Salisbury Incident Update

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord will know that of course the Government and the police are aware of other allegations, but I am afraid I cannot be drawn into them. The police obviously have operational independence to investigate criminal activity, and we do not direct police investigations. It is up to the police to decide whether to investigate, but I think that all of us believe that at the moment the focus should be on the events in Salisbury and making sure that we get to the bottom of that. We want to make sure that we deal with those who have carried out this appalling crime and that they are held to account.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, in associating myself particularly with the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, can I ask the noble Baroness to agree that robust language from the Prime Minister has not always been followed by robust action, and that it is better to have calibrated and effective action which genuinely deters President Putin than to seek tomorrow’s headlines?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I certainly agree with that. I would say that we have responded robustly and proportionately to Russian provocations over the last decade, from the murdering of Mr Litvinenko to pursuing illegal wars in Ukraine and Syria and constant aggression on the internet. At every stage, we have taken the appropriate actions and encouraged international partners to do the same.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, this Bill offers possibly the last guaranteed parliamentary opportunity to change the Government’s Brexit strategy, prevent a hard Irish land border and protect all the precious gains of the Good Friday agreement. To achieve that, since the DUP has quite understandably insisted that Northern Ireland must not have a separate constitutional status from the rest of the UK, surely not just Northern Ireland but the whole of the UK must stay in the single market and the customs union.

As the CBI, supported by the TUC, has made crystal clear, our businesses do not want to be cut off from their largest markets, or from the EU’s regulatory bodies that guarantee our access to them, in return for promises of jam tomorrow in far-flung emerging markets. UK services exports to Europe are around 60% higher than those to the US, and twice those exported to Asia. The 11 countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, favoured as an alternative by Brexiteers, account for only 7% of our trade, while Germany alone accounts for 11%.

As for the claims that, once freed from the EU, the UK can negotiate preferential trade deals with third countries, the truth is that we already have 60 such deals through the EU that unless renegotiated in time, which is highly unlikely, will actually cease to apply after Brexit—that is, by March 2019. Furthermore, with a market of over 500 million people, the EU often negotiates trade deals that are far more comprehensive in scope than those achieved by individual countries outside the EU, so the likelihood of the UK getting even better terms with third countries than we already have through the EU is minimal. Remember that many non-EU countries, such as Japan, invest here because of the level of access that they currently have from the UK into that larger EU market; access that their UK-based companies will lose once we are no longer in the single market and the customs union.

Trade deals take years to negotiate. They are usually designed to secure the convergence of standards and regulatory regimes, not divergence, which is what Brexiteers want in relation to the EU. Moreover, because of the EU’s internal budget timetable, Brussels is now suggesting that the transition period should finish at the end of 2020, after just 21 months. There could then be a dramatic cliff edge, with queues of lorries stretching for miles in Kent and gridlock on the roads of Northern Ireland. This is the true prospect for Brexit Britain, not the fantasies of the Government and the Brexiteers.

Another government fantasy is more ominous. No one who really understands the complexities and dangers of politics on the island of Ireland seriously believes that keeping the border open can be achieved without Northern Ireland staying in the same single market and customs union as the Irish Republic. The 8 December agreement requires the UK to retain “full regulatory alignment” with the EU to prevent a hard border with customs posts and security checks. Meanwhile British Ministers, divided over what was actually agreed, waffle about a high-tech frictionless border. They remain in denial about the reality that, for the European Union, protection of the integrity of the single market—which is a legal construct, not a political arrangement—means that you cannot be half in, half out.

It is important to recall that the 1998 Belfast Good Friday agreement, and the peace process which followed, was explicitly designed to depoliticise the Irish border by making it completely open. Any restriction whatever would completely undermine the agreement, which, by the way, formed an international treaty with the Irish Republic, recognised by the European Union. Border posts, customs personnel and surveillance technology could provide sitting targets for dissident republican paramilitaries to rerun the IRA’s border campaign of 60 years ago, also provoking the reactivation of their loyalist paramilitary counterparts to defend Ulster.

Worryingly, Dublin’s and London’s interpretations of the December first-phase deal are very different. The EU sees it as binding Northern Ireland and the whole of the UK to the EU’s regulatory domain; the UK sees it as merely an outline containing work in progress, with the Cabinet divided and unable to resolve the implications. The contradiction is that EU rules do not permit frictionless trade while Northern Ireland—and by extension the UK—is outside the customs union and the single market. Remember too that the Good Friday Belfast agreement is not only of constitutional and institutional importance; it requires a shared regulatory structure for cross-border movement, trade and co-operation.

Surely our duty in your Lordships’ House is therefore to act over this Bill for the whole of the UK and not just for part of the Conservative Party. Surely we have to persuade the Government to stay in the single market and the customs union to protect our economy and, above all, to protect the Good Friday agreement and avoid the catastrophe of a hard Irish border. Everyone says that they do not want such a border, but we are accelerating remorselessly towards it, as long as the Government remain so dogmatically rigid about the terms of Brexit.

House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to make just two broad arguments: about the imperative for reform now, and the legitimacy of the committee whose recommendations we are invited to endorse by taking note of its report today.

I will deal first with the legitimacy of the committee and its report. With the commendably active support of the Lord Speaker, your Lordships’ House established a fully representative Committee to look at reforms to deal with our increasingly embarrassing, ballooning size. Collectively, each major party and Cross-Benchers determined who should sit on it and who chaired it; it is our committee. Some colleagues have questioned details or specifics in the report and, yes, there are arguments for special pleading on this or that detail. Of course Members will find reason—I trust not excuse—in each bit to criticise the whole, but surely we all have to accept that the whole package hangs together or falls together. It is most ingeniously interconnected. Surely the point is that reducing the size has always been fiendishly complex, and that the committee has done an amazing job in solving the hitherto seemingly insoluble.

Secondly, I will talk about the imperative to act now. Weight watchers have shown that the best way to tackle a problem of excess is to combine personal responsibility with collective resolve and mutual support. The alternative—drastic surgery—involves unnecessary risk, no guarantee of success and an unpredictable outcome. A Commons Select Committee, having already begun considering the matter, stands ready to report but awaits the conclusion of your Lordships’ House. The media are also waiting to pounce. Newspapers, MPs and Ministers have already made threats over Brexit, which will doubtless increase to a crescendo when the withdrawal Bill reaches us early next year.

Yet we all know that things cannot continue as they are. We number over 800 and rising. Commercial properties are commandeered in the vicinity at great expense to provide us with additional offices. Through no fault of our own, we have become not so much an embarrassment but, many say, a scandal. At a time of austerity, when everything else is cut, our numbers rise inexorably through no fault of our own—until now.

Until we set up this committee to recommend reform some among your Lordships could argue we were more sinned against than sinners. We did not fill this House to bursting; Prime Ministers did. We did not put ourselves here, others did—although we all agreed with their immense wisdom in choosing each one of us. But all that changed when we, absolutely correctly, decided to establish the committee to solve the problem. That decision—our decision—means the buck stops right here with us in this Chamber today. Find excuses and we will be rightly pilloried. I therefore urge that the recommendations of this report are endorsed and implemented as soon as practicable early in the new year. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Burns, in replying will confirm this and I hope the Lord Speaker, with the party leaders, will also make sure that this happens.

When the committee was first established, I asked one venerable sage on our Benches for a view on the likely outcome. “It will be shelved as reform always has been shelved,” he said with a weary, knowing smile. I trust your Lordships’ House will prove him wrong. Things have reached a point where change is unavoidable. The question is therefore not whether there is change, but who makes it. Either this House takes responsibility or it will pass to the Commons and the Government. Either we reform ourselves or others will reform us.

European Council

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The discussions in relation to us leaving the EU were very constructive. We have now agreed to move on to phase 2 and to start to talk about our future relationship, which is extremely welcome.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the Northern Ireland question was responsible for rescuing the Prime Minister in the first stage of negotiations when she agreed a regulatory alignment on standards and the adjudication of those standards, not just physical controls on the Irish border, within the whole of the UK—that is, the customs union and the single market have to be aligned in order to keep the border open—and now that has been accepted for the transitional talks, what is the point of leaving the single market and the customs union? Does she think that the EU is magically going to give us a better deal by being exactly aligned with the customs union and the single market outside it?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We have always said that the details of how we maintain an open border will be settled in phase 2 of the negotiations, when we agree our future relationship, and that is what we will do. We have also been very clear that alignment is about pursuing the same objectives, but achieving this could be done through different means. It does not require regulatory harmonisation.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, critics ask what right have I, an unelected Peer, to oppose the Bill or even to seek radically to amend it, especially when the Prime Minister is behaving as if she represents only the 52% of citizens who voted to leave. I do not deny that they won, or that the outcome must be respected, but what about the 48% who voted remain? What about Scotland, where independence is threatened, or Northern Ireland, where the peace settlement is threatened? The truth is that the country was split down the middle and it still is. If the Prime Minister were really acting in the national interest, she would be representing remainers, too. She would be pursuing a one-nation Brexit, not a partisan, hard, right-wing Brexit. However, I fully understand and respect that, for many MPs and noble Lords, the vast majority of whom, like I did, campaigned and voted to remain, the Bill is agonising and they feel duty-bound to act in line with the referendum result. However, for me, a one-nation Brexit would, as a minimum, mean protecting jobs and prosperity by remaining in the single market—in line, by the way, with the last Conservative election manifesto—albeit with a deal on movement of labour to and from the EU being linked to having a job, and on stopping or returning those who do not have one.

A one-nation Brexit would also mean guaranteeing a completely open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, with no security checks and no controls, physical or electronic. Otherwise, the peace process could unravel.

Cutting us off from our biggest market, where nearly half our trade is done, will have devastating consequences for the economy, jobs and millions of individual citizens’ lives. The detailed terms of the divorce are likely to be serious. There will be a cost, estimated at between €40 billion and €60 billion, for the UK to fulfil its existing obligations. The future relocation of the two EU institutions located in the UK, the European Banking Authority and the European Medicines Agency, will lead to a direct loss of highly skilled jobs and an exodus of companies located here which value proximity to these agencies, as the Japanese Government have warned.

Failure fully to protect property, contract, pension and residence rights under European Union law, which we, as EU citizens, have acquired, as well as social security, healthcare and mutual recognition of qualifications, could lead to the repatriation of an estimated 1.25 million British migrants from other European Union countries, both retired and working. Financial services, which provide 11% of Treasury revenue and 10% of our GDP, risk losing their “passport” to the EU of regulatory equivalency, already leading to the banks announcing plans to move jobs to rival financial centres, such as Frankfurt, Dublin, Paris or New York. EasyJet has drawn up plans to leave its Luton headquarters and relocate to the continent, as UK-based airlines risk losing access to the EU’s deregulated aviation market after Brexit. The car industry fears crippling tariffs, while the UK aerospace industry, critically including Airbus in Wales, also fears that European contracts may be at risk. These industries are key to maintaining the UK’s tax base and skilled workforce and are crucial to the regional economies where they are based. Is this really the outcome that voters in these vital sectors wanted to see? Surely not. They voted to leave the EU to take control, not to lose control.

Almost universally overlooked is that the right to free movement has never been unconditional, even under current European Union rules. In fact, the UK already has a number of effective tools available to it to manage migration from the EU, if it wishes to do so. Other European Union countries, such as Belgium, send thousands of people back to their own country every year; for example, if they are not in work. Rather than turning our backs on our largest export market in the EU, would not a more constructive approach have been to try to agree a new interpretation of free movement of labour; namely, that this should apply only to the 60% of EU nationals with offers of employment from British employers who need them?

We now learn that if we cannot get the EU trade deal we want, the Government want to jump into what you might describe as a “Trump Brexit” to make Britain a low-tax haven with lower labour and environmental regulation, in an attempt to attract foreign firms once we have left the EU. That would also mean continued shrinking of the state, even more savage cuts in public services and even greater inequality, hitting our poorest and most vulnerable citizens the hardest. That would be a betrayal of almost everything I have fought for in both Houses of Parliament for more than a quarter of a century. Despite our party leader’s three-line Whip to march through the Lobbies with the Conservatives for this Trump Brexit, and as a matter of principle and conscience, I will vote against the Bill if the Government do not accept key cross-party amendments that have been tabled.

Informal European Council

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Certainly, the fact that the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister of Spain had constructive discussions is very positive. As I said, it shows that there is good will on all sides to try to resolve this matter as quickly as possible.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not striking how often government Ministers say how very, terribly, extremely influential the Prime Minister is? I do not recall that ever being said about Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or, for that matter, Margaret Thatcher. They always were very influential.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am telling you she is influential because you are asking me.

European Council

Lord Hain Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am sure that we will find over the next couple of years that there will be lots of debates about many of these things, but what is very clear to me is that, once Article 50 is triggered, that is the formal start of the exit process. Unless an agreement is reached between the United Kingdom and the other member states in advance of the end of the two-year period—or at the end, if there is unanimous agreement among those member states with the United Kingdom that it should be extended—once that process starts, it will be completed at the end of two years.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

Does the noble Baroness agree that yesterday the Prime Minister was the first in Britain’s history to attend a European Council without a clue as to what the British agenda was? Given that his possible, perhaps likely, successor Boris Johnson wrote a newspaper article on Monday saying that we needed to stay in the single market, only for his aide to say yesterday that he was too tired when he wrote it and did not really mean that, and given that on the doorstep in south Wales, as I can testify, people voted leave because immigration was going to be reduced—a promise also reneged on by the leave leaders—is there not now an irrefutable case for this House to consider a referendum at some point in future after the deal has been agreed, because it is very evident that people voted last Thursday without any idea what was actually going to happen to them?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

We are in a situation where, clearly, this Government campaigned for our recommendation to the British people, which was to remain in the European Union, but a majority of the British people rejected that position and decided that we should exit. This Prime Minister is working hard, between now and the point at which he is replaced, to provide as much as he can by way of factual information so that the next Prime Minister is in a strong position, as soon as possible, to outline the kind of relationship that the United Kingdom should have with the European Union. I have explained that the Article 50 process will be the formal trigger process between the United Kingdom and the European Union. As for the point at which other events will occur, once there is that clarity on the type of relationship that the next Prime Minister wishes the United Kingdom to have with the European Union—when that is presented and other contributions, whether from Parliament or anyone else, are made—I cannot say at the moment, as that will be something that the next Prime Minister has to decide.

European Union: United Kingdom Renegotiation

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for his comments and his support. I agree that people will consider how to vote based on their view of the success of renegotiation—although I keep having to preface my remarks by saying that the Prime Minister has not yet reached an agreement with Europe; as he said in his Statement, he has not yet ruled anything out as regards the next steps. Notwithstanding the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, about a higher level, I am sure that we will see lots of debates about the detail. Some things will be of particular concern to certain people, while for many others there will be an instinctive reaction to the debate rather than attention to the detail, and we will have to cover all people’s interests in this important matter.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, whereas British membership of the European Union costs in net terms about £10 billion now, if we left, presumably we would still want to be a member of the single market. After all, half our national trade is there, but on the Norway model—the only rational basis for that membership—that would cost about £7.5 billion. Will the Government explain that over the coming weeks? Admittedly it is less, but not that much less, and we would be bound by future rules determined in Brussels, without our Ministers accountable to our Parliament and our elected parliamentarians accountable to their voters in Britain being able to influence them. That does not seem much of a bargain—we would pay but have no say. Does the Minister agree?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I agree with the noble Lord’s analysis. When we get to the campaigning stage, it will be important to help people to understand that there are most definitely alternative models, but that they come with costs and disadvantages that people will need to be aware of if those are the routes they want to pursue.

Valedictory Debate

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, having served for 24 years, may I commend your role as in my view the greatest reforming Speaker in memory, by making the Commons immensely more user and citizen-friendly, and especially for the way in which you have enhanced Back-Bench influence? I thank all the Commons staff, including our excellent Serjeant at Arms and especially the Doorkeepers, with whom I have had a specially close relationship since I invited them in to share a few bottles of wine—South African wine—in the Leader of the Commons’ office.

I thank my constituents in Neath and Neath constituency Labour party for their tremendous loyalty and support. I was a Pretoria boy, but I am proud to have become a Neath man. When I first arrived I was shown into a local primary school, Godre’r Graig school in the Swansea valley: “This is a very important person to meet you, class.” A little boy in the front row put up his hand and asked, “Do you play rugby for Neath?” Clearly, he had his priorities right.

I have been privileged and fortunate to have the very best friend anybody could have in Howard Davies of Seven Sisters, what he calls God’s own country, in the Dulais valley in Neath. I first met him in February 1990, a former miner who was lodge secretary at Blaenant colliery during the heart-rending year-long strike in 1984-85. My first agent and office manager, Howard has always been completely loyal and supportive, but privately frank and direct—priceless virtues which I commend to anyone in national politics.

Having come from a world of radical protest and activism, I never expected to be a Minister for 12 years. It began when Alastair Campbell unexpectedly called and said, “Tony wants to make an honest man of you.” Some former comrades on the left were disparaging, but my response was, “I’ve never been an all-or-nothing person. I’m an all-or-something person.” I am proud of many of the achievements of our last Labour Government, some of which I helped a little with, including bringing peace to Northern Ireland and devolution to Wales.

However, there was a tabloid columnist who described me as the “second most boring member of the Cabinet”. My right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), the former Chancellor, came top. At least that was more civil than the editor of Sunday Express at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle, when I led campaigns to disrupt whites-only South African rugby and cricket tours. He said: “It would be a mercy for humanity if this unpleasant little creep were to fall into a sewage tank. Up to his ankles. Head first.” That was nothing compared with the letter bomb I received, fortunately with a technical fault in it, or being put on trial for conspiracy at the Old Bailey for disrupting South African sports tours, or being charged with a bank theft that I knew nothing about, which was later discovered to have been set up by South African agents.

Despite serving as an MP and Cabinet Minister, and remaining a Privy Councillor, I have not changed my belief that progressive change comes only through a combination of extra-parliamentary and parliamentary action. We know that from the struggles of the Chartists, the suffragettes, the early trade unionists, anti-apartheid protesters, the Anti-Nazi League and Unite Against Fascism activists confronting groups such as the National Front and the British National party, and Greenpeace activists inspiring fights against climate change.

If I am asked for advice by young people, who often ask me, “Can you tell me how to have a career in politics?” I say, “It’s not about a career; it’s about a mission.” We should never be in it for ourselves, but for our values. For me, these are equality, social justice, equal opportunities, liberty and democracy in a society based on mutual care and mutual support, not the selfishness and greed now so sadly disfiguring Britain. These values underpinned the anti-apartheid struggle and brought me into the Labour party nearly 40 years ago, but nothing I was able to achieve as an MP or a Minister was possible without the support of my family—my wife Elizabeth Haywood, a rock to me, my wonderful sister Sally, her daughter Connie, my sons Sam and Jake, and their mum, my former wife Pat.

Above all, I am grateful to my mother Adelaine and my father Walter, for their values, courage, integrity, morality and principle. My mum when in jail on her own listened to black prisoners screaming in pain. My dad was banned and then deprived of his job. They did extraordinary things, but as Nelson Mandela said, “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others.”

After 50 years in politics some might say it is time to put my feet up, but I have been lucky to have the best father in the world, and he told me in the mid-1960s when I was a teenager living in apartheid South Africa, “If political change was easy, it would have happened a long time ago. Stick there for the long haul.” That is exactly what I will continue to do after leaving this House.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman.

House of Commons Governance

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

But not very often.

The House will note that the recommendation of our report was that the Chairs of both those Committees should be chosen by the Commission itself from the four Back-Bench Members who, in turn, would be elected by the House. However, the motion before the House today proposes a variation to that recommendation, stating that

“without changing the party balance of the Commission as proposed in the report, the recommendations relating to the composition of the Commission be implemented so as to allow the Chairs of both the new Finance Committee and the Administration Committee to be elected to these positions rather than appointed to them by the Commission.”

That change in our recommendation was made after taking account of the views of both the Leader and the shadow Leader of the House. My Committee met informally after it had reported to consider this proposal, and we accepted it, as is clear from the fact that we have signed the motion effectively amending our report.

While the motion does not explicitly say so, it is implicit that these Chairs should be elected by the whole House, whatever prior agreements may have been made about from which party group they should come. I also hope that the Whips on both sides will ensure that these elections are held promptly in the new Parliament. They should not be put at the back of the queue, after departmental Select Committee Chairs, otherwise much time—perhaps three months—will be lost in getting the new governance proposals bedded down.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

May I add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend personally and to all of the Committee, especially as this was a unanimous report? There were differences among Committee members, as I saw when giving evidence. On the question of speed, is that not true of all the recommendations? No doubt he will come on to that in respect of the director general.

[Mr Straw]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention and for his evidence. We did come to the issue from different perspectives, but the fact that this is a unanimous report does not reflect any sense of it coming from a search of the lowest common denominators—rather, the highest common factors. I will come on to the issue of implementation in a moment.

A second reform that we propose to the Commission concerns non-executive members. At the moment, there are external, non-executive members, who have great outside professional experience, who sit on the Management Board, but not on the Commission. We thought that this was a rather eccentric arrangement not consistent with the principles of governance outside, and that it ought to be the other way round. We therefore proposed that two non-executives should sit on the Commission and, in addition, so too would the two senior officials of the House, a matter I shall come on to in a moment.

As I have indicated, the evidence we received showed clearly that the relationship between the Commission and the Management Board was opaque. So alongside the strengthened Commission, the Management Board will be replaced by a streamlined executive committee.

The potentially trickiest issue for us to deal with was the senior leadership of the House service. As the House is well aware, not least from the debate that we had on 10 September and from the evidence that we received, there is a wide range of opinion on this issue. Some favoured the status quo, some wanted a chief executive above the Clerk, some wanted a chief operating officer under the Clerk, and some thought the two functions should be separated entirely, with a Clerk and a chief executive of equal status. We thought hard about this. There are, as we all recognised, advantages and disadvantages to each proposal. In the end the Committee responded to what it heard from staff and from many others by endorsing the objective of a single unified House service.

This was significant because the House service is often portrayed as being divided into parliamentary and non-parliamentary elements. Asserting that the service should be unified is important both for rejecting the perception that some parts of the service are second class, and for emphasising that the primary purpose of the whole service—all parts of it—is to support the House’s parliamentary functions. But we also accepted that there had to be a strengthening of the leadership of those functions and of the hundreds of staff beyond the direct work of the Clerks.

It is not accidental, in our view, that although in the whole time that I have sat in the House there have rarely been any complaints or concerns about the standards of service provided to this House and its Committees in respect of our core functions, there have been myriad complaints about the way our employers—the public—have been treated when they try to get into this place, and from Members about the IT system, room bookings and many aspects of the maintenance of this place.

I have already spoken about leaks in the Members’ Lobby. I hope Mr Speaker will allow me an excursion into the bowels of what was the cell block of the old Canon Row police station, which has housed the House of Commons gym for some decades. My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), the shadow Leader of the House, and I are often to be seen there ensuring that we remain trim and fit. The refurbishment of the Commons’ gym may seem a second-order issue to those who do not use the facility, but for those of us who do, and for the dedicated staff of the gym, the saga of its refurbishment has not been a pretty one—nor, as the weekend’s press indicates, has it enhanced the reputation of Parliament.

Classic and avoidable errors were made in the refurbishment programme, which was due to be finished in early September and has only just been finished. I understand that the costs quadrupled. I know for certain that the specifications were changed and changed again after agreement had been reached with the gym management. It was disruptive in the extreme to us who use it and also to the staff. I thought that I had been able to put cold showers behind me when I left school 50 years ago but, like many other Members, I have had to endure cold showers, or no showers, as late as last week.

On Monday, having spent my two hours in the gym, I came out in anticipation of having a shower, only to discover that in the two hours that I had been working away in the gym, the showers had packed up. Happily, I did not meet any constituents, but other rather surprised Members will have seen me wearing my jacket over my gym kit and carrying the rest of my clothes, on my way to find a shower elsewhere. It is amusing—we are all tolerant of the situation—but it tells a story about why a better grip is needed of such issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Straw]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. We make recommendations about and acknowledge the work that has been done. In recruiting to any senior post, including the Clerk and the director general, we must take full account of the need to improve diversity in all ways in this place.

[Mr Hain]

As a former Leader of the House who dealt with such matters at first hand, I too, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), favoured a separate chief executive, but I understand perfectly, and support, the rationale behind the Committee’s recommendations. The fact that the report is unanimous is important.

May I probe my right hon. Friend on two points? First, traditionalists in the House could take this as an excuse for business as usual. That would be very disappointing in view of the work that the Committee has done and the evidence given to it. Secondly, it is really important that the new director general’s post is advertised soon. Whether an appointment can be made before or after the general election is not for me to say, but it is really important that the person is in post as soon as possible at the start of the new Parliament in order to take us into a new era.

[Mr Straw]

With luck, this report will not be particularly uncomfortable to anybody, but it will involve major change—above all, for traditionalists, if there are such, in this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Straw]

I hope that is the case. Putting the non-executive members on to the Commission, with all their outside experience, should ensure that the input into a longer-term strategy is where it should be, which is ultimately with the Commission.

I want to conclude—

[Mr Hain]

I am really sorry—I do apologise—but my right hon. Friend did not respond on the timing of the advertisement, and I would like him to do that.

[Mr Straw]

I agree with my right hon. Friend on the timing. I was going to make some remarks about that as I concluded.

On the face of it, splitting the current Clerk/chief executive post will mean two salaries in place of one. The House has made commendable progress in reducing the costs of this place by 17% in the past few years. We were very clear that this particular reform would have to be self-financing after the first year, as we say in recommendation 207. How exactly that is to be achieved will be for the new Commission, but achieved it must be.

We make plenty of other recommendations, including on widening the involvement of the Deputy Speakers in non-Chamber issues, clear and published delegations, and improvements in staff development and diversity.

Finally, I turn to implementation. The changes we propose will require amendments to the 1978 Act. Those are minor and uncontroversial. I therefore hope that those on both Front Benches will agree that if the House adopts the motion this afternoon, amending legislation will be introduced rapidly in this Session, with the aim of putting it on the Statute Book before Dissolution at the end of March. There will also need to be changes to Standing Orders. I hope that these too can be secured before the end of March, and I should be grateful for confirmation of that from the Leader of the House. Once those are in place, it is for the Commission to go ahead with this, and I hope that it does so very rapidly indeed.

I conclude by repeating my thanks to my colleagues on the Committee. We all came at our task with different perspectives, but in a fascinating and concentrated period of two months we focused hard, and we have made a set of interlocking recommendations that we believe will greatly strengthen and improve the running of this House, and, above all, the service that we provide to those who put us here. I commend the report to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hague]

We have had absolutely adequate information, Mr Speaker, and I now realise even more how serious these problems have been.

Equally important are the improvements to the governance structures recommended by the Committee. A striking feature of the evidence it took was a sense that the work of the Commission and the Management Board was somewhat disconnected, leading to problems with implementation of decisions and a lack of clarity over strategic direction. I warmly welcome the structural changes to the board and Commission, including overlapping membership, which should produce a more co-ordinated approach and a greater sense that the interests of all those who work in this place are fully represented and served as they should be. I am also pleased to see that the Committee had a keen eye on costs and tailored its recommendations in such a way that they may be cost-neutral within one year of implementation.

Once the House has agreed this motion today, as I hope it will, implementation should follow very quickly. All those involved now have to match the speed and dexterity with which the Committee has acted. It is clearly important that the Clerk of the House is appointed before the Dissolution of Parliament. The Government will play their full part to encourage that. We have provided time quickly for this motion today. I hope that will allow the Commission to meet next week and begin the process of recruiting the Clerk of the House, as well as that of taking forward the other recommendations.

[Mr Hain]

I very much agree with the Leader of the House on the need for the urgent appointment of the Clerk. Could he say something about the need for the speedy appointment of the new director general?

[Mr Hague]

That is important, too, although the right hon. Gentleman will know from reading the report that the recommendation of the Committee is that the Clerk should sit on the selection panel for the selection of the director general, so there is a sequence. That does not prevent us from starting the process of recruiting the director general, but it does mean that one has to come before the other.

[Mr Hain]

I understand that, but there is no reason why the post could not be advertised so that it is out there, the process is started and then a new Clerk can be on the selection panel to get it going.

[Mr Hague]

That is a very fair point. When the Commission meets next week, subject to the motion being approved by the House today, it will be able to consider such things and, indeed, to bear in mind the urgency stressed by the right hon. Gentleman and other Members.

We have already invited the two existing external members of the Management Board to attend Commission meetings as a first step. Indeed, they attended the Commission’s meeting on Monday, so that recommendation has already been provisionally implemented, as announced by the Commission in a written statement to the House yesterday. My right hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), who speaks for the Commission, may wish to elaborate on that. It was the first in a series of periodic updates on process that the Commission has undertaken to make, which in itself was in direct response to one of the Committee’s recommendations.

I have already indicated to the House on an earlier occasion that the Government are working hard to find a way to make the minor legislative changes that are needed to alter the membership of the Commission in the way recommended by the Committee, and to do so quickly. I will make further announcements about that as soon as I can. We will also provide the necessary time requested by the right hon. Member for Blackburn for the House to consider before the Dissolution of Parliament the minor changes to Standing Orders that implementation will require.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I rise to support the motion in the names of the Leader of the House and my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and my own name, to adopt the recommendations of the House of Commons Governance Committee report. If we agree to it, we will begin to deliver a governance structure for this place that will finally be fit for purpose in our rapidly changing world.

Since the publication of the report on 16 December, I have advocated acting on its recommendations quickly. I therefore particularly welcome the speed with which the Leader of the House has acted to ensure that the report was debated today. Should the House endorse the Committee’s recommendations—I hope and believe that it will—it will be incumbent on the House of Commons Commission to act with similar speed. I therefore welcome your decision, Mr Speaker, to schedule a meeting of the Commission on Monday to decide on the next steps in the light of today’s debate. There is every sign that all parts of the House understand the need for speed of implementation. Since the beginning of this debate, everyone has focused on how we can best do that.

All of us are anxious for the House to endorse the report so that we can move quickly to the appointment of a new Clerk of the House, as well as to the commencement of the process to appoint the first director general. That process should at least start before the Dissolution at the end of March. We need to move speedily to appoint people to both posts, although one will unavoidably take slightly longer than the other.

[Mr Hain]

At the risk of sounding boringly repetitive, may I ask whether my hon. Friend sees any reason why the post of director general could not be advertised at the very least before the Dissolution?

[Ms Eagle]

I see absolutely no reason why not. I know that the Commission will, if the House passes the motion, have that issue on its agenda on Monday. I for one—I am not the only one—am anxious to get on with both appointments as speedily as possible.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Does the hon. Lady agree that any advertisement should make it absolutely clear that the director general will have very considerable autonomy in the execution of their duties?

[Mr Hain]

And authority.

[Dr Lewis]

Indeed. That very considerable autonomy was emphasised by the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) in his report and his speech.