Income Equality and Sustainability

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York for his service and wish him and his well-esteemed lady a retirement—not necessarily from campaigning, but from his office—as long and happy as it is well deserved.

After the French Revolution, equality became a very prominent issue. In a sermon, Reverend Robert Shirra, a minister in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, examined a number of groups and concluded that equality does not exist. Not necessarily for that conclusion, a street in Kirkcaldy is called after him to the present day. I accept the conclusion that most human groups have a hierarchy and that where the incomes of members of the group are concerned, that usually leads to hierarchy in levels of income. I believe that this terrible virus has taught us very clearly how much our well-being and our lives depend on one another. Those higher up the hierarchy need a strong interest in the well-being of those who are lower. This should also be a powerful factor in the relationship between different groups. Of course, this is not a new thought. The divine head of the faith that the most reverend Primate and I have professed for a long time required:

“Love your neighbour as yourself”.

Public Services: Update

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Wednesday 29th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, my honourable friend the Minister for Health has said that he will consider the details of the scheme further. I am glad that it was welcomed by the noble Baroness and I will ensure that he is aware of the important points she raised.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

I would like to say first how impressed I am by the work of the Department for Work and Pensions, which has the responsibility for meeting the needs of the most needy people in our country. Also, can the Minister tell me the effects of the present restrictions on the criminal and civil courts in our country?

[Lord True]

My Lords, I am grateful for what my noble and learned friend said about the Department for Work and Pensions. It is an important area when it comes to confronting this crisis. Helping the most vulnerable is absolutely key, as well as those whose jobs are suddenly insecure. On the courts, there has been an impact, particularly in the case of the county courts. Virtual proceedings are continuing where it is possible to do so. I believe that court proceedings are continuing in 159 settings—I cannot remember the exact figure off the top of my head but if it is wrong, I will write to my noble and learned friend. That has also obviously had an impact on magistrates’ courts, where the throughput of cases is considerably down from the normal level. This matter receives the constant attention of the Ministry of Justice, which is monitoring the situation closely.

Breathing Space Scheme: Consultation Response

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. There is a crucial role in this for an approved mental health practitioner, who could be a social worker or a GP with the relevant qualifications. The AMHP can say to the debt advice agency that this person has a debt problem and is unable to go through the whole process of putting together a plan. But they get a buy-in to the next round, in that their debts are frozen, they enter the breathing space and they do not have to enter into a repayment plan until such time as the crisis is over and they are able to do so.

I take on board the noble Baroness’s point that we need to ensure, first, that there are enough approved mental health practitioners; and, secondly, that they know what to do if they meet somebody with a debt problem—to contact one of the debt advice agencies and get the breathing space.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for mentioning the CAP, a charity established in the north of England which I have known of for quite a while. I get its reports regularly and it seems very successful in dealing with this sort of difficulty. I hope that as the government machinery is developed, we might learn a little from that. I commend the thought that that might be a useful form of co-operation. It may be that such co-operation exists already; if so, so much the better; if not, please do.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The answer to “please do” is, “Yes, I will”.

Census (Return Particulars and Removal of Penalties) Bill [HL]

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 18th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to speak at this point because I want to leave another question with the Minister and give him time to respond.

I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, for his amendment and his explanation. I remain puzzled by the Government’s view on this, because I have now had the chance to consider their letter of 31 May. It seems to say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, “Yes, you’re probably right, but as we didn’t do it properly in 2000, it might prejudice that, so we should remain consistently with a less-than-perfect form of words”.

There are two aspects to this, as I think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said. One is the legal aspect and whether it is absolutely clear in law that “no penalty” means “not criminal”; I will leave the two noble and learned Lords to adjudicate on that. The other aspect, which was just touched on, is whether it will be clear enough to all respondents that, unlike the rest of the form, they do not need to answer these questions. We non-lawyers want absolute clarity on this second point, to ensure that no one should feel compelled to answer these questions, nor to expect to have to answer on behalf of those for whom they are completing the form. They should not even be nudged to ask someone for the answer to these questions. We would want to see some real guarantees on that not to support these amendments.

I turn now to another matter regarding voluntary and compulsory questions: military service. I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for his letter of 10 June, a copy of which he has placed in the Library, in response to my concern that, for whatever reason, somebody may not want to disclose their history of service in the Armed Forces to other members of the household. I am probably not alone in wondering about this. Indeed, only 88% of veterans and their families thought this question was “publicly acceptable”, which is interesting. One-fifth had doubts about whether it was publicly acceptable, which I think is significant. In Northern Ireland, the question was found only “generally acceptable” and the Minister’s letter says that,

“some veterans may be unwilling to disclose this information”.

The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency thought:

“This could be mitigated by providing assurances about privacy and through additional guidance”,


although it said it would look carefully at the 2019 census rehearsal before making a final recommendation for the 2021 census.

Obviously, members of households can request their own individual census form if there is information they do not want to disclose to the person completing the census on behalf of the household. However, by opting out of the household, one might be looked at slightly askance and it could raise questions as to why one is doing that. This is as true for the gender and sexual orientation questions as for the military service one I have in mind. I do not wish to pursue this separate issue now, but I ask the Minister, who I hope will be able to reassure us that, in all the guidance and testing, the sensitivities about military service, as well as those related to the areas that are the subject of this Bill, will be borne in mind.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, it is plain in the fundamental Act that you can be punished by a fine only if you fail to answer a question which you are required to answer, or if you give false information in answering such a question. Therefore, if the question is not compulsory, there can be no penalty.

I do not want to discuss further the fine detail of the legal side of this. I leave it on the basis that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and I agree that what the people getting the form need to know is that the questions addressed by the Bill are voluntary. We want people to understand that, and know that there can therefore be no penalty, or anything else in the way of harm, if they do not answer them. That is the principal point and a matter the Government can undertake in the light of the Office for National Statistics having a point in this—it has to be satisfied with the poll.

Preparing Legislation for Parliament (Constitution Committee Report)

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, it is with the greatest pleasure that I follow my noble friend in this debate. I agree with all that he said, I think, without exception. I am also grateful for the reports which are the subject of this debate and for the Constitution Committee which, with its staff and advisers, produces such excellent reports. I join my noble friend in thanking the members of the committee who have helped to keep this show on the road, although that has become more difficult with the amount of work that has been pushed into their trays.

It is possibly right for an elderly gentleman to look back a bit, and I am inclined to do that this afternoon in relation to two Bills that I had the honour of presenting to this House a long time ago. The first of these was the Children Bill, which became the Children Act 1989. The first report that we are considering comments on the necessity for policy to be clear, because you cannot draft a clear statement of something that is not originally clear. If you do not know what the policy is, it is mighty difficult to express it clearly; you have to find that out first. That is important.

The first Bill, which became the Children Act 1989, came out of a detailed consideration by the Law Commission. I believe that the Law Commission, under the chairmanship of the late Lord Scarman, developed the idea of consultation as a way of developing the law. He and his early colleagues—I was glad to have a chance to chair with him later on, because I was a Law Commissioner in Scotland for some little time—made the point that, as members of an independent body, it was difficult for them to frame policy, because as soon as they did so they became less than independent. Therefore, they have to try to analyse what people feel is required, and proper consultation in detail, and with time, is an important part of that.

The Law Commission had done extremely good work in collating the various views on a very complicated system of child welfare in this country, and put it into an extremely clear report. It was my particular privilege at the time that the commissioner was none other than the present President of the Supreme Court, so my acquaintance with her goes back quite a long time. I believe that the resulting Bill was extremely good, but it was good not because I presented it but because it was well prepared. I very much commend that.

It is not always open to get the Law Commission to do something. Fortunately, it has done something that is the subject of debate in the Moses Room this afternoon. I am glad to see that my noble and learned colleague, Lord Judge, has been able to change the rules so that he can be in both places at once, which is part of his skill that I am glad to admire.

The Children Bill went through with a lot of detailed consideration. I was fortunate, in that not only did I have the Law Commission’s support but an extremely good, very experienced social worker to help me with proposals for dealing with delicate matters. One of the most delicate in the whole Bill was the threshold for interruption by the state in family relationships. That is an extremely important and difficult area. Ultimately, together with both Houses of Parliament, a formulation was made.

As far as I know, that formulation has stood the test of time. Reference has been made to various Bills that have come along in the children and social care business since. I venture to think that the main structure of the 1989 Bill has never been improved upon, and was extremely effective.

There is quite a lot discussion in the report about post-legislative scrutiny. One of the things we did, which I think was right, was not to bring the 1989 Act into effect immediately, but to help the people who were going to put it into effect to understand what was wanted and to assimilate the principles, which were very basic, structured and well expressed. They were given time to do that and as a result, when the Act came into force two years later, it worked pretty well. One of the doubts I have—doubts accumulate with the passage of time—is the amount of time that some of these difficult cases took in the family court. Delays became higher than I would have liked. That was partly, at least, due to the amount of expert evidence that was taken in children’s cases. I am left in little doubt as to the value of such evidence in all such cases. The time that was taken to set up the Act was very good; it is not customary now to have that kind of interval.

The other Bill I want to mention is connected to embryology and was passed in 1990. We had a brilliant committee report under the chairmanship of the late Lady Warnock. It dealt with a difficult subject involving lot of what you might call theological difficulty, as well as difficulty arising from the science that lay behind the particular problems. The Warnock committee report was a brilliant account of what should be done. A shadow authority was set up under the chairmanship of the late Lady Donaldson, who was the first female Lord Mayor of London. That gave us a good deal of help in formulating the basic structure of the authority, which to this day has stood with very little change in the way it is run. That Bill shows that good preparation is the answer to getting a good Bill. Very little change has taken place in that area of the law either, except to try to keep up with the rapid changes taking place in the basic science. There is a discussion going on just now about other aspects of family life that were dealt with in the Bill but require reconsideration in the light of developments.

These two Bills show that the precise way in which preparation is done is not quite so important; it depends on what is available at the time, who is available to do it, and so on. But it does demonstrate that if you want to get a good Bill, you must know what you want in the way of policy before you start.

The Constitution Committee has suggested a standards committee for legislation. I wonder whether that can be done in the abstract. I would prefer to make it a binding obligation, so far as that is possible, on the committee of the Government who authorise a Bill to be placed before Parliament to have regard to the standards required to make the Bill reasonably capable of being dealt with under the available parliamentary procedure.

The other point I want to make in that connection concerns consolidation. I agree with what was said earlier about some of the most important areas of our law; I think particularly of immigration law, which requires very sensitive handling, and yet the law is complicated. Recently, I had occasion to try to understand what it says, on behalf of a relative. I am not without a little experience in looking at these matters, but it was extremely difficult to find out exactly what the relevant provision was in connection with that problem. Consolidation strikes me as a vitally important process in keeping the statute book reasonably accessible.

When I was a Law Lord, I served for a time on the consolidation committee. I have to say that the length of time it takes for a consolidation Bill to go through Parliament is next to nothing. The idea that there is no parliamentary time to deal with it is less than adequately borne out in practice. However, one of the difficulties is that the consolidation committee is a Joint Committee and for some reason, which your Lordships may be able to guess, it is quite hard to persuade Members of the other place who are members of the committee to come along timeously. We spent a lot of time waiting—I hope patiently—for our colleagues to arrive so that we had a quorum and could start. Here, I want to pay particular tribute to the late Lord Brightman, who was the committee chairman when I was first a Law Lord. That responsibility ultimately passed to me, but I was delivered from it by becoming the Lord Chancellor. The detailed consideration that Lord Brightman gave to consolidation matters was extraordinary. He was able to show exactly what was required and where, and he had all of that done before the committee met, and of course he was able to explain it to us. We were all so confident in his work that the time taken was really very short.

The last thing I want to talk about relates to the second report. There has been a terrific, absolutely extraordinary growth in what is called guidance. Whose guidance is it, I ask? My late good friend, a Permanent Secretary at the Scotland Office, used to say that guidance was usually couched in the mysterious passive, which you can see if you look at it. The “mysterious passive” is a favourite expression. It is not “my” opinion or “my” guidance; it is written as, “it is thought that”, “it is required that” or “it is considered that”. The amount of that has grown beyond all recognition and it is at least as fatal to good lawmaking as any kind of Henry VIII clause. A recent, fairly good example is lessons for schoolchildren. I make no comment on the substance, but the actual nature of the guidance is quite remarkable.

I thank the Constitution Committee for these reports. The subject matter is of fundamental interest and I am glad to have had the opportunity to take part in the debate.

Church of England: Disestablishment

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is right: the Church in Wales was disestablished in, I think, the 1920s. The four bishops that Wales sent to your Lordships’ House were then assumed by England, and I am sure no one would object to that. He is of course right about the validity of the authority and morality of the Church in Wales.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, we have had some terrible disasters in the months that have passed. And where do people go with these disasters? They flock to the Church. The Church of England is there to provide a service that all faiths and none find comfort in on these occasions.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree with my noble and learned friend. The Government’s policy, in a word, is antidisestablishmentarianism.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 7th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Rooker may not care and my noble friend Lord Grocott may say that he has complete licence to disagree with the party’s policy. I respect that but it is not the policy of the party, which is for a democratically elected House. Anything else is a departure from that policy. I respect it but it cannot claim any moral or political virtue at all.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder whether it aids the Bill in going forward that we have so much discussion of the policy of the Labour Party, or any other party for that matter. We want to get the Bill forward and the less irrelevance that comes into speeches, the more rapid will be the progress.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I will say only one sentence. Due to my noble friend Lord Adonis’s passionate support for the Labour Party manifesto, I look forward very much to him telling us that he strongly supports the commitment in its last manifesto to respect the result of the referendum. I really cannot resist that.

Electoral Commission

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend and his counterpart on the Opposition Benches were talking about reform of the electoral law. What the Minister said in the Commons in the quotation that I heard just now was that the mere fact that a regulation has been breached does not show that the regulation is flawed. Those two sentences stand together perfectly well.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to my noble and learned friend. As my honourable friend in the other place said, that electoral rules have been breached is rightly a cause for concern, but that does not mean that the rules themselves are flawed.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, this amendment is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Caithness. I do not intend to trouble your Lordships with any detailed explanation. It is all fairly obvious and I beg to move.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first opportunity I have to comment on what has recently taken place. If it is a question of trying to avoid the idea that this House is not—what should I say?—economical in the way it moves, the business of having a vote against the withdrawal is extraordinary. One of the consequences is that the two Tellers who voted for the Motion were doing so against their judgment. In my respectful submission to your Lordships, it does not do any good for the rationality of the processes of this House that that kind of thing should happen. I am here to acknowledge fully that it was not the leadership of the Opposition nor, I think, the Liberal Democrats who did that. It is undesirable and I hope we will now proceed rather smartly. I am entirely in favour of this Bill but I was not very happy with what happened at the beginning of these proceedings. That is the reason that I did not take part in the vote; I did not think that it should have happened.

[Viscount Astor (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may follow my noble and learned friend. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said that it was a medieval process. Perhaps I should remind noble Lords opposite that the medieval process he referred to was brought to Parliament by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, when in government. It is not the fault of the hereditary Peers that nothing has happened since; it is the fault of the previous Government and the one before them. At least the coalition Government tried to bring forward some reform but it did not get as far as this place.

It is perfectly fair that we should be debating this in Committee. There are some of us who do not agree with the Bill and think it better to wait until the Burns inquiry is considered by the Government, and the Government bring forward legislation which encompasses a proper reform. I think my noble friend Lord Balfe said that we were a House of pensioners and that is a valid point. One thing missing from the reform process that we have talked about is an age limit, because it is quite clear that voluntary retirement is not really working—it is not bringing down the numbers in this House. There really ought to be a limit either on time served in this place or by age. I am reminded that one former Member of the other place, when he was first elected, came to this House and stood at the Bar. He said to me afterwards, “I’ve seen two people who I thought were dead, and with one of them I’m sure I went to his memorial service”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

I want to just say, in support of what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has said, that my understanding is that this Bill has received a Second Reading. Therefore, it is inappropriate to propose amendments that have the effect of destroying the Bill, because that is trying to reverse a decision that the House has already taken.

The other thing that I want to say is that my noble friend Lord Butler and I have worked together for years and years, but I dispute very much the idea that the only way in which this House could indicate in a very strong manner that it supports the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is by an absurd procedure that requires two Members of this House to record their vote in opposition to what they really believe. I think that there would be something very seriously wrong with the procedures of this House if there were no other ways in which the House could show its support of the Bill.

The other empirical observation that I want to add is that, if you want to make progress on the whole, it does not help you to interrupt the people who are opposing you.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

Before the noble Lord sits down, can I just say in reply that, if he reads the newspapers tomorrow or listens to “Yesterday in Parliament”, he will hear that the way in which the House demonstrated that it wanted to support the Grocott Bill was through that Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, although I am no longer a proper member of the usual channels, I can tell the Committee that, in discussions with those channels, it was decided that the fair thing to do was to split today between the two Bills. In answer to the question from my noble friend Lady McIntosh and without betraying any private discussions, I have every reason to believe that further time will be made available for the Committee stage of my Bill, which has the overwhelming support of the House.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

I support that. I had hoped that we would have finished the Committee stage of the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, by now, and it is unfortunate that we have not done so. The amount of time that we had for it seemed reasonable. I support what has obviously already been agreed, as I have some interest in the next Bill as well. However, I invite the usual channels to do their best to get more time for this Bill as soon as possible.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Without committing my noble friend, who is sitting on my left, the Government are open to further discussions, through the usual channels, with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott.

Capita

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree entirely with the point that the noble Viscount has just made. If we are to hit our 30% target, we will indeed have to look at the procurement process in order to ensure that smaller companies are able to bid for and win these contracts.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

In construction contracts, is a guarantee given by an insurance company or some other sufficient guarantor for the performance of contractual arrangements?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I will need to write to my noble and learned friend on that. Basically, the Government pay for work that has been undertaken, so we do not pay in advance. Before a contract is let, though, detailed questions are asked about the financial ability of the company to carry out the contract. Whether they are actually underwritten and guaranteed by an insurance company is a more detailed question, the answer to which is not in my folder.