Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Minister is not going to take this amendment away and come back. It is a very kind offer to make. We had an extensive discussion on this clause in Committee. The Committee voted by quite a substantial majority to retain it. What we have here is an amendment that is offered as a compromise but which seems to the Government to make the situation a good deal more complicated.

What we have in Clause 2 at the moment is a straightforward repeal of the requirement on tribunals to offer non-enforceable recommendations on wider issues. It does not reduce or abolish the right of tribunals to offer comments on particular cases and it certainly does not lower what they can do in this overall area. It does, however, simplify the position. By contrast, the amendment offered by the noble Lords, Lord Lester and Lord Hunt, would lead, we argue, to a more complicated system for tribunal recommendations. It would reduce the protection for claimants and set up more complex arrangements for tribunals. It would allow a tribunal to make a recommendation if it thought that it would completely obviate—not just reduce—the adverse effects evident from the case. That is a much higher standard of proof for the complainant than we require under the present system or that would be required following the repeal.

I will comment briefly on the general issue from the Equality Act. This was intended by the Government to be a light-touch element in the very large number of tribunal cases. I understand that there have been around 1 million employment tribunal cases in total, of which around 10%—100,000—were discrimination cases. Some 3,000 of these discrimination cases were successful and in 40 of them there were recommendations. Therefore, we are talking about a very small number. The range of recommendations includes the question of equal pay where there is a requirement for equal pay audits, which is enforceable. An equal pay audit ordered by an employment tribunal is a precise and mandatory requirement with sanctions for non-compliance to advance equal pay in the small number of organisations where a breach of equal pay law has been found and it is also a direct transparency measure as it has to be published.

By contrast, wider recommendations in discrimination cases are effectively discretionary for employers and do not have to be made where an employer loses a discrimination case. Wider recommendations are generally broad-brush proposals; for example, a recommendation that human resources staff undergo equalities awareness training. These are non-enforceable recommendations about training, company culture or a range of other areas that are made by tribunals that may not themselves be very closely aware of the culture of the companies concerned. They are recommendations from the outside.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested that, although the amendment is in some ways defective, he would like the Government to take it away and improve it. The amendment, even if modified as the noble Lord proposes, would, in our opinion, result in a quite complex and heavy set of requirements. These could mean, for example, that tribunals might be required to consider wider recommendations in a very large number of cases while quite minor omissions by employers, such as failing to train a manager or to update a diversity statement, could become unlawful acts under equality law. I regret, therefore, that the Government have to decline the invitation to take this away and improve the quality of the amendment.

Our repeal will not prevent tribunals from making non-binding observations on employers’ practices. These could reasonably include the type of points mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Low, in specific cases. For all employers, losing a tribunal case and having to pay compensation, which our repeal will not affect, itself concentrates employers’ minds and persuades them to learn from their mistakes. The lack of enforcement already there means that they have to take them into account.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, also talked about introducing the word “proportionate” into the legislation. As someone who struggled in the EU balance of competences review to define “proportionate”, I am conscious that it opens a large door to lawyers and that it is very difficult to discover precisely what proportionality means.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, raised the question of the introduction of fees and I recognise that that is of course a serious point. He will in turn recognise that the Government are struggling to contain public expenditure. It is important to emphasise that the Government have been careful to ensure that fee waivers are available for people of limited means in order that they are not excluded from seeking redress in tribunals. The Government have committed to reviewing the introduction of fees, although of course it will be for the Government after the next election to take on that review. We are considering the scope and timing of the review and will bring forward our plans in due course.

I hope that that provides sufficient information to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Low, to withdraw the amendment. The House did support the Government’s repeal proposal at Committee stage last autumn and I stress that we proposed a straightforward repeal of an unenforceable power that creates a perception of burden and unfairness.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his reply and I am grateful to all those who have spoken, especially to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, who I thought went out of his way to suggest ways in which there might be a meeting of minds between the proposers of the amendment and the Government. I am sorry that the Minister is not prepared to respond more flexibly to the invitation from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to be flexible, which I am afraid does not give us a lot of room for flexibility on our part, although we might well have shown it had the Minister agreed to accede to the suggestion made by the noble Lord to make time for a further look at the amendment.

The Minister said that this is intended to be only a light-touch measure. I cannot see how more light touch it could possibly be. He gave us the statistics showing that there were 1 million tribunal cases over the period he referred to, of which 100,000 were discrimination cases. Some 3,000 of those cases were successful, and in only 40 cases were wider recommendations made. It is hard to see how this could be more light touch than that. You cannot say that the tribunals have been abusing this power.

The Minister went on to suggest that there is no need for such a power by dismissing as immaterial or unimportant the sort of cases in which it has been used. He said that it had been used in minor cases such as the failure of a company to train a manager. Well, I am not sure how much less minor it is possible to be than failing to train your managers properly. He also suggested that our amendment would make the situation worse. I cannot see that because it seeks simply to reinstate the position as arrived at in the Equality Act. It does not seek to be more draconian than that or more burdensome on employers. I think I showed in moving the amendment that it is hard to argue how the use of this power, as it has been used, constitutes a burden on business and employers.

No one in the House or even in the country is more expert on these matters than the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and I am sure that we are all extremely sorry that he is not able to be present today to give us the benefit of his wisdom. However, I am perfectly sure that he would not be moving an amendment of this kind if he did not think that it was a useful component of discrimination law and the light-touch enforcement thereof. In crafting it, the noble Lord sought to be compromising and to move a less drastic amendment than the complete removal of the clause as was attempted in Committee. This is a different approach. It is perfectly open to the House to support the amendment. It is not constrained in that matter by the discussions that took place in Committee. For all these reasons, I want to test the opinion of the House.

Elections: Weekend Voting

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

A whole range of places, including church halls, are indeed used for polling stations. It often happens, however, that the primary school is the most convenient place in a village or town district for people to get to and for disabled people in particular to be able to go into.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that whether an activity is disruptive or not depends on the value of the activity? I do not find many people agreeing with me about how disruptive football matches are.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I merely reiterate that not all schools that are used as polling stations have to close entirely for the day of polling. There is some disruption, so it is a problem, but it is not a universal problem.

Leveson Report

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government well understand the strength of feeling among the public on the misuse of press freedom in recent years. We have not yet reached the end of the story—we are still moving and there are some hiccups on the way.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, what is the procedure for determining the precedence as between the two royal charters which are going before the Privy Council?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Press Standards Board of Finance submitted its petition to the Privy Council before the Government had presented their own royal charter. My understanding is that that therefore gives it precedence over the Government’s royal charter, but that the consideration of the draft royal charter nominated by the Press Standards Board of Finance should shortly be finished, and at that point we will consider how we move further.

Representation of the People (Election Expenses Exclusion) Order 2013

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Representation of the People Act 1983 lists a number of exclusions from election expenses, which this order seeks to amend. The order adds a further exclusion whereby payments made to disabled candidates from the Access to Elected Office for Disabled People Fund are also exempted. This means that recipients of the new fund will not be penalised for accepting grants that are intended to increase their electoral participation. Fund payments will not therefore be considered for the purposes of candidates’ spending limits.

There are more than 11 million people with a limiting long-term illness, impairment or disability in Great Britain, and they are substantially underrepresented in Parliament and other elected bodies. The Government strongly believe that elected bodies should be more representative of the people they serve.

To address this, the Access to Elected Office Strategy was launched in July last year to provide disabled people with training, paid parliamentary internships and grants through the Access to Elected Office for Disabled People Fund. The fund was established because one of the principal reasons disabled people are underrepresented in elected bodies is the fact that they face additional costs when standing for elected office—for instance, extra transport costs or the hire of sign language interpreters. These additional costs create an extra barrier to elected office for disabled people—one that other, non-disabled, candidates do not face. The fund therefore seeks to help disabled candidates to overcome these financial hurdles by covering the cost of their disability-related items or services, whatever they may be.

The fund provides grants to all disabled candidates, whether they are independent or represent political parties, provided that they are standing at UK parliamentary, English local authority, Greater London Authority, English mayoral or police and crime commissioner elections or by-elections. By offering specific disability-related financial assistance, the fund will place disabled candidates on an equal footing with the other candidates.

Unfortunately, under current electoral rules, grant payments awarded by the fund will count towards candidates’ election spending limits. This is not an issue for parliamentary, Greater London Authority or police and crime commissioner elections, where disability-related costs are likely to be treated as personal expenses and are therefore exempt under Section 76(5) of the Representation of the People Act 1983—a provision that I am sure Members of the Committee know off by heart—but for local authority and English mayoral elections, the rules place disabled candidates who are awarded funding from the Government in the extraordinary position of being penalised for accepting it. Of course, in local authority elections, the overall limit for spending is much lower and there is therefore potentially a much higher barrier. This is because any fund spending will reduce the amount that disabled candidates can spend on the usual election expenses, while unfunded candidates will have the entire election expenses limit at their disposal.

The situation is further affected by the fact that there are a number of high-cost needs for which many disabled candidates will seek funding, such as British sign language interpreters who can cost as much as £350 a day. In some circumstances, the fund could entirely consume a disabled candidate’s election expenses limit, which is on average just £1,000 for local authority elections. This order therefore seeks to remove these unintended effects of the fund by excluding grants provided by the Access to Elected Office for Disabled People Fund from candidate spending limits. Using an existing order-making power contained within Schedule 4A to the Representation of the People Act 1983 to amend the Act itself, a new tightly drawn exception to the definition of election expenses is thus being created. This exception will provide that any item or service financed by the fund would not amount to an election expense, and would not therefore count towards a candidate’s spending limit.

A three-part test must be met in order for the exemption the order provides to apply. First, a candidate must have incurred spending specifically in order to remove or mitigate barriers to seeking elected office—barriers which must be associated with his or her disability. Secondly, that spending must also have been incurred through the means of a grant awarded under the fund’s terms and conditions. Lastly, the spending must then be defrayed or reimbursed by the fund. The fund is intended to cover all the additional costs that disabled candidates face as a result of their disability. That can therefore include extra costs that arise from campaigning activity. For example, campaigning leaflets would not normally be considered for funding, but where a blind candidate might require Braille leaflets for proof-reading purposes, the extra cost of producing those leaflets in Braille will be met by the fund.

The order is also drafted with a sunset clause so that it exactly aligns with the short and temporary operating period of the fund. The fund has been set up as a pilot exercise only until June 2014, so its effectiveness can be assessed before the Government take a view on whether to introduce it on a permanent basis. If the resolution is passed, the Representation of the People (Election Expenses Exclusion) Order will be made to ensure that it comes into force by 26 March, the start of the regulated period for the next local authority elections. I hope noble Lords agree that the fund provides essential support to disabled people seeking to participate in elections and democratic processes, and that this order helps very considerably to enable that. I beg to move.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, as we have heard, the additional costs faced by disabled people in contesting elections—for example, the cost of sign language interpreters—can make running for elected office prohibitively expensive for them. Therefore, the Government’s decision to implement the recommendations of the Speaker’s Conference on parliamentary representation through the setting up of the access to elected office fund is very welcome and much to be commended. This will go a long way to removing the financial barriers and ensuring that aspiring disabled candidates who have higher costs are not penalised, and should improve access to elected office for disabled people. Avoiding spending limits deterring disabled people applying for support from the fund would, as we have heard, require a change in the law to establish an exemption as to how the candidate’s expenses related to disability are treated. Therefore, I support the draft order which seeks to amend current election limit rules which pose problems for the operation of the fund.

It is important that we pass this order before the start of the regulated period for the forthcoming local elections in May this year. Given the breadth of the extra costs which could be faced by prospective disabled candidates, the fund does not provide an exhaustive list of expenses that would be covered and provides only an indication of the most common expenses that are likely to occur and would be eligible for funding. In fact, it would not be possible to provide an exhaustive list.

The Electoral Commission has, however, voiced concerns that the exemption which the order creates to the current limits on candidates’ spending is not sufficiently clearly defined. Following further discussion with the Government and the fund, it proposes the following actions to make the risks associated with this order manageable for the 2013 local elections. First, it proposes that the fund should ensure that all candidates accessing funding are referred to the Electoral Commission for individual advice on how their funding will be treated under the spending rules; and secondly, it proposes that the fund and the Government should set out a clear policy to clarify the operation and scope of the fund to reduce the uncertainty around interpretation of the order.

Scope, which has done a lot of work on the accessibility of elections for disabled people, believes that the exemption needs to be broad enough to allow for any potential expense that occurs because of an individual’s disability. It takes the view that the proposed drafting, which states that in order to benefit from an exemption, the expenditure must be designed to remove or mitigate barriers to seeking elected office, should be sufficiently mindful of this to achieve the desired purpose. In view of the high level of scrutiny that takes place around election expenses, the proposed exemption would need to be applied carefully and transparently to militate against the prospect of a subsequent legal challenge; for example, if another candidate made an allegation of overspending. Such allegations would be extremely detrimental to the future of the fund and would risk undermining the progress being made in improving access to elected office for disabled people. Accordingly, Scope has recognised that mechanisms need to be put in place to ensure transparency about how the exemption is operated in order to maintain trust that the fund is not being misused for political gain. It therefore supports the Electoral Commission’s suggestion of providing advice to disabled people to disclose expenses paid for by the fund on a voluntary basis on their spending return.

With these safeguards, which have been suggested by the Electoral Commission, I think that the risks can be sufficiently managed for the local elections that are to take place in a couple of months’ time. Work will continue after those elections to make sure that the exemption is working satisfactorily, and there is a sunset clause, as the Minister explained. With those safeguards, I support the order and urge the Committee to agree to it.

EU: Scottish Independence

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we do not know. That is one of the things that everyone is longing to discover.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, would the UK have a veto on a Scottish application for membership such as General de Gaulle exercised in respect of British membership in former times?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are all mongrels. My father was a Scot; there are many of us here who have mixed Scottish, English, Irish and Welsh antecedents so we all hope that this question will not come up. If it did ever lead to separation, we would, of course, have to consider it. The Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom in 1922. Incidentally, that was relatively peaceful—although not within Ireland itself—and Ireland had to reapply to join international organisations.

Government: Commercial Lobbying of Ministers

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will set up an inquiry into the nature and extent of commercial lobbying of Ministers, outside the normal processes of Government.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Ministerial Code sets out the ways of working for Ministers. On taking office, the Prime Minister committed to the quarterly publication of Minister’s meetings with external organisations and the hospitality received. He also strengthened the code in relation to former Ministers to include a two-year ban on lobbying Government and a requirement for former Ministers, for two years after leaving office, to obtain the advice of the independent Advisory Committee On Business Appointments about any job or appointment they wish to take up, and to abide by the committee’s advice, which is made public.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, following the Prime Minister’s request to him to investigate the former Defence Secretary’s conduct in relation to the Ministerial Code, the Cabinet Secretary wrote in his report that more allegations had arisen,

“which will be the responsibility of others to answer”.

If the Government do not intend to set up an inquiry, how do they propose to go about getting those answers, which I am sure both Parliament and the country will be anxious to hear?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there has been an inquiry on the Werrity affair, and I was not aware that we needed a further inquiry on it. The Government are committed to as much transparency as possible, not only in ministerial meetings—I assure the noble Lord that it relates to people as far down the food chain as me, in terms of what is required about my diary being published—but in the funding that is provided for various activities.

House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Friday 21st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

If that is the sense of the House, the appropriate procedure, as I have been informed by the Clerk, is to go through from Amendment 1, not moving the various amendments and knocking out each clause as we come to the clause stand part debates, and then deal with Amendment 163, which is an amendment to the Title of the Bill. We will then have achieved what several Members of the House have suggested is the consensus in the appropriate procedural manner.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

With great respect, is it not possible for us to achieve what I think the House as a whole wants to achieve in a more expeditious way that does not simply rely on a self-denying ordinance on the part of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, or the rather more laborious procedure that has just been suggested? Is it competent for me to move that the House do now proceed straight to consider Amendment 163?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the expression on the Clerk’s face said it all. I am sorry it was not possible for everyone to see it. The appropriate procedure would be to allow the Chairman to proceed on this basis. We will then come to Amendment 163. We do have procedures in the House that we have to follow.