Procedure of the House

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I have an interest in the subject raised by the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. It is not true that the Prime Minister responded to my Questions and those of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, with something irrelevant. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, said, “Blah, blah, blah”. The answer to me was that, whatever the Government committed themselves to in this matter, it would be the Prime Minister who decided—full stop. That is where we stood with Written Answers last week.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, I would never presume to call myself a politician. I suppose that, if anything, I am an observer of politics who occasionally commentates on it. In the 16 years that I was the lobby correspondent for the Economist, from 1975 to 1991, the House of Commons did not have a guillotine as routine, and again and again I saw its effect as an exceptional measure. It was something that the Government of the day considered very carefully. I saw the good effect that it had on the process of negotiation and the scrutiny of legislation, and the extent to which it resulted in better outcomes of that legislation. However, I was shocked when Mr Tony Blair’s Government introduced the guillotine as a regular feature and I was disappointed when my right honourable friend the Prime Minister perpetuated it. I found myself asking: if we were to have an elected Senate here, how long would it be before the guillotine was introduced here and then who would scrutinise the Executive?

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, as a member of the Leader’s Group, I have noticed that not a great deal of this debate has been devoted to the consideration given by that group to the matters under discussion today. That of course is partly because times have moved on and there are matters hanging over the future of this House that may have altered some people’s perceptions. However, it ought to be recognised that the Leader’s Group gave quite close consideration to these issues. It took a great deal of evidence and concluded that Grand Committee procedure leads to better scrutiny of primary legislation. One reason given was that there was,

“greater informality of the Grand Committee and the better communications between ministers and officials, leading to better quality responses”.

Having said that, the Leader’s Group also took the view that certain matters arouse such considerable interest beyond those who might normally be anticipated to have an interest in the subject matter of the debate that they would be inappropriately held in Grand Committee. We have actually seen the limitations of the space available in an earlier debate at the end of the last calendar year when we were discussing the European Union eurozone crisis. The Room was full to bursting and there was not enough time or space for everyone who wanted to participate.

Consequently, I think that the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, has some merit in it because it recognises—and explicitly recognises by quotation—the words and the reasoning of the Leader’s Group. I also acknowledge, however, that deciding what constitutes an exceptionally controversial Bill—as was pointed out to us by the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd—is difficult to determine. I do not feel confident that presumptions can be made on that point; and I do not believe that the usual channels will necessarily agree on it. It seems that these should be matters for the decision of the House when the Bill is first debated.

European Council

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Lord always speaks here with the voice of experience and knowledge, not least as an author of EU conclusions. I think that he said, in this rather empty House, that he is just a little bit cynical about these conclusions. It is easy to become cynical when you read these conclusions and you see the same words and phrases coming up again. I shall resist the temptation to join the Prime Minister in saying that this is a new dawn. However, the Prime Minister is very keen that when the EU says it is going to do something, it should do so. That is why he has very much been at the vanguard of making the arguments that he has, and I know that he will hold the Commission to account over the months and years ahead. Incidentally, I agree with the noble Lord about being a little bit cynical; I agree with him about the financial transaction tax. We are doing well today.

What about Kosovo? The noble Lord made a point that will be endlessly discussed over the next few years vis-à-vis the situation within the United Kingdom. I have not got an answer as to whether all the countries of the EU have recognised Kosovo. At the moment we are seeking to encourage both Serbia and Kosovo to maintain their constructive approach to further dialogue. This is crucial to the EU futures of both Serbia and Kosovo, and to stability in the region and improving the lives of its people.

One thing that came out, of course, was that the General Affairs Council gave impetus to Kosovo’s EU future this week—but I do not think that was necessarily the point the noble Lord was making, which was infinitely more subtle and will require a little bit more homework from my point of view. However, I am sure that other parts of the EU seeking to secede from their mother countries will want to see not only what is developing in Kosovo but in other parts of the EU as well.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, can my noble friend the Leader expand a little on paragraph 26 of the Council conclusions on contributions to the IMF funds? I think I am right in saying that the G20 agreed that the amount of funds for the IMF should be reviewed; that the review came up with the need to double them and that this doubling would cost Britain about £10 billion, but that this £10 billion does not count as part of public spending because it is merely a guarantee rather than a cash payment.

Am I right in thinking that HMG will be favourably disposed to playing their part—the part I have just described—in the increase in the IMF funds, assuming that 70 per cent minimum collaboration is achieved, but that if there was a special fund to rescue the eurozone by producing funds through the IMF, as is slightly referred to in paragraph 26, Britain would not contribute to that?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, my noble friend knows that we are a founding member of the IMF and we are very much supporters of a well funded IMF. It is one of the most creditworthy institutions in the world, which can draw on resources from all its 187 members to fulfil its role. There are no firm proposals on the table yet. However, I can confirm to my noble friend that we have been clear, consistently, and will continue to be clear that the IMF cannot lend money to support a currency.

House of Lords: Reform

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, the road to parliamentary hell is paved with good intentions translated into sloppily drafted, ill prepared, insensitive legislation. We have had a plethora of it over the past year. The White Paper and Bill do not even have the redeeming feature of good intentions. Perhaps the most scandalous revelation we have had in this debate was that by the Leader of the Opposition, when she told us how the members of the Joint Committee set up to produce the proposals were treated. They met only seven times—the last time six months before publication—and neither saw nor approved the draft White Paper or the Bill. I am amazed that they did not resign in indignation at that treatment.

I shall focus on just two points. The first is the practical constitutional one, which we have talked about, which is the balance of power between the Legislature and the Executive. Secondly, I shall suggest how to reduce the size of the House of Lords in a way that is voluntary, democratic, compassionate and cost-effective.

It was in his 1976 Dimbleby lecture that Lord Hailsham described Britain as an “elective dictatorship”. “Parliament”, he said,

“is now largely in the hands of the Government machine, so that the executive controls the legislature and not vice versa”.

He went on:

“Owing to the operation of the guillotine and other regulations designed to curtail debate, much of the programme is often not discussed at all”.

Although at that time the House of Lords had a massive built-in Tory majority, the constitutional conventions inhibited its use. In 1997, this situation took a serious turn for the worse. The Blair Government decided to use the guillotine routinely on all legislation so as to maximise the flow of legislation, with little regard to the consequences.

I was for 16 years in the Lobby. Indeed, I must confess that, apart from a few years as a party fonctionnaire, I cannot claim to be a proper politician at all. I was a mere observer of and commentator on the political scene, and I suppose that that is all I remain. However, I remember clearly that when there was an important Bill that was running into real difficulties, we used to speculate that the Government might be forced to introduce a guillotine. In those days, that had real political significance.

I had hoped, and indeed was confident, that one of the first things the coalition would do would be to end the automatic use of the guillotine on legislation. To my disappointment and to Mr Cameron's shame, there is no sign of that happening, so our people remain ever more reliant on the House of Lords to subject legislation to proper scrutiny untrammelled by timetables. Since the 1999 reform, this House has had growing confidence in doing so.

Who can doubt that if Mr Clegg's dreams were enacted it would not be long before that opportunity for scrutiny would be emasculated? All Governments are ruthless when they can be, and a regular guillotine would arrive with the senate. That, incidentally, is why the Opposition should never repeat the disgraceful filibuster tactics that they used here last year—although I admit that they had much provocation.

I come to the best way of keeping the size of the membership of the House within reasonable limits. I do not buy the idea that it is making the House harder to operate. An overcrowded Question Time is no bad thing. After the House of Commons was bombed, the new Chamber was designed precisely to achieve that. However, our membership is now more than 800, although the daily attendance is 450. I would set a limit of about 500. None of the alternatives in the Leader's Group report on the issue of Members leaving the House, which we will discuss in due course, seems to be acceptable. I believe the proposal for group elections put forward in the excellent speeches by my noble friends Lord Jopling and Lord Reay involves compulsion, which would have undesirable consequences.

One reason that voluntary retirement on its own would not work is the new daily tax-free allowance of £300. I most warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Strathclyde on his courage in introducing it, because it has ended once and for all the risk of further scandals on expenses—in this House, anyway.

My proposal is that on taking permanent retirement, any Peer should receive a tax-free single-sum gratuity for public service. Each Peer would receive the amount he or she asked for—provided, of course, that no one was prepared to accept a lower sum. One way of operating it would be for the Government to open it for, say, 50 retirements. Anyone could apply and the sums paid out to those who succeeded would of course be published; the unsuccessful bids would not. Bids would be accepted up to a limit of 50 seats or so or until the sum available had run out. The process could be repeated periodically until the number was down to the required total.

That may be an unusual suggestion, but I believe that once it had been thought through by the media and the public it would be seen as being transparent, truly voluntary and, most importantly, cost-effective.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, I would be grateful if between now and the report from the committee scrutinising the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, could write for me what he thinks the Sunday Telegraph and the Mail editorials would be on his proposal.

[Lord Marlesford]

I never attempt to write editorials for other papers.

Meanwhile, I support the call for a moratorium on numbers made in April by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and others in the UCL House Full report.

Mr Cameron has a problem. In this package, he is offering Mr Clegg a sum of Danegeld that he cannot pay; his cheque will bounce. As has been made clear, there can be no question of whipping this Bill through this House. The simplest solution would be for the House of Commons, where there is, in any case, a growing number of Members opposed to Mr Clegg's best guess, to be offered a free vote at Second Reading, if ever it gets that far, and for the Conservative Whips to indicate that the Prime Minister would not be heartbroken if it were defeated. After all, it is the supremacy of the House of Commons that we are debating.

On the point about us not being representatives, many people in this House have been elected representatives for a long time, but now we are all servants of the people. That is no dishonourable title.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, it may be helpful to the House if I indicate that, after we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, I propose to adjourn the debate for a short while so that we may convene for Questions. I shall make appropriate announcements at that stage.

Libya and the Middle East

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the defection of senior Libyan diplomats from around the world may prove to have been a significant component in the removal of Gaddafi? Furthermore, in the context of the withdrawal of the British diplomatic mission from Tripoli, is there any news on what is happening to the Libyan embassy in London?

[Lord Strathclyde]

No, my Lords, there is no news on the embassy in London. But my noble friend is right that the defection of senior Libyan diplomats, particularly at the United Nations, was a signal to many others that this regime had come to an end. That is part of the combined exerted pressure that we wish to see to encourage more defections and bring this regime to an end as quickly as possible.

Houses of Parliament: Access during Demonstrations

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I warmly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Soley, has just said. It is extremely important that at all times Members of this House and another place have unhindered access to go about their business in Parliament. However, the police have a very difficult job. While they do everything that they can to make sure that the entrances are not overwhelmed, very occasionally that happens. As Members of this House, we need to be aware of alternative routes so that we can still get here to do our duty.

[Lord Marlesford]

Does my noble friend agree that part of the business of Parliament is to respond to the lobbying of Members of Parliament and that maximum practical access to the Palace for lobbyists is desirable, first, so that they can make their points and, secondly, so that parliamentarians can respond? Last week, those of us who saw it would have realised that there were far fewer lobbyists here than the House could comfortably accommodate, which was a pity. Part of that was a product of the problems in Parliament Square. Does my noble friend agree with the point made by my noble friend Lady Trumpington yesterday that one of the real problems is the permanent encampment in Parliament Square, which occupies a lot of space and is therefore an obstacle to democracy?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I certainly agree that part of the role of Parliament is to accept those who wish to lobby Parliament and parliamentarians in this building, which is why we support the peaceful right to protest. I also agree with what my noble friend Lady Trumpington said. It is a view shared by many people in both Houses that what seems to be a permanent encampment in Parliament Square is no longer necessary, if it ever was. That is why the Government have published proposals to try to tackle the problem.

House of Lords: Allowances

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, I support the proposals made by the House Committee and introduced by my noble friend the Leader of the House. I should like to offer some brief comments which, to some extent, relate to what the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, said—although they do not answer his questions and probably will not satisfy him.

First, I underline, and certainly welcome, the simplicity and lack of ambiguity in the new scheme. It will reduce to an absolute minimum the administrative cost and the bureaucratic burden on both the House and Members. I should point out that IPSA, which is tormenting MPs with its arrogance, insensitivity and pettiness, is costing £10,000 per MP per year to administer. It must be one of the most expensive payroll systems in the world. Newly-elected MPs are already expressing their resentment and irritation with it. It may well deter those who might otherwise consider becoming MPs in the future unless they are either independently wealthy or have a very low earning capacity in the outside world. I hope we never allow IPSA anywhere near the House of Lords.

Secondly, the new system may be rough and ready. It is not able and not intended to deal with individual circumstances: that would be the way which leads both to scandal and to IPSA. Some of us who live outside London will lose out, but so be it. On balance it is sensible, economical, transparent and fair.

Thirdly, to those who suggested the allowance should be taxable, I point out, because this is how the tax system has always worked, that that would enable the wealthiest with plenty of outside resources to benefit by arranging with their accountants, and through dialogues with inspectors of taxes, for their expenditure to offset the allowance under the appropriate tax codes.

Fourthly, to those who still believe that the allowance should be subject to receipts, I point out, as I did in my evidence to Cockburn, that a system based on actuals, as used in the business world, depends on three steps: first, checking the expenditure was made; secondly, ensuring that it was necessarily and exclusively related to the business function performed; and, thirdly, that the level of expenditure was appropriate to the status of the employee. These steps are the function in business of a line manager. We do not have line managers. To ask officials of the House of Lords to act as our line managers would be unreasonable, inappropriate and impractical.

Fifthly, the sums proposed—a maximum of £300 a day to cover all the cost of participating—are far from extreme. I believe that the public are much too sensible to compare this, for example, with the minimum wage. The maximum amount that one could receive would be £45,000 a year, but, on the basis of the average number of days on which we sat during the previous five years, the average would be £43,500. Let us compare that with three other reasonably comparable fields—I am sure that colleagues will have lots of other examples that they could give. An MEP currently receives a salary of £78,000 a year, a daily allowance amounting to £39,000 for a 160-day year, a general expenditure allowance of £42,000 and allowance for parliamentary assistants of £193,000. That makes a total of £352,000 per MEP, of which only the salary element is taxable. In addition, MEPs receive pensions and medical costs.

Three hundred pounds a day would pay the standard fee charged by a medical consultant, an accountant or a solicitor for about one hour. The international rate for a keynote speech of the sort which many Members in the House are experienced in making has for many years been approximately $10,000, which is £6,500 or the equivalent of five weeks’ worth of the proposed attendance allowance in the House of Lords or two-and-a-half weeks’ worth at a 50 per cent tax rate.

Let us end this prolonged discussion of our financial support so that we can focus our time and efforts on the parliamentary role for which we are privileged to be here.

[Lord Soley]

I shall speak not just on the matters before us today but also the way in which we address them. We are doing a bit of what we have done in past—it happened in the House of Commons, too; that is, amending on the Floor of the House. It is that which gets us into so many difficulties. This problem started in the House of Commons some 40 or 50 years ago. It blew apart with the passage of the Freedom of Information Act. That Act affected us here far less, but it is very important.

We need to emphasise, first, that this House is cheap to run, as my noble friend on the Front Bench said, not just by British but also by international scales of comparison. We need to emphasise, secondly, that we are unsalaried and, thirdly, that we do a very important job. We are part of the democratic system of which we should all be proud. That is why I have been so acutely concerned during the past few years by the disgrace brought on politicians by the collapse of a system which none of us could justify. Is today’s solution an absolutely good one? Of course it is not. Is it absolutely fair? Of course it is not. However, we need to look at it as part of a process, which is what I said when I last spoke on this matter. My concern is that if we go on doing what we have been doing, either in the House of Commons or here, and try to amend our income system on the Floor of the House after one report here and another there, we will continue to make mistakes.

For the past four or five years, I have argued against defining “first home” or “second home”, mainly because, in the British system of doing it, you invariably run into traps and dangers which you had not envisaged. I do not attempt to justify what David Laws said, but I ask what on earth we are doing in creating a system where it is legitimate and proper for the press or anyone else in public to ask, “Who are you living with? What is your relationship with them?”. We should not go down that road.

My noble friend Lord Tomlinson explained in a very good speech the problem of geography. I am with him on the principle, but make the point that an awful lot of people make the mistake of believing that we should say “London”—I notice how often “London” comes up. The reality is that you can get to most of the cities around London—Oxford, Reading, Chelmsford and so on—more cheaply and very often more quickly than you can get to the outer reaches of London. So that is not fair either. If you want to go to Oxford you can slip down the road to Victoria and catch a bus every 20 minutes, any time of the day or night, for £8.

IPSA in another place has suggested—I know that IPSA is not popular and I will come back to that in a second—that there needs to be another geographical way of measuring this. I am not convinced that geography is the best way of determining the question of how, as a couple of my noble friends have pointed out, we ensure that those people who come the furthest distance are given sufficient support to continue doing that.

That brings me back to the problem of how we define this. I know that IPSA is not popular. I know that from talking to colleagues on all sides of the House of Commons and from common sense. I have spent some time talking to Sir Ian Kennedy. He also knows that it is not popular. We need a system that enables us to address these problems over a period of time, getting it all right without having to have an occasional report, which we then present to the House and amend on the Floor, and then wonder why it goes wrong. I understand the feeling about IPSA and my guess is that, in the long run, it will get there but it is painful while it is learning not to make mistakes any more. If we are not to have IPSA I suggest that we need a committee of the House to look at all the anomalies and unfairnesses and address them as we go along—not in one grand slam every now and then. We need to do that on an annual or biannual basis.

Many other Parliaments have these problems. It will be a great comfort to my noble friend Lord Tomlinson to know that, when the Germans tried to pass their system over to an independent body for adjudication, the German constitutional court overruled them and said, “You can’t do that because the position of representatives, elected or otherwise, is too critical to the constitution to have another body decide it”. That is a great addition to the armoury of my noble friend sitting next to me. However, if we are not going to go down that route we need to find a better way than to amend reports on the Floor of the House because that is where it goes wrong. I have watched this happen in the House of Commons on a number of occasions.

We all had legitimate gripes about that system. It was a bad system in many ways. It often did not compensate Members in the way that they needed to be compensated for the work that they do, and exactly the same applies here. People talk about distance being unfair. I have raised the issue before that if you have a business such as a lawyer’s office or you are in academia or whatever, that gives you the administrative backup that you need so you may not need to employ a full-time person as others of us do. That is not fair either. These are complex issues that do not get sorted out on the Floor of the House in a big-bang solution every now and then.

What we are being offered today is a way of dealing with our immediate problems in a way that does not tie us up in this incredibly difficult business of defining a first or second home. We should remember that a number of noble Lords have already said that they would end up spending more time away from their primary home—which nobody questions is their primary home—because they are doing other things as well or have family commitments. Therefore, according to the rules that we have practised just recently, they would not be eligible to claim. In at least one case I know that a noble Lord has stopped claiming. There is no nice simple option. What we have today as the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour and the Cross Benches have said, is a straightforward system that is pretty robust and which we can use, but I ask the House to consider how we do this in future.

There has been a lot of talk about the media. It has to be said that the media did what they should do in exposing some of the abuses in the House of Commons and here. But—and it is an important but—the majority of MPs and certainly the majority of noble Lords in this House behaved perfectly well. There was a danger last year in my judgment that the media would inflict acute damage to the concept of democracy and to our democratic institutions. If you create a situation in which politicians are regarded with contempt—and they are never going to be wildly popular or the most popular people around—you create dangers. Curiously enough, it is that House down there and this House here that actually defend the freedoms that the media put into effect, and it would be quite good if every now and then the media remembered that. In the past 12 months, I wrote three articles on why we needed to change the existing system—one for the Sunday Times, one for the Daily Telegraph and one for the Times. None of them published them, and one of them actually said that it did not want to publish my article because it did not agree with it! Yet it is very largely what we are doing today. I noticed in the Times today a very supportive editorial for what the Government are doing today.

We should all start getting proud again of the constitution of which we are all part. We should all stand up and defend it and recognise that what happened was largely our fault because we did not change the system, but also recognise that we need some form of procedure that enables us to deal with these matters, not in some occasional debate of this type or by constantly trying to change it on the Floor of the House, but in a rather more sophisticated way. If it is not to be IPSA—and that jury is still out, as we wait to see how it deals with its current problem—we have to devise our own, because otherwise we will continue to get into problems and have to make amendments as we are doing on the Floor of the House today. If we had a trade union and a business negotiating on how you paid people and compensated people, everyone in the trade union and business would think that you had gone stark, staring mad—but we are doing it.

Financial Provision for Members

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, it is typical of the noble Baroness to raise such a deeply controversial subject in the manner that she has. Tomorrow, we will spend many hours discussing all these issues. No doubt, the question of transition will come up. The noble Baroness, with all her experience, has spotted that in terms of transition there is a real difficulty about how we move from one House to the other. I can assure her that these issues are uppermost in our minds.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, in relation to the point on tax, which was raised by my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, the noble Lord may not be aware—although obviously the Leader of the House will be aware—that in the detailed documents attached to the Budget Statement, it is said that HMRC will have to amend the rules to enshrine the long-established practice that expenses received by Members of another place are not taxable. In other words, it is proposed to retain the system whereby Members of another place are not taxed on their expenses because, as the note says, with the arrival of IPSA the determination of expenses for the House of Commons is no longer quite the same. That is being dealt with in another place.

On the more general point, it is welcome that transparency and simplicity are important and overriding considerations. There is another consideration as to whether the taxpayer will regard £300 a day as good value for money. Is it a little bit relevant that for many professions such as doctors, accountants, lawyers and others, £300 buys about one hour of their time?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, what my noble friend said about taxation, HMRC and Members of another place shows how complicated this issue is. There is already a whole variety of rules for Parliament and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, if you give money to research assistants, it is almost going through individuals’ hands, and HMRC may indeed wish to take all of that into account. That is the start of a wider debate that I do not wish to continue this afternoon.

I have also wondered about the figure of £300. I am sure that some members of the public would regard that as being extremely good value, when they look at the quality of the work that they are getting from individual Peers, and others may not. It is important for us all to demonstrate that when we claim this money we are working for it and playing a full part in the legislature of which we are all members.