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.

Proposed Changes to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

One does wonder how many committees we are going to have. There will be the Procedure Committee of the House of Commons and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which are already signed up to undertake this exercise, and now we are coming along with a Joint Committee involving the House of Lords which will be doing the same thing. I think that we need a bit of balance in this. Unless one completely distrusts those Commons committees—and I hope one does not—I think that they should have a chance to monitor the issue and then recommend changes as we go along, if necessary, and as we learn the best way to tackle this very difficult issue.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, we are in danger of complicating what is surely a very simple proposition from the noble Lord, Lord Butler, to deal with the problem of changes in the Standing Orders of the House of Commons having implications for the way in which we operate in this House. If we think in any respect that they might have implications, the case for a Joint Committee is in my view overwhelming. I find it very difficult to understand the argument that the decision is a completely unilateral one with no implications whatever for this House when one House of a bicameral Parliament makes changes to the way in which it considers legislation. Frankly, the case has been made conclusively—not least by the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane—that there are clear implications for the way in which we operate in this House.

However, even if Members do not accept the constitutional or procedural arguments, because I am an old-fashioned politician, I want to set out the very simple political consequence that such a decision would have for this House. Very helpfully for my argument, three contributions have been made by Scots—the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, and my noble friend Lord Reid—who are all former Members of the House of Commons.

Palace of Westminster Committee

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a matter of major importance and of potentially huge public expenditure. As far as I can recall, we have not had the opportunity of debating it in this House yet. I went to a presentation in Portcullis House, as did some other Members, organised by the Clerk of the Parliaments and the Clerk of the House of Commons. I must say that I found it totally inadequate: there were questions that could not be answered and the presentation was not clear. We need more information about exactly what options are being proposed.

I ask three things from the Leader of the House. First, to repeat the point made by my noble friend, representation should be equal between this House and the other place. A decision was made about the education centre, which has major implications for us, but we were not able to play any part in it—it was made by the House of Commons and forced upon us, yet the centre is effectively just outside our back door and will have a huge effect on us. Can we have an assurance that we will have equal representation on the committee?

Secondly, can we get an assurance that before any decision is taken that will affect expenditure and the workings of this House there will be a full debate in this House, and that no decision will be made without such a debate? Thirdly, I ask the noble Baroness to make it clear that the Joint Committee will consider all the options for dealing with this matter, not just those that have been put forward so far as a preferred option or preferred options. All of them should be looked at properly and thoroughly by the committee. This is a matter of great importance, and I find it very strange that it was almost put through on the nod.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

To follow on from my noble friend’s point, on a related matter, he is quite right that this is an issue that affects both Houses of Parliament but there are many other issues, one of which is highly relevant, pertinent and newsworthy at the moment: English votes on English laws. It has been suggested that the rules relating to that could be made in the Commons without any proper joint consultation with Members of this House. There should be at least a Joint Committee of some sort to look at the implications for both Chambers of changes of this magnitude.

I do not use the word “disgrace” lightly, but it is a disgrace that we are making fundamental constitutional changes by an order in the Commons without any reference to us whatever. Changing the legislative process, in which we are intimately involved, unilaterally in one House without any consultation, let alone agreement, between the two Houses is unacceptable. I put it to the noble Baroness respectfully that she, as Leader of the House, has a duty to those of us here, particularly the Scots, not to allow our rights to be in any way diminished by any changes in the constitutional arrangements—at least, not without both Houses being fully involved.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, returning to the subject of the debate, I urge my noble friend the Leader to carefully consider the need for full debate in your Lordships’ House before the committee does too much work.

House of Lords: Appointments

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

No, I do not agree with the noble Lord. The proposals that my party made in our manifesto at the election for constitutional change and greater powers for all parts of the United Kingdom are the mandate on which we are governing and are what we are getting on with delivering.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, the question is whether the Prime Minister stands by the document he signed, which said that appointments to this House should be,

“reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election”.

If the Leader of the House is saying that that system no longer applies, will she explain what principle the Prime Minister now intends to abide by in making recommendations for appointments to this House?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

This Prime Minister will follow the same principles he followed in the previous Parliament and the principles that his predecessors followed in making appointments to this House. There is always an acknowledgement of the results of general elections but, historically, this House has never reflected party balance. This House has an important role and all Peers are doing the country good service if we focus on that role.

Select Committee Reports: Government Responses

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I certainly understand the frustration expressed by my noble friend with the Government’s response on this occasion. I am pleased that the Minister for the Constitution apologised, quite rightly, to the committee for the prolonged delay. On that particular report, because it covered and inquired into the inner workings of coalition government, I do not think it is that surprising that the Government wanted to give it careful consideration before responding. However, I disagree with my noble friend’s description of the Government’s response. I know that the committee was disappointed with some specific aspects and has written further to the Minister concerned, but I think that the report, as a whole, was adequate. Certainly the delay that was experienced in the context of this report is not systemic in the Government’s responses to Select Committee reports.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, is not any response to a coalition government fairly simple: that we do not want another one?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I think we are all going to fight the election to win.