rest of it? It simply is not a defensible system.

Repeated constitutional experiments have led to this. The only thing they have in common is that most of them have not resulted in exultation and acclaim by the public. I remind Members of the House that we have mayors, metro mayors and police commissioners. We still have the unitary authorities. We have two-tier systems all over the country, but with this common factor: the failure of these new systems to engage the public.

To remind the House, the turnout at the 2016 police commissioner elections was consistently in the low 20s. The much-heralded mayoral elections in 2017 had a 21% turnout in Tees Valley, 26% in the West Midlands and 29%—the highest turnout—in Greater Manchester. This is no criticism of the people who fill these positions, as many splendid people have been elected as mayors, but that is hardly in any way validatory for those who said that this would bring a new drama and dynamism to local government. We know that the referendums in 2012 as to whether the city mayoral elections should be established resulted in nine noes and one yes. Public support is a pretty good basis for introducing any new system. We need a convention on English local and regional government before we move on to my noble friend’s convention.

Secondly, referendums have come and gone throughout the devolution process. There were two referendums in Scotland and Wales, and the north-east devolution referendum in 2004 in England. We can learn a bit from these referendums. They are relevant to our present dilemmas.

One thing I would say is: do not have any system of referendum that has any kind of fancy or problematical component to it, as the first referendum in Scotland did, where the winner was not the winner. That is not a good system. Keep it simple, binary and straightforward. Also, there has been a sea change since the referendums I referred to in Scotland, Wales and the north-east. For all of those the results were accepted, despite them being wafer thin, particularly in Wales, as referred to. In that referendum there was less than 1% difference between establishing devolution or not. At least those referendums were accepted.

What has characterised the two most recent referendums—the Scottish referendum on independence in 2014 and the EU referendum in 2016—is that almost from the day the results were declared campaigns began to reverse them. I do not for a moment argue that it is not possible to review matters and to have second referendums, as happened in Scotland and Wales. I acknowledge that parliamentary elections are once every five years. But the idea that you can reverse a referendum result in two or two and a half years makes a joke of the whole referendum process.

At the very least, I hope these kinds of basic decisions about the conduct and operation of referendums can be considered in any convention. I suggest as an opening gambit that it should not be permissible for a referendum to be held with the same question in less than a 10-year period. I am being generous; we had to wait 40 years between the 1975 referendum and the one we held in 2016. There certainly should be a minimal period before you insult the public by asking them the same question twice.

I cannot help but remind the House that some care should be taken about expenditure in referendums. We know that there have been various challenges about the expenditure in the 2016 one, but the hugely well-financed campaign for a so-called people’s vote should also come into focus. I do not know how transparent all the figures are about where the money is coming from and how long it will be available for, but glossy brochures and opinion polls are quite common and familiar all around the country. We need a bit more transparency there too.

I support very much what my noble friend Lord Foulkes said in respect of ultimately having a convention, but in the meantime we want one on English local government. We also ought to tighten the rules on referendums.

EU Referendum: Conduct

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott]

We have heard enough from the remain side; let us hear from the other—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

My Lords, let us hear from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott.

[Lord Grocott]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. My noble friend Lord Foulkes spoke with passion and eloquence on behalf of the 700,000 people who marched. If I can say a word on behalf of the 17.4 million people who voted leave, it is this: ever since the referendum result was declared—this just another step along the way—there has been an unremitting campaign to try to discredit or, at best, reverse the result of the referendum on numerous different fronts, of which this is just the latest example. Can the Minister put this all in perspective and recognise that the 17.4 million people who voted leave were not all duped by the Russians and were not all ignorant about the issues which were before them? All they asked was this simple request, which we want the Government to get on with: to leave the European Union.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord will know that after the referendum the relevant legislation was passed through both Houses. Legislation will shortly be introduced, following a successful negotiation with the European Union. I share his wish, as much as anybody else, that this whole matter be brought to a conclusion swiftly and cohesively, and we can then move on to other matters.

Infrastructure and Projects Authority

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that if any management techniques such as red, amber and green flags were available in the 1830s, the London to Birmingham railway would never have been built and there would have been red flags against pretty much everything? Will he ignore the Jeremiahs and get on with the project of building HS2, which is of huge importance to the West Midlands? It is a clear statement of confidence in the future.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I say to the noble Lord that I was around 20 years ago during the gestation of HS1 and precisely the same arguments were adduced against that: it was environmentally unsustainable; it was not value for money; there were other, greater priorities. I do not think that anyone in your Lordships’ House today would now argue that we should not have gone ahead with HS1. My own view is that in 20 years’ time, or whenever HS2 is complete, the same view will be taken of HS2.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 7th September 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Grocott]

That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Trenchard]

I give way.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I would like to add a few words in support of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne’s amendment. I believe the Government should grasp this nettle. I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on this; to many others, this is not a minor matter. There was a solemn and binding commitment in 1999 that we entered into. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Desai, that you cannot bind the next Government, but this was a hugely important matter for this House. We were requested by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, on honour, to vote in that election. When I have discussed this with people both within the House and outside it, I am quite surprised by the reactions. In this House I have been told, “It doesn’t really matter in politics; there is no such thing as binding honour”.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Caithness]

I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Elton and totally agree with what he said.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I do not think we have covered ourselves in glory over the past 45 minutes. The Commons is not sitting today, so if there is any parliamentary coverage, it will presumably focus on us and this debate. I hope that one or two contributions do not receive a wider audience, because essentially what is happening now is a filibuster on a Bill which had overwhelming support at Second Reading. It is an identical Bill to one that I introduced in the previous Parliament which, likewise, had overwhelming support on Second Reading and was filibustered out of existence in Committee. The principal supporters—organisers, indeed—of this filibuster know that there is a small minority of people opposed to the Bill in this House. That is what the world outside, if it is interested, needs to know. The Bill is simply ending by-elections. I make no apology for repeating that in one of the most recent ones, there was an electorate of three but seven candidates. There is no by-election in the world as absurd as that and yet, amazingly, a number of speakers today want us to continue that system in perpetuity. Let us make no bones about that whatsoever.

[The Earl of Erroll]

First, the Bill’s sole purpose is not to end by-elections. You will get an appointed House de facto through the back door, whether you like it or not. That is the net result, and we do not want by-elections to go on in perpetuity: I want a democratically elected House.

[Lord Grocott]

The noble Earl should simply read the title of the Bill: the clue is in the title. The Bill is the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill. That is what it does: nothing more, nothing less. If you oppose the Bill, you support the by-elections: there is no equivocation on that fact.

I must respond on two specific points made that are worthy of emphasis. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, made a point about the assisted places scheme that the Bill addresses. It is worth putting it into figures. If you inherit a title from a hereditary Peer, you have something like a one in 211 chance—that is the number on the list of hereditary Peers able to stand in any by-election—of becoming a Member of Parliament, because this is a House of Parliament. If you are anyone else, like most of us here or the 60 million or however many people it is who are over the age of 18 in Britain, you have something like a one in 70,000 chance of becoming a Member of Parliament. That is the arithmetic, as I make it, so it is a ridiculous assisted places scheme, and all those who speak up to defend it who are hereditary Peers—I know that some are not—need to explain why they should have that massive advantage over all their fellow citizens.

[Lord Adonis]

Can my noble friend tell the House the size of the electorate that made him, and indeed me, a Member of this House?

[Lord Grocott]

I cannot speak for my noble friend, who has spent so much of his life with the Liberal Democrats. I am not sure whether he was a recommendation of the Liberal Democrats or of the Labour Party, but in my case it was on the basis of 60 years’ membership of the Labour Party, of which I am very proud and for which I will continue to do the job here.

I must deal briefly with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, because it needs addressing, which is that somehow we must wait until the Burns report is implemented before we act. I make the very obvious point that the cardinal argument within the Burns report is that we must reduce the size of the House, and the mechanism for doing it would be two out, one in. Since our first debate in Committee, there have been two further by-elections for hereditary Peers. Those two hereditary Peers should have been replaced by one, according to the Burns report, but no, lo and behold, there are two more here. It is essential for anyone who is sincere about wanting to implement the Burns report that we get on and pass my Bill, because it would enable us to reduce the number of hereditary Peers, not precisely arithmetically but in line with the recommendation of the Burns report.

The only consequence of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, is not to enlighten anyone; it is simply to delay further progress on the Bill. The two principal—I will not call them culprits, because I am sure they are proud of it—Peers who have relentlessly tried to filibuster the Bill are the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. This time, 55 of the amendments are in their names. We had a similar debate to this before our previous Committee sitting, when there was a long debate on whether to put the Bill into Committee. We are doing that again now, and presumably we will do it again whenever it is next considered in Committee. It is clearly their objective to talk the Bill out.

I simply say this to the two of them: I know that the overwhelming majority of people in this House want the Bill to pass. The exchange of views up to now does not at all proportionately reflect the view in the House because—I am grateful to them for this—the numerous colleagues on all sides of the House who I know support the Bill have not wanted to contribute to the filibuster. A tiny minority is thwarting the clearly expressed view of these Benches, the Liberal Democrat Benches, a large number on the Conservative Benches and the Cross Benches and, in my judgment, a majority of hereditary Peers, any number of whom have come up to me to say that they wish that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, would desist from what they are doing.

They should know better. Between the two of them, they have had about 100 years’ membership of this House. I repeat that because I could barely believe it when I looked it up: 100 years between them. They ought to be getting the hang of the rules by now, one of which is surely that you know when it is time to call a halt. They should call a halt on this and allow the Bill to proceed, because the only effect of what they are doing at the moment is not to improve the Bill or to stop it—they know they cannot do that, they do not remotely have the numbers; every time we have had a vote on the Bill there has been a majority of about 100. They should desist. I fear we now have only two and a half hours, but we had three and a half hours when we began the discussion. I will gladly give way to the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, because every time he speaks he gives me greater confidence of my position.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I resent the fact that I have been classed as a filibusterer whose sole intention is to stop this Bill. If your Lordships add up the amount of time I have spoken for, it is comparatively little. I have put forward amendments to improve the Bill and to link it to the Burns report. We put forward amendments to widen the franchise for the by-elections, which the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has just said we did not want to do. We have tried to improve the Bill.

[Lord Grocott]

He has tried to improve the Bill, my Lords? All I can say is: it is the way he tells them. I hope the House will come to a conclusion on this now. If there is a Division I hope that all noble Lords who want progress will vote against it.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I have had a certain amount of support for the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench is being provoked beyond endurance. We have just seen a most appalling waste of time. The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, moved his amendment, as he was entirely entitled to do, but he did not put in Tellers. There is no way of recording the enormous majority that displayed itself in the Not-Content Lobby. Had that vote come to a proper conclusion, I doubt whether he and his colleagues would have reached double figures. They certainly would not have got much beyond that. This is a disgraceful abuse of not just your Lordships’ House but the institution of Parliament. If my noble friend on the Front Bench is not provoked beyond endurance, I am.

[Lord Grocott]

I agree wholeheartedly with what has been said and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, should reflect on it as well. He knows perfectly well that the one thing he dare not do in the proceedings today is to put any of these in many cases ridiculous amendments to the vote, because he would be defeated overwhelmingly, as on previous occasions. Just for the record, in this group, Amendment 11 states that:

“Standing Orders must provide that vacancies amongst the 90 excepted hereditary peers are filled by a method which ensures that the excepted hereditary peer is younger than the average age of members of the House of Lords at the time the vacancy occurs”.


Quite simply, that means that we would continue to have by-elections. This is a proposal to defeat the Bill. The Bill is to end the by-elections; this amendment would ensure that they continued. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, will beg leave to withdraw his amendment but, if he does not, I hope that he puts in tellers and votes this time and no longer abuses the procedures of the House.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, to my shame, I invited a young political student to observe this debate. I am embarrassed that I did so. This debate reflects appallingly on this House and I hope that the Government will seize the nettle. We need to get on with it; it is disgraceful that we are trying to advantage one small section of society over another, as my noble and learned friend Lord Brown has pointed out. I am deeply ashamed to have been a part of these proceedings.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 15 in this group, which provides that future vacancies shall be filled,

“using a method which ensures that over time excepted hereditary peers are elected on a basis which provides for a fair representation of hereditary peers representing Northern Ireland and Scotland”.

[Lord Grocott]

To save a lot of words, can the noble Lord just confirm that his amendment, if carried, would mean the continuation of by-elections for hereditary Peers, the precise matter that this Bill tries to deals with?

[Lord Northbrook]

I agree that I support the continuation of the by-elections, but this amendment is looking at the House of Lords Act 1999 and amending it accordingly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Trefgarne]

I do not think it has been spoken to—certainly not by me.

[Lord Grocott]

Perhaps I may help the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, with the procedure, as he is fairly new to this place. This amendment was in a group that we discussed in March, when we dealt, I think, with 10 amendments in two hours. So far today, we have dealt with two amendments in one hour 40 minutes. At this rate, we will need about 10 more Fridays to complete this stage. I hope that the noble Lord acknowledges the appalling waste of precious time that is resulting from what he is doing. To now start moving an amendment that has already been part of a debated group is something that he should refrain from doing.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I do not wish to offend the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, or anyone else for that matter, so I shall not move the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Northbrook]

This point was not covered on the first day of Committee.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, perhaps I may offer a gentle suggestion to the noble Lord. I do not think that he is carrying the mood of the Committee in wishing to speak to Amendment 16, which was spoken to three months ago. The previous vote rather indicates that, whatever eloquent tactics he deploys, he is most unlikely to carry the Committee, and I suggest that we move on.

[Lord Northbrook]

I note what the noble Lord says. Actually, it was not covered on day one, but I take the mood of the Committee and shall not move the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Erroll]

This amendment sounds quite sensible as it brings us into line with the spirit of the Burns report.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, the best way to respond to the spirit of the Burns report would be to pass this Bill and turn it into an Act, because, for as long as it remains on the statute book, for every one hereditary Peer who leaves for whatever reason, he or she—well, it is “he”, actually—will always be replaced by another hereditary Peer. Everyone else would be under a system whereby it is two out and one in, with the exception of the hereditary Peers. I suggest that if the noble Lord is concerned about the Burns report, he should withdraw his amendment.

[Lord True]

My Lords, surely this is a matter than can be addressed when we reach the Burns report. I understand the fervour of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who is a good old Labour man, to end the procedure that his party agreed on. However, every time he puts his point before the House, I feel that I must repeatedly say, so that the public realise, that the result of this legislation would be the creation in time of an all-appointed House of Lords. That is the effect of this legislation, but the noble Lord never refers to the effect. One of my fundamental objections is that we would, through passing this legislation, create over time an all-appointed House of Lords without the consent of the British people to a manifesto commitment or a Bill brought before Parliament by a Government. That is the proper way to proceed. This House should not, by a hole-in-the-wall procedure masquerading as modernisation, pass legislation that will have the effect in time of creating an all-appointed House for which there is no current democratic consent. Every time the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, makes his point, I will put that point before the public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Northbrook]

Can the noble Lord explain to me why he put 92 in this Bill but 90 in the previous Bill? I do not understand that point.

[Lord Grocott]

I have no problem whatever with someone being called the Lord Great Chamberlain or anything else. I was intrigued to know that apparently the office would not go to the same family as currently occupies that role. I do not know whether any of our families might qualify, but so far I have heard nothing. The point is that I can see no reason whatever why these two offices of state, which perform ceremonial functions, need to be in the House of Lords in order to perform that function. At least one of them—two of them for most of the time—has been on permanent leave of absence, so their functions can clearly be carried out perfectly effectively whether or not they are Members of the House of Lords. Whether people can become Members of the House of Lords via heredity is the issue that we are considering.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

Before the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, rises to speak, perhaps I may say this to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. He has every right to suggest that this place should be swept away and replaced by a directly elected second Chamber. That is a perfectly valid constitutional point of view. But for reasons that have been advanced time and time again, many of us in this House do not believe that and we refute it. We believe that this House is complementary to another place and that it adds value to the constitutional system. We believe that the unambiguous democratic mandate lies at the other end of the corridor but that we have something, both individually and collectively, free from many of the shackles of party and buttressed by a large Cross-Bench element, that we can contribute. That is an equally valid point of view to that of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. While I respect his view as valid, I would ask him to reciprocate that feeling.

[Lord Grocott]

Perhaps I may have a word with my noble friend, who I always admire for his psychic powers, which I do not possess. He knows exactly why I do what I am doing at all stages. My noble friend is totally opposed to this Bill. I think he is the only person on these Benches—someone will stop me if I am wrong—or even on the Liberal Democrat Benches who is. I am grateful to him for clarifying his position. Whether he is sitting in the right place or not is only for him to judge.

I say this to my noble friend: I wish that he had made this statement a bit earlier. I had an identical Bill in the previous Parliament which received a Second Reading and a Committee stage. I do not recall seeing him in his place to express his view. He certainly did not take part in the Committee stage of this Bill on 23 March this year. I looked for him in the Division Lobby.

[Lord Adonis]

I was too concerned about filibustering my noble friend’s Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

Of course they do.

[Lord Grocott]

What is interesting to note, my Lords, is that both of them have been on leave of absence. One is no longer on that leave, but for at least the last several years that I have been looking at it, they have been on permanent leave of absence. That includes general election periods and the State Opening of Parliament. While I cannot pretend to know the constitution in enough depth to know whether they are allowed to stand in a certain place at a certain time, I can assure the noble Duke that the machinery of the State Opening has functioned perfectly well when these two people have been on leave of absence from the House of Lords.

[Lord Jones of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, far be it from me to intrude on the private grief of the Benches opposite, but I would ask noble Lords to think about this. At the moment, we are watching a constitutional polemicism of British life. The division and nastiness of that shows in so many ways. If I was a voter of any party at any time from Birmingham to Manchester and back again and I saw what was going on in this House today, frankly, I would vote to abolish the lot. That would be a crying shame because one thing that I have valued during my 11 years here is that we definitely stand apart from the tribalism and the nastiness that arises both down the Corridor and in the deselections that go on in constituencies. We are better than that, but at this moment, I am not seeing it and that upsets me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True]

As always I thank my noble friend for his agile clarification for the House. I agree that I would not want to see him upset by the removal of the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earl Marshal. By the way, the previous Earl Marshal was a very assiduous attender of this place.

If the House is going to be asked to vote, we need to know what we are voting on. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has put this Bill before the House. My noble friend Lord Northbrook has tried to clarify the point which my noble friend Lord Cormack supports, which is that the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earl Marshal should stay. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, thinks that they should go. It is a rather minor point, but actually this is a legislative House. Given that, before we vote, can we be told by the mover of the Bill what he is proposing? He wishes to remove all 92; that is the effect of his Bill and that is his intent. We have heard what my noble friend Lord Cormack says, but what is the mover of the Bill telling the House?

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, the Bill is quite clear. It says:

“No more than 92 people at any one time shall be excepted from section 1”.


That means that the 92, including the two referred to by the noble Lord, would no longer be Members of the House of Lords—or rather that their membership would not pass to their successors. It does not affect in the slightest their capacity to perform ceremonial duties. I have tried to follow this but I simply do not understand the method of succession for the Lord Great Chamberlain; it is beyond me. Do not try to explain it. I want to protect the Bill in its present form and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord True]

The effect of the Bill is not as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said—that the two Peers or their successors would remain. They would all go. That is a perfectly clear position and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for clarifying it. It is not what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, wished for but I am thankful for the clarification.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

A few weeks ago, I asked the Procedure Committee to consider changing the arrangements for by-elections so that in future they would be on an all-House basis and perhaps conducted in accordance with the so-called Carter convention. I have not yet heard the result of the committee’s consideration. I have heard it informally, at least, and I wonder whether I will hear it formally.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, one or two people in the House for whom I have great respect have suggested that we could solve the issue of absurd by-elections on a party basis—because in the case of Labour and the Lib Dems, we have only four hereditary Peers, so we get these idiotic procedures—where the whole House votes. I have two problems with that, one of which is insurmountable. The first is the turnout, as referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. He rightly said that turnout figures can be very high in party by-elections: in the Lib Dem by-election, I think that the turnout was 100%. There were three electors, all of whom voted, so that is a high percentage.

However, turnout figures are consistently very low—often less than 50%—when a turnout of the whole House is required. That is lower than the lowest turnout in any constituency in the country at the last general election, by way of a useless fact, mainly because I am sure that people like me think that the system is idiotic so do not bother. Certainly, the whole-House elections have a low turnout so the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, would be proposing a system with a low turnout.

The far more fundamental issue, which is why I hope that the House will reject this proposal, is that this does not nothing whatsoever about the spectacularly unrepresentative nature of the register of hereditary Peers. The question of who can vote is one thing—by all means, you can put forward a proposal for the whole House if you want to—but we would still face a choice restricted to the 211 people on the register, 210 of whom are men and among whom there are no members of ethnic minorities, for example. It is utterly absurd to proceed with by-elections, whatever the mechanism of election or the electorate, if the eligibility of the people to stand is so totally unrepresentative. I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord True]

I can see entirely the logic of the position of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. Obviously, it is an argument more broadly for reform of peerage law, not just through the Bill.

It is not for me to speak on behalf of the Procedure Committee, although I am a member of it. The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said that this matter was put to the committee on his request, as well as that of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, I believe, speaking from memory. That is true. The Procedure Committee considered it but felt—as I believe is the mood of the House generally, beyond your Lordships’ committee—that with the Burns report’s proposals before the House and a stage of incremental change approaching, this was perhaps not the moment to address the perfectly understandable and reasonable point put forward by the noble Lord. That is my personal position; I do not speak on behalf of committee members. I understand that the House can take a different view from the committee. My noble friend Lord Caithness sees his proposal as an improvement to our system. It is a genuine attempt to improve the Bill and the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has given the reasons why he opposes it. As far as the Procedure Committee is concerned, with this Bill and the Burns Committee before the House, this might be best addressed at a later stage.

[Lord Trefgarne]

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, referred to the list of hereditary Peers who are qualified to stand in by-elections. That list has I think only one female. I hope that the noble Lord will therefore support my Private Member’s Bill to change the law of succession for peerages so that noble Baronesses can succeed in the normal way.

[Lord Grocott]

How long does the noble Lord estimate it will be before the effect of his Bill will be parity between the sexes?

[Lord Trefgarne]

It is not in my hands at my age, I am afraid.

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[Lord True]

The noble Lord is suggesting that, and of course it is utter nonsense. I will not follow on with what I am tempted to say, because it is very rare that the noble Lord speaks nonsense. The reality is, of course, that in time there will be attrition. I believe that anybody who has the honour of being Prime Minister should have regard to balance. I had the honour of working in the Administration in No. 10 under Sir John Major, and it was put to Sir John frequently at that time that it would be good to have more Labour creations. I think that the failure to have more Labour creations at that time led, probably indirectly, to the anger that caused the 1999 Act. Of course, there should be fairness as well as restraint in creation, and I think that the Prime Minister is trying to have that.

My point is that I do not think that there is a principle of friendship and comity across the House for a majority in the House which is not the Conservative Party—although many might agree with it. I am sorry if they do; I try to persuade them. But I do not think that we should pass legislation—and I could not support legislation—the back door of which would be to strike heavily at the political strength of the Conservative Party, the governing party. It would cut the number from 250 to 200—which the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said he would welcome. Yes, it would be over time, but I remind the House that, I think, 20 Conservative hereditary Peers are already over 75 and a number are over 85, and the effect will take place.

I have prolonged my remarks because of interventions. I think that the principle is clear: I believe that, if the House wants to proceed with legislation, an element of fairness towards the Conservative Benches and the Cross Benches could be achieved by including an amendment of this type. I beg to move.

[Lord Grocott]

Perhaps I could clear this up with a couple of facts. On the question of the party strengths in the House of Lords, I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord True, need worry too much about a Conservative leader ensuring that their party strength in the House of Lords remains strong. By way of illustration, the Labour Party was elected with a huge majority of 157 in 1997, at which time there was a colossal majority of some 200 or 300 Conservative Peers in the House of Lords. Many of them—90% of them—went in the 1999 Act and we have only the cream left: the 10% who were elected, the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, among them. However, it was in 2006, nine years after the Labour Government were elected, that Labour became the biggest party, although obviously not the majority party. So the Tories were the biggest party for the first nine years of a Labour Government with a majority of 157 in the House of Commons. The noble Lord need not worry: the Tories are much better at making sure that they have friends in this House. Does he know how long it was after the 2010 election before normal service was resumed and the Tories were the biggest party again? It was just two years: by 2012 the Tories were the biggest party. So if the noble Lord, Lord True, is having sleepless nights about Tory leaders not appointing enough Tory Peers, I think that he can sleep well.

On the other crucial fact, with respect, talk about making a mountain out of a molehill over the disproportionate effect of my Bill on the future composition of parties in the House of Lords! I have been doing calculations on a sheet of paper while the noble Lord has been talking and just for the record, since the 1999 Act there have been, I make it, 34 hereditary Peer by-elections, roughly one third of the total. Of those, nine were Conservatives. So over a period of 19 years, although he used the phrase “striking heavily” about the effect on party representation in the House of Lords, the Conservative membership would be down nine if my Bill had been in operation. Just for the record, the Labour Party would have been down two, so the net benefit to the Labour Party in opposition over the Government would have been seven Peers over 19 years. Once again, I suggest to the noble Lord that he can sleep well still, even with that anxiety hanging over him about the future.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, the reason for the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, mentioned is that when the elections took place in 1999, it was by and large the younger and most active hereditaries who were elected. It is not surprising that the gathering-in rate of Conservative hereditary Peers has not been as great as it is about to become. We are all getting older and my noble friend Lord True has raised an important point.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said nothing about protecting the Cross Benches. He waxed lyrical about how a Conservative Prime Minister would be keen to protect these Benches but with the possible implementation of the Burns report ahead of us, we are talking about a size limit on the House along with the importance of keeping the Cross Benches. Perhaps he could tell us how the Cross Benches are going to keep their numbers up to those required.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the incredible thing about the proposal before us is that we would entrench a wholly nominated Chamber of Parliament in perpetuity. My noble friend, whom I hugely respect, says that we support this amendment because it is in line with Labour Party policy. My noble friend Lord Grocott gave me a lecture earlier about how my position was inconsistent with that of the party. The Labour Party’s policy at the last election was:

“Our fundamental belief is that the Second Chamber should be democratically elected”.


I keep inviting my noble friend Lord Grocott to say whether he supports the Labour Party’s policy. Does he support a democratically elected House of Lords?

[Lord Grocott]

I am opposed to it being directly elected. In answer to my noble friend’s question: yes, believe it or not, after 60 years once in a while it may be the case that I do not say that I agree 100% with my party’s policies. Can he remind us how long he has been in the Labour Party and how often he has disagreed with the party manifesto?

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I have been in the Labour Party for 24 years and I have voted against the Whip less often than my noble friend has in recent Divisions on European Union legislation. I do not take any lectures from my noble friend about party loyalty. He said to me earlier that he thought I was sitting in the wrong place in the House because I supported Labour Party policy. My noble friend appears to support an extreme version of the Conservative Party’s policy, which is for a nominated House in perpetuity. Maybe he would wish to cross the Floor. Let us keep this debate in proportion. We are talking about very specific amendments—I am drawing my remarks to a conclusion—to very minor legislation, but which would have a very major impact: it would entrench in perpetuity a nominated House, whereas the right reform is not to tinker with second-order issues of this kind but to engage in a proper democratic reform of the House of Lords, which happens to be the policy of the party which my noble friend Lord Grocott and I support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder whether it aids the Bill in going forward that we have so much discussion of the policy of the Labour Party, or any other party for that matter. We want to get the Bill forward and the less irrelevance that comes into speeches, the more rapid will be the progress.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I will say only one sentence. Due to my noble friend Lord Adonis’s passionate support for the Labour Party manifesto, I look forward very much to him telling us that he strongly supports the commitment in its last manifesto to respect the result of the referendum. I really cannot resist that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, Amendment 35A had an unusual genesis. I sought to table amendments to the Bill to provide for an elected House. As I have now said several times in my fundamental commentary on the Bill, that is the big issue before Parliament and should be addressed sooner rather than later. The clerks said that it was not possible, within the scope of the Bill, to move for elections which involved members of the public being elected. However—wait for it—it was within the scope of the Bill to make it possible for the public to elect hereditary Peers from the register when a vacancy arose. That is why the Committee has before it an amendment providing that, in future, the entire national electorate would vote when hereditary Peer vacancies arose.

I am not proposing this as a serious proposition for the future composition of your Lordships’ House, but I unapologetically move the amendment because it puts into the debate the central issue of moving from a nominated/hereditary House to a democratic one. I have always believed that we should do so. I believed it when I was writing the constitutional reform policies for the Liberal Democrats and when I was advising Tony Blair on constitutional reform. My noble friend Lord Grocott and I disagreed all the time about this fundamental issue.

My noble friend has, as I see it, a very conservative view of the constitution, which is basically that the constitution circa 1950 was jolly good and we should not make any changes. My view is that we should carry on modernising; part of that is more democracy, which means really substantial devolution, a fair voting system and a democratic second Chamber. Those, to my mind, are fairly sensible propositions that, sooner or later, we will have to address as a country. The reason I believe that they have much greater urgency than before is that the whole context in which constitutional reform is now being debated is that of the single biggest constitutional reform this country has undergone in the last half-century, and that is Brexit.

In my travels across the country, which I have been engaged in intensively in recent months, I can tell the House that—as many noble Lords will know from their own communities—there is intense discontent at the state of governance in this country at the moment. It is particularly intense in the Midlands and the north of the country, where there is a great sense of alienation from the centres of power and a significant feeling that parliamentary institutions are not working effectively. There are many things that I believe need to be done to address that. My own view is that we should have significantly more devolution—part of the problem in the Midlands and the north is that we have inadequate devolution. We had good devolution settlements for Scotland, Wales, London and, when it was operating, Northern Ireland, but we have only scratched the surface of devolution in the Midlands and the north and we need to address that seriously.

Reform of Parliament has a part to play in that too. The conclusion that I have reached—though I put this forward tentatively and believe that we should have a constitutional convention to discuss it—is that we should now have a democratic second Chamber, either directly elected or representing the devolved elected institutions of the country. I think an argument can be made either way for a directly elected second Chamber, as in Australia, for example, or an indirectly elected second Chamber, representing what would become a federal structure of the United Kingdom, like the Bundesrat in Germany. There are arguments for and against, but what there is no argument for, in my view, is a perpetuation of a wholly nominated second Chamber, which, by the way, we got by accident.

We got to a wholly nominated second Chamber through a series of incremental reforms to what was a hereditary House. No one at any stage set out to create a wholly nominated Chamber. When Harold Macmillan introduced the then Life Peerages Bill in 1958, it was to complement what was still predominantly a hereditary House. Indeed, ironically, a large part of the reason he introduced the Bill was that members of my party, the Labour Party, were quite rightly not prepared to accept hereditary peerages. Lord Attlee, much sainted in the memory of my party, was one of the very last members of the Labour Party to accept a hereditary peerage; others simply would not do so. As part of a classically Tory attempt to keep the House of Lords going at all, the Life Peerages Act was passed.

We have had a substantial debate on what happened in 1999 and 2000; I know about it intimately because I was advising Tony Blair at that time. We gave firm commitments that the nominated and part-hereditary House that would replace the substantially hereditary House that applied before 1999 would be interim. It was deemed interim in the report of the royal commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, which of course recommended a predominantly elected House. For various reasons, not least the strong advice of my noble friend Lord Grocott, who was always passionately against any public elections to this House, those proposals were not taken forward, which I believe was a mistake.

[Lord Grocott]

I can live with a certain amount of total misrepresentation, but there comes a point where it is impossible for me to remain seated. At no stage have I said to the noble Lord in private or in public anything other than the fact that I am opposed to a directly elected House. He is a clever chap who no doubt would be happy in a university; he knows that that does not rule out an indirectly elected House, nor a House that is more representative of important interests across the nation. There are a whole range of other options. My fixed position—this is the only part of his long speech that has been accurate about me—is that I am opposed to a directly elected House for precisely the same reason that my long-standing noble friend Lord Rooker explained to him: it would be a threat to the House of Commons. He has never been elected to the House of Commons, never been an MP or anything of that sort, so he does not understand how fundamentally a directly elected senate would be a threat to the powers of the House of Commons.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

Whatever one’s view of the amendment, and of the view of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, of an elected Chamber, I think he indicated in his opening remark that this is a frivolous amendment. Can we not just knock it on the head?

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I think I have a responsibility to respond, as this is an amendment to a Bill I introduced. I suppose I should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for changing his mind so dramatically in the space of an hour; we are all entitled to change our minds. However, he gave us a little lecture an hour ago about the inadequacy of my Bill, saying it should be opposed because it was pointless and incremental, and he now puts down an amendment providing for the preservation of hereditary peerages, just elected by a different mechanism. I have to agree that it is not merely a frivolous amendment, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, himself has acknowledged; it is a silly amendment, and I hope the House will throw it out.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I do not propose to press the amendment at this hour, given how thin the House is, having thinned out progressively over the last two hours. However, I believe the issue of a democratic second Chamber is the fundamental issue which we need to address in this House, not tinkering reforms of the kind we have been debating over the last few hours. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Elections: Electoral Commission Recommendations

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My noble friend raises an interesting question. I think the honest answer is that all countries in the West have to wake up to a new form of conflict where military and non-military weapons are joined together in an integrated and dynamic way in order to achieve political aims. My noble friend is right: Russia is at the forefront of this so-called hybrid warfare, with a wide spectrum of capacity which has the potential to damage political and democratic institutions. That impacts on a wide range of government departments, and we have to make sure they are correctly aligned to see a proper response to this very real threat.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord, Lord Young, agree that it might be helpful for the Electoral Commission to direct its attention to an aspect of our elections in this country, namely the system of by-elections for replacement of hereditary Peers? Can he confirm that there is one taking place next Tuesday in which the statistics are as follows: 31 electors and 19 candidates? To make it even more absurd, the total number of people—that is, hereditary Peers—who can take part constitutes 0.004% of the electorate in Britain. Is there any electoral system anywhere in the world quite as ridiculous as this? Will the noble Lord please do the very simple thing, which is to acknowledge this and to support a Bill to scrap them?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I commend the noble Lord on his persistence and ingenuity in campaigning tirelessly for his Private Member’s Bill. He refers to an anomaly. This was introduced in 1998. If it was so absurd, why, for the next 12 years, when his party was in office—when he, indeed, was Chief Whip—did he allow this anomaly to remain on the statute book?

House of Lords: Size

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Garel-Jones (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

My Lords, I think we will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and then from the Conservative Benches.

[Lord Grocott]

I gently suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Young, that he would not be answering 15 questions if he could give us one answer. The answer that I would like him to give us is the one that was presented by the Burns report, which has been largely accepted by the House, and indeed implicitly by the Government; that is, the completely anomalous position of having 92 protected places while trying to reduce the size of the House, so that, following last week’s vacancy caused by the retirement of Earl Baldwin, this House will be by law obliged—against its policy—to replace that exiting Peer with a new Peer. If the Minister will simply answer yes to my question of whether the Government will put an end to that anomaly, I guarantee that he will not get any more questions from me.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

There are, however, many others who might fill the gap. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was the first to admit that his Bill would have but a marginal impact on the size of the House, which is the subject of this debate, dependent as it is on the mortality of the hereditary Peers—none of us would wish to see that accelerated. So far as his Bill is concerned, as I said when he asked a question last week, unusually we have offered additional time to him. There will be another Friday when he can take the Bill forward and I have made it absolutely clear that the Government will not obstruct it. It is up to him and the House to make progress with the additional time that we will make available.

House of Lords: Membership

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I do not have the mental capacity or the bandwidth to work that out. Fifty? Sixty? Any advance on sixty? [Laughter.] I notice some jostling for position on the Liberal Benches. I am sure that by the time the House rises someone will have worked out the exact proportion and how many Liberal Democrats ought to go.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I think the noble Lord, Lord Young, will find himself on pretty thin ice if he is suggesting that there has been some kind of fairness between the two major parties over the last couple of decades and the last few Prime Ministers. I remind him that when Labour came into office in 1997, with a majority of around 170 in the House of Commons, it had a deficit of around 250 to 300 in comparison with the Tory representation in this House, and it took nine years, until 2006, until Labour even became the biggest party in the Lords. They of course were the only nine years in the Lords’ history when the Labour Party has been the biggest party. It took the Tories just four years after 2010 to reassert their traditional position of being the biggest party in this House irrespective of the results of general elections. So the Minister needs to be a bit more cautious in talking about the peerage-awarding powers of Prime Ministers when Labour has been at such a massively consistent disadvantage.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I take the noble Lord’s point, but the base from which the two parties were starting in 1997 and 2010 were totally different. That is why it took the Labour Party longer to catch up.

Hereditary Peers: By-elections

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Grocott]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the Lord Speaker’s announcement of the retirement of Earl Baldwin of Bewdley on 9 May, what is their policy on by-elections for hereditary Peers.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, we are committed to ensuring that the House continues to fulfil its constitutional role as a revising and scrutinising Chamber effectively, including by working with others in your Lordships’ House to address the question of its size. That policy extends, of course, to any questions on the composition of the House. We should of course also offer the noble Earl, Lord Baldwin, the very best for his retirement.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Well, that was an amiable Answer —but in no sense an answer to the Question that I asked, which was about the policy of the Government on hereditary Peers’ by-elections. Will the Minister confirm that the retirement of the noble Earl, Lord Baldwin, means that a by-election—we shall call it a parliamentary by-election—will be taking place, the electorate for which will be 31 hereditary Peers, and that the list of those eligible to stand as candidates in the election will consist of 198 hereditary Peers, 197 of whom are men?

The Minister is straightforward with this House and he has a sense of humour, so I hope that he shares the view of the overwhelming majority of this House that these by-elections are now beyond satire. They are ludicrous and indefensible. If he does think that—although he keeps his face very straight as he looks at me—I hope that he will be able to announce that the Government will do something popular and announce that these by-elections will be ended by supporting my Bill, and that this by-election, which we will be forced to go through, will be the very last of its kind.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, the noble Lord’s Bill had an unopposed Second Reading on 8 September and on 23 March useful progress was made in going through the amendments. The Government are prepared to allocate yet further time for the Committee stage of the Bill—a hospitality not normally extended to a Private Member’s Bill, as the noble Lord, himself a former Chief Whip and custodian of Fridays, will know. The use to which the House puts that extra time is a matter for him and for the House.

So far as the by-election is concerned, it will contain, I suspect, the most sophisticated and discerning electorate, comprising 31 Cross-Bench hereditary Peers.