Deputy Chairmen of Committees
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Laming
Lord Boswell of Aynho (Non-Afl)
My Lords, before the Chairman of Committees replies, perhaps I may respond briefly to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. He will perhaps have anticipated that I was half-anticipating a contribution from him; it is, indeed, a seasonal necessity. It will perhaps be helpful to Members of the House, under whose remit we have the honour to serve, if I briefly comment on the state of play within the general framework. The noble Lord’s restraint today in terms of the personalities involved on the substantive committee was admirable but he has questioned the number of sub-committees. Frankly, I am not ashamed of the work that is done by my sub-committees through my main committee. There will be an opportunity for that to be debated in public in due course, and I hope that the noble Lord will join us in doing so. But in terms of the overall remit, I would suggest, if nothing else, that this is not the moment to change our substantive arrangements, although we may well wish to reappraise them in the future. We are well aware of the risks and opportunities presented by the upcoming referendum. At the very end of the last Session, we considered a paper prepared by our clerks indicating work that our committee could do when the result was known.
The structure of our committee and our scrutiny model have served us well since they were adopted in the 1970s. Indeed, I have the first report within yards of my desk, and the structure is substantially unchanged. Despite the noble Lord’s feelings, I hope that we have built up a reputation for diligent scrutiny and for evidence-based, balanced and thoughtful inquiries. We get a steady stream of visitors from across Europe asking what we do, why we do it and the conclusions we have reached. The committee is clear already that we should use the opportunity presented by the referendum to undertake a fundamental and challenging review of our scrutiny model. If people vote to leave the EU, it is self-evident that fundamental change will be inevitable. We would need to ensure proper parliamentary oversight of the withdrawal negotiations and the terms of any new relationship with the European Union. As long as we remain in the European Union, possibly for several years, we will need to maintain a continuing scrutiny function. If, on the other hand, the electorate vote to remain, we are minded to use the opportunity to launch a thorough review of our scrutiny model.
The European Union has changed almost out of recognition since we joined in the 1970s. It is a Union of 28, rather than nine, member states, with a directly elected European Parliament which acts as a co-legislator in the majority of cases. The United Kingdom has also changed with the creation of devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and their associated parliamentary Assemblies or Parliaments. We need to ask whether a system of document-based scrutiny devised in a pre-internet age is still appropriate. Clearly, the European Union continues, and will continue, to exercise a profound influence on the UK, and it is right that the House should devote proper resource to its scrutiny. I hope that our work is helpful to the House as a whole. But as a committee we are determined to move with the times and ensure that our resource is not wasted but is used as effectively as possible, whatever happens in the referendum.
It happens that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, has not participated in debates on our reports in recent times, to my memory. He has confined himself to criticising the committee in the media, alongside his traditional and, I am sure, welcome contributions on occasions such as this. I regret that he has not done more. However 23 June turns out, we will need collectively to pull together, as a society and indeed as a House, to heal wounds and to move forward. I sincerely hope that once the referendum is out of the way, he will work with us in reflecting collectively on how, in a changed world, this House can most effectively perform its vital and, I think, continuing task. I hope that is helpful. We are conscious of his sensitivity and we hope to be helpful to the House as a whole.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Laming)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. Perhaps I can try to offer a little crumb of comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. These committees have been scrutinising thousands of documents a year. If we did not have these committees to do this job, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, might have even greater concern. I beg to move.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, perhaps I might reply briefly. The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, implied criticism of my not participating in debates on these reports. I have to say that that is because I see that they have so little effect in Brussels, as I mentioned. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, or indeed the Chairman of Committees, can give your Lordships more than one or two examples of all the thousands of documents they look at where we have actually changed policy in Brussels.
Liaison Committee
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Laming
The Chairman of Committees
My Lords, the committee considered the range of options that were put to us. There was a common theme on some topics; others were more individual. We considered each of them on their merits and we have reached the conclusion that we now commend to the House.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, I have been able to give brief and informal notice to the Chairman of Committees of my intention to query the wisdom of the selection of our new ad hoc committees. Let me say again, and in agreement with the noble Lord, that the findings of your Lordships’ ad hoc Select Committees are one of the most valuable contributions of your Lordships’ House to British public life. The experience and knowledge that resides in your Lordships is perhaps unsurpassed by that in any other community in the United Kingdom.
However, at least three of the four selected ad hoc committees, if not all of them, fall into a rather similar category of inquiry, which one could loosely describe as social science. This appears to be at the expense of other important topics. I do not have time to go into all of them, but there is the hugely important and possibly catastrophic subject of antimicrobial resistance, proposed by the former Secretary of State the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. There is better regulation as proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, which would have gone to the heart of our democracy and how it is working or, rather, how it is not working, with the resultant disillusion among the voting public.
Above all, I would single out the problem of Islamism and the spread of Sharia law in this country, so forcefully and tragically brought home to us yet again this morning in Brussels. I submit that it is wrong of our Liaison Committee not to have picked one of the three proposals to examine this perhaps greatest threat to our present culture. We could, for instance, have had an inquiry proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on global jihadist movements and the international fight against terrorism. There was a proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for an inquiry into our Prevent strategy, whether it is working and, if not, what perhaps can be done about it. Perhaps most simple of all, we could have had from the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, a committee to examine the spread of Sharia law in communities in the United Kingdom and to assess its social consequences. I feel that the noble Lord and his committee owe the House something more of an explanation as to why these and other committee inquiries were not chosen from the very large number of suggestions that were put forward.
Noble Lords would of course be disappointed if against this background I did not once again protest at the fact that we have no fewer than seven committees looking into our relationship with the European Union, in the form of one main committee and six sub-committees. I know that Europhile noble Lords will say that these committees are hugely valuable and that the reports that they produce are treated with awe and admiration in the corridors of Brussels, but I have to say that I see no evidence of this. In fact, if we take even the influence of the British Government in the deliberations of the Council of Ministers, we can see that since 1996 the Government have opposed 55 legislative measures in the Council of Ministers and were defeated on every single one of them. If the Government have such little influence in Brussels, I would have thought that the reports of your Lordships’ Select Committees have even less. Even if they do have influence, can it be right for us to fund seven of these committees when all these other subjects need to be looked at by your Lordships with the wisdom and authority that our committees bring to bear on every subject that they address?
Liaison Committee
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Laming
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Laming)
My Lords, I have the pleasure of presenting the report of the Liaison Committee. In recent times, the proposal that the House should establish an international relations committee has received a greater degree of attention. The issue has been raised in the Chamber on a number of occasions and there have been written representations from many Members. Therefore the Liaison Committee has been considering the matter in some detail. We appreciate that there is a range of views across the House on this question. The Motion before the House invites your Lordships to agree with the Liaison Committee’s recommendation to establish an international relations committee from the start of the next Session, together with a number of safeguards relating to membership and financial discipline.
As Members will know, the House has recently established ad hoc committees to consider a particular subject matter for one Session only, with some follow-up by the Liaison Committee. This enables a wide range of colleagues to participate in committee work. However, given the conflicts and tensions in the world and the interest of this House in international affairs, several Members have pressed for your Lordships’ House to have an international relations committee. If the House agrees to the proposition, it will be important to draw on a range of experience, and therefore the report invites the groups to bear this in mind when they make membership recommendations to the Committee of Selection.
We heard concerns, too, about the likely cost of an international relations committee, particularly in relation to travel. In broad terms the average annual cost of a Select Committee is about £225,000. Our report invites the House Committee, in drawing up the House financial plan, to consider whether any additional budget required by the Committee Office for the new committee should be offset by savings in other areas. For clarification, this does not mean that other committees will be affected in the next Session.
In addition, our report recommends a full review of investigative committee activity in the Session 2017-18. This will enable a timely evaluation of whether the new committee is working well, whether the safeguards are effective and how it is interacting with the European Union External Affairs Sub-Committee—Sub-Committee C—as well as of the overall shape of Select Committee activity. Although the Liaison Committee considers committee work at the end of each Session, there has not been a comprehensive review of the committee structure of the House since the Jellicoe committee reported in 1992. Since then there has been a considerable growth in the number of committees. Twenty-five years after the Jellicoe report, the time seems right to look again at our committee structure.
There is never a perfect solution to issues such as this, but the committee agreed that it needed to make a recommendation to the House for a decision. I hope that your Lordships will agree that our recommendation, including the safeguards, strikes an appropriate balance between the views expressed to us. I beg to move.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, although I welcome the new committee, may I ask the noble Lord to say a little more about why we need it, in addition to the External Affairs Sub-Committee of our European Union Committee? May I also once again ask the noble Lord whether we really need seven European Union sub-committees, especially when Brussels pays so little attention—indeed, virtually no attention—to their deliberations? Would we not do much better to distribute most of the cost of our seven European sub-committees over a number of ad hoc committees, for which your Lordships are so peculiarly knowledgeable and well suited, in the national interest?