Buckinghamshire (Structural Changes) (Modification of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007) Regulations 2019

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I beg to move the two Motions standing in my name on the Order Paper en bloc.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, perhaps I may make a brief intervention.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, the Minister’s Motion to move the Motions en bloc has been objected to.

[Lord Liddle]

No, I—

[The Lord Speaker]

You have objected to it, even if you do not know it. The Minister should now move the first Motion on its own.

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[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, it is not my intention to delay the House, and I apologise if that is the case. I realise that we have a heavy day of statutory instruments ahead of us.

I would like to use the opportunity of this order concerning Buckinghamshire to make a parochial plea on behalf of my own native Cumbria, in which I should declare an interest as a county councillor. I am raising the issue on this order because the situation of our county is precisely parallel to the situation in Buckinghamshire. I am rather pleased that, in the case of Buckinghamshire, the Secretary of State has decided in favour of a single unitary authority for the county. In Cumbria, we went through an extensive period of debate with the district councils on the question of local government reorganisation. We tried very hard to establish consensus, but we could not and therefore the county council with the full support of all parties has applied to the Secretary of State, as it is entitled to until the end of March, to make a request for consideration of reorganisation.

I would like an assurance from the Minister. I realise that a lot of effort has gone into this Buckinghamshire case and that the Government will have an awful lot on their plate by the end of March, but for us this is an absolutely vital concern if we are to avoid major cuts in our services and to have an efficient local authority system in Cumbria and one that can deal with the very big challenges that we are facing.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, while not strictly on the issue of Buckinghamshire, I think I signed off a letter yesterday to the noble Lord in response to the one that he had written to me on the subject of Cumbria. I am not sure whether he has received it yet—possibly not. The same letter went to my noble friend Lord Cavendish putting forward similar arguments which support the thesis of the noble Lord that there is cross-party support for this. The issue is very much in the in-tray. Suffice it to say that, after the end of March, there is still a facility for local government reorganisation, even if the initiative is not taken before then, although it is on a slightly different basis—it would be an invitation from the Secretary of State. I do not think, from memory of the letter, that we are ruling that out in any way. We would need to consider that.

Local Authorities: Essential Services

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a Cumbria County councillor. I well remember my political apprenticeship on Oxford City Council in the 1970s and those enjoyable debates with the noble Lord, Lord Patten. I also remember an unhappier time in the 1980s when I was a member of Lambeth Council. The events there did a lot of long-term damage to the reputation of local government. I am now delighted to be a member of Cumbria County Council in the native community I grew up in, where, if I might say so, the Labour group that I attend reminds me so much of the Labour Party I dearly love.

The central thrust of my argument is that, with the public spending review coming up this year, it is essential that the Government set up an independent inquiry into the structure and future financing of local government in England. Although he is no longer in his place, I recommend that the Government invite the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, to chair such an inquiry. These are centrally important issues. I think Ministers will accept that the Government have no bandwidth to address them themselves in the coming months because of Brexit, but they have to be looked at. What better means of doing that than by having a quick but independent look at these questions?

I will argue why this is essential from my experience in Cumbria. Cumbria is not like Newcastle, about which my noble friend Lord Beecham, with his wonderful record of service there, spoke so eloquently. It is a mixed place: half of it is rural market towns, relatively affluent, and attractive to incomers and tourists, but the other half is very industrial or post-industrial, with pockets of deep deprivation and a lot of places that feel left behind, as we say nowadays. One of the extraordinary things about Cumbria is that, if you contrast the ward on the west coast in Workington with the ward in the east of the county near Penrith, you will find that there is almost a 20-year difference in life expectancy. That is shocking.

Our authority’s spending this year—its net revenue budget, taking out direct schools grant and all the rest—is about £380 million. This year, we have to make £39 million-worth of savings, bringing the total savings we have had to make since 2010 to £200 million. Half of the authority’s spend goes on what is called the people directorate: the care of children and adults. There are still immense strains on adult social care, but the crisis of the moment is around looked-after children, for which we set a budget this year of £43 million —we now think that we will have to spend £54 million. While we are cutting £39 million, we are coming under intense pressure on looked-after children. That is in part because of a rise in numbers and in part because of a rise in the cost of placing people in residential accommodation.

For the future, I see very little happy prospect without some uplift in government grant. On present projections, we are required to make some further £50 million in savings over the next three years, unless public spending projections change. I simply do not know where this will come from. We are looking rather desperately at trying to cut the cost of social care placements for people with very special needs.

There is one opportunity to save a lot of money in Cumbria, but it is in the Secretary of State’s hands. We could have a local government reorganisation, which would create a unitary authority. It is estimated that that would produce savings of £25 million. An application from the county council to this effect has gone to the Secretary of State, Mr Brokenshire, and I hope he is looking at it seriously. It is a difficult problem for the district councils and the MPs because people do not like this change. But in the financial situation we face, it would be irresponsible for the Government not to permit this to go ahead.

For the longer term, we need a change in government policy on the financing of local government or else we will face the total evisceration of local services. I think about all the grants in the area that I represent and all the local organisations that will have to close: the library will have to close and we will not be able to keep supporting our baths and our theatre club. David Cameron used to speak of the big society. It is the big society that is suffering most from this deep austerity.

I recognise that there are many claims on future public spending, but I hope there is consensus—I would like to hear this from the Minister—that local government has borne a disproportionate share of austerity and that this now needs to be corrected in the coming public spending settlement. Of course, if we want to have decent services, we will have to pay a bit more tax, not just at the top but one that everybody can afford. Social care is a real test of this. We cannot address the question of social care without a willingness to pay, and I think that there would be such a public willingness to pay.

My argument is this. Yes, local government has coped remarkably and has had to continue to innovate boldly in its provision of services. Services have to change; they cannot be preserved in aspic. We have to be innovative, but national government has to help local government in this situation. As mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, we have to have a long-term plan for structure, finance, how we handle business rates and what the Government want local government to be able to achieve. We need an urgent independent look at this at this time of wider national crisis that makes it so difficult for us to concentrate on these questions.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Committee: 11th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, I usually sleep quite well, but last night I had a sleepless night. It was because I received a Written Answer yesterday from Defra about exactly how much farming support came from Europe. It stated:

“Across the UK £3.95 billion is provided a year under the Common Agricultural Policy. Of this, around 93% is funded from the EU, with around 7% being national funding under rural development programmes”.


So 93% is from Europe. If Brexit goes through, it could well devastate the Welsh agricultural industry. It is a catastrophic move for Welsh agriculture. We know that it already struggles. We have had years of blight in Welsh agriculture, but now we have a scheme going through that we do not have to approve: this House can stop it and, by so doing, stop that death blow to Welsh agriculture.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I add an English voice in support of the amendment—a northern English voice and a Cumbrian voice. In deference to the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, for whom I have great regard because of the work he does in Cumbria, I think that European funds have made an enormous difference to our prospects in the north. In our debates on the Bill, we have heard a lot of the voices of Wales and Scotland about how they should be treated in the light of Brexit, but we have heard very little about how the north of England should be treated. This reflects the fact that federalism in this country has not advanced far enough. We do not have a proper devolved system of government. It is an object lesson in how the interests of large parts of England are completely forgotten in a lot of our deliberations.

The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, is absolutely right that the £350 million a week claim on the bus played an enormous part in the leave victory. I remember giving out leaflets on the streets of the ward I represent on the county council in Wigton in Cumbria. People came up to me and said “Roger, you know, we’re not going to vote for you on this because we’re just wasting all that money”. I tried to explain to people that the £350 million that they were talking about was a gross figure of UK contributions to the EU, from which we got back substantial amounts of money which went to Cumbria in a big way.

Let me cite some examples. There is not just the agricultural support, which I know is a great concern of the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish. We would not have broadband in Cumbria if we had not had special EU support for it. We would not have had the regeneration schemes for the ports of Maryport, Whitehaven and Barrow if we had not had EU structural funds. We have had huge support for regeneration.

One other interest that I should declare is that I chair Lancaster University, just outside my native county, which is presently building a health innovation campus that would not happen without EU structural funds—and this for an excellent university, which is top of the league in the Sunday Times this year, if I can plug it in the Lords Chamber. It is a vital investment for the university’s future.

The truth is that, if the £350 million claim that the leavers made was to be met, all that spending would have to be scrapped—all the spending on agriculture and the regions and all the spending on culture, science and innovation would go, because that was the gross contribution. Clearly, therefore, there is great embarrassment on the Benches opposite as to their present intentions, because they cannot tell the Foreign Secretary that he was lying throughout the campaign. But the truth is that that was what he was doing. He was lying about the £350 million. The fact is that, if these programmes, the agriculture support and structural fund money is to continue, there is no £350 million. There might be a lesser sum from the net contribution, but when you are thinking about the net contribution, you have to think about the impact of Brexit on our economic growth and therefore on tax revenues. It is already the case that, whereas we were growing before the referendum at the top of the G7 league, we are now growing at the bottom of it, and the Chancellor’s own forecasts for the next five years suggest that we will continue to be in that position and will suffer a considerable loss of potential growth and tax revenue.

This is a very serious issue. I would like clear answers from the Government as to what promises beyond 2020 they are prepared to make on agriculture and structural funds. That matters greatly to the future of the regions of this nation.

[Lord Adonis]

I endorse everything that my noble friend Lord Liddle has said. Always when the House debates a Bill at length, certain themes appear, and the themes and patterns can often be of some significance. One of the most significant themes that has appeared in your Lordships’ consideration of this Bill is how weak the voice of England has been in our debates compared with the voice of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

There has been only one substantive debate about the interests of England after EU withdrawal and how it is handled, which was the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—significantly, a former leader of Newcastle City Council—on 19 March. It was a very significant debate in the form that it took. What came through very clearly in the debate was that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and other leaders of local authorities in England, including the noble Lord, Lord Porter, who sits on the Conservative Benches and is the leader of the Local Government Association, had far more confidence in the EU’s processes of consultation through the Committee of the Regions than they did in any institutional arrangements for consultation between Her Majesty’s Government and local authorities in England.

I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, in his place—I think that he may be responding to this debate. In his characteristic way, he made a very constructive response to the debate, saying that the Government were considering consultation arrangements post-EU withdrawal with local authorities in England. I took it to be a very significant statement when he said that that might involve new consultative machinery, including possibly a new consultative body between the Government and local authorities in England. I have to say that the fact that it takes EU withdrawal for Her Majesty’s Government to produce proposals for formal institutional consultation between the leaders of local authorities in England and the Government is a pretty damning commentary on the state of our constitutional arrangements in this country. One of the themes that comes through very strongly from Brexit is that English local government and the regions and cities of England are essentially government from London in a colonial fashion, in much the same way as Scotland and Wales were before devolution. One of the very big issues raised by Brexit is that whatever happens over the next year, whether or not we leave—and I hope we do not—Parliament is going to have to address with great seriousness in the coming years the government of England as a nation but also the relationship between this colonial-style government that we have in Westminster and Whitehall and local government across England as a whole.

The one telling exception to this pattern is London, because London has a directly elected mayor and the Greater London Authority. As a former Minister, I know that the whole way that London is treated is radically different from the way that the rest of England is treated because it has a mayor and the GLA. When the Mayor of London phones Ministers, sitting there with 1 million votes—somewhat more than my noble friend has as the county councillor for Wigton; I know he has done very well but he does not sit there with quite so many votes—I assure noble Lords that Ministers take the Mayor of London’s call.

I remember vividly that when I was Secretary of State for Transport I met the then Mayor of London, who is now the Foreign Secretary, and he did not know who the leader of Birmingham City Council was. It only happens to be the second largest city in England. That is a very telling commentary on the state of the government of England. How England is going to be treated is massive unfinished business in our constitutional arrangements, and Brexit has exposed a whole set of issues relating to the government of England that will now have to be addressed.

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[Lord Liddle]

Can the Minister tell us anything about the timing of consultation papers on the shared prosperity fund? When are they likely to appear? Particularly in relation to the debate on Brexit, are we likely to see what is proposed before the final decisions that we have to make at the end of this year?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

The noble Lord makes a fair point. I do not know the specific answer, but I will cover it in a letter to all Peers who have participated in the debate on these amendments, and place a copy in the Library.

Inequalities

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Liddle]

To move that this House takes note of the case for a comprehensive agenda to address regional and national inequalities within the United Kingdom.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register as a member of Cumbria County Council and as pro-chancellor and chairman of Lancaster University.

The United Kingdom, England in particular, has a massive problem of regional inequality. It is growing and though there is a political consensus that “something must be done”, what is being done is incoherent, underfunded and does not yet match the scale of the challenge. We saw this in two government reports published this week. The industrial strategy document highlighted in one of its tables the enormous productivity gap between London and the south-east and some of the other regions in the country. On Tuesday, the State of the Nation report from the Social Mobility Commission, chaired by my good friend Alan Milburn—I wish he was still in politics—painted an extraordinarily bleak picture. The commission’s report said:

“The UK now has greater regional disparities in economic performance than any other European country”.


Just reflect on that for a moment: greater disparity than that between northern Italy and the Mezzogiorno and greater disparity than there is between prosperous southern Germany and the eastern Länder. If I may add my own aside on that, this is before Brexit and the disappearance of the European structural funds that have, over the years, been one of the few consistently reliable sources of money for physical and economic regeneration. We still have no guarantee of what will happen to this vital source of regional investment in the longer term. I do not know whether the Minister has news for us today. I doubt it, but it is something that the Government will have to speak about.

Since the great depression of the 1930s, our prosperity has been overwhelmingly driven by London and the south-east. There are also big differences in public spending per head between northern and southern regions. The estimate of the Social Mobility Commission is that this comes to £6 billion a year. Even where public spending is relatively generous per head, as it is in the north-east, it is important to look at the composition: almost half of public spending in the north-east goes on welfare payments and only 6% on stimulating the regional economy through investment in science, employment and transport. In London, despite pockets of great inner-city deprivation, only a third of public spending goes on welfare and 12% is spent on economic regeneration.

Of course, there is a more variegated picture than the regional picture: coastal towns in the south have done badly, as well as other parts of the country. There is one interesting fact that the commission brings out: in thinking today of Kensington and Chelsea, we think of the awful tragedy of Grenfell Tower. But in K&C borough, 50% of disadvantaged youngsters get to university. Do you know what the figure is for Barnsley, Eastbourne and Hastings? It is less than 10%. Therefore, on the creation of social mobility, as well as on inequality, the regional picture is pretty gloomy. It is a matter of great concern to me as a Carlisle lad that Carlisle is fifth worst blackspot in Britain for social mobility, while the area I represent on Cumbria County Council—Wigton in Allerdale district—is the sixth worst. We need something to be done. It is not good enough to say that we are anti society’s ills, particularly if you are on the progressive left. We win only when we offer solutions.

As for the past, Labour can say that it helped invent regional policy. My grandfather was a miner in west Cumbria. His pit closed in 1926 and no one worked in the area until the Second World War. It was the Distribution of Industry Act 1945, passed under the wartime coalition when Hugh Dalton was president of the Board of Trade that started the process of development areas, the building of advanced factories on new estates, and the putting in place of a system of licences, grants and aids that helped transform these depressed areas. That achievement was built on with great success by the Wilson Governments of the 1960s with investment grants, regional employment premia and all of that.

We have to find a way to devise a credible regional policy for modern economic conditions. What we did then will not work. Britain is unlikely to attract major new manufacturing plants. Small firms are the major source of employment growth. Services are Britain’s major competitive strength. It is a new generation of innovation and high-tech entrepreneurs who are likely to deliver the best jobs for the future.

What needs to be prioritised? For me, connectivity, both digital and rail, is very important. I remain a committed supporter of HS2 as potentially a great uniter of the divided north and south economies. He is not here, but I greatly admired my noble friend Lord Adonis’s lecture on the future of London, in which he talked about HS2 facilitating a great golden arrow of economic integration between the north, the Midlands and the south. I am with him on this, but with an important qualification: I would like the golden arrow to point north rather than south. For instance, I want it to be feasible as a result of HS2 to shift whole government departments out of London, with fast connectivity to the capital to attend occasional ministerial meetings. In fact, to be cheeky, I suggest that we relocate Defra to my native Cumbria, where the civil servants could hop out of their office and look at the practical consequences of policies on farming, fishing, environmental management and flooding.

In research and innovation, better connectivity will stretch the golden triangle of our university research north-west, I hope to the excellent Lancaster University, which I chair, and, in the north-east, to Durham and Newcastle. I greatly applaud the Government’s commitment to expand the nation’s research and innovation budget. However, at present, 46% of that goes to Oxbridge and the top London institutions. A modern regional policy would set a target for the new UK Research and Innovation to reduce their share to, say, 30% of a greatly expanded budget. The way to do this is with the science and innovation audits presently being conducted area by area. Risky decisions have to be taken to back job creation and innovation outside the present golden triangle, because the north has to become a magnet. The Government have to help design that magnet for this new generation of entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers. Here, it is important that we continue to encourage overseas academics to work in Britain and that we have a generous policy towards refugees—often brilliant people whose countries deny them basic freedoms, who want to come and work in Britain. They should be encouraged to work in the regions.

The north needs more investment than HS2. I am disappointed that the Government have not made a commitment to getting on with HS3. We need modern transport hubs at every level. Again to quote a local example, the journey time from Carlisle to Manchester Airport is getting on for two and a half hours. It takes only three and a quarter hours to get to London. We have to improve services within the regions. When you get to Carlisle, if you are going to Sellafield, the greatest nuclear site, it takes an hour and a half on the train to get there westwards. If you are going to Newcastle, it takes you more than an hour and a half to cover 60 miles to the east. We have to improve that connectivity.

How is all this to be paid for? I am not in favour of robbing London to pay for investment in the north. I support Crossrail 2—I see the economic case for it—but London is a very rich place with a huge tax base. I would like the Government to give London’s mayor expanded powers to raise revenues from that rich tax base. I would start by putting additional council tax bands at the top end on expensive properties. That would release more national funds for the north.

In the 1960s, Labour used to self-confidently make the argument for regional policy on the grounds that it was in the interests of London as well as the north to have a better-balanced distribution of growth across the whole country. That was relevant then and is even more relevant now in taking the pressure off house prices and creating exciting new opportunities for dynamic young people in other parts of the country, where their expectations of the good life can be somewhat better than renting an affordable bed-sitting room.

It is in the interests of the whole country, non-Londoners and Londoners alike, that we have a kind of British Marshall plan for the regions. I would put two other elements in it. First would be an attack on our decaying town centres in the north: tackling empty properties, not allowing heritage to decay, creating attractive units at affordable rents and business rates, and bringing back housing to town centres. Secondly, it is important that we try to transform the quality of public services in the north, particularly teaching in the too many low-performing schools, which have been tolerated for far too long, but also doctors and nurses, who are in short supply, to deal with the brunt of an ageing population. That means incentives for young professionals, particularly for youngsters to come back home from university—their parents would dearly love that. Why not try to devise a scheme where the burden of tuition fees is lifted from students who commit to working for five or 10 years in the regions whence they came?

There has to be a new political framework for a revived regional policy. Again, to compliment the Government, I greatly welcomed George Osborne’s commitment to the northern powerhouse, devo deals and city regional mayors. It showed commitment that something needed to change. Given the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, in the House, I say how much I admired his effort in trying to make that policy work. It was an outstanding performance. I am very sorry the Government took the opportunity for it to continue away from him. However, it was too piecemeal an approach and the devo deals depended on establishing local consensus. I know from bitter experience in Cumbria how difficult local consensus is to establish. In our case, there is frankly no sense in adding the third tier of an elected mayor to an already dysfunctional two-tier local government structure.

It is a shame that Osborne is no longer in the Cabinet to advocate these policies, although he is a brilliant editor of the Evening Standard. His policy now seems to suffer from the “not invented here” syndrome of the present Government. We have an industrial strategy that seems to prioritise sectoral deals over regional deals. We have to find a way of meshing the two together. In another Cumbrian example, it is self-evident that it is the Government who have to make a decision about whether we have new nuclear power stations. They will require some form of public equity stake, but if they are to go ahead the preparations for them—the working out of the planning, housing, skills and local supply chains—has to be done by some powerful devolved body.

I am coming to the conclusion of my remarks. We need a comprehensive new political structure of devolution based on city regions. This should form part of a constitutional convention that looks at the future of England and the United Kingdom. We need that political change to go alongside the renewed regional policy of which I have spoken. I look forward to the rest of our debate this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in a very good debate. I was particularly honoured by the presence of two former Deputy Prime Ministers, which I think emphasises the importance of the topic. I think there is a lot of consensus that we need more investment. We are talking not about wasting money but about collective action that will pay rich dividends both for individuals and for taxpayers. The only other point that I would make is that the great unanswered questions in our pursuit of regionalism are those that my noble friend Lord Richard so elegantly pointed to in his speech. With that, I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Local Government Finance Settlement

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a county councillor in Cumbria and someone who is not a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Perhaps I may express my sympathy for the Minister in having to come before us with such a pathetic Statement. Does he not recognise that the fundamental problem the Government are facing is that they cannot meet the expectations of the public for decent schools, decent health and decent social care on the financial perspective they have set out of reducing public spending to 36% of GDP by 2020? We have to fundamentally reconsider that objective.

Will the Minister give us some indication that there might be just a little bit of joined-up thinking in the Government and assure us that this extra social care fund which is being provided will be directed at those parts of the country where the NHS is suffering from severe bed-blocking problems, as is the case in my own county of Cumbria? These issues are really threatening the provision of decent healthcare in our area.

Thirdly, I want to make a point that no one else has made. The Statement contains a threat to the most local of local democracies; I am talking about parish and town councils. In my experience—there is a town council in Wigton in the area I represent in Cumbria—they do not have big budgets, but they are trying to use money to make up for community grants for helping swimming pools and local leisure facilities that have inevitably been cut back by county and district councils as a result of the scale of the cuts in grant that the Government have implemented. To try to restrict their freedom of action is, frankly, petty.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for his contribution. The picture he presents is at odds with the picture of local government achieving, and being recognised as achieving, around the country. Yes, there are challenges we are meeting, not least dealing with delayed discharges. As I have indicated, that is essential to the Government’s thesis; the Statement indicates that too. It is important that we deal with the issue of integrating health and social care, and £6 billion—not an inconsiderable sum—will be invested in that. We hope that by the end of this Parliament the position will be much better than it is now. This is not an entirely new problem—not that I am suggesting the noble Lord said it was—but one that has grown up over time. Therefore, it is a problem that will take time to solve.

On the particular point the noble Lord made about parish and town councils, once again I do not recognise this action we have taken against them. We have recognised the very important role they fulfil. As a Government we are keen to ensure that council tax increases are kept to a minimum. I hope the noble Lord will agree that that is fair. They have gone up excessively in the past under successive Governments, but, as I have indicated, at the end of this Parliament they will be lower in real terms than they were when we came to power in 2010. That is a significant achievement. Meanwhile, I assure the noble Lord that we will work with parish and town councils to ensure they continue to offer the quality of services they currently do, to help them in that regard and to ensure they have continuing value for money on that front.

EU Committee: Court of Justice of the European Union

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I join my noble friend Lord Anderson of Swansea in congratulating the committee and its chair on the excellent report before us tonight. It once again shows the value of our European Union Select Committee and the work that it does. The subject of the Court of Justice is—and I come on to this in a moment or two—a subject that arouses great passions in some quarters, but this is a model of a balanced report based on careful study of evidence and entirely non-partisan in its spirit, and I think, as the Opposition do, that the Government would do well to heed its recommendations.

My only regret—and it is a point that I have made about these reports before—is that it was completed at the end of March and we are now debating it in the second half of October. In this case, it so happens that the report and its recommendations remain relevant, topical and timely, but that is not always the case, and we should give these Select Committee reports a high priority in our work.

Obviously there is a real problem about the Court’s growing case load. I looked up how many cases the ECJ had before it or had settled in the year before we joined the European Community in 1970, and the number was 70. In 2010, the figure was 574, which tells you something about the expanded scope of the European Union’s work. I agree with my noble friend Lord Rowlands that some of this is the result of unintended consequences, but at the same time one also has to acknowledge the technical complexity of operating a single market as seen in the REACH chemicals directive or the extension of the scope of European activity into areas such as criminal justice, because our security depends on our interdependence with our neighbours. This will inevitably bring more work into the remit of the Court.

In one respect, the letter that we have received from the Minister for Europe, the right honourable David Lidington, is encouraging. It acknowledges that there is a workload problem, and it is encouraging that the Government are having discussions about this. However, the sentence,

“we are not convinced that the court is facing an imminent crisis”,

suggests to me that the Government are not grappling with this issue with the urgency that they should.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, explained how the delays in the Court are very damaging. If you look at the evidence on how long cases such as competition cases take to get resolved—33 months—that is not terribly satisfactory from anyone’s point of view. It is not satisfactory on grounds of efficiency and justice, nor does it happen to be in Britain’s national interest. We need an effective Court, as we need an effective Commission, to police the single market’s rules. Perhaps I may make an obvious point that is worth repeating again and again; there is a huge contradiction in the attitude of Eurosceptics towards the European Union. They say that they joined only a single market and that all they want is a single market, but they refuse to accept that the functioning of the single market depends on effective supranational institutions such as the Commission and the Court: that you cannot have one without the other. I would like the Government—I know that the pro-European half, or section, of the Government is facing me from the Front Bench—to feel that the whole of the Government recognise the truth of that argument: namely, that it is in Britain’s national interest to have an effective ECJ.

There are Members in the other place who have strong views about the ECJ. I was very alarmed to read that Mr George Eustice, in this new group of Eurosceptic Conservative Back-Benchers that was established, started talking about how in reality the European Court of Justice operates as a political court; that it has been out of control for far too long; and that it is time to clip its wings and to make it accountable to Parliament, as though it is normal that courts are accountable to politicians. That is the attitude in important sections of the governing party.

The fundamental reason why these sensible proposals are not being squarely addressed by the Government is because of this politics, which is getting into very dangerous territory. Some Members in the other place have attacked individual British Members. One attacked the British Advocate-General, Eleanor Sharpston, just because she happened to be, in their view, on the wrong side in the metric martyrs case. That kind of populist approach to the European Court is quite unacceptable. We need to see on the part of the Government a willingness to deal with these issues in the kind of objective manner that is in our national interest, as this report recommends. I commend the report to the House.