Housing (Scotland) Act 2010 (Consequential Provisions and Modifications) Order 2012

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Grocott

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I do not know whether this is in order, but if it is I would like to do it. My noble friend should know that concern about this matter is not confined to the other side of the House. I also think that, notwithstanding what has just been said or what the previous Government may or may not have done in 2006, this raises real questions about the relationship in practice as it has existed over many years between the two Houses of Parliament. I think that we are entitled to an opportunity to hear a Statement and ask questions about just where that relationship is now going.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am prompted to stand because of the reference to the Cunningham committee on conventions. I simply put this serious question to the Leader of the House. I recognise the great difficulty at times—which was expressed in the length of his answer—in interpreting financial privilege, and the difficulty that he has in convincing Members of the House, including Members on his own side about if and when it should be applied. But can the noble Lord imagine himself telling 300 elected senators that matters such as benefits received by cancer patients or for disabled children were none of their business whatever and if any of their constituents raised any of those issues with them, as constituents inevitably would, they would have to explain that there was nothing they could sensibly do because it was not within their powers?

His position in trying to justify and hold that line would be quite impossible. Clause 2 of the draft Bill as it stands, which still insists that there will be no change in the conventions between the two Houses in the event of an elected House, is absolute nonsense. I therefore just put it to him as I did in perhaps less impassioned terms yesterday, that this is really an issue that the committee under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Richard must examine before it reports and advises the two Houses of Parliament.

Procedure of the House (Proposal 9)

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

It is “noble Lady”. Well, whatever. It is a matter of supreme irrelevance as long as we can be reasonably courteous to each other. As far as I can recall, only moments ago she was arguing for brevity. Now I have to say “the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester”. I prefer “the Bishop of Leicester”.

All I am saying to the House is, for goodness’ sake, we could shorten the Companion if we did not have all these requirements. I shall be very tempted to put down amendments to extend the use of the word “gallant” to everyone who has shown courage on the battlefield, not simply to someone who has become a field marshal.

I know I am pushing water uphill. This is far too revolutionary a proposal for the House to accept, but none the less the opinion of the House should probably be tested on it.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, it may surprise people who have heard me speak on one or two other things to know that I am a complete reactionary on this, but for a reason that may also surprise them. The Order Paper says:

“Members may also use the term ‘my noble friend’ to refer to fellow members of a political party”.

Where does this leave me with my Liberal Democrat friends?

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Grocott

Monday 16th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, Amendment 22A is grouped with Amendment 23, but I do not intend to move Amendment 23, which is about the relationships between the two Houses, in advance of the publication of the House of Lords reform White Paper. I understand that we will be getting it tomorrow, so having a discussion today is rather pointless.

Amendment 22A refers to the need for major constitutional issues to be ratified by referendum. I am acutely aware that the idea of a referendum at all is not too popular at the moment. I was not very keen on the last one, but I am now that I know the result. I know that my justification for raising this was that a real-world event of some significance occurred between Committee and Report on the Bill. This is a constitutional Bill of some significance, and in between the two stages a very important event took place: the referendum on first past the post versus the alternative vote. It is absolutely right and proper that when the first referendum in 40-odd years has taken place, it should be considered.

I am pretty surprised that there has been no official statement on the result of the referendum to either House, as far as I know. There certainly has been no statement to this House, and I do not think there has been one to the other House either. I fear that I know the reason. Perhaps the Minister can give me a more principled reason than this, but I fear that it is in both sides of the Government’s interest to pretend that the referendum has not happened. The Liberal Democrats obviously do not want to be reminded of the result, and the Conservatives, who may be muttering beneath their breath and punching the air silently, if it is possible to do that, may none the less feel that they had better not say too much about it at the moment because it might upset their coalition partners. I do not have either of those inhibitions. I am very happy to talk about the referendum and its significance for this legislation. I want to make sure that I remain in order.

I have to add, in parenthesis, that there is almost a conspiracy of silence among the media on this referendum. I think of two newspapers in particular—the Guardian and the Independent—which set great store by the referendum and campaigned for a yes vote. I am sure we would have had no end of in-depth analysis if there had been a yes vote, but as far as I can discover, although I cannot claim to read both papers in detail every day, there has been virtually no reference to the outcome of the referendum. There is a kind of a news blackout on discussing it. I do not intend to discuss it at length.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

I can hardly believe what I am hearing. In the referendum, the Labour Party was split. I am not sure whether it was split down the middle or at some other juncture, but it was clearly severely split, with its leader going one way and a lot of other people, including the noble Lord, another. Can he tell us what his Front Bench would have said had there been a statement?

[Lord Grocott]

I am responsible for all sorts of things, but I am happy to say that, by my choice—who knows what might have happened now—I retired from the Front Bench. One reason why I wanted to retire from the Front Bench was to have the sheer joy of discussing these constitutional issues without any inhibition.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

That rather proves my point. I like the simplicity of polling day being polling day. We all know the beginning and the end, that the election programme will be on the BBC and that we will get an instant polling verdict on “News at Ten”. Are these bad things? I believe they increase the drama of an election and you need some drama in politics. It cannot be reduced to a dull procedural convenience. I do not doubt for a moment, as I have said, the motives of people who wanted more postal votes. There were many in my party who did and my Government facilitated it. It was done with good intentions but the outcome of what I can only describe as a rolling election has not been a good one. Likewise, I do not think the idea of having more than one polling day would be a good one. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, says it makes people very tired so that they cannot cope and might make mistakes. However, our elections are amazingly free of challenges once the results have been declared. I have lost some elections and won one after a recount but people accept the results and rarely contest them.

My final concern is that, if elections are to result in more hung Parliaments—I doubt that they would under the first past the post system, as some claim, but they certainly would under a more proportional electoral system—the period between people first starting to think about an election and casting their postal vote will be prolonged and the country could reach a verdict weeks afterwards. So I recognise the motives behind these proposals but it is easy to have good intentions but bad outcomes. We have elections relatively rarely, and we will have them even more rarely if the Government have their way with this Bill. They ought to be dramatic days and I fear that these amendments would make them less dramatic and certainly less decisive.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, it is more or less fatal for me to come into the House because somebody always presses a button that leads me to get to my feet. In this case, it is all this nostalgia about February 1974, which is the date on which I was first elected. My memory of it is that it took a very long time because Braintree did not count during the night; it only counted the following day. After a nervous, sleepless night, I came in with a relatively small majority at about the same time as the Western Isles.

I have a lot of sympathy with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I would not support these amendments if they were pushed, but consideration of change should not be ruled out. I make three points in support of that. First, on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, most of the criticisms of abuse or problems connected with postal votes seem to relate at least as much to people who have had them for years as to new postal voters. Secondly, like many people here, I live in London during the week and at my home in Essex during the weekends, so I now have a permanent postal vote for everything except parliamentary elections, which I cannot vote in anyway, because I never know where I am going to be.

The third point picks up that made by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, about the greater use of postal votes and non-postal votes—if I may oversimplify what he said. A key strategic problem is the decline during the past 20 or 30 years in the number of people who vote at all. During most of my time in the other place, the turnout was never less than 75 per cent. It was several times more than 80 per cent, and I had villages in my constituency where the vote went over 90 per cent. In the previous two elections, we have been down to percentages which we used to associate with American elections—between 60 and 70 per cent. Therefore, the key problem here is getting the vote up. We should be willing to consider anything which could be shown to contribute to that.