House of Lords Reform

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make it clear what my attitude to this Bill is. In a race between the Grim Reaper and this Government to see the back of me, I hope that the Government win. In 1999, we stayed on to secure the further reform of the House of Lords; I believe that we should make a further attempt to do that.

The current arrangements, with the Prime Minister’s unfettered power of appointment, will not do. What the Leader of the House described as incremental change is no change at all: a few Members gone but the basic structure of the House staying the same. The dangers of that were very well illustrated by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood.

It is really not difficult to do stage two. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, set out one way of doing it and other Peers have set out others. They all focus on an element of quality control, but I do not think we need to create institutions to do that. As long as whoever brings in incoming Peers has to say why and how they will enhance the House, bringing in people who will not do that will reflect on the reputation of that party. One way or another, we will see fewer bad appointments.

If Peers who are still in the House have to commit, on our honour, to playing a proper part in this House and say that we have the capacity and intention to do that, then it will be quite easy to remove Peers who fail that test. We will have an ability under that sort of system to control our own quality. We can tie it back in to what my noble friend Lord Norton will doubtless refer to as being “assessed against purpose”. I am a follower of my noble friend and, after this evening, of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, also. He was a superb Minister in his day. It was always a huge pleasure to find oneself opposite him because he listened. If he agreed with you, he would take it back to the department and you knew that he would be effective in his arguments there, even if he did not always win.

Another change we should make, as has been said a lot this evening, is to numbers. We need to agree how many Peers are in this House and what proportions should be linked to the Government, Opposition and Cross Benches. It is not a difficult change to make. If that causes problems around an election, when the basis for assessing the numbers changes, as has been suggested by the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Foulkes, we can de-link peerages and the right to sit in this House. It has been done for hereditary Peers and it can be done for life Peers also. That, in a way, might be a useful change so that the people who have really earned a peerage but do not want to serve in this House can be given that honour, and membership of this House can be confined to people who really want to make a contribution.

I add that I very much support what my noble friend Lord Astor said about self-evaluation and improvement. We need to become a more reflective House. I would like to see us publishing proper independent research on our effectiveness and looking at ways in which we can do better. I would very much like to see us covering secondary legislation better. As other Peers have said, we are seeing much more of it. We need to get more control of it.

Lastly, when it comes to retirement age, one of my early memories of being on the Government Bench as a Whip and taking a Bill through is being thoroughly defeated by three speeches, mostly from the Cross Benches, from Peers whose total age when added together was 286. I do not think age should be the criterion. We live in an ageing society. We have to make the best use of all the good years that we have, and we should not set the contrary example in this House.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 18th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Amendment 281 in my name is intended simply to persuade the Government that it is important to provide this information to the public and to enable accountability of the Government for the state of very important public buildings. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 282NE in this rather miscellaneous group. It is one of the joys of England that we have a lot of towns with houses that have no driveways but front gardens. We need to take care of that in the context of our policy for making everyone drive electric. As we have set things up at the moment, we have introduced an imperative that people should pave over their front garden and use it to park their car. If they do so, they will have a dedicated parking space and can charge from their own house, at the rate they are buying electricity in a deal they have made themselves rather than from some organisation doing it in the street. They also pay VAT at 5% rather than 15%. Zoopla says that, if you do that, you will increase the value of your house by at least 10%.

It is both for people’s convenience and a necessity. If you get an electric car and rely on very thinly provided street parking, you may find that you have to park some long distance from your house and cannot be sure of being able to charge your car when you need to do so. We are creating an environment that will result, if we are not very careful, in our towns becoming much less charming and beautiful places because of our good ambition that more people have electric cars.

I ask my noble friend to make it clear to local authorities that they can do something about this and do not have to give permission for a dropped kerb or paving over front gardens. They can wind this into an organised rollout of on-street charging and not let desecration happen by default.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will introduce my noble friend Lady Bennett’s Amendment 282NC, as she has been called away to “Gardeners’ Question Time”. Of course, I will vote to support Amendment 281.

I will be very brief. This is a quite simple amendment based on a report from the New Economics Foundation entitled Losing Altitude: The Economics of Air Transport in Great Britain. It takes on the Conservatives, on their own ground, on questions of growth and economics. There are still arguments that airport facilities are needed for business travel, but it has declined by 50% in the past decades.

All the infuriating by-products of air travel—the noise, disruption and pollution—are not actually worth while. The sector is one of the poorest job creators in the economy per pound of revenue. Automation and efficiency savings have meant that the rapid rise in passenger numbers between 2015 and 2019 was not enough to restore direct employment to its peak in 2007, plus wages are significantly lower in real terms than they were in 2006. That is obviously not for the top jobs; this is for the bulk of workers. Quite honestly, air travel just cannot be justified on any grounds anymore.

The amendment proposed a review to examine the costs and benefits of planned expansion of the UK air transport sector. Quite honestly, it is not worth it.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

My Lords, I will be even briefer in full support of the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I agree with everything that has been said. I will not rise to the bait at the mention of HS2; that is not going to happen. But we need legislation—we cannot afford to lose this incredible habitat.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much hope that the Government will take this amendment seriously. I would like to see them accept it. I do not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that ancient woodland is irreplaceable. It just takes a very long time—a matter of centuries—to replace it. As part of our planning, when it comes to 30 by 30, where to put woodlands and the extremely important issue of connection, we ought to be saying that losing 0.2% of our ancient woodland every year is not good. We want to plan to add 0.5% a year to where we plant and how we connect. We should have a long-term strategy to make sure that, in 100 years, we have twice as much woodland as now; otherwise, we will continue to bite into it.

A planning permission is currently being sought in Kent. I can see the argument for it. We want a supply of ragstone. A lot of important buildings are built of ragstone. This may be entirely the right place from which to get it. An additional Thames crossing is in prospect. We may well need it. We know that there will be circumstances in which we want to tear down ancient woodland. You cannot just take the soil and stick it somewhere else in the hope that things will re-establish themselves. It needs much better, more careful and longer-term planning.

Ten thousand years ago, there was none of this stuff. It has moved and come since. All these plants and animals have moved here during this period. We should not think that we cannot multiply it. We should be planning on the basis that we can, which needs a lot of thought, care and consideration. I declare an interest. I own a PAWS—a plantation on an ancient woodland site. I do not have any ancient woodland but I own a space where one used to be. We should give it careful attention, ensuring that every time we damage a woodland, there is proper consultation and consideration. It should not just be about whether we should lose this bit but about how we, as a local authority, plan to end up with more in a century’s time, rather than saying, “Shall we eat this slice of an ever-diminishing cake now?”.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I ought to start by saying that I am a member of the Woodland Trust and therefore protection of woodland is very important to me, so I wholly support the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, in her amendment.

Ancient woodland is ancient. The definition of ancient woodland is that it has been around since the 1600s or even longer. The combined effect of a copse or even a small woodland area in biodiversity terms is enormous. The Woodland Trust and others define these areas as being our equivalent of the rainforests in the tropics in the extent of the diversity of nature that is encouraged to live among the trees. So, it is not simply a question of cutting down a tree; it is destroying a habitat. I think that is what we ought to be thinking of and it is exactly what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, thought about.

Some of these ancient woodland areas are homes to threatened or at-risk species, so again it is not just about, “Let’s cut down the old oak tree”; it is about protecting a whole habitat for a huge number of species. The National Planning Policy Framework, which was published last week, has a tiny paragraph saying that

“development resulting in the loss or deterioration of irreplaceable habitats … such as ancient woodland … should be refused, unless there are wholly exceptional reasons and a suitable compensation strategy exists”.

If only it had ended at “should be refused”. Because if we are, as a country, intent on protecting and enhancing our environment, those bodies of ancient woodland are exactly the sites that we should be protecting in full. What the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is asking, which we on these Benches wholly support, is that we strengthen that protection of ancient woodland, which is a key element of any Government’s environmental protection. So, I thank the noble Baroness for tabling the amendment and if she presses it to a vote, as she has indicated, we will be with her.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 21st March 2023 Lords Chamber

For me, that threat of civil litigation reintroduced into the Bill by the Government in the other place is what was required as a deterrent. That would have helped to ensure that free speech was taken seriously by bureaucrats who run universities or student unions. It is disappointing to me that government Ministers here have folded, and under far less pressure than Royal Holloway’s debating society. I am opposed to the amendment. I hope that the other place will think again about us thinking again when it gets to consider the decisions taken today.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, has just said emphasises the main point I wish to make: that this applies to students just as much as to academics. The whole idea of freedom of thought is really important. We are bringing up our children to think that they must curtail their thought. I have a daughter at university at the moment and that is certainly her experience. The atmosphere of not being allowed to discuss and talk about things is prevalent. The Bill is really important in making a difference to that. I will be very interested to see what Members in the other place think of the amendments we send down to them.

We should not think that this is happening just in universities. On 8 March I received, as other noble Lords might have, an email from the parliamentary security vetting department asking us to fill in and sign a form. It said that we must not share passwords, override or undermine security measures and sensible things like that. But it then went on to say that we must not be offensive or put the reputation of Parliament at risk. I do not know how to survive in this place without doing both those things; I imagine that applies to other noble Lords too. Our freedom of speech is now to be curtailed by a directive from parliamentary security vetting without—so far as I can see; I have contacted the authorities without getting any reply—any way in which noble Lords can be involved in that process. I am not sure who will take me to task for being offensive in this place, but I find offensive the idea that I should be asked to sign saying that I will not be.

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not sure that I am going to be offensive; I now feel that my presentation is lacking as a result. Let me at once declare an interest. I was the general secretary of the Association of University Teachers in times when the issue of—and necessity for—freedom of speech in universities was regarded as one of their paramount responsibilities.

I readily agree with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who said that that is fundamental to almost all of us who have been concerned with higher education. I appreciate what the Minister has said; this has been a very solid development. I also support the amendment the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, introduced, for much the same reasons as the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner.

I feel a sense of disappointment and sadness on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. It is obviously never pleasant to be invited somewhere and then told you are not going to speak, but I urge her to get over it. The truth is that when you go into academic climates and start talking to academics, you are going to find—rather like with lawyers—that a large number will agree with you and a large number will disagree. They will tell you that with all the spitefulness, generosity and so on while they do it.

I have come across a lot of academics who want to make sure that the world of universities does not automatically become subsumed in a world in which people pursue litigation against one another, rather than try to resolve things through more sensible routes. It was bound to end in a reasonable compromise, and I think the Minister put that very fairly and very well.

In welcoming these developments, the academics who have bothered to get in touch with me have told me that the kind of change we are contemplating today is the kind they would find easiest to live with. They are more and more—probably in part because of the debates we have had—sympathetic and attentive to the problems that have been created by cancel culture. I used to cancel my own culture when I was a lecturer, largely by giving very erudite lectures on obscure mathematical problems. Very few people enjoyed them. There is only so much multiple regression you can hear about before you conclude that you should take yourself home because no one is going to be that interested, but it was what I was teaching.

That is why I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that of course some people will be uncharitable and malevolent, but it is something we can get past with a sensible compromise of the kind we have seen—particularly in the light of the reservations the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner, has about it.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 7th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (CB)]

My Lords, I do not oppose this amendment at all. I can see why it might be possible for material relating to this issue to be included in codes of practice. However, it is worth observing that a lot of the behaviour described by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, is patently criminal. It is a great shame that universities, colleges and other authorities do not always appreciate that.

As I said in Committee, a group of masked men letting off flares and shouting threats and abuse about a professor of philosophy inside her workplace is conduct that, in my view, is properly characterised as criminal. It is a great shame that the University of Sussex or other relevant authorities did not see it that way.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am thoroughly with the spirit of this amendment. I have a child currently at university and I know that it is about not just the speaker, but the effect this has on the students. It becomes impossible to discuss anything when you expect to be shouted down. That is far harder for a student at a university to take than it is for a visiting speaker. Universities have to get this right.

In my youth, the extreme right openly contended with Maoists in the junior common room. It was debate. They argued in debate. To shut that down now is to tell students that they are not allowed to express their own opinions. That makes a university pointless. Universities have really not stood up for the purpose of universities, in a way that I hoped they would.

House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I unstintingly join in the thanks that this House has given to the staff who have looked after us so well during this pandemic, producing a system that has enabled us to continue in business to great effect.

This debate is an interesting and involving demonstration of how successful a hybrid House can be. To my noble friend Lord Borwick, I say, “Yes, change is best made gradually, but sometimes you need a crisis.” Transitioning a black taxi from a petrol to an electric engine is a substantial change, bringing a lot of other changes in its wake. Sometimes, you need to make that sort of change, and a crisis gives you the opportunity to do so because it forces you to change a lot. The right test that we should apply to all the changes that we are looking at is that advocated by my noble friend Lord Norton: does this make us better at our job?

My feeling about Committee stages of Bills is that it does not work. When we get the chance to come in for Committee, most of us will come in because it works much better if you have large-scale public personal interaction. However, I cannot see the problem with some minimal hybrid participation; I do not follow my noble friend Lord Howe down that path. It may be that some future technology will enable a truly hybrid Committee to work, but, for the rest, I find myself alongside the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, and others in thinking that many people who ought to be part of this House have real lives and careers, have caring responsibilities and live long distances away from London. We need those people to be part of this House.

To answer my noble friend Lord Dobbs, the public perception of this House should not be of capital-bound has-beens; we want people who are living in the world and learning from it as well as those with accumulated experience. All of us owe it to this country to do our bit for climate change, which means not requiring travelling when we can avoid it. Travel is one of the really big generators of unnecessary carbon dioxide.

I turn to some of the issues that have been covered. I also like lists for Questions, but I think that it might be an idea to add a golden ticket so that, once or twice a year, Peers can say, “This is my subject—I do not want to miss out.” There has been a suggestion that the hybrid House has reduced access to Ministers. There never was much: you had to hang around in the hope of catching them at the back end of a voting Lobby. If access to Ministers in an informal way is really an important part of what we do, we should take steps to make that true.

Others have said that they object to prepared speeches being read out, one after another. That was true before Covid: the House had been heading in that direction for a long time. If that is something that we care about, that is change that we need to make; we need to do something to reverse that.

My noble friend Lord Howe said that, with remote voting, Ministers do not get a “fair hearing”. As others have said, that was the same before as well: there has been a lot of voting in accordance with Whips’ wishes. Very rarely have we all sat down to listen to what the Minister and the proposer are saying before we vote; most of us make our minds up beforehand.

If we want to change that, we need to change our old ways—we should be holding the Government to account—but how useful were the old ways? I remember a Starred Question in 1992, when the House was still full of World War II warriors, asking:

“What preparations are being made to commemorate the battle of El Alamein”—[Official Report, 11/5/1992; col. 142.]


on its 50th anniversary. The reply was that there were none:

“It falls to the Germans to lead this year’s ceremonies.”—[Official Report, 11/5/1992; col. 144.]


That was a point when you could feel the mood of the House; when has that happened since?

We need to do a lot of thinking about how we can do better, and we should not just turn back to the old ways because they were comfortable.

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, and many others have pointed out the importance of the relationship between district and county authorities when it comes to the highway. In the district of Eastbourne where I live, it will be the district council that bears the responsibility for our economic recovery in a town which is based on the hospitality industry. As my noble friend Lord Wei said, innovation and experimentation ought to be the order of the day. However, this crucially involves roads. They permeate a town and you cannot talk about the experience of visitors, let alone residents, without really focusing on what is going on with the roadways. As others have pointed out, this Bill involves the interface between the pavement and the roadway. If we have a café that is spilling on to the pavement, with pedestrians spilling over into the roadway, the district authority absolutely must have the power to set the standards of safety that will make sure that that safety can be delivered by procuring changes to what is happening in the roadway. This cannot wait on the county; this has to be something that the district council can do by its own motion, or least get the county to do in an expedited way rather than to the county’s own timescales.

As has again been suggested by others, I too hope that we will look at expanding the Bill. Where neighbouring premises, open spaces or car parks might be thrown into service in the cause of this Bill, they should not be neglected. We should also look at encouraging, particularly in a seasonal town like Eastbourne, pop-up experiences—things that are not intended to last into the winter.

Lastly, in reply to my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lord Balfe, I am enthusiastic about this way of conducting business. I think that we have seen some real improvements in the ways in which our colleagues are now better embedded in the communities they are a part of, both in working and in living, and I have seen that being reflected in the debate today. I understand that we need to see some improvements to the systems we have at the moment, but given a bit of determination and good will, they seem to be entirely without our capabilities. I for one am in no hurry to get back to the business of commuting to Westminster with all the disconnection that that generates.

Adult Education: Part-time Attendance

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am very pleased to reassure the noble Lord that in fact, under this Government in the last spending review, we have protected FE budgets at £1.5 billion over the course of the Parliament. Therefore I am sure that the noble Lord will recognise how much the Government are doing to support FE and will want to congratulate us on doing so.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend recall that the committee on the digital economy of this House recommended shorter courses, of five weeks or so, and bang-up-to-date courses so that people being encouraged to do part-time courses would be given something that employers value?

House of Lords Reform

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, it is very nice to follow a speech from the Benches opposite that I completely agree with. I am sure that, under the new leadership of the party opposite, that will be increasingly the case. I must point out to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, that actually we have the right to limit or decrease our size as a House just by passing a Motion. However, as my noble friend the Leader of the House said, that is not the most important matter, so I will come to it last. We almost all know that we need reform; we have to get on with it and we ought to be able to look to the Government to support us in getting on with it.

I agree very much with the Leader of the House that change should be gradual. Human institutions change much better when they evolve rather than being pushed into some catharsis. Mistakes are much smaller and much easier to rectify when you can see where you are going and when each step is only a short distance in front of your face; whereas if you try to change something radically it is very easy to make mistakes. So we need to get into a position where we are allowed to have a process of continuous self-criticism and improvement. The sort of approach that we urge on schools and many other institutions should be available to us. The way people get to be Members of this House, the balance of this House, and all the other issues that my noble friends and others have been discussing today: we need to move all those matters out of this process of primary legislation—because the constipation down the other end never lets anything happen—and into a process where we can do it by agreement with the other House, by a vote of both Houses, or by something much less occasional, where we look every year or few years at how we should change. I really look to my noble friend to institute a process, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, says: to get us something we can work with, make some changes, see how they go, and make more changes, without getting stuck in the legislative logjam.

I know that this needs to be done with consultation between the parties, so I am absolutely delighted by what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has been quoted as saying about removing the opposition to gradual change that came from the Liberal Democrats in the last Government. It would be great to get some agreement on where to move next between the parties, but we do have to make this a matter of open debate. I very much hope that we will involve the Constitution Unit and others who can moderate the debate in a friendly way, and that we will let other people in, rather than having a closed decision made by people in this House and in politics.

When it comes to size, an effective Motion would be to resolve that, notwithstanding any practice of the House, no more than 20 new Members appointed under the Life Peerages Act 1958 may be introduced to the House in any calendar year. We can do that. If we chose to allow 10 new Members, we would be set on a course of reducing the size of the House. It is already within our powers to resolve that, but I very much hope that we will instead find ourselves engaged on a wider process of reform. If we are not allowed to do that, I think we should take action on size, but if we have a wider process of reform—if we can tackle the bigger issues, with the help of the Government, with a process involving all parties, and sharing that with the public, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, says—that will be a much better route forward.

Student Loans

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

In some sectors there has been a relaxation of the rules, which has also been driven by some of the needs of the economy. We are very keen to ensure that as many people have access to higher education as possible. We will continue to look at this but, as I have said, we have seen a 43% increase in the number of higher and degree apprenticeships compared to 2013—and, crucially, we are now seeing a growing economy. Since 2010, 2.4 million private sector jobs have been created. What people really want is job security; that is what we are providing.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, we have not yet heard from the Conservative Benches.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, do the Government plan to take forward the recommendation in the House of Lords Digital Skills Committee report that we should involve the Tech Partnership in reviving and modernising IT qualifications, particularly for the benefit of adults who wish to change career?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am sure that the Government are considering the conclusions of that report. I am happy to follow up on that with the noble Lord.