House of Lords Reform

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, in welcoming as I certainly do the fact that the usual channels have set aside a day for this report, I ask for one further service to the House from the Leader of the House. He has already referred to the fact that there are actually two reports. There is an alternative view in an alternative report signed by 12 of the 25 members of the committee. If my maths is correct that means that if, you exclude the chairman, that is half of the committee—in my personal opinion, the best half of the committee. Can the Leader of the House ensure that the alternative report, as well as the full report, is made available in the Printed Paper Office to all Members? I do not think that facility is available at present.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

Can the Leader of the House confirm that the House is to prorogue on Monday?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, may I just ask another question? While this is a matter of great importance, there are other matters. Will the Leader of the House confirm that it will be a full day’s sitting on Monday and that the debate will be preceded by Oral Questions and that if there are any urgent matters that Members wish to raise they can raise them under the normal procedures of the House?

Health and Social Care Bill

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am rapidly becoming an expert on privilege, which I was not expecting a few moments ago. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, because he explained with his experience the process of deciding privilege in another place, which I repeat is not a matter for me as a member of the Government. Nor is it a matter for the Government or a Member of this House. It is something that has been jealously guarded by the House of Commons for many years.

My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, raise the same question, which is how we could be pre-warned. I am not sure how that process could take place because we do not know what the Government will lose or what amendments the House of Lords will press to a Division. I dare say that we could. I am thinking as I am speaking, which is always a dangerous thing to do from the Dispatch Box, about a system where amendments might be deemed to be likely to invoke privilege by the House of Commons. But I suspect we can probably do that ourselves. Maybe my noble friend Lord Elton was correct in saying that amendments that mean a substantial increase in expenditure of public spending are more likely to invoke privilege than those that do not. Perhaps that is the way to go.

I wonder if we are profiting in continuing this debate now. Would it not be better to wait until the Welfare Reform Bill returns from the House of Commons with its amendments to see if privilege has been invoked? There is then a well trodden process in this House. I do not think that the House wastes its time by debating the issues. We do not insist on all the amendments that we pass in this House. We sent them back to the House of Commons to get the Government and the House of Commons to think again. If they have thought again and invoked financial privilege, we should let the matter rest.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords, I have listened to the noble Lords, Lord Martin of Springburn and the Leader of the House. They both claim, each in their different way, that this is a wholly independent procedure. Are we really to believe that one morning the Speaker gets up and says, “Eureka, I’m going to decide whether this is financial privilege or not”? Who initiates the process? It is hard to believe there was not a nudge and a wink from the Government to try to save their own blushes.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, is not the reality that when the Government have run out of arguments and patience they ask the Speaker if he will invoke financial privilege? They cross their fingers and hope that he will do so. Do this Government actually want the House of Lords to operate as a revising Chamber or not?

House of Lords: Reform

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, there is no doubt that this is an effective House and a very good value House and therefore I hold to a view that I have made public in the past: that a reformed House, directly elected and with fully salaried Members, would cost more than the current House. However, it would have a legitimacy, and a power and authority, which this House does not have. I remind the House, as I have done many times, that at the last general election all three main parties carried a commitment in their manifestos to reform this House.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords—

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

Should not addiction to constitutional reform be treated with the same bracing cure as addiction to welfare benefits? Will the Government set a cap on the amount that ordinary, decent, hard-working British citizens are to be required to pay to support the constitutional reform dependency of the Liberal Democrats?

Procedure of the House (Proposal 1)

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, I declare an interest in these matters. I am a member of the Procedure Committee, a former Leader of this House and the only living person who has been Leader both of this House and of another place—in fact, only the fifth person in British history who has ever held both jobs. I say all that because I think what I am going to say will be pretty disagreeable to a great many people in the House, and I thought that if I said it now, at least they could not accuse me of a lack of experience. My view is that proposal 1 is grossly unfair on the Lord Speaker, is bad for the House and would be the end of self-regulation.

First, the proposal is bad for the House. The working practices report seems to be based on a number of misconceptions. The Leader’s role is not to make decisions but to advise the House of what he thinks the will of the House is, and that expression of view can of course be challenged. The Leader, as is clear from the proposal before us, advises only which group or party he suggests the House may like to hear. That, of course, leaves a big gap regarding what happens, as is often the case, when two Peers from the same party rise to speak.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Order!

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

A document was issued by the Government Whips Office saying that the Lord Speaker should call sides at Question Time, but the Order Paper talks about calling groups. Which is correct?

[Lord Wakeham]

I have no idea. I am speaking only on proposal 1; that is all I know about. I have had many years’ experience of whipping and I consider that, like other things, it is best done in private.

House of Lords: Reform

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, no, I am not. I have not read Mr Benn’s no doubt splendid article, but given that the Recess starts later on today, perhaps it should be required reading for all noble Lords.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords, why is the Leader of the House so reticent about telling us how many representations he has actually had? He said many—is that 10, 20, 100, 500, 1,000? Will he take this opportunity to correct his Freudian slip when he said that House of Lords reform was not important?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, that was well spotted by the noble Lord. Of course the issue is extremely important and something that this Government are very committed to dealing with. Since the general election, we have received over 180 letters from members of the public. Since the publication of the White Paper, we have received over 30 pieces of correspondence. The key point is that the vast majority of these letters call for a change in the way that this House is run.

Japan and the Middle East

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, is it not the case that—

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

There are a lot of people trying to intervene. There is room provided that everyone is brief.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords, while I welcome the statement from the Arab League and do not in any sense diminish its importance, does the Leader of the House think that there is any real prospect of countries which are part of the Arab League and which have the military capacity taking part in the no-fly zone operation? Does he think that seeking such support would be a help or a hindrance to getting a resolution through the Security Council?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, there are members of the Arab League that would have the capability to involve themselves in policing a no-fly zone, but I sense that we are a long way from that at this stage. There is still a diplomatic process to be completed of resolutions in the United Nations, but there is certainly no bar to making the co-operation across nations and alliances as wide and as deep as possible.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I have no desire to irritate the noble Lord or, indeed, his noble friends, but the point is that the three main political parties each had a manifesto at the last general election which was broadly in agreement. The Deputy Prime Minister took the view that it was important to bring those political parties together in drafting the Bill. When we get to the creation of the Joint Committee of both Houses, the noble Lord and others of his views—not just on the Cross Benches, but elsewhere—will quite rightly be fully consulted and represented on that committee.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

Does the noble Lord agree that the path that he has now undertaken means that the House will be presented with the choice of the three political parties? It is a bit like Henry Ford: “You can have any choice you like, so long as it’s mine”.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, in a way that is how it works in Parliament. Governments propose legislation and then Parliament disposes of it in whichever way it wants—and that will happen. I am sure that what the Government publish and what comes out of this committee at the end of the year is not where we will be at the end of the day. This is the start of the process. It will be up to the two Houses to set up the Joint Committee; it is not the job of government. My noble friend Lord McNally, the Deputy Leader, and I will make the case for the inclusion of all strands in this matter.