Brexit Negotiations

Lord Pannick Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We are committed to seeking continuity in our current trade and investment relationships, including those covered by EU FTAs and other preferential trading arrangements. We are working to agree arrangements with those partner countries to replicate, as far as possible, the effects of these agreements.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the agreement envisages that our courts will have a discretion to refer cases about citizens’ rights to the European Court in Luxembourg. Do the Government intend that legislation will provide any guidance to our courts as to how they should exercise this discretion? If the Government do not provide guidance, our courts will be required to decide issues of very considerable political sensitivity.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The ability of our courts to ask the ECJ for a view will be voluntary, very narrowly defined and time limited. Our courts can choose to ask the ECJ for a legal view on the law in relation to citizens’ rights where there is a point of law that has not arisen before. If the past is a guide, we would not expect this to happen very often; it currently happens for about two or three cases a year in this area of law. This ability will be strictly confined to those citizens’ rights as exercised under the withdrawal agreement by EU citizens who were settled here before we leave the EU. It will not extend in any way beyond that.

Arrangement of Business

Lord Pannick Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, let me quickly confirm that. The answer to that is yes.

[Lord Pannick]

Did the Leader of the House consider inviting the House today to suspend consideration of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hart, but allowing the Committee to proceed with the other business under this important Bill, which many of us were prepared today to come along to attend to?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn. I think that it was support not just for me as Leader of the House but for the correct procedures and processes in this House of Lords. What he said was extremely important and I hope that noble Lords will think very carefully about how they proceed having heard what he said and perhaps having read it in Hansard.

The noble Lord, Lord Richard, made a perfectly good point about who decides these matters. The fact is that we do not have a Speaker. We ultimately can decide these things for ourselves, but we have probably the best set of clerks in the world, who give us authoritative advice about these matters. My view is, and it was my view when I was Leader of the Opposition, that if the clerks take a view on something like this, we would accept it.

On what the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition said, I was not aware that a counsel had been taken on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hart, and an opinion sought and received which will be made available. I am sure that that will be very useful to noble Lords who like to read that sort of thing, but I do wonder whether we really want to go in the direction of reaching for our lawyers every time there is an issue of disagreement. It is not so long ago when this House was the last court of appeal in this country; I think that we are a lesser House for having removed that function from it. So it is not something that I would greatly encourage.

I gave an answer to the noble Lord, Lord Reid. He was right to raise his question in a tone of incredulity. There is incredulity here that any noble Lord would wish to continue once the House had taken a view. I say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that I did not consider the option that he described. I dare say that it could have been open to us, but I felt that very few people in this House had any knowledge of what had happened yesterday afternoon and that I should bring it to the attention of the House as early as possible, which is what I have done, and allow for a period of reflection over the course of the next few days to see whether this can be sorted out and how to proceed.

Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Pannick Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick]

Why do the Government consider it necessary to impose any deadline on completion of the work of the Joint Committee? Given the importance and complexity of that work, would it not be more appropriate to trust the Joint Committee to determine how long it requires? The Leader of the House said a few moments ago, “I cannot possibly second-guess how the committee will choose to approach its work”. Those were his words. The deadline does precisely that.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I strongly support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Cunningham. I do so because it goes to the heart of what the debate about reform of the second Chamber should be. It focuses on the powers of the two Houses and the relationship between them, which, in my view, should be considered before we discuss the composition of the second Chamber. My noble friend is a cautious man and he has put down a cautious amendment. I would like it to be stronger. I would like the Cunningham committee to be reconvened so it can consider the new set of circumstances—which is exactly what it suggested in its report unanimously adopted by both Houses— before we go on to the second consideration, which is what the composition of the new second Chamber should be.

I am alarmed by the position of this Government, just as I was alarmed by the position of the previous Government. We have the constant repetition of the mantra of the primacy of the House of Commons as if that in itself will deliver the primacy of the House of Commons. I have heard Jack Straw say time and again, “Don’t worry, you’ve got the Parliament Act and the financial privileges of the Commons”. I have heard exactly the same from Nick Clegg. With regard to fatuous clauses—I do not want to be too rude in this—I thought the Leader of the House quite wisely read out Clause 2 rather quickly. I will read it more slowly so it can sink in. It says:

“Nothing in the provisions of this Act about the membership of the House of Lords … affects the primacy of the House of Commons, or … the conventions governing the relationship between the two Houses”.

If that is not a clause which is wishful thinking, I have not heard one. Why not have a clause saying that the new House shall have a turn-out, at elections, of at least 60 per cent? Why not have a clause saying that the new Senate will cost less than the old House of Lords? If you have wishful thinking clauses, then the options are pretty wide. I support my noble friend’s amendment but I do not think it goes far enough.

Following the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, regarding the date, I have to speak through the Leader of the House to the Deputy Prime Minister, who has been the prime mover of these things, whatever his current position. When a date is set for the committee to report, the phrase “Physician, heal thyself” comes to mind, because we have the precedent of the Clegg committee, which was set up in May last year and took 11 months to report. It had essentially the same remit as the proposed committee, but it had the massive advantage of being much smaller—it had eight members—and if I may say so without causing offence, they were hand-picked to agree. If you have a committee of eight members hand-picked to agree, I would suggest that that is likely to lead to a more speedy conclusion than one of 26 members of widely differing views. At the very least, considering that the Clegg committee took 11 months to make up its mind before anything was presented to the House, I would suggest that anything less than 11 months for the committee that is being proposed would be wishing for something that is probably unattainable.

Why does not the Leader of the House revert to his own good sense? When he set up the Goodlad committee—which was a Leader’s Group—he very wisely did not give it a date when it should report. I was very fortunate to serve on it, and it took, I think, nine months. That was without a date. It did a good job—very busy, hard work—and to expect a committee looking at the future of half of Parliament to report in less time than the Goodlad committee took, and substantially less time than the Clegg committee took, is wishing for an awful lot. I would appeal to the Leader of the House not to set a date and to indicate that the date is by no means binding. I would also appeal to him in his capacity as Leader of the whole House. As he repeatedly reminded us when our positions were reversed, the Leader of the House is not just leader of a great political party, as our leader was and is in this House, but is Leader of the whole House. As such, does he not agree that his prime responsibility to this House on Lords reform is to ensure that the 12 Members who speak for this House on the committee accurately reflect the division of opinion in the House on Lords reform? It is not entirely within his power to do that, but he could give the House advice. In the last poll that I saw, 80 per cent were opposed to a directly elected House. I do not wish to overstate my case, but I suggest that it would be appropriate for nine of the 12 committee members to have the good sense to wish to keep this House free from direct elections, which we know would damage the relationship between the two Houses.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Pannick Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 94A. I agree with everything that has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. I thank the Minister and Mr Mark Harper in the other place for the courtesy they have shown in spending time with me discussing possible amendments to crucial aspects of the Bill. I take the view—I know that I am not the only noble Lord who does so—that the Government are certainly entitled to get their business through this House. However, the Bill would benefit considerably from improvements to Part 2. I am delighted to hear from the Leader of the House that concessions will be brought forward. The Clause 11 formula of a 5 per cent band either way for an electoral quota is simply too rigid to allow for proper consideration of geographical considerations and local ties. It is wrong in principle for Clause 12(2), which we are now debating, to abolish the power of the Boundary Commission to hold a public inquiry.

The Boundary Commission process, including public inquiries, has served this country very well. It has maintained public confidence by a transparent process which has avoided even the suspicion of gerrymandering which blights so many other democratic countries. The Boundary Commission needs to retain some form of discretion to call for an inquiry, at least in those cases where it considers that it is necessary, with appropriate safeguards. I am sure that improvements can be made to the statutory scheme to promote efficiency and reduce delays but there really is no case for abolition. I very much hope, and expect, that the Minister will tell the Committee that this is one of those matters on which the Government intend to bring forward concessions.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

My Lords, we welcome the amendment spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. The amendment to reinstate public inquiries into Boundary Commission proposals provides your Lordships’ House with an opportunity to start edging back from the precipice. It builds on an amendment moved by the opposition Front Bench which your Lordships debated last Wednesday. Although the Cross-Bench amendment that we are debating is more restrictive than ours, we willingly support it in the interests of breaking the deadlock on Part 2. It is a sensible and practical proposal for which we are grateful.

Clause 12 will, if enacted, abolish completely—indeed, it would go further than that and ban—the right to hold a local public inquiry into the recommendation of a Boundary Commission. The Government have chosen to put in the place of a public inquiry an extended consultation period by written submission of eight weeks. It is our submission that this is not an adequate replacement. Part of the function of a local inquiry is to provide people with a fair hearing and an explanation of why a proposal has been turned down. That is essential to the legitimacy of the process and we believe that it improves the decision-making process as well. Perhaps one of the most telling facts is that in every single case where the Boundary Commission was proposing significant changes, such as an increase or a decrease in the number of constituencies in a particular locality, its initial proposals were in every case amended following a public inquiry, so public inquiries are at their most valuable when the recommendations under consideration are the most dramatic. That fact is particularly salient in the context of this Bill which provides for a boundary review based on a reduction of 50 constituencies and the new set of rules dominated by a rigid electoral parity rule.

As the heads of the four Boundary Commissions have made clear, those factors mean it is inevitable that the next review will result in considerable changes to the electoral landscape, so considerable in fact that the Bill states in Rule 9(2), in Clause 11, that the Boundary Commissions are not permitted to take into account Rule 5(1)(d),

“inconveniences attendant on such changes”,

when conducting the forthcoming review.

They can take account of inconvenience in future reviews, but not in this first one.

As we debated in your Lordships’ House last week—I recommend that your Lordships read Hansard to see the relevant quotes—even psephologists who are sceptical about the value of public inquiries have said that on this occasion, in this context, they should be retained. Indeed, they have made the point that, while political parties have tended to be the major participants in inquiries, the scale of change that will be brought about by the next review is likely to provoke a much greater level of involvement by individuals and groups of local people. That is one of the reasons why we on this side of the House have not been willing to drop this matter.

I accept that there is a case for amending the current provisions in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 so that boundary commissions have some discretion about whether to go ahead with an inquiry, even where the basic threshold is met. However, the amendment proposed by the Cross Benches addresses that issue. The amendment that we moved last week provided that element of discretion. The variation on our amendment, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, the noble Lord, Lord Woolf, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has tweaked the drafting on that point and made the position clear. We are grateful for that.

There is also the point about judicial review, made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, in the dead of night last week, which he makes again today. I will not repeat what he said, because he said it a lot better than I ever could. His intervention on Wednesday was a powerful one and I very much hope that the Government will listen to it.

The Cross-Bench amendment keeps our initial six-month limit on a local inquiry but states that no secondary inquiry should be allowed. Given that these are very rare in practice, we have no objection to that change in the proposal.

I hope that the Minister, in responding to this debate, will be able unequivocally to accept this amendment. It has nothing to do with partisan advantage. It is a practical proposal concerned with the legitimacy of the process for drawing constituency boundaries. Helpfully and constructively, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, confirmed last week:

“It is not a fundamental principle of the Bill that there should be no oral inquiries.”.—[Official Report, 26/1/11; col. 1070.]

We have high hopes that the noble and learned Lord will enable us to progress in this matter by broadly accepting the proposal in the Cross-Bench amendment. I support the amendment.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Pannick Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McDonagh]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former General Secretary of the Labour Party and also, like many people of all political persuasions in this House and none, I have been a lifelong grass-roots community campaigner, passionate about how democracy works in our communities. That is why I was interested in this Bill and looked forward to examining it. I was slightly worried because, on the face of it, it appeared this was two Bills not one. I then read the Bill and indeed it read like it was two Bills and not one. Who was I to question it as a mere Back-Bencher? I was sure it would all become clear to me when we came to debate it. I entered the debate and, yes, it debated like it was two Bills, not one. It was a car crash. It was impossible to scrutinise and the Minister was unable to answer the points and the questions that were raised.

This reads, looks and debates like two Bills because it is two Bills. It is what we in south London call a cut and shut. I do not know how many noble Lords are familiar with the term but I will explain it. A cut and shut happens when rogue traders buy cars that have crashed. They have either hit something from the front or been hit from behind. The cars are split and the two pieces are welded together. To the unsuspecting buyer it looks like a fantastic car, but woe betide the person who gets into it: it is a dangerous vehicle. That is what the Government are creating with this cut and shut—a dangerous vehicle for our democracy.

To be fair to the Government, no one has tried to say that this is anything other than politically expedient. No one has pretended that it is other than two Bills. I appreciate it when everyone tells me that this is very clearly set out in David Laws’s book but they did not need to do that. On this side we are all a little bored by political biography and we would not have got around to reading it. However, I understand how it happened. When you go on a date, you are not that sure of the other party so you enter into a pre-nup. Both parties wanted two separate Bills and each was unsure that the other party would vote for theirs, so they were put together. Now that you are in a secure marriage—it certainly looks like that to me—you can rely on each other to vote for each other’s Bill.

So that we can properly scrutinise this legislation, I—again, as a Back-Bencher—attempted to table amendments. I thought to myself, “This can’t be the right way to go about this”. I took advice from our fantastic Clerks, who explained that the Bill could indeed be split. It has been done twice in the past—once successfully, albeit in the originating House. That Bill was split four times. The second time, the vote was lost. I read the rules—this has been a great Bill for my learning experience, so I thank you for that—and could find nothing that would prohibit splitting the Bill. It seemed a sensible way to proceed, particularly as there is a time constraint on the referendum. It is an important debate for the public to have.

However, subsequently, I now understand that there may be problems if the Government were not to support the Motion. It is not my intention to do anything that would stop us getting this legislation through properly and efficiently. Therefore, I call on the Government to support the Motion. That will allow us to treat the Bill in a timely, efficient and properly scrutinised way. I beg to move.

[Lord Pannick]

I remind noble Lords that your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, of which I am a member, reported to the House earlier this month that it understood the need for urgency in relation to Part 1 of the Bill, which concerns the proposed referendum. However, it suggested that the case for proceeding rapidly with Part 2—relating to constituencies—was far less strong. We expressed regret that the Bill was not the subject of any pre-legislative scrutiny or any prior public consultation. We further advised the House that, because of the lack of prior consultation and consideration of the important issues raised by Part 2, several vital constitutional concerns had not been properly addressed by the Government—for example, the impact that the proposed changes might have on the relationship between the Executive and Parliament. It is very important to ensure that there is sufficient time to give Part 2 the closest scrutiny. I, too, am concerned—speaking entirely for myself and not the committee—that the Government’s understandable wish to proceed speedily with Part 1 may adversely impact on scrutiny of Part 2. It would be no answer to the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, if the Minister says that there will be adequate time for debate on the whole Bill. Time is required not just for debate but for reflection by all noble Lords and the Government and for cross-party discussions before changes of this constitutional significance are made.