House of Lords: Labour Peers’ Working Group Report
Debate between Lord Maxton and Lord Phillips of Sudbury(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Labour Party for having brought its group together and congratulate it on the outcome of its deliberations. Like every other speaker, I cannot resist mentioning the affection in which I held Lord Grenfell. I am sure that he will read this debate and note how many noble Lords thanked him for his part in all this.
I would like to draw to the attention of the House the broad political context in which we are holding this debate and looking at these issues, which has not been much mentioned. That context is one of considerable crisis in this country, not just in the political sense. By all the yardsticks, at no time since the last war has politics been held in such confused and, I am afraid, low repute, and it behoves us to look at the issues we are discussing in the light of that. I share the concern about young citizens expressed by a number of noble Lords. The society that we have constructed is of such barbaric complexity that it is almost impossible to get to grips with it, particularly as our schools do not have a compulsory citizenship programme; in fact, it is being cut back as we speak.
I do not know about other noble Lords but, time without number, when friends and acquaintances discover that I am a Member of the House of Lords, they say, “Thank God for the House of Lords; it at least shows a bit of independence”. Much as I am naturally inclined to support an elected House—it seems on every conceivable, theoretical basis to be the obvious thing—as things stand in this country, and as the Commons is now, an elected House is not an option.
The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, gave some statistics about the occasions when we in the Lords have defeated the Government in the Lobbies. I obtained some statistics a couple of years back from the Commons research department, and they are even more striking than his. In the 11 years up to 2012, we defeated the Government 503 times. In the same period in the Commons, the Government were defeated six times—once in every two years. That allows production-line legislation, which in turn has led to us having the fattest statute book in the whole of the free world, which in turn leads to citizen perplexity, which in turn leads to the impossibility of normal, interested citizens being able to engage with what we do here, because the legislation flashes past in droves so fast that many of us sometimes think, “My gosh, has that already come before the House?”.
Preservation of our independence here is, therefore, the first and foremost priority. That is closely related to what many noble Lords have mentioned—most recently the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—the flight path of Peers getting into this place. Let me emphasise that I do not wish to denigrate the House of Commons or MPs in any way; they are a fine lot of people. I am talking about a system. The fact is, however, that if you come into this place having been a businessman, a doctor, a judge, a vet, a teacher or whatever, you have a complete experiential wisdom that, I am afraid, is not available to young men and women, however able, who have led their entire lives in the House of Commons.
Lord Maxton
Very few MPs spend their whole lives as Members of Parliament. I was a teacher before I became an MP. Others I knew were doctors, lawyers, miners et cetera. The range of experience in the House of Commons is wider than the noble Lord suggested.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
The noble Lord would have to agree that the trend—statistics have been published in the press in the past three days—is very much towards full-time politics, I am afraid. The number of MPs who have been in politics before they came into the Commons is increasing all the time.
As I say, independence is inconsistent with being a full-time Member of this House. I am anxious about the numbers game because if you are going to have only 450 Members, let alone the 312 suggested by my party, that is not consistent with people having a duty and presence here while continuing their careers in whatever walk of life. Those people are infinitely valuable to this place. Again and again, every day, we are beneficiaries of that experience which is brought into our arena, and is bang up to date.
I therefore hope that we will resist the temptation to have a specific number of Peers. I absolutely agree that we have to reduce numbers. For that reason, I am in favour of a cut-off at 80 years of age—which does not leave me with many years—and although I fear that all age limits are to some extent arbitrary, this proposal is a reasonable compromise and avoids any possibility of judging retirement on any other basis.
I should like to say a word about secondary legislation, which the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred to and is important. We should do more to make our oversight of secondary legislation, which is much greater in volume than primary legislation, more effective. Our inability to amend secondary legislation is weird. Is there another legislature in the world that prevents such amendments? It was only dreamt up to prevent the House of Lords being an obstruction to the smooth passage of Commons legislation, but that is not good enough. In fact, some noble Lords may not know that it is possible to put in primary legislation a provision that allows amendment of secondary legislation to be built on the back of that primary legislation. It has happened in only six or 10 statutes—I remember the India Act of the 1920s, for example. We should put in all major legislation, under which huge powers are left to secondary legislation, a power for Parliament to amend it. I also agree with the proposal for a three-month delay, which need not be at the expense of rejecting a piece of secondary legislation altogether. We have done that only half a dozen times in our history.
As a low and doubting Anglican, I cannot resist mentioning the reverberating debate about the Bishops. I do not see why—indeed, I see every reason to the contrary—the Bishops cannot be paralleled by the leaders of other faiths. I would like to see a leading Hindu or Muslim or two and so on. That would add to the richness of our debates. Finally, I cannot resist taking up the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who, I think, wanted to abolish titles altogether. That might never see the light of day, but why on earth can we not have an option to choose whether we take a title when we come in here? That at least would ease the feelings that some of us have.
Phone Hacking
Debate between Lord Maxton and Lord Phillips of Sudbury(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Lord Maxton and Lord Phillips of Sudbury(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Maxton
My noble friend makes a good point because the chance of a reduced turnout is even further increased by that. Moreover, if we have to have this sort of electoral system and way of voting, maybe there is a case for switching the polling day from a Thursday to a Sunday because at least that would give people the whole day to cast their vote, whereas those who are at work on a Thursday have to do it after they get home.
I turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. He is quite right to say that there should be somebody to do this. But whoever is in charge of the election, what he will have to decide—certainly in Scotland—is the order for counting the different sets of votes. I assume that the same people will count both the referendum and the Scottish parliamentary votes. There is already criticism in Scotland that, because the referendum for AV is being held on the same day, the announcement of the results of the Scottish parliamentary election may be put off for several days because they will want to announce both results at the same time. Whoever is in charge of the election will have to make the decision about what to count first. The various ballot papers will have to be sorted out, as my noble friend said, or will it be decided that the Scottish parliamentary election votes will be counted and those results announced first?
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I hesitate to ask the noble Lord to give way again, but I think I can help him on that. Paragraph 5 of Schedule 1 gives the chief counting officer the power to direct regional counting officers and so on, and gives regional counting officers the power to direct counting officers within their region about the discharge of their functions. That will probably include directions about the sort of issues the noble Lord has raised. But of course that does not go across to paragraph 10, which is all about encouraging participation.
Lord Maxton
I gather that some returning officers in Scotland have already begun to complain that they do not know which votes they will have to count first, and that this is causing some confusion in their ranks. Maybe it is for the Government or the Electoral Commission to take a decision on this. However, I think that there will be some anger in Scotland if the results for who is to form the next Government in Scotland and who is to be the next First Minister in Scotland are delayed by the result of the decision on the AV referendum, if that is done first and the other results are delayed. For some of us, the idea of Alex Salmond being First Minister for even one more hour let alone one, two or three more days is more than we want, but the fact is that I would accept that decision if it is made. The power in the Bill may allow the officer to make that decision, but it would be a very important decision for him to make.
Identity Documents Bill
Debate between Lord Maxton and Lord Phillips of Sudbury(14 years ago)
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Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Oh my gosh. I shall go back to school.
This is a basic and simple matter. I shall be interested to hear what the Minister says in response to the amendment.
Lord Maxton
My Lords, the noble Lord who moved the amendment may be slightly surprised to know that I support it, but for reasons that are rather different from those that he put before the House. A friend of mine described the Bill as the King Canute Bill; in other words, it is doing away with something—identity cards—which, in a relatively short time, whatever Government are in power, will have to be reintroduced. That is almost inevitable. I would hope that an appointed independent person would give that recommendation to the Government of the day and say, “Sorry, we have got it wrong. It is time that we reintroduced ID cards”. I agree entirely with my friend’s view, except that poor old King Canute is the most maligned man in English history, because he never suggested that he could hold back the tide. What he said to his courtiers was, “I cannot hold back the tide”. I suppose that it is the first example of PR going badly wrong.
There will come a point where the need for smart card technology will become such that we will have to introduce an identity cards Bill. This amendment would at least allow an independent person to look at it and say, “Sorry, we’ve got it wrong. Let’s have another look. Let’s introduce ID cards”.
Identity Documents Bill
Debate between Lord Maxton and Lord Phillips of Sudbury(14 years ago)
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Lord Maxton
Perhaps I may briefly clarify that. A TV licence does not relate to an individual; it relates to the property to which it applies.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
It would seem that I have given a bad example. Does it not have the name of the licence holder on it?
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Right. It therefore identifies that person and there is a number in relation to it.