International Climate Action

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 26th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I have a practical suggestion for how we can save the Amazon rainforest and similar areas. The international community, through the IMF and the World Bank, should take over a proportion of the government debt of the countries concerned, on the basis that the debt would not be liable to interest nor have to be repaid provided that these areas were conserved. To give a real incentive, the multiple of the value of the commercial exploitation of the rainforests offered would have to be considerable—probably five or even 10 times as much debt as the commercial value. If that were done, countries would have a real incentive to protect and preserve their rainforests.

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

My Lords, debt cancellation is not a new idea. It has had some currency and traction in the past. It is an area that bears further consideration. Going forward, we should not shy away from looking at it. It would have to be done very carefully. How to address this in the short term might be more challenging.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak about national security. I suggest that the greatest threat to our national security comes from political Islam and, in particular, its military wing, Islamic State, which has in fact subsumed earlier jihadist organisations such as al-Qaeda. Since ISIS announced its arrival in Raqqa three years ago with the aim of creating a worldwide caliphate, we have seen enough of its brutal methods to be able to classify it as a fundamentally fascist movement wearing the cloak of Islam. The political motivation is clear. In this, it is remarkably similar to Soviet Bolshevism, but of course with Islamist theocracy taking the place of communism as the monopoly form of government.

This morning I visited the British Library exhibition on the Russian Revolution. I would like to quote one full paragraph from the catalogue which makes the point with elegance:

“Inaugurating the next stage of history, the proletarian revolution would, in their view, accelerate, extend and transform these globalising dynamics”—


the world moving to ever closer integration—

“further dissolving national territorial distinctions of class, ethnicity, religion and culture. The revolution would lead to the creation of a unified socialist world-state, and ultimately to world-wide stateless communism”.

I have nine specific proposals to make to the Government. First, HMG should always make an independent assessment of the greater national good where the interests of national security clash with civil or human rights.

Secondly, British jihadists who have travelled to take part in IS operations anywhere in the world should not be allowed back into this country, whether they be British citizens by birth or naturalisation. Their passports should be cancelled and their citizenship revoked. They have made their free choice and, if they have not died from it, they should live with it. We cannot afford to take the risk or pay the price of doing otherwise.

Thirdly, we need greatly to tighten our borders. This must mean that the Passport Office is aware of any other passports held by a British passport holder.

Fourthly, the Passport Office should temporarily invalidate electronically a British passport held by someone who is serving a custodial sentence or is on bail under charge of a security offence. I note that it was reported that one of the London Bridge killers was on bail at the time of the attack. This will involve automatic notification of such instances by the courts and the police to the passport authorities.

Fifthly, there must also be automatic electronic cancellation of passports on death as soon as notified by the registrar of births and deaths.

Sixthly, it is most urgent that there be automatic recording, for a period of at least five years, of all departures from or arrivals in the UK. It is absurd that there is scant recording of departures, with the wholly inadequate excuse that closer scrutiny is “intelligence led”.

Seventhly, we do not necessarily need national identity cards, but we need national identity numbers with individual biometrics centrally held, but not just on any document held by the individual. Documents containing biometrics—although necessary for many purposes—can be dangerously misleading if the biometrics of the holder cannot be compared with a central record. At present there are a plethora of government numbers allocated to the individual: national insurance, NHS, passports, driving licences, HMRC and criminal records to mention half a dozen obvious ones.

Eighthly, new standards of positive vetting must be introduced to help ensure that terrorists, of whom we know there are now many in the UK, are not able to get into sensitive positions.

Finally, there should be a fresh appraisal of the role and legitimacy of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain, whose links with jihad are not unlike those that Sinn Fein once had with the IRA.

None of these proposals is new. I have made them all before, but with scant response from the Home Office—although sometimes Ministers have privately told me that they agree with me. Perhaps the time has come for a department of homeland security on the basis and lines of that constructed in the United States.

Localism Bill

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Marlesford]

16: After Clause 47, insert the following new Clause—
“Litter deposited from motor vehicles
(1) Local authorities may make byelaws about litter deposited from motor vehicles.
(2) Such byelaws may include provisions about—
(a) the application of section 87 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (offence of leaving litter) to litter deposited from motor vehicles;(b) the procedures for identifying the person in charge of a motor vehicle; and(c) the information which the registered keeper of a vehicle may be required to provide the local authority.”

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 16, I must declare two interests. The first, I hope, is shared by many on all Benches of your Lordships’ House, which is to campaign to do something to reduce the amount of litter that disfigures—indeed, I would say disgraces—our country. The second is to remind noble Lords that back in the 1990s I was for five years chair of the CPRE, which has supported this amendment.

I do not apologise for repeating this amendment 21 days after we last debated it. At that time, the Government’s reply to the debate was, I suppose I could say, sad. My amendment is simple and necessary. We have to do something about litter. I believe in the old political cliché of action and not words. I am not seeking to create a new offence; it has been an offence for 11 years to drop litter from vehicles under Section 87 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

The problem is that it is very seldom that anything can be done about it because it applies only to the person dropping the litter and at the moment there is no way of knowing who dropped the litter. My amendment would simply make the keeper of the vehicle responsible, as is already the case for parking and for speeding. It is a simple amendment. To put it mildly, I am afraid that my noble friend Lord Shutt did not welcome it. He read out a brief that did not produce a single decent argument. Perhaps I may remind him of what he said on 10 October. He said that,

“extending the scope of the littering offence … raises issues of fairness and proportionality ... It may not always be a ready solution for the registered keeper to avoid prosecution by identifying who was the actual offender”.—[Official Report, 10/10/11; col. 1370.]

That is what he was asked to say, and he said it. That is his job, I suppose, in one sense. However, the only Whitehall bazooka that he forgot to fire was that the Government, I suppose, feel that they can never risk being taken to the European Court of Human Rights. No doubt his officials said to him, “Yes, Minister, it is always safer to do nothing”, and that is what happened.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for moving this amendment. We have had some discussion about it and have had two serious debates in this House. I am afraid that there are serious problems with the amendment. One of them was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. The fact is that it is extremely difficult when most enforcement law is not carried out anyway and you are just adding to it. As the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, himself said, there are already powers regarding littering offences under Section 87 of the Environmental Protection Act. What happens is that they are not enforced; there are not enough enforcement officers, or they are not around at the right time to ensure that littering does not take place. There are already penalty charge notices that can be given by enforcement officers, particularly in the towns, but all over the country, to enable enforcement on litter dropping. So I do not believe that the amendment is necessary.

What we need is proper education and proper campaigns. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, his authority is not sitting around waiting for a by-law—it has got itself up and going and is running a campaign with a quite attractive title. I have to say that it strikes one as something that might have had the noble Lord behind it. So we do not really need this.

There is a further difficulty. Local authorities can make by-laws only for themselves. If one authority has a by-law and another does not, where is the fridge going to be dropped? It will be dropped within the one that does not have a by-law. Furthermore, local authorities cannot deal with motorways or main roads outside their control. Those are in the power of the Highways Agency, which has not been included in the amendment.

I know that the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, is going to be very upset with me, because we have had a discussion that will make him upset with me, but I want to go back to the position that we do have the London Local Authorities Bill, which has powers in it. I appreciate that it is largely urban, but London local authorities stretch out beyond the urban to the suburbs and even, may I say it, border on greenbelt and places that could be tempted to be rural. What we want to do is to see what happens as a result of that Bill. The Bill is a private Bill, as everyone knows, and is before Parliament now. It has completed its Lords stages and is at an advanced stage in the House of Commons. The expectation is that if there are no more challenges to it, it will proceed on its way. When that is implemented, we will be able to see what can be done. The Bill will allow a local authority to issue a civil penalty to registered keepers whereas the amendment of the noble Lord would make it a criminal offence. This would make it a civil offence with a penalty charge notice of £100, and that would be to the registered keeper.

There has been some discussion about whether the registered keeper is the person who ought to be responsible for this. Under the amendment of the noble Lord, the registered keeper would have to be asked who was in the car—very similar to a charge within a court of an offence asking for a statutory declaration. If we can move it into the civil area, I think that would be a worthwhile approach. The Bill will also enable local boroughs to issue civil penalties. We hope that is going to receive Royal Assent later this year. We want to see whether that can be a good route out.

In the mean time, I am going to use those terrible words about getting people to understand what they are doing. The Government are already supporting Keep Britain Tidy in developing the Love Where You Live campaign—that is nearly as good as the tosser. We are also supporting other campaigns in order to make people realise what they are doing. I do not underestimate in any way the problem of litter. I appreciate that it is an absolute eyesore. I think fridges may be outside the scope of litter, but I appreciate that is also part of a wider problem.

I cannot accept the amendment. I know the noble Lord will be upset with me about that, but there are still too many problems associated with it to make it one that we can put into legislation at this stage. I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw it after my explanation.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for her comments. I am most grateful for the support that I got from all sides of the House. I would like to answer the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, straight away. First, I am not creating a new offence as such. All I am trying to do is to make the 1990 Act, which has failed for the reasons we have discussed, work better. How many prosecutions there have been or how many there will be is completely unknowable. I suppose we could know how many there have been, but the point is that at the moment the thing cannot be enforced. In my book, unenforceable law is bad law. You should not have laws which put obligations and requirements which cannot be, and therefore are not, enforced. That is the way to bring the law into contempt.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. The Act applies to more offences than throwing things out of motor cars, so have there been any convictions for other litter offences without this problem of motor cars?

[Lord Marlesford]

I am talking about the problem, not of motor cars but of motor vehicles—a little wider than motor cars but not as wide as the noble Lord seeks to draw me. I am not concerned with other things that the Act does. I am sure there are lots of bits of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 which work extremely well. What I cannot accept is the suggestion of my noble friend that it is not necessary. It is necessary for us to do something about litter. This is one thing we could do. It is a simple thing. It is an enabling power. It is a power which gives local authorities the opportunity, as my noble friend Lord Jenkin explained, to do what is being done in London. Therefore, it is wholly appropriate to the Bill. All too often one has found that the Government talk one thing and either do nothing or do something quite different. I would like to feel that this House will give a signal that it basically believes that something should be done and that something can be done. I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.

House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Friday 21st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll]

As a hereditary Peer, I do not have a grievance about anything and if I have to go, I have to go, but my purpose here is to ensure further democratic reform. That is why I was put here. This is not democratic reform. Until that comes, I should stay.

[Lord Marlesford]

I think of two very simple facts. First, hereditary Peers who are sitting in this House are in no sense discriminated against as a result of Clause 10. Secondly, it is perfectly obvious that the arrangement for by-elections was always intended to be an interim one. The mistake, in a sense, was not to have had it ending at the end of that Parliament or, conceivably, the following Parliament because it was intended to make use of the reservoir of experience which we had, needed and wanted to keep. We have done it extremely successfully. Least there should have been a too rapid decline, there was an arrangement for temporary topping up.

In answer to the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, it is so clearly for the reason she gives that the topping-up system is a farce. It is undemocratic, and I suggest that Clause 10 is a means of moving on to democracy, which is the reason why it should stand.

[Lady Saltoun of Abernethy]

I said that I agree that the topping-up system is a farce, but it could easily become not a farce if the electorate were all the Peers in the party, not just the hereditary Peers in the party.