Business of the House

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, this is not really a question to the Leader of the House; it is more an observation about business today and tomorrow. My Bill to end the system of by-elections for hereditary Peers is in Committee tomorrow. It had its Second Reading on 9 September and has sleepily made its way through the procedures of the House. Since 9 September, there were just five amendments tabled, one of which was from me. Coming in this morning expecting a quiet day at the office, I discovered that 59 amendments had been tabled overnight. I make no complaint about that—people use the procedures of the House as they wish to—but I thought it would be for the convenience of the House that I pointed out today that there are nine pages of these amendments for a one-page Bill, which I think is probably a world record. If anyone is thinking of contributing tomorrow, my pointing that out may be helpful, because you will need an hour and a half with a towel over your head to work out the 59 amendments, but we all look forward to getting a successful Committee on the Bill tomorrow.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, has the Leader of the House seen the very damaging publicity to the credibility of the House of Lords arising from the reporting in the national press of the existence of these 59 additional amendments? Is not the Leader of the House and her team rather worried about this? Would it not be wise if she were to prevail on those tabling the amendments to withdraw them to attempt to save the credibility of this institution?

House of Lords: Appointments Commission

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

It is beholden on political parties to ensure that they make effective nominations to contribute to the role of this House; it is beholden on us within this House to work with the best of our ability here. It is also important that we reflect the wide range of expertise and experience of people around this country, so that we can do an effective job on their behalf.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Does the Leader of the House agree that whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the Appointments Commission, it is a far better system for getting people into this House than the system of by-elections for the replacement of hereditary Peers, including a recent by-election where there were nine candidates and an electorate of three? Will the Minister acknowledge that a splendid Bill to eradicate this procedure is scheduled for a week on Friday—modesty prevents me mentioning its sponsor—and agree that the Government should give it their support?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I congratulate the noble Lord on his excellent outline of his own Bill; I think we all know that it is he who is taking this forward. I am afraid that on this occasion I cannot offer him those kinds of assurances. However, it is imperative that all people in this House play their part, and we have a range of skills and expertise that help us to do so.

Brexit: Article 50

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Garel-Jones (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords—

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

My Lords, please, this is not helping. We know that this is an important issue but we get Questions on it nearly every day. It does not look good for the House. It is the turn of the Liberal Democrats.

[Baroness Goldie]

My party believes implicitly in parliamentary sovereignty and my party believes in holding Parliament with due respect. I do not see any conflict in holding that position and in the actions already taken by the United Kingdom Government. I might observe to the noble Baroness that the intervening events from the manifesto, to which her colleague the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred, are that the Conservatives published another manifesto to prepare for the 2015 general election. There was no reference in that to the royal prerogative and, interestingly, the Conservatives won a majority to form a Government—not a privilege afforded to the noble Baroness’s party.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred to the importance of what he described as “political integrity”. Does the noble Baroness agree that it is clearly a matter of political integrity—when this House and the Commons, both without dissent, voted to have a referendum to determine whether we should remain in the European Union or leave it—that Parliament should abide by and act on that decision?

[Baroness Goldie]

I thank the noble Lord opposite for, frankly, a very sensible and welcome interjection that gets to the heart of the issue. There is an electoral mandate here. There is an obligation on government to implement that mandate.

Strathclyde Review

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, presented his report in his characteristically emollient way. I do not think we should be too taken in by the gentle way in which he presented it, because what he is suggesting is a substantial constitutional change that will transfer power to the Executive from Parliament and will alter the relationship between the two Houses. I do not object to constitutional change but the responsibility for arguing for it must come clearly from those proposing it and we should review it with all the skills of forensic examination that are at our disposal.

I want to look at the two key arguments that the Government and their supporters—or, I should say, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and his supporters—have advanced on the need for this constitutional change. The first is that, somehow, the decision on 26 October had considerable impact on our primary concern, the primacy of the House of Commons, and threatened that primacy. The title of the noble Lord’s review even refers to the primacy of the House of Commons. But it did not. If the Commons or the Government had decided that they did not like the decision that we made on 26 October, they had several simple options open to them. One would have been, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, to resubmit a statutory instrument in a slightly modified form, which this House would have then had to consider. It would probably have been like ping-pong but it would, sooner or later, have been sorted out. Alternatively, the Government could have brought in a simple Bill and timetabled it strictly, and no doubt it would have been designated a Bill over which this House should have no control. They easily had the capacity to remedy and to enshrine the principle of primacy.

The other argument advanced, including by the Leader of the House in her presentation on the report, is that the decision on 26 October somehow threatened the constitutional convention about the Lords not throwing out statutory instruments; she went so far as to say that it was “broken”. I took the precaution of asking one or two Questions of her. First, I asked her how often since the Second World War the convention had been broken. The reply came back that it was on five occasions, in 1968, 2000, 2007, 2012 and 2015; I remark in passing that three of those were when Labour Governments were in office. So we find that in 71 years since the Second World War, on the Leader of the House’s own acknowledgement, the convention has been challenged on five occasions.

I asked the Leader of the House how often the convention had been broken on those five occasions when the Lords threw out a statutory instrument that had come from the Commons, and the answer is once—the last time. I am conceding the Government’s whole case now and saying that the amendment passed here could have been interpreted as a fatal amendment, but even on those grounds—the Government’s own terms—only once in 71 years has the convention been threatened, and now they propose to change the constitution to deal with it. By the way, during the whole of that time there were 41 years of Tory Government, and they suffered two defeats on statutory instruments. If that is the rate of defeat, I do not think it is enough to get in a lather about. So why are the Government determined to go ahead when, quite plainly, on their two principal arguments, the primacy of the Commons is intact and the convention is intact?

I cannot resist doing this; I apologise in advance to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, but he had this to say about secondary legislation and statutory instruments in a debate on the Cunningham committee:

“although many have argued … that a power to reject might be replaced by a power to delay, or even a power to amend, the practical difficulties are great … I think that we need … more legislative restraint by government with fewer skeleton Bills backed by reams of regulation … Sometimes, as the committee acknowledged, rejection may be needed—very rarely—but the circumstances must be exceptional and extremely rare”.—[Official Report, 16/1/07; col. 632.]

They are exceptional and extremely rare, on any reading of what has happened.

So why is this change proposed? It is part of a wider concern of the Government: they do not like it when they are defeated. No Governments like it when they are defeated but all I can say is, “Join the club”. I know what it is like to be defeated. In the five and three-quarter years of this Government, they have suffered 123 defeats. In the five and three-quarter years with which I am particularly familiar, between 2002 and 2008, the Government suffered 325 defeats. I know the response but, even allowing for the undoubted ineptness of the Government Chief Whip at the time, 325 defeats against 123 hardly gives this Government grounds for their persecution complex. They have a very easy time in relation to the House of Lords most of the time. In the 115 years of my dear old party’s being around, only for eight of them has it even been the biggest party in the House of Lords, despite years of Labour Governments. If you do the maths, in 107 of the last 115 years the House of Lords has had the Conservative Party as its biggest party.

The ball is really in the Prime Minister’s court. He has the power and can do what he likes. He can cut our powers, if he brings in legislation and is able to get it through. He can create large numbers of Conservative Peers, as he has already been doing, but if he wants to carry on then no one can stop him. He can even abolish us if that is his wont, since he has a Conservative majority—although he might find it tricky. But I very much hope that he will go away, calm down and decide that, “This isn’t broke, so don’t fix it”. Governments do not like being defeated and I believe that there are enough people in the House of Commons who do not like this unnecessary encroachment of executive power. I certainly hope that should any firm proposal come to cut our powers in this House, enough people here will be certain enough about our responsibilities to ensure that it is rejected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am conscious of time; everybody is tired. I am going to come on to that; I have just said that that is what I am going to come on to, and I will.

Some noble Lords thought that it would be best to proceed without legislation and instead to codify the convention; certainly there is an argument to be made in respect of that, but that approach would require us to restore a shared understanding about the convention underpinning our power of veto. Most noble Lords focused their comments on the third option put forward by my noble friend, the one that he recommends—as he described it, the ping without a pong. He suggests that that would replace this House’s power of veto with a new power to ask the other place to think again, with the House of Commons having the final say.

What he is recommending there is what noble Lords are arguing for. However, some thought that it would be necessary to retain the veto available to us now. I stress again that all these things are under consideration, but it is important for me to point out that we do not have an absolute veto when it comes to primary legislation. The new power that my noble friend suggests would be more in keeping with the role of this House, and the desire it has to ask the other House to think again.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor and Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others asked me from the Labour side of the House to consider what was possible that would have some longevity and was not about just advancement for any particular party in government. Again, I found it very helpful to revisit what the Labour Party said to the Joint Committee on Conventions about the veto when they were in power. Forgive me for singling out the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, again but it was he who made this point to the Joint Committee. He said that,

“the House of Lords can veto secondary legislation … the very legitimate question arises … whether it would be sensible to consider the proposition that the Lords in respect of secondary legislation should do what it does with primary legislation, and see its function as being a delaying, revising chamber but not a vetoing chamber. That is really the question that is being put”.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, the noble Baroness will acknowledge that a lot of evidence went to the Joint Committee, which was set up by the Labour Government precisely to look at all these issues. That all-party Joint Committee, although a committee with a Labour majority on it, looked at it and the conclusions that it reached were agreed unanimously and adopted by both Houses. That is the way the process worked and it is the way any new process should work.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I say to the noble Lord that the Joint Committee on Conventions of 2006 was clearly highly respected. It was a very significant committee, and its findings and work have really stood the test of time. The problem we have is that the convention that was set out there and reinforced by the Joint Committee—I am afraid that this is the problem, because we disagree and this is what we are having to address—is no longer operating in the way that it was agreed it should operate.

House of Lords: Strathclyde Review

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his remarks, and I very much take on board his advice about my approach over the next few weeks.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

As something of an expert—if I may modestly say so—on government defeats in the House of Lords, can I put it to the Leader of the House that this is no way to effect a substantial constitutional change that would strengthen Government in relation to Parliament, and fundamentally affect the relationship between the two Houses?

The Leader of the House refers constantly to the events in October. They were bizarre. A Government propose a reduction in the income of people in the lowest-paid families. The House of Lords says, “We think you should think again about this”. The Government say—amazingly—“We are thinking again, and we’ve decided that we agree with the House of Lords”. Yet the Government persist in what can be seen only as a malevolent way to set up a committee like this to cut the wings of the House of Lords.

This is a significant suggestion to the Government, I hope: if you want to effect change of this sort, do it in the proper, conventional way. That is by proper scrutiny—for which we have the 2006 example readily to hand; it came to conclusions not helpful to the Government, I may say—putting to both Houses the proposal of the Joint Committee of senior Members of both Houses, and then for the Houses themselves to decide whether they want to go ahead with this substantial change. A government-inspired report with no witnesses listed, no evidence taken in public, no calls for evidence in a way that we can understand—this is no way to effect constitutional change.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I have huge respect for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and I listen carefully to what he says. The key thing that I am trying to identify in my remarks today is that we are in disagreement about what happened in October. That is what I find regrettable. It means that the important convention, which stood the test of time for so long, has been broken. He refers to the Joint Committee of 2006, which predates my time in the House but I understand from all my reading and research how important and respected it was. That committee reinforced the convention, but the convention that it reinforced has now broken. So what we have done is come forward with something which offers that clarity and simplicity. It draws heavily on previous work that has been done by other groups, such as my noble friend Lord Wakeham’s distinguished royal commission. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has come forward with a proposal and all I ask at the moment is that the House considers it—as indeed we in government are considering it.

G20 and the Paris Attacks

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My noble friend is right in saying that there is widespread support for the measures that we have already committed to taking, and I am very grateful for that. The Prime Minister said very clearly today that he knows that he and the Government have a responsibility to come forward and make their case for the additional steps that we believe are right, and that is what he is going to do. He hopes very much that by doing that in a very clear way, he will attract strong support for the additional action that is necessary to keep this country and its people safe.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Is it not perhaps an unpalatable truth that the progressive removal of border controls—and, indeed, the virtual elimination of boundaries between many countries of Europe—while very good news for law-abiding people, can have pretty serious consequences so far as the movement of terrorists across Europe is concerned? Has the Leader of the House seen reports that it is now a deliberate strategy of the terrorists to make plans for terrorist attacks in one country and implement them in another? Given the dangers facing Europe at the moment, is not the progressive removal of border controls—not, of course, applicable to the UK—an aspect that heads of Governments need to look at?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

As the noble Lord has just acknowledged, we are not part of the Schengen agreement. We remain very committed to retaining our borders and to policing them strongly. As we have announced in the past few days, we are taking even more steps towards, and investing further in, protecting those borders. We also play a big part in protecting the outside borders of Schengen agreement countries. However, I agree with the noble Lord that this raises very serious issues that have to be considered by countries that are part of Schengen.

Rugby World Cup 2015

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, as the noble Lord well knows, we have the Gold Event Series, launched in November 2012. We invest £50 million of lottery money in bidding for future events, and have had some success. Clearly, the news that we have had this week is a deplorable state of affairs; the WADA report has shocked us all. It is completely right that we should build on the record of the Olympics in having strong anti-doping policies.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, my noble friend makes a very strong point. We had the £20 million First World War Centenary Cathedrals Fund, of course; I was in Norwich this very weekend looking at some of the brilliant repair work that has been done. I think that we in this country are great at looking after historic buildings. We should be telling people overseas and they should be learning from our skills in conservation and architecture.

[Lord Grocott]

Does the Minister agree that one of the key factors, maybe even the key factor, which made the Rugby World Cup such a celebration and a success was that it was available for virtually everyone in the country to view on what we still occasionally call the terrestrial channels, which are free to air? Is the evidence not crystal clear that with major sports longer available on free-to-air television—notably cricket and, increasingly, golf, not to mention Premier League football—the capacity of the country as a whole to celebrate these events inexorably diminishes?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

To be brief, I agree that the television coverage of the Rugby World Cup was amazing. We all watched a lot of games, even though the home countries did not do as well as they should have done. Good television coverage is very important.

House of Lords: Government Review

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The piece of secondary legislation that we debated on Monday was very clearly and exclusively about a financial matter, to the tune of £4.4 billion in terms of the savings it would deliver in the first year of its implementation. It was a decision arising from the Budget in July. What happened on Monday is something that has never happened before.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Leader of the House reassure us that the work of the committee will be evidence-based and, in particular, will take note of the following piece of evidence? It is that, during the five years of the Cameron premiership, on average there have been 20 government defeats per year. In the five years from 2002 to 2007—a period with which I am very familiar—under the Blair and Brown Governments, there were on average 59 defeats a year. I remind the House that that was at a time when the Labour Government had a majority of around 170 in the Commons and Labour was not even the biggest party in this House, let alone a majority party. The Prime Ministers of the time did not work themselves up into a synthetic lather about government defeats. If the Prime Minister is anxious to find evidence about Governments being defeated on a regular basis, I am at the end of the phone to give him that information.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I cannot imagine that when the noble Lord was Government Chief Whip in this House, if he and his Government had experienced the events of Monday in the same way that this Government did, they would not have defined the result in the same way as we have done. The noble Lord talks about the rate of defeats. This was not about the rate of defeats under this Government compared with those under previous Governments; this was about a specific event on Monday that was unprecedented. But if he wants to talk about how often this Government are being defeated, since the general election this Government have been defeated in 75% of all the Divisions that have taken place in your Lordships’ House.

European Council

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My noble friend makes some important points. As I have already said, we have applied our effort where we think we should help people—at the point of need—in a way that means that the countries they are fleeing to are able to sustain that support. We very much support what is happening in terms of a plan with Turkey. It is also worth adding that in November there will be the Valletta summit between European and African countries to look at what more can be done to prevent more people fleeing from that part of the world. We have to try to ensure that we support people where they are most in need of that support—that is, before they make these dreadful and treacherous crossings.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, on the renegotiation, there was one line in the Statement that was close to being amusing, which must be a first for a Statement on Europe from any leader. It said:

“I will be writing to the President of the European Council in early November to set out the changes we want to see”.

It is about two years since a referendum was promised and still, if we are to believe what we read, the heads of government of the other 27 member states are not at all clear about the terms that the Prime Minister is trying to achieve; certainly, the people in this country are not clear about them. I want to register my astonishment at that. He will answer in general terms, of course—indeed, there are general terms in the Statement itself—but negotiations are not about general terms: they are about quite specific matters, about which we still do not know.

I put it to the Leader of the House, in her role as Leader, that if the Prime Minister is saying that he is going to spell out these terms by November, and the mechanism by which he is going to do so is a letter to the President of the European Council, copied to member states and presumably to Members of both Houses of Parliament—for which we thank him very much—and of course for the British public to see, at the very least this House, and I can ask her only about this House, ought to see at long last the precise terms that are the bottom line for the Prime Minister’s negotiations, so that we can examine this crucial aspect of the Government’s European policy and question the Prime Minister precisely on the efficacy of the demands that he is making.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I consider it my aim every day to bring amusement to the noble Lord, so I am glad that I achieved that today.

The Prime Minister has been consistent throughout this process. In his Bloomberg speech he set out his vision for Europe. He has been clear about the need to make the case for reform in all the discussions he has had with his various European partners. As I have already explained, detailed technical talks have been going on about the legal implications for change in these four areas. He will set out the detail of the changes that he wants to see in November and will then proceed with his negotiations and he will achieve his best for Britain. I have every faith that he will secure an outcome that will ensure we end up with a better relationship for the UK with the European Union. We will then put that to a referendum; I am pleased that the noble Lord is now supportive of the opportunity that we are providing to the people of this country.

House of Lords: Membership

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My noble friend is using me as a channel to ask questions to the Liberal Democrat Benches. He is quite right that we are all responsible for the effectiveness of this House and making sure that that happens.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask the Leader of the House to act as a channel to the Prime Minister from this House, initially to tell us whether he was accurately reported when it was implied, at least, that he felt that the political majority in the Commons should in one way or another be reflected as a political majority in the Lords. If that is the case, will she ask him to reflect on the fact that in 1997 when the Labour Party had a majority of some 170 in the House of Commons, it was in a significant minority in the Lords; ditto in 2001 after the 2001 election; and ditto after the 2005 election? It was not until 2006 that the Labour Party became the biggest single group in the House of Lords, which was quickly reversed of course by the coalition after 2010? Will she at least make sure that the Prime Minister is aware of those facts?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I can certainly reassure the House that the Prime Minister is not seeking in any way to make a government majority in this House. We recognise that the importance of this House is that it holds the Government to account and that the party in government should not be in a majority. The House should also understand that, even after the introduction of the new Peers announced the week before last, the Government still face a combined opposition of 80 Peers, which is twice the size faced by the last Labour Government when they were in power.