House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

My Lords, the last thing I would want to do is delay the Bill in any way. I was shocked recently to discover that this proposal has been debated since the 19th century without being passed. Of course the principle is absolutely right, but I just question whether Amendment 1 is really a very good idea. We talked just now about expenses. Obviously, if we pass the amendment, that conduct, which would have taken place before the Bill came into force, may only be exposed after it came into force. The amendment would make it impossible to deal with that conduct. In other words, the amendment makes it difficult to deal with some of the worst conduct. To use an entirely hypothetical example, if someone committed perjury in a libel case and it took four years for that perjury to be revealed, in the course of which the Bill was passed, the conduct would no longer fall under the Bill. I wonder whether the amendment is quite what we want.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the Opposition fully support the noble Baroness in her endeavours. The noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, raised an interesting point to which the noble Baroness will no doubt respond. There is time between now and Report if clarification is required. I take his point.

The Bill can be fairly assured of passage through your Lordships’ House. The question is, when it gets to the Commons, what help will the Government give it? Without government help, I suspect that it will be very difficult for the Bill to pass, so it is right for me to press the Minister on what the Government’s attitude will be. At Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, helpfully said, as the noble Baroness reminded the House, that the Government have no settled view on the Bill at present. He kindly said that he would take back the speeches and consider with colleagues what response the Government could make. I hope that today he will be able to tell us that the Government are prepared to give this a fair wind in the other place. The other place does not have much work to do; the Government have sent MPs home. They now do Mondays to Wednesdays, so there is plenty of time for the Commons to consider this if the Government so wish.

There is an appetite in this House for sensible change. Discussions are taking place about the noble Baroness’s Bill and other noble Lords are discussing the issue of retirements, which we are going to have to face up to. Yet more noble Lords are discussing improving the governance of the House. I hope that the Government will allow for these discussions to take place and that we can have some more general debates about the issue of retirement. I think that we could reach a consensus on retirements in your Lordships’ House. The Minister is looking at me but there is an overwhelming appetite among noble Lords all around the House to sort this out. We have had the remarkable example of the Lord Speaker making a statement some months ago, giving notice of her intent to leave the House at a certain time. That was a marvellous example. Why are the Government not allowing the House to come to a sensible view on these matters?

The Minister may say that it is because substantive reform is just around the corner, and he may quote me as having said that in the past. It is difficult to assume who is going to win the next election, but let us assume that we have a Government after the next election, after some time and of some sort. Let us assume that they set up some kind of review—a convention or whatever—to come forward with proposals on substantive reform. I would say that the first opportunity of that coming into practice would not be before 2020, if we are realistic.

[Lord Cormack]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, whom I am tempted to call my noble friend on this occasion, as on others, for giving way. Does he not agree that it would be entirely feasible for the Government to set up a Select Committee of this House, with a strict timetable to report back by the end of January or in early February on the issues to which he was referring? I am quite confident, from my experience in the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, that consensus could be reached, and reached amicably.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I very much agree with that. That is a very sensible approach and I am sure that consensus could be reached. The point I was making is on the argument that we should not do this because substantive reform is just around the corner. As I said, even if we agreed and a Bill went through and was approved by both Houses, it would be very unlikely to be implemented before 2020. So for at least five years ahead, we will be working under the current arrangements. The argument for sensible change—

[Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)]

I am slightly confused. I thought that this Bill was about dealing with people who transgressed the behaviour expected in this House. I appreciate that my noble friend is anxious to pursue his agenda but he knows perfectly well that consensus on reform of this House can proceed only on the basis of its powers compared to the House of Commons. Until that is satisfied, all the discussion in the world will get nowhere and he should not waste his time on it.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

With the greatest of respect—and I have great respect for my noble friend—I think that he has missed the point. I agree that substantive reform of the Lords will not take place until the relationship between this House and the other place is fully resolved. I believe that conventions will need to be codified in an Act of Parliament to have any chance whatever of there being a relationship between two elected Houses, if we are to have two elected Houses. Other noble Lords will disagree but I say to my noble friend that the argument that the Government have deployed on a number of occasions is that we cannot agree to sensible, incremental measures because we are committed to a fully elected second Chamber. That seems to be the argument that essentially comes out, certainly from the Minister and his party. My point is that even if we were to reach consensus and a reform Bill went through both Houses, it would be some years before it could actually be put into practice.

In the mean time, we still want a second Chamber to be as effective as possible. The way we are going, the issue about numbers is becoming so serious that we are running into a real problem of credibility. That is why I hope that the Minister will be very positive on this Bill but that he will also reflect on what his noble friend has said about allowing the House to discuss these other matters and come to a view very quickly, which I believe could be done.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I hesitate to open up a wider debate about long-term Lords reform. We all know that we are already into substantial discussions about constitutional reform of this multinational state. I suspect that after the next election and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, just said, with whatever shape of government should emerge from it, the future of this House will be caught up in those discussions. Two of the three parties are already committed to a constitutional convention, so there are a range of things—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I am sure he is right but does he also accept that it will be some years before any change can take place? Therefore, the argument that the House should be given a fair wind by the Government to make some incremental, sensible change is overwhelming.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord and I will discuss, off the Floor, the question of how easy it will be to get consensus on the principle of retirement. I will tell him about some of the conversations I have had with Members of his own Benches about this over the past two years, some of which have been extremely vigorous.

Meanwhile, we are dealing with the Committee stage of today’s Bill, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, rightly pointed out, is concerned with the conduct of the House. It has a limited and specific purpose and is concerned with the reputation of Parliament as a whole. We welcome that. The Bill is also concerned with rebuilding public trust in our political institutions and, as she made clear, is intended to give the House precautionary powers—powers which are intended to be available but to be rarely, and, one hopes, never, used. We recognise that and the Government also recognise the sentiment around the House on the Bill. We are very happy to work with the noble Baroness to ensure that the amendments are tweaked into a form that would suit.

We understand the spirit of the amendments but there are some issues about the exact definition, which we need to clarify. The noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, raised one example: what do we do if we become aware of past conduct which was egregious but was not previously known? What do we do about past conduct, the effects of which are continuing? The issues of retrospectivity are complicated in this regard and the House will also need to be concerned that we currently have an inherent power of suspension, which may or may not be used with retrospective regard to past conduct. If we were to pass this, we would be limiting the power of suspension that the House currently has. What I can do on behalf of the Government is to say that we would be very happy for Cabinet Office officials and lawyers to discuss between this stage of the Bill and the next, with the noble Baroness and others, how we might reshape these amendments to put them into a reasonable form.

The Government are giving the Bill a fair wind in this House. How far we will be able to assist it in the other place is a matter which the Government do not yet need to address and have not yet fully addressed. All Members of this Chamber will know of the complicated internal procedures that the Government need to go through. It will be tight to get the Bill through the other House, given the queue of Private Members’ Bills before the next election—although I take the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that some of them are not entirely overworked at the moment—but we need not address that issue definitively at present.

For the moment, I am very happy to say that the Government will work with the noble Baroness to revise the amendment into a form that would suit the purposes that are intended, and that we have thought through some of the complications about the principle of retrospection, which is a very delicate and important one in the issue of conduct.