Elgin Marbles

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Lexden]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of proposals to loan the Elgin Marbles to Greece.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, the Elgin marbles—or Parthenon sculptures, as some prefer—are famous for two reasons. The first reason is of course because they are magnificent treasures of civilization, part of the heritage of our world. The second reason that they are famous is as regrettable as it is persistent. These great treasures have an almost infinite capacity to provoke heated arguments about their ownership and their location. It is almost impossible to mention them in everyday conversation without instigating a dispute on these points.

This has not always been the case. The sculptures were brought to our country between 1801 and 1812 by the 7th Earl of Elgin, about whom many unkind things are said. They were placed in the possession of the British Museum by Act of Parliament in 1816. For the next 165 years, there was scarcely a peep of protest from anyone in Greece—which had become an independent country in 1832—about their residence in one of the world’s greatest museums. During this long period, the idea that the British Museum’s possession was permanent became a settled conviction in Britain.

The peace was shattered some 40 years ago. Since then, politicians and other leading figures in Greece, a country whose friendship has always been greatly valued in Britain, have repeatedly demanded that the treasures should be installed once again on the Acropolis, from which, in the Greek view, they were illegally removed by the much-criticised Lord Elgin. No one, I think, can doubt the strength of feeling that exists in Greece. It has the power to damage and blight good relations between our two countries, particularly at official and diplomatic levels. People of good will, in both Greece and Britain, must surely seek to diminish the acrimony with which the heated and recurrent arguments, engendered by dispute over ownership and location, have invested the great and famous sculptures.

Those seeking to understand the issues more fully will be greatly assisted by a recent detailed study by one of our leading scholars, Sir Noel Malcolm, a most distinguished historian of international standing with a particular interest in the Balkans, a fellow of the British Academy and of All Souls, Oxford. Sir Noel Malcolm’s meticulous scholarly study was published earlier this year by Policy Exchange, an organisation of enormous value in promoting debate on political and public affairs. Not all scholars reach clear conclusions. Sir Noel Malcolm does so. He finds the claim that the removal of the treasures was illegal to be false. He finds the claim that Elgin saved the treasures from serious damage, dispersal and destruction to be true. The central point is this: the British Museum has full legal entitlement to the treasures which Elgin saved for posterity.

It should perhaps be noted that no Greek Government have ever sought any form of legal judgment on the question of ownership, yet the words “theft” and “robbery” are freely bandied about on the Greek side.

The absence of serious doubt on the question of legal ownership is immensely important, but it does not settle definitively an issue of this kind. I sought the view of a retired Conservative Minister, an academic philosopher well-known for his careful consideration of all sides of highly contested issues. He told me that, in his view, the Elgin marbles have a special and disproportionate importance for the Greeks which sets them apart from almost anything else that has ended up outside their mother country. Should not that view incline us to consider sympathetically the Greek demand for the transfer of the sculptures from London to Athens?

However, must not great weight also be given to the fact that, in over more than 200 years, the Elgin marbles have become part of Britain’s cultural heritage? Some assert that a mere 200 years are of no significance in a roughly 2,500-year-long history of the sculptures, but that is to ignore the important fact that these 200 years constitute the great majority of the period during which, in post-classical times, the sculptures have been seriously valued as works of art.

Professor Mary Beard, who has done so much to extend our understanding of the ancient world, has said that

“after 200 years the Elgin Marbles have a history that roots them in the British Museum as well as in Athens”.

Surely such a statement confers great merit on the suggestion, which has been given wide publicity, that some form of loan arrangement might be instituted between the British Museum and the Greek Government. Mr George Osborne, the current chairman of the British Museum trustees, has become the principal champion of that idea. He tells us, not infrequently, that he is exploring the ways in which a loan scheme might be agreed with the Greek Government, with, as he put it recently,

“Greek treasures coming our way in return”.

At present, a loan is the only basis on which any of the Elgin marbles could go to Greece. They are the property of the museum, which is prohibited by an Act of Parliament from selling them or giving them to anyone else. A loan would be wholly compatible with the British Museum Act 1963, which states:

“The Trustees of the British museum may lend for public exhibition”.


It is a power that the trustees have not in the past been reluctant to use. The 1963 Act goes on to state that

“in deciding whether or not to lend any such object, and in determining the time for which, and the conditions subject to which, any such objects is to be lent, the Trustees shall have regard to the interests of students and other persons visiting the Museum”.

This surely rules out open-ended and potentially permanent arrangements.

There is another crucial issue. In any agreement with Greece, the museum would need to be certain that it will get its property back. The current policy on loans makes clear:

“The Trustees of the British Museum will lend only in circumstances when the perceived risk to the object is considered reasonable and when the borrower guarantees that the object will be returned to the Museum at the end of the loan period”.


If proposals for a loan, the subject of this debate, are to succeed, two essential preconditions would surely have to be met. First, the Greek Government would need to give a binding, legally enforceable commitment to restore the sculptures to their owner at the end of the loan period. Secondly, the length of the loan period would need to be firmly established. On the latter, various possibilities have been mentioned, ranging, I think, from five to 15 years. Can my noble friend the Minister say whether the Government have a view on the maximum time the sculptures should be on loan from the British Museum? Would the Government seek to ensure that a loan agreement fully respected the British Museum’s ownership of the Elgin marbles?

Would it not be wholly wrong, in seeking an agreement with Greece, to jeopardise the interests of the British people? Although the British Museum may have its difficulties at present, which will keep Mr Osborne busy, it has never failed in its duty to hold the Elgin marbles securely, in its own words,

“for the benefit of the world public, present and future”.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, for the benefit of the House I tell noble Lords that two noble Lords have given notice that they wish to speak in the gap. It is an incredibly tight debate and I am sure we want to hear from everyone and the Minister’s reply in full, so I implore all noble Lords to stick to the speaking time.

Living in a COVID World: A Long-term Approach to Resilience and Wellbeing (COVID-19 Committee Report)

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

My Lords, I will start with some thanks. First, I thank the team that helped us during our committee; it was patient beyond belief, especially with the novice chair. I thank the Whips’ Office for a protracted process of finding a date to debate our various reports; I am delighted that we have managed to do so today. Most importantly, I thank the members of my committee, a few of whom are in the Room, and many wish they could have been. They all contributed with incredible kindness and care to what was and still is a complicated subject.

The central contention in our work is that, because of Covid, the state needed somewhat of a reset. I will return to that theme in my remarks. We felt that, because of the incredible acceleration of some trends and the emergence of others due to Covid, as well as the trends that we saw in sharper relief during Covid, there were multiple angles from which we should rethink our approach to resilience, well-being and long-term planning.

We did many pieces of work in our committee, starting with a large data-gathering exercise. To be completely honest, it had a mixed reception among colleagues, but we were intent on making sure that, at a time when the world was feeling very anxious, we involved the communities of people most affected by what was happening and did not just start from our own perspective here—not in this building or our own home offices but our own views about how people might feel.

We did a huge call for evidence that went out to the world, and 4,000 pieces of evidence were submitted to us. We received everything from poems to pictures, and writing from children, grown-ups and academics. We worked alongside POST, which did some brilliant work for us, looking at some of the academic work emerging during that time. That was one of the first things we attempted to do, and it certainly put us right into the thick of what different communities were feeling about what was happening. We then went on to look at a hybrid world, families and children, and towns and cities, and then wrapped it together in our last piece of work, about the resilience of our entire communities, which we are debating today. I will focus on each of those in turn.

I was a member of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy for three years, and resilience in our work meant something quite different from what ended up in the work we are discussing today. In that committee, resilience was about the critical national infrastructure—whether we can protect the water system from biochemical attacks and so on. In the Covid-19 Committee, we worked hard thinking about how we can build the muscle of resilience not just in how central government responds to crises but in how communities build stronger links to each other and to central, charitable and faith organisations; how to make sure that we are measuring the right things to build on resilience, looking at not just economic growth but all the factors that impact people’s lives; and how we can think about a different planning cycle. So often, short-term thinking is the enemy of good thinking.

I will take each of those in turn, starting with resilience at a local level. In our call for evidence, we looked at multiple different communities of people and engaged with lots of different peoples’ experiences of what was at that point an extreme lockdown. We were all in lockdown while we were doing the majority of our work. We found a huge number of different things, but what was clear in every one of our evidence sessions —and among pretty much every group of experts we talked to—was that, through Covid, inequalities were being seen, which people had not realised were quite so deep; that inequalities were being exaggerated by Covid, which it had not been appreciated were so deep; and that the trend into more inequalities was accelerating because of Covid; all of which was very alarming. We heard from people who were making the choice, quite literally, between getting data to be able to function in a lockdown and buying food. We heard from people whose children were not learning to speak because they had not seen other people, or who were having to deal with a parent with a deep mental health issue. The stories were countless and very affecting, as noble Lords would imagine. We all felt strongly that, unless we recognise and see for ever the inequalities that we experienced during Covid, we will have done the country a disservice by not paying full attention to them. So, one part of resilience is recognising, understanding and acting upon those inequalities.

Another part of resilience is building social cohesion. We saw again that, in multiple parts of our communities, there were amazing examples of social cohesion and people looking after each other. We are not just talking about standing on the doorstep banging pots and pans for nurses, but real care, filling the gaps where services had had to stop. However, we also saw that there were communities where that was not the case; very often, that was linked to deep deprivation and socioeconomic issues. So, yet again, inequality was affecting both the ability for communities to come together and their resilience.

Something else that we found, which perhaps seems unsurprising now but was a little more novel—and we were perhaps a little more naive about—two or three years ago, was around information flows and how that had affected inequalities and the ability for communities to be resilient. We looked at how communities were getting information, how information spread and how communities were affected by information. One thing that I have reflected on since we finished our work is how, if we were starting the work now, we would certainly be more alarmed by this particular point, as the launch of generative AI has changed the game yet again with regard to the information systems that we all live within. Even two or three years ago, we were concerned by how much the resilience that we are able to build for the country is affected by the information that different people receive. I would therefore be interested to understand the Government’s response and reflections on our positioning of resilience as not just coming from central organisations but being built at a local level and built around these different aspects of inequality, social capital, social cohesion and information flows.

The next thing that we looked at as part of the bigger picture was moving to more of a measure of well-being from welfare. Well-being can be taken in many different ways, and I am sure that there are many in this Room who are more expert than me on the measurements and academic studies around well-being. At the very basic level, we knew that mental health was deeply affected at the time that Covid hit. Now, Covid is estimated to have impacted the mental health of around 8% of the population, costing the economy £100 billion a year— I am sure that noble Lords will agree that they are very significant numbers.

But we went further than looking at just mental health; we considered how the Government were weighing up trying to save lives, save the economy, save the education system, save the health system and save communities—an unenviable task—and what other measures might be useful in that regard. Our very clear position was that we supported the Government’s move to measure well- being and would urge the Government to go further. The Government have made many nudges towards measuring well-being and we had an adviser on our committee, Nancy Hey, who works at the What Works Centre for Wellbeing—effectively a government agency looking at well-being measurements across society—who helped us to navigate this issue.

I shall press the Minister a little as, as I understand it, she can recount the Government’s spending figures around well-being. Money was supposed to apportioned to each department, but it has still not been given to each department. Only £50,000 was to be given to each of 10 departments to have some measurements around well-being, but, unfortunately, this has not yet been distributed and it looks as though what works well centres might have to close because of the lack of propulsion towards better understanding of well-being. This is a shame when it felt as though there was some real cohesion and non-party-political coalescing around well-being and how valuable it could be, especially, I reinforce, when weighing up the unenviable task of saving lives and the economy and the systems that we all operate in alongside that.

We looked at inequalities and well-being and spent time thinking about long-term thinking. The political cycle is no one’s friend, especially in the past two years. We felt very strongly that, in order to be well-equipped against potential future crises, we need more long-term thinking at the centre of government, and that is why I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, is responding to us today. We recommended that there should be somebody in the Cabinet Office looking at long-term thinking and bringing together a multi- disciplinary approach to help departments navigate beyond some of the difficult complexities of their political masters. We appreciate that this is a complex subject, but it is fundamental if we are going to be able to address future crises that we are inevitably going to face.

Those are the three planks on which our work was formed: inequalities, well-being and long-term thinking. On all of them, we believe that refocusing and re- emphasising could help build our national resilience in a new way and help us as we inevitably face future crises.

As I stand here now and look back 18 months to when we finished this last report, I think there are some things that we got pretty right. There was a report just this morning from Ernst & Young and coincidentally the TUC has published a report looking at the interactions between humans and digital in the provision of services. One of the things that we looked at for a long time was how that might play out in future. We said very clearly that we thought technology was not the answer for all services. It was gratifying to see this morning that those reports come out in the same place. I think that in some things we were looking in the right direction. However, in some things I think we slightly underegged the challenges we would end up in. In our towns and cities report, which we are not debating today, we looked at future of the high street and local businesses. I stand here as president of the British Chambers of Commerce and I am somewhat anxious about the number of businesses that will be forced to close their doors over the next year. I am sure many members of the committee heard the upset owner of Wilko, which went bankrupt yesterday, blaming Covid for a lot of its troubles. I think we may have underestimated the impact on our high streets and local businesses of the residual tail of the Covid challenges.

Inevitably, with a committee set up three months into a pandemic looking at its long-term implications there will be some challenges. We were challenged by differing views of how to execute our work—who should be brought into it and different ideas about what the future might hold—but I am 100% certain that we were not in any disagreement about the scale and importance of what we were facing. We had absolute cohesion around four ideas. We saw new inequalities, new trends being created, an acceleration of certain trends and a deepening of others. It is very important that we do not lose sight of that in the face of some of the other things we are looking at now.

I am much struck that we are debating this report alongside the financial statement in the Chamber next door—I quite appreciate that many Members may wish that they were there instead. These issues are completely interrelated, yet it somehow feels as though we have disconnected them. The spending choices being debated in the Chamber are a direct result of some of the decisions made through Covid. It is important to make sure that, as we face the significant headwinds of a rapidly intensifying climate crisis, wars on multiple fronts and a cost of living crisis that people are feeling so keenly, we do not lose sight of the impact that Covid had on many people’s lives in this country.

I look forward to the Minister’s response and reflections on the themes and thoughts in our report.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, I think there may have been a little confusion about the speakers’ list. For the convenience of the Committee, let us hear from the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, next.

Veterans Welfare Services

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, it has been useful to hear of the Government’s very firm commitment to improving the services provided to our veterans, to whom we are all in such debt, to know that progress is being made, and to look forward to fuller news by the end of the year. I will follow comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, on the extremely important report published in July by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton. LGBT veterans are waiting anxiously to hear news of the Government’s implementation of the recommendations in that report. I was delighted to hear from my noble friend the Minister that LGBT veterans will be hearing definite news by the end of this year. I point out that the relevant webpage on GOV.UK, which exists to provide news of the Government’s work and response following the noble and learned Lord’s review, has not been updated since 31 July.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his comments. I have already said that we hope to say something about the Etherton report by the turn of the year. I note what he said about the website; we will certainly pass that on.

Her Majesty The Queen: “The Faithful”

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I think that was mildly away from the subject of the Question, but I always note when a former Sea Lord is against the building of a ship.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that as people in the years to come look back on this extraordinary and glorious reign, they are likely to subscribe to it all manner of suitable loving and respectful epithets, and it might perhaps be wrong to single out any one term?

[Lord True (Con)]

I agree. Is it possible to agree with what both my noble friends said? I believe it is. The Queen’s reign provokes so many positive reflections, and I hope they will last. Her illustrious great-grandfather, King Edward VII, was known as “the Peacemaker” for his efforts to prevent war in Europe. Sadly, four years after his death, the Great War broke out.

Elections Bill

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on some amendments in this group. As Members of the Committee will know, I am extremely disturbed by this Bill as a whole and by the way it has been introduced. Of all its provisions, I think Clause 11 is the least justifiable, introduced as it was after a Written Statement by a middle-range Minister last September after the Bill had already begun its Committee stage in the House of Commons, and pushed through for clearly partisan reasons.

On Monday, the Minister was asking us to look at the practice on voter ID in other countries as a justification for what the Government propose. I am sure he recognises that in the Irish and Danish constitutions, any change in the voting system is a constitutional amendment and therefore has to go through exceptional procedures. That is also true in a number of other countries. In this respect, of course, he will probably say that we should pay no attention to other countries. I deeply respect that, privately, the Minister knows this clause is impossible to defend, and I recognise that he nevertheless has to stand up for it as best he can in the circumstances that this was a Conservative pledge in 2017 and someone up there has not forgotten that.

Yesterday, I read a very good article in the Political Quarterly of 2019 entitled “The UK Politics of Overseas Voting” by Susan Collard; I will return to it when we get on to overseas voting. One of the things that struck me about the introduction was that it talked about the package of measures that might have been agreed among the parties in 2016-17 about voting reform. It was discussed among the parties in the Commons that we could have moved towards automatic voter registration to reduce the number of people not on the register—by and large, the young and the marginal. We could have had a major effort at citizen engagement to encourage people to go to the polls. We could also have included votes at 16, which would almost definitely have helped the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and others. In that context, overseas voting and the extension of overseas voting would have been part of the same package. That could have been negotiated as part of a—

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

Were these official interparty discussions or informal exchanges?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

These were exchanges on and off the Floor of the House of Commons.

That would have been a major set of changes to voting rights that might even have included some form of examination of our voting system. I draw attention to Amendment 140, which suggests that we need a citizens’ assembly on methods of voting for different elections in this country. That would be highly desirable, encouraging an intelligent approach and taking out of the control of parties the question of whose advantage is most looked to in this respect.

This Government have mucked about with local government over an extended period. I am not a great fan of metro mayors—certainly not metro mayors without the scrutiny of elected assemblies—but the Government have them. The Government have reduced the number of local councillors, and now they want to muck about with the system, partly because what Michael Gove and other enthusiasts thought they wanted—independently minded people like we saw in New York and Chicago—has not yet emerged very strongly. But some of those who emerged are rather good, or not so good, Labour candidates, who do not please the Government. Be that as it may, we have a current system for elected mayors.

The only argument, in effect, that the Government can make in defence of this change is that the voters of London and other cities are not as intelligent as their counterparts in Ireland, Scotland and elsewhere and are not capable of understanding a complicated system such as the supplementary vote and therefore we have to go back to the first past the post. That is not a good argument, and I look forward to hearing what alternative argument the Minister may wish to produce.

One of the problems with the first past the post system is that it works really well only when there is a clear two-party system and the two-party system has broken down in almost all democratic countries in recent years, except for the United Kingdom and the United States. In the United Kingdom and the United States, factionalism within both major parties has almost wrecked our politics, partly because the extremists —or less moderate—in both major parties have done their best to take over their party rather than going off and forming their own.

I was very struck by an argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, during our previous day in Committee, which was that you need to be very careful about how the selection process for candidates works because in most constituencies in Britain the selection process decides who will be the MP. The attraction of any form of alternative voting, supplementary voting or proportional representation is that it gives the voter some choice among candidates.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I take the noble Lord’s point, because there are all sorts of polls and this is in the Library briefing, but I can honestly say that I have debated this issue in the past with Labour Ministers who were not for votes at 16 at the time. I think we are getting to a stage in thinking about sophistication and education where we have to coalesce around an arbitrary age. I go back to the criminal responsibility point. The noble Lord speaks very eloquently. He argues “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and that we should not make a radical change without a great deal of consensus. He did not speak like that when he was talking about radically overhauling the refugee convention on another Bill.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I simply venture to suggest that, at the moment, the priority should be to assist and encourage as many of our young people who are already entitled to vote at the age of 18 to get on the registers. We do not have nearly enough of them on the registers. The Government have a number of important initiatives in hand to encourage more of those aged 18 and immediately above to register to vote. My noble friend might be able tell us briefly about some of those important initiatives when he comes to reply.

Elections Bill

Lord Lexden Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to return again to the issue of overseas voters, following in the footsteps of my noble friend Lord Altrincham. Exactly a century ago, his forebear Sir Edward Grigg, a brilliant man, was working as Private Secretary in No. 10 to Lloyd George—but no one should imagine for a moment that the peerage was bought from that notorious famous seller of honours.

Patience is sometimes rewarded—not often, in my experience, but occasionally. It is exactly 10 years ago that, as a fairly new Member of your Lordships’ House, I called, along with other noble friends, for the removal of the 15-year limit on the voting rights of our fellow country men and women living beyond our shores. I set out the case for this extension of the franchise in detail during the passage of what became the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013.

Back then, I was told very politely by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, the Minister with responsibility for electoral issues during the coalition Government, to go away and do some work on the important practical implications of this significant change: the means by which registration to vote could be made as easy as possible, whether votes could safely be cast electronically, the part that our embassies and consulates might play in assisting overseas voters, and so on. These matters were studied by a cross-party group under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. Our report was well received when it was debated in Grand Committee before the general election of 2015. So considerable patience has been displayed by our fellow country men and women living abroad—but at last the promise, thrice delivered, will be fulfilled under this Bill.

The principle that this Bill enshrines is entirely right. I reject the charge that it is a partisan measure. Implementing it will give rise to practical issues, which the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, outlined in his characteristically measured way and which the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, described with characteristic and enjoyable gusto. We will no doubt return to them in Committee.

This legislation will bring us into line, belatedly, with other major democracies. The United States of America, France, Italy and the Netherlands, among others, all provide lifelong voting rights for their citizens living in other countries, as do Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It really is high time that the United Kingdom joined the international consensus—rather than “madness”, as my noble friend Lord Balfe suggested.

I have seen for myself the strength of support for lifelong voting rights at meetings that I have addressed in other countries under the aegis of the excellent organisation Conservatives Abroad, chaired by my friend Heather Harper. I have also received much correspondence from those who have lost their votes after 15 years. One lady in her late 70s wrote to me: “Even though I expected it, when I received a letter from Corby Borough Council telling me I was no longer eligible to register as an overseas voter, I was devastated and still am. Since reaching voting age back in the 1950s, I have never, ever not exercised my democratic right to vote. But now I have been disenfranchised.” Never again will such distress arise, thanks to this legislation. The 15-year limit is wholly arbitrary, and I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Cormack is so far unpersuaded that it should be removed.

With very few exceptions, British citizens abroad are debarred from voting in the national parliamentary elections that take place in the countries where they reside. The world over, the parliamentary franchise rests on nationality, not on residence or the payment of taxes. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, who had responsibility for electoral matters in the last Labour Government, said in the course of our debates in 2013 that

“taxation has never been a criterion for voting in this country and it is not now.”—[Official Report, 14/1/13; col. 484.]

If it had been, Disraeli, who has been extolled in this debate by my noble friend Lord Willetts, would have been unable to extend the vote to the urban working class in 1867. Few if any of them paid taxes.

I have a remarkable man at the front of my thoughts today. Harry Shindler, a Labour supporter in his young days, has lived in Italy since the Second World War, when he helped to liberate that country from fascist control. He has devoted himself to two causes: the development of Anglo-Italian relations and the right to vote in elections in his native land. Last year, when he celebrated his 100th birthday, Harry was invested with the OBE by the British ambassador to Italy. It gave him enormous pride. Harry is the chief hero of the long campaign which this Bill brings to a conclusion. I shall always think of the clauses in it relating to overseas voters as the “Shindler clauses”.

Finally, I too applaud the arrival of the noble Lord, Lord Moore. I have known him, though not at all well, since the early 1980s, when the greatest Tory I have ever met, TE Utley, dispatched him to Northern Ireland as a reporter on the Daily Telegraph to acquaint himself with the affairs of that wonderful part of our country. He has long been a staunch champion of the union. I anticipate some tremendous speeches from him on that subject, which is dear to so many of us in this House.

Veterans’ Strategy Action Plan: Gambling Addiction

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

As I have already said, the Government are grateful to the RAF Benevolent Fund and are considering that research. The NHS long-term plan is addressing provision for those who have gambling problems, and we will continue to work to ensure that we detect and support problems where they arise. In that respect, I am on all fours with every noble Lord who has contributed so far.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

I commend the Government for establishing a review of the treatment of LGBT veterans who served in our Armed Forces between 1967 and 2000, when many were disciplined, dismissed and humiliated for homosexual conduct which was perfectly legal in civilian life. Can my noble friend assure these veterans that, when the review is completed, it will be followed by action to address the suffering and hardship that they endured?

[Lord True (Con)]

I pay tribute to my noble friend and others on all Benches who have campaigned on this matter. I am pleased to tell him that setting up this process is not the end; the end is the action that follows. We are committed to taking tangible action, where appropriate, to redress past wrongs. To do this in a meaningful way, we have to fully understand the impact that the historic ban still has today, and the independent review will help to do that.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much support Clause 1 being part of the Bill, but I want briefly to record how big a decision this is. Just 11 years after the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was put on to the statute book, with much criticism and objection to it at the time—it was done in the shortest period of time and, as we know from other sources, was decided in a very short period by the coalition partners—we are saying that it should now be repealed. This must be the shortest existence of any major constitutional Act.

I mention that so that we learn, I hope, at least one lesson from it: that major constitutional Bills should not be introduced in anything like the way this one was. At the very least, there should be some attempt to achieve consensus on them if they are to endure. Of course, normally, there should surely be pre-legislative scrutiny. The Act has no friends, as evidenced by the fact that there are no amendments to Clause 1. Clause 1 is terrific; I thought that we should start on a happy note.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, Evelyn Waugh once said that the problem with the Tory party is that it

“never put the clock back by a single second.”

Is it not rather wonderful that it is now putting the clock back by 11 whole years?

Clause 1 agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, if I may intervene in this debate, I think it is still important that what used to be the custom and convention be clarified on paper. This is for a very simple reason. While I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that it is inconceivable that a monarch could refuse the request of a Prime Minister, there is always a possibility. For example, in India, which has a constitution based very much on British lines, the president is elected by the Parliament, and very often he or she is a partisan person and would be unable to refuse the Prime Minister under any circumstances. We have to reserve the power of the monarch. If what the Prime Minister is saying does not smell good when he or she is asking for a dissolution, the monarch should have the power to say no.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with all those who have said that my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth has done us a very considerable service. He reminded us of the formidable words of Alan Lascelles, private secretary to George VI in 1950. We should, at all times, keep those Lascelles words in mind:

“It is surely indisputable (and common sense) that a Prime Minister may ask—not demand—that his Sovereign will grant him a dissolution of Parliament; and that the Sovereign, if he”—


or, we should add, she—

“so chooses, may refuse to grant this request.”

It is the existence of this power that has ensured, and will continue to ensure, that no Prime Minister has asked improperly for a dissolution in our history.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

May I just ask, what would be an improper dissolution?

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

I do not think I could make a list of the possibilities. One can conceive of them, but we trust to the existence of this power and the wisdom of the monarch to ensure that no improper dissolution is likely ever to be brought forward.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I intervene briefly because this is a very interesting debate and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, for having tabled his amendment. We are all here because we recognise that the 2011 Act was a mistake. However, I am a little puzzled by the noble Lord’s amendment because he prefers to insert the word “personal” when, up to now, we have simply referred to it as the royal prerogative. Indeed, I am grateful to the Minister, who in a Written Answer to me yesterday defined the royal prerogative; I have it in front of me but do not need to read it out. The Minister refers to the royal prerogative just in those terms and not in any way as “personal”. Therefore, when the noble Lord, Lord Norton, responds to this debate, I would be grateful if he—or indeed the Minister—could tell us whether there is any difference between the phrases “royal prerogative” and “personal prerogative”.

While I am on my feet, I join other noble Lords in saying that, when I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Beith, it brought back to me what happened in 1974. However, I do not think that anyone would expect the monarch to refuse a dissolution, although it is inherent in the nature of this Bill that the monarch might take that fatal step.

Covid-19: National Memorial

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

Yes, we should always seek to be better prepared for everything in life. When we have the inquiry, I have no doubt there will be lessons to be learned by this Government, and I agree with the noble Baroness that the Houses of Parliament and the whole community will want to learn every lesson.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, will the memorial encompass our entire country—all four parts of our United Kingdom?

[Lord True (Con)]

Yes, it will be a United Kingdom commission.

National Insurance Numbers: Electoral Register

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I have indicated that the Government do not see attractions in producing a single national electoral register or centralised database. It is one of the aspects of our position that we should not move forward to automatic registration, and there are others. I have to disappoint the noble Lord on that score.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I too welcome the news that my noble friend has given us. Would it not help to reverse the rather worrying trend in recent years that has seen the number of 16 and 17 year-olds on the registers, in readiness to vote at 18, fall by some 20%? Has any recent assessment been made of the effectiveness of the work done by electoral registration officers in schools, where Northern Ireland has had particularly marked success?

[Lord True (Con) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend raises an important point and we will certainly look at the Northern Ireland example. As he and the House may know, we have been working to try to encourage enrolment through the universities, and an evaluation will be published today of Cabinet Office work looking at the effectiveness of the student electoral registration condition. These are all important areas where we need to continue to work.