Action Against Houthi Maritime Attacks

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend quite rightly stresses the importance of the role of the Iranian Government and the Iranian regime. One must not forget that, looking at the whole span of human history back to ancient times, Iran has been a vital and greatly civilised place in the world, and it will always be a powerful force in that region, whatever the circumstances. However, it is incumbent on people who have authority, power and strength to use them with wisdom and for specific and constructive purposes. That is not, as my noble friend said, what the Iranian regime is doing at all; it is doing the reverse and is responsible for a lot of the instability in the region, including in relation to the Houthis. We have made it clear to Iran that we view it as bearing responsibility for the actions of these groups. We will continue to discuss with allies what the appropriate further actions on Iran may be.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, the Leader of the House is clearly right when he says that it is often difficult to assess the effectiveness of the kind of action that has taken place, although the Statement says that the first assessment of the wave of strikes that took place provides

“evidence that they were successful in degrading the Houthis’ military capability”.

Surely one other, perhaps more precise, measure of the effectiveness of any strikes would be the effect on traffic in the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal. Does the Leader of the House have any precise information about the effectiveness so far on the levels of shipping in that area?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the efforts that we are making with Prosperity Guardian are to seek to secure, so far as we may, the most secure and most effective situation for the movement of traffic by sea. The choice of where to travel in such circumstances is a matter for those who are operating vessels. It is the case that some vessels are diverting and some other vessels are not diverting. The noble Lord is quite right to say that these matters need to be kept under careful examination. We are doing that, and our allies are doing that. The end result we wish to see is that all people operating commercial shipping feel able to continue using these waters, rather than feeling that they have to divert around the Cape.

Business of the House

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Privy Seal (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, I would not consider it to be chaos. In fact, I thank the usual channels, who have agreed to sit early to maximise scrutiny time on the levelling-up Bill. The aim is to conclude Report without recourse to a late sitting, which I think many of your Lordships find a great inconvenience.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, is this the right occasion—if it is not, I am still going to raise it—to consider what a sensible time is for the House to sit? It is not a choice, as it is frequently presented, that the sensible time for us to start on a Wednesday, for example, is 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then we can sit till midnight or thereafter, when the whole quality of debate, the capacity of Members to make a decent contribution and the number willing to do so diminish, and then, out of the blue, when it is convenient to the Government—I fully understand why—we have to start early on certain days on this short-term basis. It seems to me that no serious disadvantage would occur if we regularly started earlier and finished earlier. Is it not time that we made some changes in this direction?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, obviously, that is a matter for the House as a whole, and this probably is not an appropriate occasion to launch a major debate on it. Obviously, we sit earlier on a Thursday. As noble Lords will know, the tradition and reality of this House is that many noble Lords have other activities to undertake—

House Of Lords: Appointments System

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I think the question of “disproportionate” was answered by Members of your Lordships’ House rather than me, so I will not add to the pain of those Benches. I think that there needs to be—and I have advocated this publicly in the House and privately—better representation of His Majesty’s Opposition in your Lordships’ House. I do not think it is generally acceptable that His Majesty’s Opposition should have fewer representatives in this House than the Cross Benches. I recognise that, and for all the criticism of the previous Prime Minister, Mr Johnson, he approved the appointment of Labour Peers. I hope that will go forward.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, a part of this report that I particularly enjoyed was the piece saying that

“the ending of the hereditary peer by-elections … is crucial”.

There are two more of these wretched men-only by-elections pending as they stand. I appeal to the Leader, who talks about proportionality. It is his responsibility—and he knows the constitution well enough—not just to speak for his party but as Leader of the House to speak for the whole House. The whole House is absolutely clear by an overwhelming majority, repeatedly tested in votes on this issue, that hereditary Peer by-elections should end. I ask him to go to his colleagues in the Cabinet, tell them that there is no defence of this system whatever—I challenge him to provide one—and say that a simple two-clause Bill would scrap them, which would be consistent with the wishes of nearly everyone in this Chamber.

[Lord True (Con)]

I think the Government have other legislative priorities. The noble Lord knows how highly I esteem him. He is a bit like the elder Cato, who ended every speech in the Roman Senate by saying that Carthage must be destroyed. Unfortunately, Romans later looked back and said that when Carthage was destroyed was perhaps the beginning of the end of Rome. I am sure that, one day, the hereditary peerage will—and that has been long accepted—depart this House. Many will be sad of that. When it does, the full gaze of the public will turn on the life peerage and how that, in its turn, will stand the test of time.

Hereditary Peers By-election

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Lords Chamber

Thirty-seven Lords submitted valid ballots, and the notice detailing the results is available in the Printed Paper Office and online. The successful candidates were the Earl of Effingham and Lord Ashcombe.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the House for allowing me to make a few remarks after this latest clutch of by-elections; I remind the House that five new Members of Parliament have been elected since last Thursday with scarce a murmur from anywhere. I want to put into Hansard and on the record a little more information about the by-election that was held last week for the new Cross-Bench Peer.

I find the way in which these results are announced completely unsatisfactory. Obviously, that is not a criticism of the clerk—it is precedent—but we have notice of new Members of Parliament only by means of a very lightly drawn, barely noticeable script on the Order Paper. The only information we get, apart from the recent embellishment, which tells us the total number of votes cast, just tells us who has won the election. More information should be provided when the result is announced. I am unable to give it for the result that has just been announced because I would have to go along to the Printed Paper Office to get it, but I can give some information about the by-election for the new Cross-Bencher which was held last week. There were 10 candidates for that vacancy and 30 electors, so, three electors for every candidate. Twenty-two of the 30 voted; I make that a turnout of 73%. The winning candidate got 11 votes and the runner-up got 10 votes, so a quick calculation tells me that that is a majority of one, which of course makes this a hyper-marginal seat.

I simply say to the House that a by-election result has been announced without the figures and without even the winning candidates being present, let alone the losing candidates—usually, the losing candidates stick around as well for a normal by-election. With no criticism of the people elected whatever, it is without any reference to the House of Lords Commission, unlike any life Peer or Cross-Bencher appointed to this House. There really is need for more information to be presented to the House when the clerk reads out the result. I commend that to the House authorities and to the Leader, who is in his place and who I know takes these things very seriously.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, before the Minister responds, I wonder whether there may be an opportunity for he and I to discuss this through the usual channels. Not only do we have hereditary Peers by-elections, against which this House has voted in principle—with no disrespect to those candidates who come into the House, whom we welcome—numerous times. We also have additional Members coming to the House as Ministers—about 10 in the past couple of years—and now there are reports of a further prime ministerial resignation honours list from the Prime Minister, who has been in post for only about a month. It seems that we ought to have a little more thought about the membership of this House and, as the Burns report says, not having a House of quite the size it is, but one that allows us to do our best work in the best way. It would be helpful if we could discuss in a sensible, practical and respectful way ensuring that this House is of a size that enables us to do our job in the best way possible.

Elections Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I also wish to speak in this part of the debate in Committee on these amendments.

I have to be totally honest with the Committee: when I was asked to be part of the team on this Bill, I was not an expert on elections other than that I had been a candidate and I had been the leader of a council and seen election officers’ work close up. As we have progressed through the Bill, some issues have become clearer but some have confused me even more as we have debated them. This is a part of the Bill that really confuses me. What is the basis of the electoral franchise in the UK? What is the platform that is easily understood by a citizen? This is an example of why electoral law needs to be simplified.

I want to deconstruct what that means in the terms of my noble friend Lord Shipley’s Amendment 155A. Let us take it down to ordinary citizens. In a local authority area, you could have someone who owns a holiday home, and so has an address there, but they never live there. They rent that accommodation out for 52 weeks a year, yet they have a right to vote there. They do not use the services and do not contribute other than in council tax. Another person lives there for 365 days a year, works in the local area and pays taxes, volunteers at the local food bank, is an upstanding member of the community and gets involved in litter picks, is an active citizen in the community, uses the bin service, wants to get involved in planning and is affected by planning policy, has friends who use social care, wishes to use the library—and library services are starting to charge—and uses all the local services but, because of either where they came from or when they came to the UK, they do not have a vote. Yet someone in that area who has no connection other than that they can purchase a holiday home can vote.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I very much agree with the thrust of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. In the light of that, would he apply a similar argument to the extension of the franchise, contained in a different part of this Bill, to some 2 million overseas electors who have not been in the country for 40, 50 or 60 years and do not pay taxes here? Does he agree that that is an oddity in our electoral system as well?

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

The noble Lord is just slightly ahead of me, because I was going to come on to that. I will answer his question, but I was just pointing out very clearly the inconsistencies in what happens at local level. I will then answer his question on the other issue with what I was going to say, because if the Bill passes in this form, we will have to consider that. Will the Minister explain in very simple terms, to somebody who is not an expert in elections but just an ordinary citizen, how that can be justified? There must be a sense of fairness as the basis for people voting at local elections.

On national issues, if the Bill passes, we could also be in the situation referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. Take somebody who has not been in this country for 50 or 60 years: they have no family here; they do not pay taxes here; they left when they were 18 and have never worked here. They will be able to vote. At the same time, there are some people who have been here for 20 or 30 years, who pay their taxes and work here, but because of their status, they cannot vote. Can the Minister explain how that would be perceived as fair and a good platform for our electoral process? It seems to me that this is an important matter. This is the whole basis on which people not just pay tax and are citizens but actually influence services and taxes that affect their very life by being resident here. But as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, if the Bill passes, people who have not lived here for 50 years will have the right to vote and influence government policy, even though it does not directly affect them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Yes, and to create overseas constituencies. I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, who was deeply shocked to be told by the noble Lord, Lord True, in a meeting a few weeks ago when he recommended the creation of overseas constituencies on the French model that that was Liberal Democrat policy. I hope he has now recovered from the shock.

There are tremendous problems with the Bill and the failure to connect all these dimensions. We will come in the sixth group to one of the other reasons why the Conservatives want to push ahead with extending the rights to overseas voting without thinking through the other dimensions of it, which the Liberal Democrats have thought through—the expectation that, once overseas voters are on register, they will be able to increase the systemic advantages—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for talking about people thinking through the consequences of legislation, and of amendments. I remain puzzled by the Liberal Democrat policy that these 2.5 million additional people, who have never lived in this country, other than maybe for a very short time when they were very young, and who do not pay taxes into or own property in this country—not that that should be a qualification to vote, of course—must now be given the right to vote, should they choose to do so, in British general elections. There are lots of ramifications that the noble Lord has not thought through.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

There are lots of ramifications that we have discussed extensively. I am happy to discuss them with the noble Lord off the Floor. What I am objecting to is dashing ahead with this without the creation of special constituencies and a number of other things that would begin to match the demand for them to come in.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, might be disappointed to hear me say that we do not disagree on very much. I strongly agree with his emphasis on citizenship. The badge of a liberal democracy is active citizenship. One of the things that most concerns me about the drift of politics and legislation in this country is that we are heading towards a much more passive model of citizenship and a much more populist model of democracy. That is another thing to which, in broader terms, we must at some point return.

For the moment, having recognised that the Government have not worked out what they want on all this, and that they have inherited a tangle of historical rights to vote and denials of the right to vote, I am happy to withdraw my amendment. I hope this might just possibly be one of the issues we will discuss between Committee and Report.

Elections Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 212E, in my name, seeks to draw attention to a principle Parliament has previously agreed and that should now be brought into force. The Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 was discussed, and agreed, in much more consensual debates than is the case with the current Elections Bill. Parliament then agreed that donations and loans from an individual that are worth over £7,500—either individually or in aggregate over a calendar year—would have to be accompanied by a new declaration confirming that the donor is resident and domiciled in the UK for income tax purposes.

The Electoral Commission explained that donors would have to make the new declarations, and that those it regulates would have to ensure that they receive a declaration in respect of each relevant donation and add up donations they receive below £7,500 to check whether a declaration is needed. But this provision was not subsequently introduced. The consequences of this failure, and the real reasons for it, soon became clear. All the main parties have received donations from people who are not domiciled here and do not pay taxes here. The scale of the funding involved seriously distorts our democracy. After the 2015 general election, the Guardian reported:

“The Conservatives have raised more than £18m from wealthy donors who were domiciled abroad for tax purposes, research shows. Labour have also benefited from non-dom donors and accepted gifts of at least £8.55m. The family that controls the Lib Dem’s biggest corporate donor is also domiciled abroad”.


The provisions of the 2009 legislation should probably have been brought in before the 2010 general election, because the relative sums raised indicate why Governments since 2010 have not seen it as being in their interest to introduce these provisions. Ministers since then have tried to maintain that that the 2009 legislation approved by Parliament is unworkable, which is very convenient. But this is not the case as the Electoral Commission produced proposals nine years ago to make it workable. It is time that we insisted that all the parties—and simultaneously—are unable to take donations from those who are abroad simply to avoid paying taxes here. Only when no party can accept donations from people who may be tax exiles can all parties be expected to adhere to this principle. This amendment would bring that 2009 legislation into effect. We should not have a political system which might be described as “the best that money can buy”.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with much of what has been said so far, although I think an obvious connection—an obvious debate that we still need to have—between this question of donations from overseas and the massive extension of the electorate living overseas has been missing. The two issues are related and they raise matters of very similar principle. This extension of the franchise would be a massive change: it is an increase in the potential electorate of around 2.5 million people over a couple of years.

Of course, it will be argued that, in practice, most of those who could register as electors would not. In 2019, when the rule was that only people who had been domiciled abroad for 15 years could vote, I think about 204,000 people actually voted, which represents a turnout of about 17%, but there is absolutely no guarantee that that low turnout will persist. I say this particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, who argued about the importance of connecting different aspects of the Bill, which I agree with. If we move to a system of automatic voter registration—which I am personally in favour of, but I do not expect it to come about as a result of this Bill—you have a potential additional electorate of 2.5 million people.

Once you concede the argument that it is okay for people with virtually no practical connection with this country who have lived abroad for 40, 50 or 60 years to get on the register by “attestation”—that is the word—if there is no way in which you can establish as a matter of fact that they once lived or voted in a particular constituency, albeit 50 years ago, they can get on the register by means of someone else who does qualify attesting on their behalf that they are in fact the person who lived there and they are entitled to vote. It is much easier to get on the electoral register from abroad in many respects than it is at home, particularly when we have voter ID established in the way being proposed.

But, to me, the principle at stake is about individual constituencies. To remind the House, at the last election the figures for the proportion of overseas electors in some constituencies were small. The figures are small at the moment. For example, in London and Westminster it was 2.43%, in Hammersmith it was 2.12%, and in Islington it was 2.36%. They are relatively low figures, but, of course, if you increase the electorate by potentially 2 million, even if the turnout is low, you could end up with 5,000 or 6,000 people in individual constituencies who have no connection with the area worth speaking of at all being able to vote. This could result in particular decisions being made, as they can be at elections, of crucial importance to the people living there. The most dramatic example would be a proposed hospital closure, involving very strong views on either side of the debate. The 5,000 or 6,000 people who have never lived in the constituency and who will never have to cope with the circumstance of the hospital closing could be the determining factor in the election. I am opposed to that; I just think it is wrong. It damages our democracy if there is no residence, no contact and, in truth, no responsibility for the decisions that are made.

I think what is true of voting is also true of money: if you have a situation where people who are on the register are also permitted donors, there can be a totally distorting effect—I am not going to go into the various figures that have already been given—possibly on the outcome of the election itself. If huge sums of money come from a potentially very large number of overseas electors—or even someone who is not particularly interested in voting but thinks “Well, as soon as I become someone on the electoral register, I’ll be able to donate with impunity and I’ve only got get someone to attest that I once lived in a particular area and away we go”—you have a situation where it is now money that might determine the outcome of an election. This is money from people with nothing but a slender and tenuous connection with the country, in this case, in which they are not going to be living with the consequences of their money having a significant effect on the outcome of a general election.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I remind him of the third link in this, which is that campaigning for overseas voters is going to be very expensive and the advantage will go to the party that has the most money, in terms of contacting them and soliciting their vote. So, in terms of a level playing field, the addition of another 2.5 million overseas voters tips the balance even further in favour of the richest party.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I absolutely agree with that.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, this has been a hugely interesting and terribly important debate. I am now going to take what you might describe as the traditional Green role of going much further than anyone has gone before in seeking to deliver what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, called for in introducing this group: free and fair elections. That is what I think we are all aiming for. Before I do that, I think perhaps I should—given the direction the debate in group one today took—declare in retrospect my position as vice-president of the LGA, and apologise for not doing that earlier.

Given the hour, I am going to restrict myself to commenting on Amendments 212A and 212B, which appear in my name. They do bear some relationship to Amendment 212DA in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, which goes in a similar direction but in a more limited way. Like many noble Lords, I am drawing particularly on the 13th report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life entitled Political Party Finance: Ending the Big Donor Culture—which is what my amendment seeks to do.

Amendment 212A amends the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act to set a donation cap of £500 from any individual donor or corporation to each party or candidate, either with a single donation or cumulatively by multiple donations through a calendar year. Clause 1(2) specifically excludes trade unions from that cap, which I think deserves some explanation. One of the Green Party’s policies for a sustainable society states:

“Donations from democratic membership organisations (such as trade unions) provide a useful method for ordinary people to pool resources in order to exert influence”.


It could be argued that there may be other organisations similar to that—I think of the RSPB, perhaps, as an example—that might choose, as a group, to give a larger donation. But the practical reality is that most of those are charities, and our charity law means that is not practically going to be an issue.

I would like to acknowledge that there is potential flaw in the way this amendment is written—and it certainly needs some more work—in that it does allow a donor to give £500 to potentially every single candidate, which would obviously come to a very large sum of money, which is not the intention of the amendment. This was done because the donation rules apply separately to parties and to individual candidates—but this is something I will work on in terms of this amendment.

With that proviso, this is an amendment that could truly revolutionise our elections. Indeed, it could go a long way to making the United Kingdom a democracy. Currently, very large donations are a major factor, perhaps a deciding factor, in our elections and other votes. The dictionary definition of an oligarchy is “a small group of people having control of a country or organisation”. I might add “party”. There is a strong case for saying that that fits the UK better than the definition of a democracy. Perhaps that has always been the case, but certainly now, since we have a situation where technology allows huge online spending to reach voters in a targeted way—far more than anyone using up their shoe leather to knock on doors and deliver leaflets possibly could.

I am not really expecting the Government to say, “Yes, we want to transform our elections and make them wonderfully democratic and set a £500 maximum donation limit in a year”. But I have a real question which I would very much appreciate an answer to from the Minister. I note that, responding to the Committee on Standards in Public Life report in 2011, the then coalition Government said:

“The amount any one individual, organisation or institution can give in political donations should be limited.”


So I ask the Minister: do the Government accept that there should be a limit, whatever that limit is, on how much one organisation or individual can give? Should it really be the case, as it is now, that there is no limit?

I note that a political party’s spending is capped at £30,000 for each constituency that it contests in a general election. So if a party stood a candidate in each of 650 UK constituencies, its maximum spend would total £19.5 million. Indeed, I am indebted to the Library for some very rapid research this afternoon. The figures have not yet been fully published, but it would appear that the Conservatives spent not very far off £16.5 million in the 2019 election and about the same in 2017, according to the published figures.

That might seem to be a kind of limit. One donor could fund an entire general election campaign. But, of course, that spending covers only the regulated period and only the regulated spending, which is far from everything that political parties spend. Funding outside election periods would, so far as I can see, be utterly unlimited.

If you think I am talking in terms of theoretical possibilities here, you might want to look across the channel to the United States of America whose political direction, for many ills, we very often follow. A useful report produced last year by Issue One, a non-partisan group that seeks to reduce the influence of money in politics, totalled some of the contributions from what it called “megadonors”—multiple Wall Street billionaires and investors, a Facebook cofounder, a shipping magnate and an heir to a family fortune dating back more than a century. If you look at those figures, you see that at the top of the list is Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, who spent $1.3 billion, which is about £1 billion. Of that, $1 billion went towards his own failed campaign for president in 2020.

This is a pattern that we are increasingly seeing around the world, where money can buy you the politics you want—or at least you can make a very effort at it. It seems that the natural conclusion is to buy yourself, or the party created or reshaped in your own image, office. In my native land, the United Australia Party has said that in the forthcoming federal election it plans to spend more than it did in 2019, when the figure topped 80 million Australian dollars, which is about £45 million. It was previously known as Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and the Palmer United Party, and it was formed and overwhelmingly funded by the mining magnate Clive Palmer.

I would be very interested in anyone’s answer to the question of why people should be able to buy the politics they want and why people can make serious efforts to buy control of the whole country. That is what is happening and we have nothing in our law to stop it. A lot of our discussion in this group has focused on foreign money in politics and we have heard many powerful accounts of why that should be so. For example, the wife of President Putin’s former deputy Finance Minister, a British citizen acting legally, has donated almost £2 million to the Conservative Party since 2012, making her the largest female donor in history, but if we focus on foreign donors, that only partially addresses this issue.

Why should anybody, whatever their residence, status or citizenship history, be able to buy our politics? If they are a businessperson or an inheritor of family wealth, surely they are likely to influence politics in the direction of maintaining that wealth. Why should they be able to do that? I am sure there is many a nurse tonight, struggling hard to do his best for his patients in the NHS, who would love to influence our politics to improve its resourcing. A farmer might have very strong thoughts about the direction of UK trade policy and its impact on food, health and environmental standards. A family carer, struggling along on an allowance of £87 a week, might have strong views on the adequacy of that. Why should their voice be any less than anyone else’s?

I was discussing this amendment with a Member of your Lordships’ House who I will not identify, because it was a private conversation. They exclaimed in a tone that I think could best be described as horror, “But we couldn’t run an election on that!”—noble Lords might guess that they were not from the Green Party. I invite your Lordships’ House to consider a different kind of election, one based on passion, ideas, commitment and genuine engagement with the public, rather than a continual bombardment of slogans—which would probably consist of three words—endlessly, from every media source, as a replacement for actual politics and policies.

I understand that there are some ways of reaching voters that quite reasonably cost money, such as leaflet or video production, so I agree that Amendment 212A implies state funding for political parties. We collectively get the politics that we fund. If we all paid for politics, it would be our politics—what a refreshing idea. I think we will get to those points in the ninth group, with the very interesting amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, so I will leave my comments on that till then.

Amendment 212B is rather more technical. There will be people in your Lordships’ House who know a great deal more about this than I do, and I would be very interested in any comments. This amendment would revive Section 68 of PPERA, requiring declaration of multiple small donations by an individual which total £5,000 or more in any year. The figure of £5,000 is what was used in Section 68 of PPERA originally. I have tabled this amendment because, when I had some experts look at the donation rules for Amendment 212A, we realised that Section 68 of PPERA had been repealed, but neither our team, nor the House of Lords Library, could find any justification recorded for the repeal. It does not seem to have been discussed in any parliamentary debates.

It ought to be revived because of the online nature of many political donations now. It is possible and easy to make many small donations that could total a very large figure. This perhaps sounds theoretical, but a person could donate £1 billion by making 1 billion donations of £1. None of those donations would have to be declared to the Electoral Commission and none of the verification that is done with larger donations would have to be made. That is obviously wrong. Questions have been asked about recent election donations. I will not go into those, but I have identified a clear risk here. Indeed, both of my amendments identify very clear risks that have to be addressed.

Business of the House

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)]

My Lords, before the Leader of the House responds, may I ask what account was taken of the impact of these proposals on our staff?

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, just to reinforce what has already been said, may I say that the problem is simple and so is the solution? The problem is that the Government are trying to do too much in one parliamentary year, and it derives from the Queen’s Speech. In the 10 months, or however long it is, since the previous Queen’s Speech, too much legislation has been put into the package.

This is not a great issue; there is plenty of time available in this House for legislation. The Government have been having Thursdays since I do not know when, and we have been sitting early and sitting late. Discussions will now be well advanced on the content of the Government’s legislative programme beginning in May—we do not know, or at least I do not, which day in May—and the Leader of the House should be tackling her Cabinet colleagues and getting them to obtain a grip now. Recognising that the Commons can guillotine legislation, and so can process it much more quickly than we in this House can—that is one of our great strengths—it is a matter of judgment as to how much can be put through during a 12-month period.

As the Leader of the House knows, she has a responsibility not just to her party but to the House as a whole. I would like a reassurance from her that she is tackling her Cabinet colleagues and telling them that they are trying to pile too much into a year for this House. With our much looser timetable for discussing Bills as they go through—that is our strength—unless this is tackled now, we will face exactly the same problem in the next 12 months. This is my specific question: is the noble Baroness tackling her colleagues in the Commons? Is she the only Member of this House in the Cabinet these days? I have lost count. She nods her head. It is particularly important, then, that she take that responsibility, and on behalf of the House, I urge her to do so.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, before my noble friend replies, may I ask her to reflect on the fact that this is a self-regulating House, and a self-regulating House requires a degree of self-restraint—in the number of amendments tabled, the number degrouped, and the length of the speeches made in pursuit of them?

Covid-19

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As I mentioned in response to an earlier question from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, our current assessment is that we are not planning to shorten the isolation period, for the reasons I gave. We are certainly working with international partners to learn the lessons of omicron and we obviously have increasing data on what is happening here across the country. We are monitoring data daily. We have tried to have a proportionate approach to ensuring that people’s health, safety and well-being are at the top of our priorities while understanding that lockdowns have a severe cost in many other ways. Balancing that has been incredibly difficult, but we are looking at data daily to try to make sure that we get that balance right in order to keep the economy open and keep people safe.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, 60% of the people in intensive care have received no vaccination whatever. Can the Minister tell us more about the people who have not been vaccinated? In particular, what proportion of them are unvaccinated because of medical reasons? What proportion of them are unvaccinated because they have not received the information that they need to know where to go and the importance of this? What proportion of them are simply, for whatever reason, ideologically opposed and refuseniks as far as vaccination is concerned, which of course brings great problems to the rest of us who are vaccinated?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am afraid that we do not have that kind of granularity of data but, as I explained in my response to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, we are trying to use a whole array of different means to target people who, for instance, are unvaccinated because they are nervous and need more information. Obviously there are issues around different communities in the country. Then, I am afraid, there are people who believe the disinformation that they read on the internet or elsewhere; we are trying to tackle that. We are trying to have a holistic approach where we tackle the differing reasons why people do not want to be vaccinated. Most importantly, we need to keep highlighting some of the numbers that the noble Lord rightly mentioned, as well as highlighting to people the absolute importance of getting their booster.

Health and Social Care

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

What will help the people my noble friend has talked about is the fact that, under these plans, we will now cover all care costs for anyone with assets under £20,000, which is up from the current level of £14,000. Importantly, she will know that, currently, anyone with assets over £23,350 faces paying their care costs in full. The new £100,000 limit is four times higher than that, which means that many thousands of people will now be eligible for further state support under our plans.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

What significance should the House attach to promises made by the Prime Minister?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am sure the noble Lord will make his own judgment on that. I repeat that the Prime Minister was perfectly honest about it in his Statement. He said that

“no Conservative government ever want to raise taxes”,—[Official Report, Commons, 7/9/21; col. 155.]

which is absolutely true, but he wanted to be honest and accept that this will break a manifesto commitment. I am sure that even the noble Lord would agree that, having provided more than £400 billion of support for jobs and livelihoods, businesses and public services at the start of the pandemic, we have particular challenges around our public finances. And that was not in our manifesto.

Procedure and Privileges

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the things that was really noteworthy about the Procedure Committee report was this entirely novel way, as far as I can make out, of the House reaching decisions—that is, to have a kind of opinion poll before we reach our decisions. Under the normal procedures of the House, whether it is a Bill, a debate or anything else, you have the debate and then test the opinion of the House. In this system, it seems that you test the opinion of the House and then have the debate. That seems to me—well, I can think of some of rude ways of referring to it—to stand procedures on their head, and I am not sure that I like it. No doubt the Senior Deputy Speaker will be able to refer to this when he sums up.

But I will say this: if we are to have this kind of system in the future, my word, we need some ground rules—they certainly do not come out in the Procedure Committee’s report—about what kinds of decisions we test opinion on before the debate, and what kinds we do not. There are two contrasting examples of very important decisions that I can refer to: one is whether to have a speakers’ list for Oral Questions and the second is whether to change our sitting times, as my noble friend Lord Adonis referred to. The Procedure Committee dismisses the question of the House’s sitting times in just a sentence. The only justification it gives for testing the opinion of the House in the way that it has on speakers’ lists is because of “the divergent views” on the subject—but there are divergent views on every conceivable subject that ever comes before this House. If that is the only ground the Procedure Committee has to offer for having this system, it is a pretty poor basis.

There is a real problem with this way of making decisions, which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, touched on. By the way, I very much sympathise with the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Adonis. In the five sitting days of the week—Monday to Friday—we have four different starting times, and the only two days that are the same are Monday and Tuesday. I cannot think of any other public-facing organisation that has four different kick-off times in five working days.

However, the other problem with having these kinds of pre-debate opinion polls is that most of these questions do not lend themselves to a binary decision—they are not a simple “this or that” question. I will be frank with the House: on the question of speakers’ lists, I do not like the system that was in operation prior to the Covid crisis. I have said so many times; I initiated a debate on it five years ago to say that the Lord Speaker should be the person to play a role in that. But I certainly do not like the idea of the lists being published in advance and continuing with that method. I would love that idea if I was still on the Government Front Bench. When you are there to answer questions at Question Time, it is an absolute joy if you know exactly who is going to ask them. You can generally, with reasonable accuracy, anticipate precisely what question they will ask. If you know the subject and the person asking the question, you know what the question will be, so it is a great benefit to the Government Front Bench.

Perhaps I should be more sympathetic to the other group to whom it is a great benefit, having been a Chief Whip: it is great news for the Whips. If it is not the Lord Speaker or randomness deciding, the party groups, one way or another, have to find a mechanism for determining who the questioners should be. When I was Chief Whip, I would have loved to have decided who among our side was going to ask the questions; quite a few would have been waiting quite a while for that opportunity. So, this system hands power to the Government Front Bench—to Ministers—in particular, and to Whips in general.

I do not like that system either but, of course, there is a third way—to coin a phrase—which is the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe: we do the same as pretty much every assembly across the planet with procedures anything like our own does, and give some authority to the Lord Speaker. That authority has slowly accrued over the years since the post was established, to more or less universal agreement. We now actually have the Lord Speaker announcing business, and we have had, as my noble friend Lord Blunkett said, the Lord Speaker announcing who is going to speak next. I do not want there to be Stalinist control, but light-touch control from the Woolsack seems the best way of dealing with things. This was neither of the options on the ballot paper, if I can put it in those terms, when the House was consulted. I certainly support that amendment, and I really hope that the House can think again about the idea of a rigid speakers’ list.

One final point: a rigid speakers’ list is a huge change in our procedures. Since I have been here, every other major change in our procedures has always been introduced initially for a trial period, usually for six months, to test the water. If the House decides to go ahead with this system without accepting the amendment, which I hope does not happen, I feel very strongly that, after six months of operating with rigid speakers’ lists, we should have the opportunity to decide whether we want to make this permanent.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Brougham and Vaux) (Con)]

I advise noble Lords that the speaking time is about five minutes.