Economy: The Growth Plan 2022
Lord Inglewood Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, in Cumbria, where I live and chair the local enterprise partnership, it looks as if the local economy will not return to its pre-Covid levels until 2024 at the earliest. Business has been under the cosh and widespread commercial and personal hardship has ensued, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham, among others, told us.
Business and commerce now need stability—a period when they can get on with their own business, confident that policy will not be oscillating like a pendulum on cocaine. Business has had its period of commercial destruction; now give it some time for commercial creativity and security for its working capital. The post-Brexit world must be allowed to settle down. There is no short-term or even longer-term prospect of going back. Apart from anything else, the EU cannot want that kind of relationship with us.
One of the most damaging aspects of Brexit was and still is the reintroduction of costly and bureaucratic friction into trade with our most important neighbouring market, with its consequential real disruption of supply chains. Increasingly, I am convinced that, in the real world, the trade deals we are negotiating are not a substitute for trade with our neighbours, which is different because of the mainland’s physical propinquity to us. Rather, I sense that President Modi and Gulf potentates are looking at and eyeing up this country rather in the way that Robert Clive did when looking at the Carnatic in the second half of the 18th century.
Equally, the Government’s apparent avowed intent to systematically dismantle that piece of our statute book derived from EU law looks gratuitously damaging. Most of this legislation has been given political legitimacy by the support of the then UK Government at its birth and much has been gold-plated on its transposition into UK law. Reasoned change for good purpose is good, but gratuitous, iconoclastic meddling is bad.
The planning system is clearly, on occasions, byzantine, overcomplicated, bureaucratic and poorly administered, but it is also necessary and that needs to be recognised, as do its real shortcomings. Innovation zones could have a beneficial impact, so long as they do not displace what is happening anyway, are in the right place and on the right scale, take legitimate, site-specific concerns into account and are not mere political pork barrels. I would be grateful if the Minister would tell me what the position on business rates in these innovation zones is.
There has also been a lot of comment about the environment and what one might describe as associated aspects of policy from what the Government are proposing. In areas such as Cumbria, the environment, agriculture and natural capital are important economic assets, not bolt-on luxuries, as some people appear to suppose. Can the Government confirm that they recognise them for what they are and will treat them as important, wealth-creating activities and drivers of growth, not fripperies?
Carbon is now being described as the new gold or the new oil. It must be valued at its real worth and its value redeployed in those places where it is fixed, in the way in which coal wealth was used in the north in the 19th century to promote that part of England’s economy. The same is true for clean energy.
Nobody is suggesting that any of these things is easy, but competent economic governance is rather like being a doctor: if the patient lives and thrives, the reputation grows; if not, it is the opposite. Doing this right might be boring, but if so, boring is good.
Houses of Parliament: Co-location
Lord Inglewood Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the title of this debate reminded me of Dr Johnson’s remarks at the auction of Thrale’s brewery, when he commented:
“We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich, beyond the dreams of avarice.”
In a similar way, this debate is not about the minutiae, architectural detail and geographical aspects of the location of Parliament. As we have heard from all sides of the House, it is about other things, which we are discussing today. For that reason, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Norton, on leading this debate. When discussing constitutional or legal matters, even in a semi-abstract way, there is a danger of emulating the great early Church council’s debates about the Trinity. In many respects they simply missed the wider point, and I want to try to avoid that error.
Unashamedly, I am a disciple—albeit a heterodox one—of the great English 17th-century common lawyers, and a proud, direct patrilineal descendent of one of the heroes of the 17th-century Parliament. Not for me the “Thorough” government of Strafford and his acolytes.
Parliament now is a single entity of two distinct parts, and that cannot be changed without our consent. These two parts are discrete, but they alone together are the source of parliamentary authority. It is my contention that, for this to work properly, they must be juxtaposed, and also juxtaposed with the Administration they hold to account, all of which is set in a framework of law. Propinquity is essential.
I say that because for 10 years I had the privilege of being a Member of the European Parliament, something that may now be a bit unfashionable. I was working in a parliamentary institution that was permanently on the move. It does not work well, and serious business is much harder to conduct—not impossible; much harder. Direct personal contact is important.
The events surrounding Brexit have led to ideas circulating about a revisionist version of our constitutional arrangements which, even if correct, do not alter the fact that much—indeed most—of Parliament’s time and activities deal with matters not defined in referendum questions and electoral manifestos. To use a contemporary word, they require curating. They generally relate not to the big picture—the what—but to the how. These are matters of detail, sometimes of micromanagement, and there is a wide range of all kinds of things that need resolution—and this is ignoring events that take place that change the world we live in. In any event, referenda and general elections are conducted within the framework of law. We do not simply grant the victor universal and arbitrary powers.
Disagreement about these things is our proper business, and it seems to me that government has no business to complain about that, even if on occasions it is sometimes fully entitled to be irritated, if not actually angry. While the Government are entitled to get their own business, there is a considerable proper scope surrounding timescale and detail, and it is our constitutional role to play a full part in that.
As I said, I was a Member of the European Parliament. I think that remainers and Brexiteers can agree that one of the problems with the relationship between MPs and MEPs was the lack of knowing and understanding each other—something that, when we have it, leads to greater personal respect. No Act of Parliament can make one person be in two places at the same time. As a number of Members have said, it is crucial that that is avoided.
I frequently comment that the 100 yards between this Chamber and the other place is the longest 100 yards in the country, and that divide seems to be getting longer. That is because we are at a time when those who are, if I may put it this way, the controllers of the other place seem to be adopting ever more frequently the motto, “We are the masters now.” It does not seem that there is much place in their thinking for checks and balances; rather, there is an urge for de facto or even de jure unicameralism controlled by the Executive.
Echoing the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, I remember that the late Lord Kingsland commented to me on occasion that when Parliament and the House of Commons stop safeguarding citizens’ rights then the courts will step in. You have only to look at the newspapers these days to see that the courts are quite busy.
In any event, as has been said by others, matters of location must be for Parliament, not the Government, who make the rather touching assumption that we will be welcomed with open arms wherever they might decide to send us. Is that actually so? I have wondered about that. It is government policy that the long-term storage of nuclear waste will take place only if the local community endorses it, and perhaps the same principle applies here. Indeed, as other noble Lords have commented, if there is a need for some other part of Parliament to go elsewhere then why not the other place?
I return to the overriding main issue, which is that unless the second Chamber, however it may be composed, is in proximity to the first Chamber, the standards of parliamentary governance that everyone in this country is entitled to expect will be endangered. That is likely to lead towards unicameralism controlled by the Administration, which is inimical to our traditions, the rule of law and our freedoms, which, taken as a whole, are a crucial and central part of Britishness.
Beyond Brexit: Institutional Framework (EUC Report)
Lord Inglewood Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am very glad that we are debating these three important reports this afternoon, because it seems to me that their subject matter is still as topical as it was when they were written.
I joined the goods committee during its deliberations. I believe I was asked to do so because I chair the Cumbria local enterprise partnership, an organisation close to the front line. I drew on my experiences and connections in whatever I may have been able to contribute to the committee’s work. In a previous incarnation as a Member of the European Parliament, I was also a spear-carrier during the reigns of the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Kerr, in charge of UKRep during the establishment of the single market, and perhaps had something to bring to the process of reverse-engineering what we put in place then.
From my perspective, the Brexit referendum and the 2019 general election were exercises in democracy that led to political outcomes, which in turn led to changes in economic and commercial life here in this country that may or may not turn out to be economically or commercially optimum or sensible. Such considerations were of a second order to the political ones.
I see Brexit as a political process propelled by a national wish to change our constitutional relationship with the European Union. It seems to be common ground between all involved that this would bring about real short-term damage to business, commerce and the economy. The longer-term disagreements relate to whether there will be consequential benefits. The detail depended on whether we had a hard or soft Brexit and whether there would be a deal. In my view, it seems we have a hard Brexit with a deal—and these reports are about that. This is the bed we have made, and we are now all lying on it.
As has already been said, the impact of Brexit is intimately tied up with the impact of Covid. I believe it is impossible fully to disentangle them now. However, work commissioned by the Cumbria local enterprise partnership and carried out by Nicol Economics, applying Treasury metrics, and the Cumbria Intelligence Observatory suggests that, bearing in mind regional variations, our experience is very similar to that elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and that the economic impact of Brexit appears to be roughly double that of Covid, if such a simple way of looking at it has any validity.
Some 4% of the Cumbrian economy relied on direct exports to the EU, supporting 7,000 jobs—with all the implications that the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, talked about. The Cumbrian labour market, especially because of the county’s economy’s reliance on the visitor economy, has been badly hit—in particular, obviously, the tourism and leisure sector. For example, earlier this year it was possible to take a self-catering holiday but impossible to get an evening meal if you wished to eat out, because they could not find staff for the restaurants and pubs.
The logistics industry has been very hard hit by both the availability of drivers and the associated rules and regulations, as has already been pointed out. As has also been mentioned, supply chain issues make obtaining inputs to manufacturing and dispatching products extremely problematic. This is true not least in the construction sector, where there is significant double-digit inflation, up to and beyond 20% or 30%. Small businesses are simply giving up on exporting to the EU.
Interestingly, when I was in Germany in the autumn, staying with an old MEP friend, I discovered from talking to him and his wife over the dining room table that it is exactly the same for small businesses on the continent. It is not worth their while bothering to try to export to this country. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, touched on, there are all kinds of concerns in the agricultural industry, many of which are outside the remit of this debate.
Two things stand out in particular. First, young people appear to have been disproportionately affected, first in respect of jobs themselves and secondly by the long-term impact of problems relating to training and skills. Secondly—this has been exacerbated by Covid—large amounts of working capital have been destroyed. This is likely to make trading out of the problems and navigating the way to a future commercial environment more difficult.
The third of these reports relates to the mechanisms for future relationships between us and the EU, and, while no doubt recognising that much might be done to recalibrate the detail as far as Great Britain is concerned—I have no expertise or wish to comment in detail on Northern Ireland—I doubt there is much political appetite on either side to drill down into it. As far as domestic policy is concerned, I very much hope that the levelling-up agenda—which seems to take as long to gestate as this afternoon’s debate—can take positive steps to deal with the immediate collateral damage to the economy that has been brought about.
The north of England expects the Government will do their duty, and we are watching. For me, however, the big imponderable is the rest of the world, where it seems that substantive change has yet to emerge—although, of course, whatever the particular trading arrangements, there are always commercial opportunities. Setting aside wider political considerations, which may well play quite a big part in this, it seems that the fly in the ointment is that, in the words of a friend of mine, “regulation is the new tariff”. Increasingly, access to a market is not synonymous with being able to put goods for sale on to that market. This concept appears to be anathema to many traditionalists, but one has only to look at the debate around fair trade, COP 26 and the environment to see how this approach is gaining traction in all kinds of places. Of course, that was the basis of the EU single market, which we have rejected.
It will be interesting to see how this will evolve, but in the meantime, we have no idea whether we are waiting for the boat to come home or whether we are “Waiting for Godot”.
Budget Statement
Lord Inglewood Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, the most recent occasion I was in London was one year and one day ago, when I came up to speak about the unfolding crisis from my perspective as chairman of the Cumbria local enterprise partnership—as I do again this afternoon. I, like many others, welcome those who made their maiden speeches, but especially single out the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, and the noble Lord, Lord Khan, who are both ex-Members of the European Parliament and northerners. We are a species that, inevitably, shall become extinct.
On that occasion, I emphasised the importance of the economy functioning. If it does not, the epidemic’s health crisis, which is far from over, will usher in at least as serious an economic one, with all that that entails. I stand by that proposition, which appears to be shared by the Chancellor.
Wherever you go and whoever you are, it is always possible to carp about the detail in any Budget, but it is inevitably and invariably the big, boring bits that really matter. We must remember that every furloughed job is on the cusp of being a job lost. In Cumbria, we have the highest district furlough rates in England. In January it was 23% in Eden and 26% in South Lakes.
It is therefore crucial that, when furlough ends, the economy swiftly gets back to profitability. Most of these potential employees are engaged with SMEs, as the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and the noble Lord, Lord Sterling, pointed out. Most of these in turn have taken out loans as their working capital and reserves have been dwindling. They will have to be replenished from trading. It is a serious existential problem for them.
It is the smaller and often more low-profile economic actors who are one of the keys to getting our economy functioning again, not least in the part of the north where I come from. It must be the core purpose of economic policy now to get them working profitably again. It is encouraging and a good start that this appears to be at or near the centre of the Chancellor’s thinking.
European Union (Future Relationship) Bill
Lord Inglewood ExcerptsWednesday 30th December 2020
(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, as an avowed remainer, I hoped I would never be faced with this evening’s decision, but we are where we are, and I have got to. What has struck me about the process we are going through is how constitutionally smooth and seamless it has been, despite the political noise and turmoil.
Legal sovereignty is about taking decisions and implementing them, and how that is done. Brexit has been politically complicated, but it has been a relatively straightforward exercise of our sovereignty, which was not inherently affected by EU membership. Not for the first time, we have changed the way we do things and we may and are entitled to do so again in the future. This appears to contrast with the inevitable economic consequences of change, which, together with Covid, in the short and medium term are going to be very economically damaging. I do not see any alternative in the circumstances other than to do a deal, which does what I might call a “Dunkirk” for some, but not all, our businesses and commerce. We must not forget that regulatory rules are becoming the new tariff wars in the 21st century.
I am a northerner, I chair a northern local enterprise partnership and I eagerly look forward to levelling up. Hitherto, in my experience it is London that has always been the problem, not the EU. The economic implications of no deal are horrifying, and you cannot level up if you haven’t got any money.
In another sector, compared to no deal, our fellow citizens’ rights and freedoms are less extensively expropriated and our wider security is better. Individual and collective freedoms matter. Historically, geographically and culturally we are everywhere—and everyone agrees—part of Europe. We shall have to work closely together. To reject the deal now would be a supreme act of bad faith which would destroy our negotiating bona fides for the future.
Finally, after the political events in this country of recent years, Parliament and the country as a whole must reflect carefully on what has been going on. The other place, at least to me, appears to be evolving into an electoral college which defines the executive. Once done, the executive then controls it via the whips’ office and patronage; this has nothing to do with party. It looks as if we are edging towards a unicameral parliament controlled by the executive, which, quite apart from everything else, tend to be bullies.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, commented earlier in this debate, and as was echoed by others, it is Parliament that legislates under our constitution, and is the body to which the executive is answerable. It is one of our constitution’s core principles. Another one is that the arrangements incorporate checks and balances and we must not inadvertently lose them, and carelessly do so, by allowing them to disappear by default.
Spending Review 2020
Lord Inglewood Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, looking across the northern business landscape, as I do, from the perspective of chair of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, the prospect is not cheerful. But the spending review is a start—a real start—on the road to employment and prosperity, which are two sides of the same coin.
Having said that, it is far from a complete solution by itself. Levelling up is hugely important and welcome, and infrastructure projects will play a part—albeit a relatively straightforward and visible part—of a much larger, more complicated and less obviously visible process of dealing with the consequences of Covid-19 and the implications of the end of the Brexit transition period. Whatever the latter may bring, there is agreement across all ranges of opinion that there is going to be real economic turbulence and upheaval, likely in many cases to be exacerbated by the existential implications of Covid having taken focus away from both its problems and its opportunities. As I have said on a number of occasions, if you are in a shipwreck, saving your baggage is low on your list of priorities.
My concern in these remarks, based on my own observations and experience, is the plight of small businesses—one-man bands, family businesses with an employee or two: that part of the economy. They do not have sharp-suited, smooth-talking lobbyists in Whitehall and Westminster. Present initiatives do not appear to be reaching them as hoped. These businesses and families are the bedrock of this country. Many have been ruined or enormously damaged financially; they are frightened by what lies ahead and their morale is low. They need the economic equivalent of what the National Health Service is giving Covid patients; they need genuine, relevant assistance and support, based on actual experience and a pragmatic understanding of the real world, not academia, think tanks or governance and administration—and they need it now. The impact of what is happening will last for years, if not decades, and the survivors of this unprecedented chapter in our history will be the launch pad for the next stage of recovery. The cure for the public finances must not be allowed to kill them, because each and every survivor is part of the future, and we need every one.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)
save-line3The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, has withdrawn so I call the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh.
Covid-19 Lockdown: Economic Support
Lord Inglewood Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
As the noble Lord will be aware, we have made very substantial payments to the devolved authorities over the last few months and increased those payments in October by £1.3 billion. We are all in this together, as my right honourable friend the Chief Secretary said yesterday. We keep all these situations under continual review.
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, some firms are facing considerable difficulties in obtaining CBILS loans; I speak as chairman of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership. This appears to be because some banks are reorganising their own internal arrangements in response to the crisis, while some are reluctant to deal with businesses that are not regular customers. What are the Government doing to ensure that these problems will be resolved and that the CBILS arrangements work as intended before the potential borrowers’ money runs out?
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, my honourable friend the Economic Secretary is in constant dialogue with the banks on how all these schemes operate; he continues to try to help to improve them. If the noble Lord would like to write to me on the specific concern he mentioned, I will ensure that it gets the proper attention.
Boards of Public Bodies: Representation
Lord Inglewood Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my Cumbrian neighbour, the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I must preface my remarks by saying that, according to analysis I carried out—on the basis of what might be described as the tabloid newspapers’ view of suitability for almost anything in the contemporary world—I have failed completely, totally and dismally.
However, I have chaired two public boards, and they are very different. The first was the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, which I chaired for just over 10 years. The second was the Cumbria local enterprise partnership, which I currently have the privilege and pleasure of chairing. In each case, I was involved in the selection of members, which involves a considerable amount of time, thought and care. In doing that, three things struck me. The first is that you need to know what the board is for. Secondly, you need to be clear how the existing slate of people who are working with you relate to and work with each other. Finally, and obviously, you need to know the qualities and attributes of any applicants you are looking at.
The fundamental purpose and approach of the two organisations that I chaired were entirely different. The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, or so-called Waverley committee, was a quasi-judicial body of experts that gave recommendations to the Secretary of State in the DCMS about whether a “cultural object” more than 50 years old should be subject to an export stop, as well as, on occasion, making slightly wider comment about the workings of the art market in this country. The latter’s purpose is to promote the socioeconomic prosperity of the county of Cumbria within the framework of the northern powerhouse, under the umbrella of the national industrial strategy and in conjunction with local stakeholders. The former—the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art—is based exclusively on scholarship and expertise. A failure to base decisions on that leads you to judicial review.
The effectiveness of the system of export control ultimately depends on its acceptance by the art market, both in this country and in the rest of the world. I should declare an interest as president of the British Art Market Federation. If this respect and acceptance is lost, or is perceived to be lost, the system will, in consequence, fail. Obviously, here there is no place at all for extraneous considerations. Some years ago, in my period of chairmanship, there was a real argument within government about the gender of one of the slots within the committee. This became quite animated in certain corridors in Whitehall. In my view, this was completely absurd, because both male and female members of our committee were strong and each played a strong part in the work we did. By any measure, it seems to me that the suitability, scholarship, expertise and integrity of any member is the crucial factor in this body’s working. In my view, the Government’s priority should be, without equivocation, that the guest candidate should have the job on their merits.
It is probably true to say that in the case of the local enterprise partnership, things are a bit different. There is a very big need not only for technical competence and the ability to deliver, but for the board’s work to gain acceptance in the locality. It builds up confidence in all who live and work in the county of Cumbria. In this context, the general as opposed to the specific technical attributes and characteristics of members is of very real importance. It is to do with the locality, sectoral expertise, ethnicity and so on. As an aside, when we are talking about this topic it always strikes me as interesting and perhaps a little surprising that youth and age are rarely bracketed together. An awful lot of the work that public boards do relates to young people, who normally do not sit on them or have much of an input. Equally, in the case of something such as the Cumbria local enterprise partnership, Cumbria is a county with a very high proportion of older people. Once you have gone past the age I am getting to shortly, you just do not find people of that generation playing a role.
It is not a matter of having X person on the board. In my view, what matters is having a board that collectively understand X and what they can do to improve whatever the circumstance of that category of person might be, and to be able to work with people whose own personal experiences may be quite different from their own. I think there is a real risk of reducing good practice in this area in order to a tick a box, when in fact selection should be a matter not of pure merit but merit coupled with an ability to understand and empathise with people, places and things with which one is perhaps not quite so familiar oneself. The paradox is that in an attempt to open up membership of public bodies, which is something I support and think is good—I heard what my noble friend Lord Holmes said and concur with much of it—nevertheless there is a risk, if you are not careful, that the effectiveness of the organisation can be degraded, and thus those whom it is intended to help may be served less well. In the context of such activities, there is occasionally a risk of tension between diversity and effectiveness. We are not doing anybody any favours by attempting to disguise that fact.
It is not a matter of finding an X to be a member of a board to widen diversity. It is a matter of finding an X who can contribute to the wider project of the board. After all, the underlying rationale of all boards is to do something.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Holmes on securing this debate on an issue he has championed both before and after the publication of his report last year on opening up public appointments to disabled people. I commend the speech he made today, and those of all noble Lords who have spoken—who had to cope for the first time with flashing lights to limit the times of our speeches.
Recommendation 2.1 of my noble friend’s report states that the Government should,
“showcase role models on a rolling basis”.
He has done exactly that for many years. As my noble friend reminded us, he is chair of the Global Disability Innovation Hub, diversity adviser to the Civil Service and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Assistive Technology, as well as sitting on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on FinTech, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Blockchain and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He is deputy chairman of Channel 4; he is chair of Ignite, an innovation and change consultancy; and he sits on the future talent steering group. So, it is not just this House that benefits from my noble friend’s wide range of skills, experience and energy.
The question that has run through our debate this evening is basically this: are there more people like him out there, whose energy and talents we can harness? To answer that question, as noble Lords will recall, we asked my noble friend, alongside his already significant responsibilities, to review how we can open up public appointments to disabled people.
Public bodies sit at the heart of our society. They deliver vital and essential services to our communities, such as the NHS, policing, justice and educational services, to name a few. It is vital that these public bodies have strong leadership at their core to help them to make the right decisions to deliver the services that the public need and expect.
The Government make more than 1,000 appointments a year to the boards of around 550 public bodies, spending more than £200 billion between them. It is these appointees who provide direction and leadership in public bodies. By holding senior staff to account, they also provide expert and independent advice. As other noble Lords have done, I thank the many hard-working individuals in public bodies, both within the executive and non-executive teams, who make these public services a reality—many of them also serve in your Lordships’ House.
The Government are committed to improving diversity in public appointments. Given the diverse communities that these bodies serve, it is important that the public appointments we make are as representative as possible of those communities. Indeed, the Prime Minister herself has made it clear that public services like these must represent the people they serve. Not only is this morally the right thing to do, but it also brings genuine value to decision-making. Public bodies regularly face challenging decisions so we need the best minds from our communities to help guide them. As my noble friend said in his report,
“talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not”.
We have made good progress in increasing diversity in appointments. New appointments made of women, candidates from BAME backgrounds and those with a declared disability have all increased since 2013-14. However, I am sure that noble Lords will agree—I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, will—that there is still more to do to meet the Government’s ambitions of 50% of public appointments being held by women and 14% of appointments being made from ethnic minority backgrounds by 2022. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, we want to “unlock” talent. Both he and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, made a valid point about having a broader cultural base and broadening a board’s outlook so that it has the breadth of vision that is needed.
So what are we doing? In 2017, we published our Public Appointments Diversity Action Plan, which makes the moral and business case for more diverse public appointments. It sets out our goals and a 10-point action plan to help meet the Government’s ambition of achieving 50% of all public appointees being female and 14% of all public appointments being from ethnic minorities by 2022. My noble friend Lord Holmes’s review of the barriers preventing disabled people taking up public appointments was part of delivering this plan. My noble friend reported back in December 2018; again, I thank him for his excellent review, with its moving case studies. The Government remain committed to improving diversity in public appointments and have carefully considered the recommendations put forward in my noble friend’s review.
The review sets out a range of recommendations covering data collection and transparency, attracting and nurturing talent, application packs and job descriptions, interviews and the other issues that were mentioned in the debate; for example, the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, mentioned retention and both he and my noble friend Lord Holmes mentioned having a central application portal. The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, also mentioned making the interview panel more diverse, which is another recommendation in the report. Many of my noble friend’s recommendations will benefit all those from underrepresented communities wishing to apply for public appointments. I read my noble friend’s report last night. He said:
“I believe that they”—
the recommendations—
“could have general applicability and benefits in many situations, across public appointments and to all talent acquisition and recruitment practices”.
Therefore, it makes sense that, in parallel to responding to my noble friend, we refresh the 2017 Public Appointments Diversity Action Plan.
As I recently set out in my response to my noble friend’s Question in May, we will respond to the review imminently—around the end of this month—and at the same time we will publish a refreshed public appointments diversity action plan. I am only sorry that those were not available in time for our debate this evening. Appointments are made individually by departments, so officials in the Cabinet Office have been working across those departments and thoroughly considering how to take forward the review’s aims on a broad front.
In response to a question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, I can say that our revised diversity action plan will set out measures that will help to open up public appointments not only to disabled people but to diverse groups in the broadest sense. That includes women, those from ethnic minorities, those of different faith perspectives and those who identify as LGBT+, as well as individuals from different social backgrounds and indeed from all regions across the UK.
I know that officials from the Cabinet Office have been keeping my noble friend Lord Holmes informed of the progress of the Government’s response to his review and the refreshed diversity action plan, and I hope that he has found these updates helpful. I would welcome his views on them when they are published, as would the House as a whole. He will be pleased to know that, in the meantime, we have continued to take forward actions in the Public Appointments Diversity Action Plan published in 2017. We have been working to increase the visibility of appointees from underrepresented groups and have encouraged applications from people with diverse skills and experiences through a series of events.
Since last summer, my honourable friend the Minister for Implementation has been hosting and has spoken at events, including one held in Downing Street with the kind permission of the Prime Minister, to encourage talented individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds to consider public appointments. Events have also been held to encourage the brightest and best in business and those with faith perspectives to consider these opportunities. The Minister went to Birmingham and Newcastle to encourage talented individuals from outside London to apply for public appointments—we want more talented individuals from outside London and the south-east to consider these opportunities—and we will continue to hold further events throughout 2019. We have involved networks in these outreach events to help raise awareness of public appointments and have encouraged them to distribute communications about public appointment opportunities to their members. We have also improved how we collect and monitor data on the diversity of appointments and reappointments made each year through the launch of a new data collection tool.
I shall try to address some of the specific issues raised during our debate. My noble friend Lord Inglewood asked what we were doing to encourage more younger people to take up public appointments. Our public appointees have been getting younger. In 2017-18, 20% of new appointments were of people under 45, compared with 18% in the previous year, and some bodies have created specific roles—
European Union Subsidiarity Assessment: Electoral Law of the EU (EUC Report)
Lord Inglewood Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Neuberger (CB)
My Lords, I speak as a member of the EU sub-committee on justice. I, too, pay tribute to our chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and to our advisers, who have been brilliant. There is very little to add to what has been said but I want to say something about why we felt this was so important.
One argument worth adding is an emotional one. A degree of irritation was felt at the report coming out just before Christmas at a time when parliaments were going in to recess around Europe and there was not time to respond. We have heard that both Dutch Houses did not get it, as far as we can see. We did get it but with very short notice, hence the rush to bring it to your Lordships’ House. So I think there is a degree of irritation.
This is a procedural issue. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, I am rather sympathetic to the report—at least to the matters within on gender equality. I think that that is great but it is not the point we were looking at. It is important to emphasise that we all felt that at a time when there is considerable criticism of the European Parliament and of European institutions more generally, it would have been better—hence this iterative process we hope to engage in—had they stuck to their procedures so that we could stick to ours. We were unanimous on this and I think that for all of us that was the strong argument. Therefore, I think that this should be supported.
Lord Inglewood (Con)
My Lords, unlike the previous speakers I am not a member of the EU Select Committee or its sub-committee. But I was a Member of the European Parliament for 10 years and during that time served on the Legal Affairs Committee and the Constitutional Affairs Committee. It is a truism that it is very important that the European Union, and the European Parliament within it, works on the basis of conferred competencies. In other words, it can only do what it is permitted to do by the treaties that set the institutions up.
As I mentioned, I served a considerable number of years on the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the EP. It is one of its characteristics that in a chamber of enthusiastic pro-Europeans, it is one of the most enthusiastic parts. We saw only a few weeks ago, in the discussions on tax credits between this House and the other place, that parliaments are always angling to gain a bit of territory. You see this in a pronounced form from time to time in the European Parliament. But the important point about this proposal was mentioned at the outset by the noble Baroness: subsidiarity has nothing to do with the merits of the subject in question. The only issue is whether the European Parliament, in its proposals, which are after all not legislation but only draft legislation, has overreached itself. Having looked at it—although not at great length—I think there is a strong case for saying it has.
A separate but important aspect is whether the appropriate procedures have been adhered to. It seems pretty clear that they have not. Therefore, we are looking at a proposal from the European Parliament in the European legislative system, which, as currently drafted, breaches the principle of subsidiarity and which, in any event, has been brought forward in a flawed manner.
National Parliaments (EUC Report)
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Lord Inglewood (Con)
My Lords, no one who has heard the debate this evening can be under any illusion that the topic we are discussing is not very important. I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and his committee on the work they have done.
It was about 30 years ago when I began my involvement in political life when I stood as a candidate in the European elections in County Durham. It was not an especially glorious chapter as I got beaten by 55,000 votes, but it was a start. Nevertheless, even though I was inexperienced then I appreciated that the European Community, as it then was, was a sui generis type of institution that shared systems of government from both parliamentary and diplomatic traditions. It seemed to me that there were only two reasons for this. First, and we sometimes forget this when we are debating these things, different parliaments in different countries operate in really quite different ways. Secondly, the scale of what was involved was much smaller and seemed to be more aligned with what diplomacy traditionally did.
Of course, it is 30 years on now and the world has changed and the European Union with it. Economic integration, improved transport and communications and movement of people have changed the way people live and work not only in the Union but right round the globe. The role of the European Union has become functionally much more akin, it seems to me, to what states traditionally used to do than was the case then. At the same time, the diplomatic attributes of the EU’s modus operandi are much less prominent than they used to be. I am very glad that the member states are still the principal building blocks of this institution but we need to be clear that as the world changes the way in which nation states—and in the case of the European Union member states—work is going to have to evolve. One of the difficulties is that the role of national parliaments has not evolved in the same way as the European Economic Community became the European Community and then the European Union.
I should like to turn briefly to the report itself and break it down and focus on some of its themes. Scrutiny is perhaps the most prominent theme and is still probably the most important attribute of the engagement of national parliaments. I agree here very much with my noble friend Lord Tugendhat, who said a number of wise and sensible things. One of the most wise and sensible was that scrutiny of Ministers in the Council of Ministers should be enhanced. Certainly I had a brief spell when I was a departmental Minister of going to the Council of Ministers and nobody wanted an account from me about anything I was doing. From a purely personal point of view it was one of the most exhilarating parts of my political career. I think one brief discussion with my Secretary of State over a cup of coffee was the whole measure of it. I have wondered against this background whether Parliament as a whole might not be wise to revisit its general approach to European matters, which was put in place by Sir John Foster several decades ago.
I was also interested in the point made in the report about wider, less specific formal scrutiny, because in recent years most of the work I have done in this House has been with the Communications Committee and the Extradition Law Committee. That work has suggested to me that there may frequently be important European aspects that take a bit of digging out. I am particularly thinking of the significance of competition policy and regulatory policy in the context of media markets and communications—because I spent 10 years in the European Parliament I probably was more conscious of these aspects than many other Members.
I turn now to what might be described as the personal institutional engagement that could be enhanced between the Commission, Parliament, COSAC and so on. The idea is absolutely excellent but the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, is right that the problem is finding the time to do it because the laws of physics are still such that you cannot be in two places at once. I listened with very great interest to my Cumbrian neighbour, the noble Lord, Lord Judd, but when I was in the European Parliament—and you could do it then—I had the dual mandate. Given the workloads that apply in each of the two places I simply do not think it is possible to revert to doing that in the old way. Therefore, it is dangerous and misleading to try to overplay and over-rely on the ability of individuals, whether MPs or Peers, to engage fully in very extensive ongoing dialogue, because of their other commitments—although I add the proviso that it would depend on whether the way Parliament works changes or not, and I will touch on that briefly in a moment.
Like a number of noble Lords, I think that the reasoned opinion provision is an interesting and radical development, because on a very small scale it gives national parliaments a place in the legislative process. That is very important and something that should be worked on. The report said that there was no interest in treaty change; we have touched on it this evening. However, despite protestations to the contrary, the kind of changes that are being called for across Europe are such that certainly in the old days I doubt they could have been put into effect without treaty change—although, speaking for myself, if clever lawyers can find ways round, good luck to them.
In recent years, much of the background to the discussion and focus on the role of national parliaments in the European political system has been based, as has been said, on concerns about the European Union’s democratic deficit and its lack of popular legitimacy. This was a point the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, raised. However, we in Parliament need to be very conscious of some of the criticisms that have been levelled against Westminster recently. An awful lot of the traditional criticism of the European Union we now hear levelled against us here. It may follow from that that, as time goes by, our own terms of reference change. It seems to me inevitable that the role of national parliaments, and indeed the part that member states can play in a globalising interdependent world, are inevitably going to change and we no longer here have a Parliament set in a world that would be familiar to a Bagehot or a Dicey. Therefore, when we look forward we must tailor our thinking to what we recognise as the likely shape of the world as it will become.
Finally, I cannot recall any House of Lords report so enthusiastically endorsed by the Government. I have to admit that that makes me a bit concerned. However, it suggests that they too are finding the wider world a very perplexing place at present. I suggest that they might endorse their general stance in these matters by prioritising the importance of scrutiny and Ministers making themselves available for scrutiny as their number one priority.