Queen’s Speech

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Lloyd of Berwick

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

My Lords, I agree wholeheartedly with what the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has said about the volume of legislation. Twenty-five years ago the Acts passed in a single year could be contained in a single handy volume, which, as I have said before, one could, if so disposed, read in bed. Today, a year’s statutes can be contained only in five massive volumes, one of which I can scarcely lift. We have come to believe that legislation will solve every problem but we are wrong about that.

I wish to touch on two separate points, the first of which has not been mentioned so far. Therefore, like the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, mine may come as something of a relief from Lords reform. I refer to intercept evidence and whether or not such evidence should be admitted in court in order to convict terrorists and others accused of serious crime. The basic facts on that issue are agreed. We are the only country in the world to exclude such evidence. I have argued that the ban should be lifted since a report I wrote on the subject of terrorism in 1996. There is little doubt in my mind that the ban would have been lifted years ago but for the resistance of MI5 and GCHQ. Their case has always been that the lifting of the ban would prejudice their main purpose in life, which is gathering intelligence. However, in 2006, the movement for reform started to gain pace. Several very powerful reports were produced in that year by Justice, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and others.

In addition, there was a debate in this House in March 2007 on a Private Member’s Bill that I had introduced. One noble Lord was kind enough to say in the course of that debate that I had “demolished” the case for maintaining the ban. The noble Lord in question was none other than the noble Lord, Lord Henley—speaking, it has to be said, at some length on behalf of the Conservative Party in reply to the debate. He was teased with having changed his mind from what he had thought before. He replied—I thought with some dignity—that it was legitimate for the Conservative Party to change its mind, and that that is what it had done. I can only hope that the Conservative Party will not change its mind back again.

As a result of increasing pressure for reform, the Government appointed a committee of privy counsellors, known as the Chilcot committee—which might perhaps be referred to as the Chilcot committee number 1, to distinguish it from the Chilcot committee number 2, which has still not reported. That was in July 2007. In January 2008, the Chilcot committee came down in favour of lifting the ban, provided that certain conditions were met. The Government accepted that report and asked the committee, in effect, to get on with it. Its favoured approach came to be known as public interest immunity-plus. This has many advantages, not least that it will be consistent with the operational requirements of MI5 and GCHQ.

Then, in 2009, there came a bolt from the blue. The preferred approach was abandoned—not because of pressure from MI5 and GCHQ but because of certain legal difficulties that had come to light. The preferred approach, it was said, was not “legally viable” because of a decision of the Fourth Section of the European Court of Human Rights in a case from Finland. Since then, we have heard nothing from the Chilcot committee. On 15 December last year, I asked what was happening, and the only explanation given, again by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, was that there had recently been changes in the membership of the committee. That was five months ago. There has still been no word from the committee.

My view, for what it is worth, is that back in 2009 the Chilcot committee took a wrong turning. It gave much too much weight to the decision in the European Court of Human Rights on the Finnish case and, in order to test the legal position and get things moving again, I hope to obtain leave next week to introduce another Private Member’s Bill along similar lines as my earlier one. I am aware that the Chilcot committee has been advised by an independent QC of great distinction. I have been allowed to see that advice but, since it is concerned largely with legal matters, I hope it might be possible—with his consent of course—that that advice be made generally available before the Second Reading of my Bill, so that we can all understand the nature of the legal difficulties that are said to have arisen, and perhaps help to resolve them.

I come now to my second point, which, needless to say, is on Lords reform. I suggest that I might have something slightly different to say on that. My views have remained the same as they were in 2011, in 2007 and, even earlier than that, I think, in 2002, when we first debated this matter. I am against a mainly elected House and the 80 per cent option, but I am equally against a wholly appointed House. I am in favour of a partially elected House, such as that which was favoured by the royal commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, 12 years ago, soon after the first-stage reform was completed.

The authors of the alternative report now call for a constitutional convention; and that call has been echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and my noble friend Lord Elystan-Morgan. The request is that the constitutional convention should,

“consider, in depth, the issues involved in further reform of the House of Lords, and to bring forward proposals”.

However, that is exactly what the royal commission did 12 years ago. All the crucial issues that would now be considered by the constitutional convention, summarised carefully for us in paragraph 5.54 of the alternative report—including, above all, the impact of House of Lords reform on the House of Commons; in other words, the primacy question that has occupied so much of our time—were considered at length and in detail by the royal commission. It offered a solution. What purpose could then be served by having 12 years later another royal commission under a different name?

So far as I am aware, there was no reference to Wakeham in the alternative report; which is hardly surprising because there was no reference to Wakeham in the Joint Committee report—or, indeed, in the Leader’s speech when he opened this debate on Thursday. This is, of course, because the Joint Committee was asked to report on the Bill and nothing but the Bill. Thus the proceedings of the Joint Committee have, if anything, tended to polarise divergent views, as we have seen, rather than find a way through. In retrospect, it may not have been the best approach.

What, then, did the royal commission recommend? It proposed that 15% of the House should be elected by proportional representation to represent the regions. In a House of 450 Members, that would produce 65 elected Members. Alternatively, with 20% elected Members, we would have 90 such Members—by a happy coincidence, exactly the number of hereditary Peers whose presence among us is still so welcome, but is also so anomalous. Nobody, I think, would argue that the presence of 90 elected Members would present a challenge to the powers of the House of Commons—more especially given that the constituencies that they would represent would be so large that they would not have to face, like Members of the House of Commons, their constituents every weekend. The primacy of the Commons would remain as it is under the existing conventions. There would be no need for a written constitution or for a concordat between the two Houses. On that view, there is nothing wrong with Clause 2, except—this is vital—that the Government have got their numbers wrong.

Moreover, a limited influx of elected Members would actually improve the quality of our debates. Here, I know that I shall be treading on thin ice, but, at present, there are in the House too many ex-Members of Parliament. In the recent two-day debate on Lords reform at the end of April, there were 37 speakers in all, of whom 22 were ex-MPs and 11 were hereditaries. We can do better than that. I accept, of course—

[Lord Grocott]

Perhaps I may ask the noble and learned Lord, given that he said that there were too many ex-MPs in this House, whether he thinks there are too many lawyers.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

There are always too many lawyers, but I maintain that we could do with fewer former MPs and perhaps more elected Peers in the way that the royal commission suggested.

I accept that the Wakeham proposals, which I support, rested on a compromise—of course they did—but you will never, ever reach consensus on a disputed issue unless there is compromise on both sides. Therefore, I beg the Government to think again about the Wakeham proposals before introducing a further Bill, as I hope they will do. A 20% elected House would of course fall far short of what the Deputy Prime Minister wants but it would at least represent a step in the right direction and as such should, I suggest, be accepted by the Labour Party in the House of Commons. As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, mentioned, it would make the House of Lords more representative but without challenging the primacy of the House of Commons.

If a Bill along those lines were introduced in the House of Commons, I would expect it to get through and, if it did, I hope that it would be accepted by your Lordships in this House. Surely that would be far better than forcing the present Bill down our throats by having resort to the Parliament Acts. Let us do something now and something more than what is contained in the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel. Above all, let us not defer the decision by appointing another royal commission under a different name.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Lloyd of Berwick

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I listened to the Leader of the House many times when he was Leader of the Opposition and was often almost seduced by his oratory. However, that was not the case on this occasion and I do not think that it was a speech that he will be entirely thrilled about, because it was based almost entirely on suggesting that my noble and learned friend’s argument was spurious, shallow, pointless and simply and avowedly party-political. The noble Lord is nodding, so he is obviously confirming that. I want to comment initially on two points that he made, which are important considerations for the rest of us during this debate.

The noble Lord said that we know “that this Bill is on a tight timetable”. In other words, it has been guillotined quite severely in the Commons; that; of course, is what he hopes to be able to achieve in the Lords. I simply ask him: who is responsible for this Bill being on a tight timetable? The Government have made that decision in the full light of all the information. It is also, presumably, the reason why the Government say that it was not even possible to have pre-legislative scrutiny on this huge constitutional Bill—one which I think the party leader of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has described as being part of the most important reforms since 1832, with characteristic understatement. Your Lordships need not worry; I am coming to hybridity. I am sure that the noble Lord will deal with that as seriously as I am dealing with the comments that he has been making.

The noble Lord enunciated what I thought a unique constitutional principle—at least as far as I have heard in this House; it was an astonishing one to come from the Leader of the House—in which it is not this House’s business to consider issues which have not been voted on or considered in the other place. He has commented on it enough times to make me realise that this means that large swathes of business under this coalition Government will not be possible for us to discuss, because he knows perfectly well that in the other place large sections of business are frequently not discussed and not voted upon. That is due to timetabling, which obviously took place under the previous Government as it does under this one. But please let us not pretend that he is making a serious constitutional argument that we must not consider it ourselves because it has not been considered by the other place.

I come to a severely practical point on the issue of hybridity, which was partly touched upon in an earlier exchange. No one could seriously argue that this particular clause of this particular schedule did not have characteristics of hybridity: “Preserved constituencies” is all it says. It then lists two constituencies with no explanation whatsoever of why they are preserved. I put this as a procedural point to the Leader of the House; I would have thought that there is clearly no reason on earth why any other constituency that wants to be added to the preserved list should not be able to make out a case for doing so. There are 648 parliamentary constituencies not covered in the preserved list. I shall certainly be trying to persuade this House that Telford is a constituency that should not be interfered with. It is a fast-growing town in the West Midlands, whose population changes much more rapidly than other constituencies. I put only that point to him. I will not develop the argument now—it would not be to the specific point of hybridity—other than to point out that these amendments, should they be tabled, could not possibly be grouped because the nature of the hybridity means that each case is individual and is unrelated to all the other constituencies. That is the basis on which these two constituencies are put down.

If, for the sake of argument, many amendments were tabled making the case for individual constituencies, it could not then be sustained, even if you concede that this clause is hybrid, that it was only a small part of the Bill, as some of the proponents of this not being a hybrid Bill are advancing. If, during the passage of the Bill through this House, other constituencies were added to the “exempt” clause, it would become a much bigger part of the Bill. I put it to the noble Lord the Leader of the House that these are serious questions; the case is certainly serious so far as I am advancing it. There is hardly a constituency in Britain that could not put its case on the basis of its boundaries, its communities and their relationship of the communities to each other.

In passing, we have to acknowledge that all local contribution to this by way of public inquiry, which has always been the case in the past, is being bypassed too; as the noble Lord the Leader of the House has told us, the Bill is under a very tight schedule. I acknowledge that there are different opinions on this, but it is not worthy simply to use the characteristics of normal parliamentary banter, which I enjoy as much as anyone else, in responding to a very serious Motion that my noble and learned friend has tabled which, on the noble Lord’s own admission, will delay the Bill, if that is what it does, by only a week and a half. On a matter of such constitutional importance—the Government’s words, not mine, although on this occasion I agree with them—should we really not be able to delay the Bill by that time in order to establish where there is clear and serious doubt, although the noble Lord will no doubt be able to persuade enough people to his point of view? We should at least have the opportunity of dealing with that question in the proper way by referring it in the way that my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer is suggesting.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

In a brief intervention some months ago, I acquired an entirely undeserved and unsought reputation for being an expert on hybridity. On that occasion, though, I detected what I thought to be a serious issue that needed to be considered in the way described. On this occasion, I can detect no such issue. I have listened with great care to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has said. I accept that the threshold is a low one, a point that I made on the previous occasion, but an elector’s interest in voting is not a private interest in the sense described in the Standing Orders. There can therefore be no question of treating one private interest differently from another. I am saying, only in a roundabout way, exactly what I believe the Clerk of the Public Bill Office has himself said in the letter that has been mentioned.

Before I am asked, I shall say that I have not read—