Restoration and Renewal Programme Board

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

May I just ask the Senior Deputy Speaker to bear in mind that it is not just people from around the world who admire this building and see it and its purpose as iconic? I have taken dozens and dozens of groups round this building over the years and not a single person has said to me, “I wish this was made of glass and concrete and stuck somewhere outside the capital”. I do not know whether anyone else has come across someone who said that—maybe my noble friend Lord Foulkes, but no one else.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My noble friend and I are noble friends. It does not need to be glass and concrete. Other countries, such as Australia and Brazil, have done it, and they are some really good buildings. In the United States, the Capitol is a really effective building, because Senators have offices where we do not. I do not understand why we cannot keep this as a building for all sorts of other purposes but have a proper place to carry out the work of a proper legislature. I will introduce my noble friend to many people who think the same—my noble friend Lord Maxton is one of them, by the way.

Procedure and Privileges Committee

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I thank the Senior Deputy Speaker for the courteous way in which he has dealt with these issues, both formally and informally. I am most grateful to him for discussing them with me.

First, I emphasise that I think it is crucial that we have an efficient and fair system to allow our remote disabled colleagues to participate as much as possible. Secondly, I approve the extension of their ability to participate. The only issue before us is who calls them to speak, and that brings me to my amendment.

Let me say what my amendment is not. It is not a party-political issue in any way whatever. It does not in any way compare us with the other place because the other place does not have an arrangement to allow disabled people to participate remotely; in fact, yet again the other place is not as enlightened as we are in this House, just as we were first with televising the House and on many other innovations. And it is not a beauty contest; I think we would lose right away if it were.

So why am I proposing this amendment? First, the chair of all the meetings I have ever been to has been the moderator of the debate. That applies to committees of this House, where the chair calls people to speak. Secondly, the Leader of the House has many other responsibilities. Even today, just before this debate, she dealt with an important Covid Statement, and later today, she will give a Statement on the crucial issue of Ukraine. She is a member of the Cabinet, and has many other responsibilities. Why should we require her to do this, when we have a perfectly competent Lord Speaker and, if I may say so, an equally competent Senior Deputy Speaker, as well as many other Deputy Speakers who stand in and carry out that responsibility very well? In fact, we saw a perfect example of this earlier today, when my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Hudnall called the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to speak remotely on the previous Statement. She did it with skill and effectiveness. Among everything else, with due respect to the Senior Deputy Speaker, she proved that the configuration of the House, which was his main argument, is not a problem. She was able to deal with it perfectly.

I would be interested to hear colleagues’ views before I decide whether or not to press this amendment, but I now have the pleasure of moving what I think is just a simple but very important amendment.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is going to speak at this point. If he is not, I am always happy to say a few words.

Companies (Strategic Report) (Climate-related Financial Disclosure) Regulations 2021

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I exercised the right that all noble Lords have to object to Motions being taken en bloc, not because I object to these two particular Motions being taken en bloc but because I object to the fact that, when the Leader of the House made a business statement earlier today, no other Member of the House was able to ask questions or make any comments. Yet it was a very substantial statement, and some of us wanted to point out that we object to decisions about who should speak virtually and who should speak in the Chamber being taken by a party-political representative—the Leader of the House—rather than by the Speaker. I was not able to make that comment; others wanted to make similar comments. I would like the Deputy Speaker, and anyone else who can, to raise the matter with the Lord Speaker, and I will do so myself. Perhaps the Minister will too. The issue is why there was no opportunity to question the Leader of the House when she made that business statement.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly agree with my noble friend. This is not directly the subject of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, and I do not expect a comprehensive and detailed reply. But I urge him to talk to his ministerial colleagues, particularly to the Leader of the House, and make the point that—as my noble friend has said—a substantial statement was made that nobody could have known about: there is nothing whatever on today’s House of Lords Order of Business to tell us that the Leader of the House would be making a substantial statement. The essence of a sensibly functioning Houses of Parliament is proceedings that are intelligible. How on earth can someone in the Gallery know what is going on when someone gets up from the Bench, and they have not got the faintest idea who she is—I mean no disrespect to the Leader of the House—and makes an important statement, and the House continues as if nothing has happened? That is an unacceptable state of affairs.

I have, over the years, made a very small advance in this respect, if I may bring it up: there never used to be an announcement of the results of a hereditary Peers by-election. After much consideration of this revolutionary proposal, eventually it went up on the monitor and it appeared on the Order Paper that such an announcement would be made. This is probably the easiest question in the Minister’s long experience on the Front Bench, but will he talk to the Leader, so that, perhaps through the usual channels, we can get some intelligibility introduced into these important matters? That is all I have to say.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a couple of observations, one specific and the other more general. The specific observation relates to subsection (1) in the proposed new clause, which talks about the way in which a withdrawal agreement would be approved or otherwise by Parliament. This issue has been raised several times in the past by me and other noble Lords. If you require parliamentary approval, what happens if one House says yes and the other says no? This is particularly serious in relation to anything connected with the ratification or otherwise of agreements between the Government and the EU 27. Either House saying no—in this case it would probably be the House of Lords—would, in effect, be a veto on the whole process. To be fair, there is an attempt to deal with this problem, because proposed new subsection (1) requires approval,

“by a resolution in the House of Commons”,

but the simple,

“consideration of a motion in the House of Lords”.

My simple, factual and specific point is just this: we do not need an Act of Parliament in order for us to consider a Motion. We can do that any time we want to, pretty well, on any subject we choose. That is not any kind of control or limitation whatsoever. I would say, “Good, but what on earth is subsection (1)(b) doing in an Act of Parliament?” It is absolutely unnecessary—otiose may be the word, I am not sure, but it is irrelevant and we should not clutter the statute book with points such as this which are of no value whatsoever. My more general observation is that we are putting ourselves in a bizarre circumstance. We are saying that we, the unelected House of Lords, should pass an amendment which effectively tells the House of Commons how to hold the Government to account. Essentially, it is instructing the House of Commons. A lot of noble Lords have been in the House of Commons. That House holds Governments to account day in, day out. It does that by a multitude of different mechanisms: by debate, adjournment debates, emergency resolutions, questions to Ministers, and Bills.

The function of Parliament in general and the House of Commons in particular is to hold Governments to account. We are simply saying to it by this amendment, “We think you should have additional powers to hold the Government to account”. If the House of Commons wants to exercise control over the way in which the negotiations proceed, it does not need any advice, still less any extra powers given to it by us—it has them already. Government is subject to the House of Commons. The House of Commons is not the servant of government in a parliamentary democracy, to quote the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, but ultimately it is the other way round: the Government is the servant of the House of Commons.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

If my noble friend is right in every case, why did Gina Miller have to take action in the High Court?

[Lord Grocott]

My noble friend was not present at the time, as a number of us were, but if he is in any doubt whatever about the ultimate authority of the House of Commons, he should have been in the House of Commons in 1979—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I was.

[Lord Grocott]

I am sorry; it was later. My noble friend missed the boat by a few months. That was when the House of Commons—just before my noble friend enriched it with his presence—threw the Government out. I can think of no more substantial control than throwing the Government out of office and calling—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

They were a Labour Government.

[Lord Grocott]

Yes, sadly, they were a Labour Government, and my vote was not enough to enable them to survive. If anyone is in any doubt whatever about the capacity of the House of Commons to do what it needs or wants to do in respect of this or any other piece of legislation, those powers exist already. It does not need any advice from us.

Role of the Lord Speaker

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Thursday 30th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

His is not a wig.

[Lord Grocott]

It’s real.

Trade Unions

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Nothing changes.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My noble friend Lord Grocott says that it has not changed completely. They were intent on increasing their wealth, and ordinary workers were excluded and exploited.

The Chartists, founded by the London Working Men’s Association, agitated for political rights for ordinary people and set in train the long series of events that, by 1928—only then—led Britain to become a full democracy. When we take time to look back at the achievements of the unions, we begin to appreciate how different life would be now for ordinary working people without them. I will give a few examples.

First, on workplace safety, workplaces with union safety representatives have half the serious injuries of non-unionised workplaces. In particular, the London Olympics of 2012 were the first Olympic Games ever in which nobody was killed while constructing the venues. It is not accidental that for the 2012 Games there was strong union representation on both the London Olympic committee and the Olympic Delivery Authority. In comparison, at last year’s Winter Olympics at Sochi in Russia, 60 people died.

Secondly, there is the minimum wage. Unions were among the early supporters of what was arguably—it is a view I hold—new Labour’s most successful achievement: lifting the purchasing power of low-wage workers, particularly women, without negatively impacting on unemployment and, incidentally, thereby helping economic growth.

Thirdly, on equal pay, as we all recall, the female trade unionists at Ford’s Dagenham and Halewood plants forced the introduction of the Equal Pay Act 1970, which was a key step in the battle for gender equality in the United Kingdom. However, we are not all the way there yet. Since last week until the end of the year, women will on average be working for nothing in comparison with men in equivalent jobs.

Tremendous advantages have been won by the trade union movement, including full statutory maternity leave since 1993, and there are all those achievements without even mentioning the insurance cover, the legal representation and the other services that we ordinary union members receive from our trade unions.

Our economy also benefits hugely from the presence of trade unions at both the micro and the macro levels. At the level of individual workers within the economy, unions have had a positive effect for every type of worker. In relation to salaries and holidays, unionised British workers earn 8% more than non-members on average, and they have 29 days’ annual leave as opposed to 23 for non-members. For young people, workers between the ages of 16 and 24 earn on average 39% more when they are union members. That is a huge and significant difference. Women in a union earn 30% more on average. The gender pay gap among unionised workers is 6% compared with 22% among non-unionised workers. Finally, workplaces with recognised unions are 24% more likely to offer training to their workers, and training in skills is vital to developing our economy if we are to make progress.

Unions also impact positively on the macroeconomy in three major ways. First, although some people claim that unions inhibit productivity growth, the opposite is true—our economy is more productive where there are trade unions. Productivity growth since the recession has been disappointing across the economy as a whole. However, a recent study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research found that this productivity gap is connected to the decline of trade unions and that, in reality, high union density is associated with stronger productivity growth. The sectors of the British economy that are experiencing strong productivity growth, such as aerospace and engineering, tend to be those with stronger union representation, where employers actively encourage and engage with the trade unions in their workplace. Professor Kim Hoque of Warwick Business School has found that workplace productivity in the public sector is improved by union representation, and he has raised concerns about the effect on productivity of the Government’s impending Bill—an issue we need to return to when we debate that legislation.

Research by the New Economics Foundation found that high union membership boosts GDP by redirecting a larger share of capital to consumers or purchasers, thus expanding the domestic market for goods. Therefore, increasing the level of unionisation to that of the early 1980s, for example, could add nearly £23 billion to GDP. For every 1% reduction in the proportion of the workforce in unions, GDP is reduced by more than £2 billion.

Liaison Committee

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a simple factual question. Everybody has been talking as if there is clarity about when the committee will be established and when the review will take place. That seems to be based on a false premise, unless I missed something in an announcement. The reference is that the committee will be established in the next Session and the review will be in the following Session. I do not know when the next Session is going to start. I do not know whether the Chairman of Committees can tell me that. I have a rather nervous disposition, and I remember that in the last Parliament, the one beginning 2010, the first Session—much to the opposition of many of us—lasted for two years. The Leader and the Chief Whip are present, so I would like an instant response on this question: I simply want to know when the next Session will start, because until we get clarity on that a lot of this discussion is based on a false premise.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not disagree with what my noble friend has said, but I have one point to make. I had the honour of following my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours as a member of this Liaison Committee. When I joined the committee, I found that there had been a very long-running battle between the enthusiasts for setting up an international relations committee and those who had reservations. Since the noble Lord, Lord Laming, took over as Convenor, he has, with tremendous skill and remarkable diplomacy, come up with a compromise which allows the setting up of the committee but puts very strong limits and controls on it. He is to be congratulated. I hope that we do not delay it and that the House passes it and endorses it unanimously.

Palace of Westminster Committee

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

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.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

Can the Minister point to me anywhere in existing electoral law where, during a general election, for example, there is a running release of the state of the voting—after the postal vote had taken place, for example—and that is made known? Unless Amendment 56 is passed, that will be the likely situation in respect of these petitions. If the Minister disagrees, please intervene and tell me. I will stop speaking.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Is it not the case that if anyone goes to the opening of a postal ballot and then reveals the result of that postal ballot, it is a serious offence?

[Lord Grocott]

Yes, it is a very serious offence. But we have been assured by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that the Bill as it stands is entirely in accordance with existing practice. I just cannot imagine the situation in any other election whereby this kind of running total would be available.

I vote Labour; that is what I do. It is in the DNA; it is inherited; it is passed on to future generations—that is how it works. It is like supporting Stoke City; it is what rational people do. I simply put it to the Minister that, even with that pedigree, if I could see the tally in a particular constituency’s voting after the postal votes had been handed in and could see a very close result coming out between two parties which I disliked intensely, but one of which I disliked marginally more than the other, and, sadly, my dear old party was nowhere, clearly there is a possibility that that might affect my judgment. I do not think that it would, actually, but I am putting a hypothetical case here.

Surely the same is true of any kind of running commentary on the numbers of people who have signed the petition. Surely, as my noble friend Lord Hughes has said, it must really render the process void if the returning officer, or whatever he is called, or anyone else, is telling the press, “Oh, it is up to 8% now, and 9%; we only need a few more and there we go”. If, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has said, this is entirely in line with previous electoral law in the way we hold elections, fine; but if it is not, I do not understand the point.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder if the Minister could help. I know that these are consequential amendments relating to the third trigger, which was added during the course of the Bill. It seems to me, though I am not a lawyer, to present a considerable anomaly, which is that a particular offence in relation to parliamentary expenses where there is a guilty verdict and a fine in a court results in a by-election, while any other offence—which lots of people might consider to be more serious—results only in a fine. I do not know about the law, but that might include, perhaps, sexual harassment, defrauding the public purse in some respect other than parliamentary expenses, drink-driving or something of that sort. Surely, in the operation of the law—I am looking desperately around, hoping that a lawyer might help me—it is bizarre if there is a more severe penalty for a lesser offence. That seems to be the case with this group of admittedly consequential amendments.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words on this issue and this amendment seems an appropriate point as it deals with the third trigger. What worries me is the accretion of triggers—the first, the second and the third—because I suspect that if we pass this Bill, which does not seem to have many friends anywhere, we will end up with more triggers in subsequent legislation. We are starting on a very dangerous course.

As my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside said at Second Reading, this is the thin end of a wedge, because the green light will be given to people such as Zac Goldsmith to come up with his amendments again in the next Parliament. He is a multimillionaire who treats being an MP as a hobby rather than as an occupation, a calling or as something that is really worth while. I look at some noble Lords opposite, for whom I have the greatest respect, who carried out their jobs as Members of Parliament with great diligence. I disagreed with them on policy and on everything else in relation to what they did, but they looked after their constituents, took up issues and worked hard. Now we are getting dilettante MPs coming in and we end up with this kind of legislation.

Members of Parliament should have the power and the authority to look after their constituents without fear or favour or threat, and should know that they can stand up to vested interests without always looking over their shoulder. Once we pass this Bill, and particularly if we take further steps, we will have MPs looking over their shoulder week in and week out. I could give dozens of relevant examples, which my noble friend, a former Speaker, will know well. For example, Tam Dalyell was so persistent on the “Belgrano”, Aldabra and even, I am afraid to say, devolution. However, he might have been intimidated if he had had to look over his shoulder, anticipating challenges, because of this kind of provision.

Other examples include Chris Mullin, who raised the issue of the Birmingham Six, and the Liverpool MPs who looked after the interests of the relatives of people killed at Hillsborough, and kept on and on about that in spite of vested interests. Tom Watson is raising the issue of historic child abuse and feels in a strong enough position to do that. However, if MPs are always looking over their shoulder, they will have less strength to do that.

I have the greatest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. I have known him a long time. Indeed, I knew him when he was simply William Wallace. I used to listen to him very keenly because of his knowledge of international affairs and had great respect for him. He said at Second Reading:

“We have put forward the Bill believing not that it is the golden trigger”—

actually, I think that he meant the silver bullet, but never mind—

“that will somehow revive public trust alone, but that it is one element among many that we need to begin to re-establish public trust in democratic politics and in Westminster”.—[Official Report, 17/12/14; col. 221.]

I do not see many leaders in newspapers such as the Daily Mail saying, “Well done, Westminster. This is re-establishing trust by bringing in a Bill to recall Members of Parliament”. I just do not see that it will do that. I think that trust in Westminster would be restored if we ensured that the legislation we passed was sensible, workable and intelligent. This legislation is none of those. It is not sensible or workable—and it is certainly not intelligent.

I was not able to be here at Second Reading, but I read the debate in great detail. Many Members of this House rightly said that they were in favour of the principle of recall but none of them said that they agreed with this Bill. It is a terrible Bill. It was brought in right at the end of the Session and rushed through the House of Commons. It was not given proper consideration in the House of Commons, and even I have had my arm twisted to agree to all its provisions and not create too many problems.

Yet there are things that the Bill could deal with. When Members of Parliament cross the Floor they are not obliged to be recalled. That is not included in the Bill. You would think it would be, would you not? I do not like giving credit to Mr Carswell and Mr Reckless, but I will, because at least they triggered by-elections by resigning. There is no obligation to do that. I mean no disrespect to some noble Lords who are here now, but I would have thought that crossing the Floor, being elected as a Conservative and moving over to become a Labour Member—in fact, there are two of them staring at me; I feel their eyes piercing—might present an argument for taking this matter forward.

There was once a Tory MP—I am trying to remember his name—who in his last term of office as a Member of Parliament went to live in California.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is a very good question. I could spend an hour or two on that, although the Minister and other noble Lords will be pleased to know that I will not. We could start with the constitution of the United Kingdom and talk about the total inconsistency between one part and the other. That would take us down the highways and byways—not the Liberal ones on this occasion, although it could perhaps be some of them. Instead, I move to Amendment 13.

The clause that this relates to deals with two further provisions to the first recall condition, referring to imprisonment and detention following an offence. It deletes a proviso which states that the first recall condition includes offences committed before the MP became an MP. It also deletes a proviso which states that the first recall condition does not include offences committed the day before this section comes into force. Acute Members will notice that Amendment 16,

“Page 2, line 24, after second ‘MP’, insert ‘unless that offence was disclosed before the MP became an MP’”,

contradicts the one to which I have just referred. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, would have jumped up and pointed this out if I had not done so myself. It attempts to amend the subsection that the previous amendment deletes, so if we had deleted it, we could not have amended it. It gives the House an option.

The reasoning for this amendment, which was also provided by the Law Society of Scotland, is that Clause 2(1) elaborates the reference to an offence in Clause 1(3) as including an offence committed before the MP became an MP. If an MP was elected by the constituents after he or she had been convicted and sentenced for that offence, there should not be a recall because he or she was already elected in the full knowledge that that offence had been committed and that he or she had been sentenced for it. I am not talking about where there might be an appeal or whatever but where the matter had been dealt with. That would be clear because the constituents must have known about the MP’s offending history prior to the election but nevertheless elected that individual. I do not see any reason why these two amendments from the Law Society of Scotland cannot be accepted.

The more difficult one for the Government to accept might be Amendment 4. This relates to the first of the two criteria—that the offence must have resulted in a sentence of imprisonment of more than a year. Noble Lords will know that, under the present arrangement, if Members of the House of Commons and, indeed now, of this place are sentenced to more than a year, there is automatic exclusion. That is part of our provision in this House. It is part of the provision in the other place. The point I want to raise is that it is not whether it is a year or 18 months or six months, it is a question of who decides. Should it be this House or the other place that decides in relation to the Members of this House or the other place, or should this cumbersome, expensive, complicated recall mechanism be enforced? Why, if it is less than 12 months, should it be this complicated, expensive trigger mechanism, but, if it is more than 12 months, we are able to deal with it ourselves? Why can we not deal with all of them ourselves? Would it not be more sensible for us to deal with Members of this House who are convicted, whatever the length of their sentences, and for Members of the other place to deal, equally, with their Members, irrespective of the length of their sentences? What is magic about one year? What is special about one year? We will come to this in relation to other amendments later on. What is the logic behind it? There is no logic.

[Lord Grocott]

I raise with my noble friend a practical point that he might be about to address. If a sentence of less than a year becomes the law, it could trigger a petition and then the petition could lead to a by-election. My advice to any Member of Parliament facing this kind of situation—it might be for the good reasons of principle that several noble Lords have referred to—would be to bypass the whole question of a petition being raised to call for a by-election. The sensible thing to do would be to resign the seat immediately, which we know from Clause 5 would cancel the whole mechanism of petitioning and recall, and, rather than go through all that rigmarole and all the publicity that might be associated with it, say, “Right, I am probably going to be subject to a recall in any case, so I am going to resign the seat and make the whole section of the Bill redundant”. That would certainly be my advice, so let us get it out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My view—I think I said this—is that the recall procedure is daft. It is expensive, complicated, and all of it should be dealt with by both Houses for their own respective Members. We should throw this out and go back to the House of Commons and let it decide in relation to people who have been sentenced for less than a year or more than a year. I think it is right that they should be dealt with by Parliament, not by this kind of recall procedure. I put the amendment in precisely so that it could be discussed.

[Lord Grocott]

Is not my noble friend, in wrestling with these amendments which attempt to improve the Bill, just illustrating the difficulty that all of us feel who know that this is a bad Bill? May I suggest the answer that he should be giving; that is, it would be far better to leave the law as it is, which is that if you are sentenced to more than a year, then “You’re out, mate”, and if it is less than a year, then the chances are that it is something which existing procedures would deal with in any case—perhaps the informal procedures of parties, that would not re-endorse a Member of Parliament? There are all sorts of mechanisms of that sort which in practical terms come into play. The real lesson is that we are trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and we just have to do the best we can.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I could not have said it better myself; in fact, I did not say it better myself. That was an excellent explanation of it with which I completely concur. I tried to say that with increasing degrees of inability to do so.

My last question to the Minister is equally serious. Let us suppose that someone is given a suspended sentence. Does that count? It would be perfectly possible for me to say, when the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, appeared before me, “I sentence you, Lord Finkelstein, to a year in a prison, but I’m going to give you a chance and I’m going to suspend the sentence to see if you behave for the next year. If you behave, then that sentence will not be imposed”. Would that apply? I am not clear whether suspended sentences are counted in relation to the Bill. There is no guidance. It is just something that occurred to me. No doubt there will be many more problems in relation to the Bill which will come out during not just this discussion but if, heaven forbid, the Bill was to be triggered—to use that awful word—which we all hope it will not be.

Amendments 4 and 13 are probing amendments, but Amendments 3 and 16, which have been drafted by the Law Society of Scotland, are serious and important, because there is that inconsistency about offences committed overseas and there is also the question, raised in the second Law Society amendment, about offences committed before a general election. If the Minister cannot accept the amendments today, I hope that he will say that he will have a look at them between now and Report and see whether these two problems might be properly dealt with. I beg to move.

[Lord Finkelstein]

My Lords, I very much hope that if I am ever accused of a serious offence, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will not be the judge. I want to run through a list of offences for which you can be sent to prison for less than a year: assault with intent to resist arrest; assault on a police constable in the execution of his duty; racially aggravated common assault; domestic burglary; fraud; false accounting; and sexual assault—this is obviously not a full list. In other words, it is possible to be sentenced for very serious offences for less than a year. All that this Bill does—and it is a very simple Bill; it is not, as has been repeatedly and falsely suggested a complicated, burdensome, cumbersome and expensive Bill—is to provide the general public with a simple mechanism which allows them to remove Members of Parliament should they see fit in circumstances that are limited in it. There are a very few common-sense circumstances in which people would expect to have such a power. We have discussed at great length today many ridiculous ideas which are not in the Bill and said how strongly we are against them, and I think that we can all agree that we would be against them if they were in the Bill or if anyone proposed them in future Bills. Therefore, there is great unity in the Committee on the subject of hypotheticals.

However, if we confine ourselves to the subject of what is actually in the Bill, is the House of Lords seriously saying to the general public, at a moment of disillusion with politics, that we wish to deny a limited range of powers to them which would be available to the boss of any employer in any company and would be used in the circumstances set out in this Bill?

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That was a very powerful speech by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. He certainly does his homework very effectively. Like him, I wish that some Members of Parliament had done it. In the past few weeks, I have listened to a number of Conservative Members of Parliament and to some Labour Members of Parliament, and I am not sure that they know exactly what they voted for and its implications not just in terms of the voting system, as my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours said, but of the reduction in the number of Members from 650 to 600. That is something we will come to later. The purpose of a revising House is to try to draw attention to this, so I am really grateful to my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, as I am sure the House is.

I want to raise one point. What can we do to stop this misapprehension that everyone elected under this system of AV has achieved the support of 50 per cent of the electorate? We discussed this in a previous debate, and I think it was my noble friend Lord Rooker, in his usual eloquent way, who pointed out the various systems. As I understand it—I am open to be corrected if I am wrong because I do not want to go on if I am—if the system used is that everyone is required to use all their votes, so that if there are 10 candidates, they vote from one to 10, that does apply. However, as I understand it, in the system that has been proposed and that we are being asked to approve, that is not required. You can vote one, two or one, two, three or one, two, three, four and so on—

[Lord Grocott]

Or just one.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Or just one, which my noble friend Lord Grocott and I would prefer. Yet again last week, in spite of the fact that this House has said it on a number of occasions and other people have said it, the Liberal Democrats—and I absolve the Tories of this—were saying, and the Guardian was repeating, that everyone elected under the system being proposed will have the support of 50 per cent of their constituents. That is manifestly untrue, and it is about time that the Liberal Democrats stopped spreading these lies.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I come back to a point that I raised on a previous amendment in relation to the fact that there are two different franchises in the election and the referendum. The Scottish parliamentary election is on the local government franchise and the referendum is on the UK parliamentary franchise, plus Peers. The Minister is right that we are the only ones having that special treatment. The schedule makes provision for either a combined register or two separate registers. Can the Minister explain how that will work, how the registers will be combined, and what the procedure will be?

As I understand it, if there are two separate registers, one for the Scottish parliamentary election, which includes European nationals, and one for the referendum, which does not include European nationals, it will be quite a cumbersome operation. When people come in, there will be three categories: people entitled to vote in the referendum and the Scottish parliamentary election; people entitled to vote in the referendum only; and people entitled to vote in the Scottish parliamentary election only. It will be much more confusing. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, raised the confusion in the Scottish local elections in 2007. I think it will be even more confusing than that because of the two franchises.

There is also the question of overseas voters. They will be entitled to a vote in the referendum, and it would be useful to know what arrangements are going to be made for them to be given the votes that they are entitled to, to be made aware of their entitlement and to get postal votes. Even in relation to postal votes, there will be three categories to be dealt with: those entitled to both, those entitled to the referendum and those entitled to the Scottish parliamentary election.

Keeping the registers, marking them, marking ballot papers and handing them out will be a very complicated exercise. With respect, I think the Government have underestimated some of the difficulties that they are creating for counting officers and returning officers by having the referendum on the same day. Since I raised this matter some weeks ago—I think the noble Lord, Lord McNally, was dealing with it on that occasion—I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, will now be able to explain how these processes are going to be carried out, particularly the ones at the polling station.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, it often happens that you can see something in a schedule that raises quite an important more general point. I am referring to the cost of the combined polls, which is on page 137 in Schedule 5. It says quite simply, and I am sure that voters would regard this as common sense, that when two or three elections are taking place in the same area at the same time you divvy up the cost of delivering that election between them. I ask myself whether that is the building block that has resulted in the calculation that the Government have made, a very important calculation, about the cost of the referendum and, more importantly, the saving to national funds from holding the referendum, with all the difficulties that entails, which we acknowledge to be not insurmountable, on the same day as a number of elections in a number of different places.



Unfortunately, I have not brought my precise note, but I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has these details engraved on his mind. The Government and the Deputy Prime Minister have repeatedly told us a precise figure—from memory I think that it is £35 million but I stand to be corrected—which will be saved by holding the referendum on the same day as a number of local elections. I have always thought that using the word “saved” there makes about as much sense as saying that you buy a fridge for £150 in a sale, as opposed to paying £200, and that therefore you have saved money. You would save a lot more if you did not buy the fridge and we would certainly save a lot more if we did not hold a referendum. Sadly, that argument has now passed.

Clause 7 sets out the complexity of the way in which the referendum will be counted and the voting areas. I will not list them all, but they range from,

“a district in England … a county in England in which there are no districts with councils … a London borough … the City of London”,

et cetera. I want to ask a straight, factual question. How have the Government calculated what the saving will be to the Exchequer from holding the referendum on the same day as these other elections? As to the “cost of combined polls” under Schedule 5, page 137, the Government have obviously attributed to the referendum the whole cost of those areas where there are no local elections, which I suppose is intelligible enough, and I assume that they have divvied up—I may be making huge assumptions here—the proportionate cost of the referendum in those districts where other elections are taking place.

Most of all, I have always been wary about the glib statistic of how much is being saved by holding the referendum on the same day. If that is the building block of this calculation, which presumably somewhere along the line it must be—that is, the cost of combined polls—I would ask the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, to give us a note on whether the calculation is built on these individual bricks. I rather fear that it might be a construction built on sand. But at least I should like to know the calculations that have led to this alleged saving.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My noble and learned friend is absolutely right that this is a very important amendment. It is double-barrelled in that it deals with two things. It deals with the redistribution to make sure that it is based on the real number as near as possible of people eligible to vote in a constituency, and it encourages people to register and to vote. It is important from the point of view of the redistribution of boundaries, but it also has a wider and more beneficial effect.

For the first aspect of this, I have an amendment, Amendment 89C, which I hope we will come to later this evening. I hesitate to say that it is better than my noble and learned friend’s amendment, but it is simpler because it just says that,

“for the purpose of this Act”,

the electorate will be taken as the number of people eligible to vote, not registered to vote. We can always find out the number of people who are eligible to vote through the census or whatever. I hope, in anticipation of that—which is why I am giving the Minister a bit of extra notice—he will look at his briefing. It is a simpler amendment and I hope it is one that the Government might accept.

However, my noble and learned friend’s amendment has the double advantage of getting people on to the register and, as my noble friend Lord Desai said, encouraging people to vote. There are lots of ways of doing that which we have discussed previously. One of those is compulsory voting. A number of colleagues were a bit doubtful and unsure about that, and with good reason. I say that because I have just been reading about the compulsory vote in Belgium, but because that country has a daft proportional representation system, which my noble friend Lord Grocott will particularly appreciate, it has not been able to form a Government for seven months, and the guy who was appointed to mediate between the various parties in order to try to get a government has just resigned. That is the sort of thing that happens when you have daft systems of proportional representation. Someone asked me who is running the Government in Belgium, and I said that I supposed it was the civil servants. They answered, “What’s different? Doesn’t that always happen?”. I hope that is not the case, but it is worrying that you can get to that position even with proportional representation and compulsory voting. You would think that that might improve the situation.

[Lord Grocott]

My noble friend referred to it as a “daft” system of proportional representation. For the benefit of the Committee, I wonder if he could list for us the good systems of proportional representation.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

No, I cannot; there are not any. It is an even dafter system than the one included in the Bill.

What is proposed in the amendment has a very important aspect to it; that is, getting people on to the register. We should do everything that we can to achieve that. I am a little worried about the current situation, because, with public expenditure cuts, local authorities will spend less money on canvassing people to get on to the register. They will take the cheapest option of sending out letters once and hoping that they will be returned, instead of going round, knocking on doors, returning if they do not get a reply and really making sure that everyone in a household is on the register, which is vital.

It is not being party political or fighting the class war to say that it is much easier to get people to register when they are living in detached houses or houses that are easy to access. It is much more difficult to get to houses in multiple occupation; for example, tenements in Glasgow. Sometimes, you cannot get in through the main door to get up to the front door of the flat concerned to get people to register. It is therefore vital that we put in place a system or series of systems that encourage people to get their name on to the register and local authorities to get out and make sure that they reach as many people as possible. That is why the amendment needs our support.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said that it is not a responsibility of the Electoral Commission. Well, if it is not the Electoral Commission’s responsibility, who is charged with it? It seems obvious that it should be the Electoral Commission, which has extended its responsibilities during the past few years. As my noble friend said, the commission now has on it political party representatives, including my noble friend Lord Kennedy, who understand what they are talking about in relation to these matters. The Electoral Commission should therefore be able to take on this extra responsibility.

The amendment would put a constraint on the Electoral Commission to certify that all reasonable steps had been taken and on government not to be able to progress until such certification was obtained. I hope that the Minister will understand the importance of getting as many people on the register as possible.

We are going now through a series of issues which ought not to be party political and on which we all ought to find common ground. The noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord McNally, are very old friends of mine—the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has been for many years, and the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, used to be one of my constituents—but I somehow get the impression that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, listens more to the arguments that are being put forward, picks them up and responds to them. I hope that that is a presage for his feeling able, on some of these issues which are not really party political, to say, “I’ll have a look at that. I’ll pick it up. I’ll go back and talk with my colleagues about it and then come back at Report stage”. The coalition Government would find the passage of this Bill, which has been difficult for them, a lot easier if they were to do that. I know that that is difficult for two reasons: first, because there is a coalition, with differences of opinion between the two parties, I am led to believe, on certain aspects of the Bill. I have no inside information—the noble Lord, Lord McNally, is shaking his head—but I still think that there might be some differences of opinion. I know that that takes some time. I know also that Ministers in the other place have principal responsibility for this; Ministers in the Lords do not necessarily have ministerial and departmental responsibility and they therefore have to consult with Ministers in another place.

The third thing that will make it difficult for them is that there are two departments dealing with the Bill. There is the Ministry of Justice in which the noble Lord, Lord McNally, is a Minister, and the Deputy Prime Minister within the Cabinet Office also has responsibility. There are some differences of accountability there. Notwithstanding that—I am using this amendment but it will come up a lot in others and I hope I can be excused special pleading in relation to Amendment 89C—I hope that the noble and learned Lord will not just come up with an argument against everything that we put forward. I hope that as time goes on and we go through the Bill this week, next week and the week after that, on issue after issue, he will look at this carefully. If he gives it that kind of positive response, he will find a lot more sympathy on this side of the House.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

There are fruitful lines of discussion here for Report stage, and if they can lead to unanimity across the Chamber—which is what I sense we are moving towards—let us look forward to that day.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, I struggled through the snow from Scotland on the encouragement —indeed, almost the insistence—of the noble Lord, Lord McNally. He is not here now, in fact, but he would not have managed to sit through much of this Committee without my presence, so I thought I had better be here. I thought I would just say a few words now, having made it. However, I hesitated to stand because so many Members opposite, particularly on the Conservative Benches, must have things to say on this. I shall sit down now if they want to get up, because I am sure that they are not the greatest enthusiasts for the system of voting that we are considering in this Bill and discussing, to some extent, in this amendment.

I am not sure which is the best description of the Bill. I think it was my noble friend Lord Rooker who described it as a Faustian pact. I thought at the time that he said that it was a Foulkesian pact, and I was going to deny that I had anything to do with it.