Church of England: Holistic Missions

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

My Lords, I do not know whether one should declare an interest in a debate of this kind, but I am a lifelong if doubting Anglican and an occasional Quaker attender. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester for inaugurating this debate. It is a useful one to have. One must thank ResPublica for its report because it is stimulating and useful. I welcome to today’s debate the two maiden speakers, the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence of Clarendon, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle.

I want to concentrate on the central recommendation of the ResPublica report. It diagnoses what it calls the failings of state departmental silos and private sector cherry picking, trapped between individualism and collectivism. I have a lot of time for that analysis: it is broadly right. It also talks of the potential institutional role of the Church of England as the “hyper-local” hub or gateway to compensate for the failings that I have just referred to. It says:

“Communities exhausted by the break-up of traditional structures of both families and communities are simply unable to access the all-inclusive and bespoke provision that alone can transform their lives. Unless we tackle this institutional deficit we will not save the poor from poverty or secure the middle classes against a similar fate”.

Again, I find myself in broad agreement, particularly with the reference to the breakdown of communities about which I will say a little in a moment.

It is sometimes useful when confronted by large themes such as this to go back to local particular example. I come from a town in Suffolk that is, I suspect, typical of many towns in our nation. There are more than 300 market towns such as Sudbury. Today, it has more than 12 places of worship. There are 20,000 people, three Anglican churches, one Catholic, one Baptist church, a Methodist church, URC, Strict and Particular Baptists, Quakers, unattached Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Vineyard and others besides.

That does not give the impression of a community that is falling out of contact with Christianity. I should go on to say that there is a thriving Muslim community now, mainly made up of the local restaurateurs and their families. They carry on their services in the Quaker meeting house, which is a delightful and appropriate thing for them to be doing. There is in the town a strong Churches Together set-up, which is typical of most towns. That does a huge amount, quietly and effectively, to co-ordinate activities between the different churches and faiths, and provides a flexible and organic utility for that community.

I sometimes think that of all the aspects of our national life that we do not pay enough attention to, it is the decline of community life, which over my span has been continuous and now has now reached a critical position all round the country. The consequences of the breakdown of community are incalculable because it is through community that we learn our humanity, learn to tolerate and be tolerated, and imbibe so much of the collective wisdom that otherwise escapes us as mere individuals in our families. The ResPublica report proposes this hub role for the Church of England largely as a means of shoring up the community life of the country. The report refers to the decline of the tradition of communitarian civic conservatism. I think that that is with a small “c”. Again, it is right. In my home town, for example, in the 1950s, the leaders of the community were its natural leaders, in that they were the leading business people, the leading professional people, leaders from trade unionism and so on. Sadly, that is less and less the case. I repeat that that is a national tendency. Not having those in the community who are most naturally looked up to—the natural examplars, you might say, of civic and citizenship identity—is a massive setback from which we are all suffering today.

One of my gripes with the ResPublica report is that it concentrates far too much on the Church of England. All churches have that vital, practical, exemplary role. The phrase keeps coming back to me of walking the talk. If the churches do not walk the talk, what the heck are they for and who are they following?

The report suggests that the Church of England is given the key role of being the institutional hub in the process of reviving communitarianism, countering the rabid individualism, consumerism, materialism—call it what you like—that is, I think, deforming our society today. It wants the Church of England to celebrate its values and purpose rather than celebrating celebrity itself, as we spend so much time doing, I fear.

My problem with all of that is that I do not think that the Church of England, although I love it dearly, is fit for that purpose. It is in a state of extreme inequality within itself. In some parts of the country, some churches and cathedrals are vibrant and thriving, but many are not. They are very much on the back foot and struggling. I believe that, in any event, a state church, such as the Church of England is supposed to be, is better off being less connected with the state than more. I think that it infringes on the independence of a church to be too establishmentarianist. I think that that saps the independence of the church and its congregations; it makes it more subject to the vicissitudes of Governments—sometimes the same Government, let alone changing Governments; it reduces its freedom of collective or congregational criticism; it also places a downward pressure on the potential for civic and congregational innovation.

I see the Church of England—indeed, all churches—not as great, hub institutions embraced with and by the state but as seed beds of individual civic activism, hotbeds even. Often, thank goodness, churches and chapels are. I see them more as fertilisers of community vitality rather than some sort of grand master of the same. For those reasons, I am sceptical of what I take to be a central proposition of the ResPublica report, although I thank the organisation for addressing the issues and challenging me.

Lastly, lest I sit down on what may sound too complacent a note, I think that the Church of England has a huge amount to do—we have a huge amount to do. The failure of the Church of England to engage young people is, I fear, is central to its challenges. In my congregation, I suppose that the average age must be about 70. We do not have a Sunday school, but we are thought to be a successful church. We are not. You cannot say that you are in those circumstances. We are still far too middle class and far too disinclined to get our hands dirty. I do not oppose the central proposition of the report or by any means suggest that all is right in the state of the Church of England. It comes down to action: walking the talk, as I said earlier. We have a great deal to do in that direction. My word, does not the country and do not our communities need the Church of England, all churches and humanists? For goodness’ sake, do not let us, in our religiosity, get trapped in some bubble that does not allow others who do not share our beliefs the same dignity, respect and potential power.

I close by quoting good old Chaucer, who often got it spot on. Vis à vis what the Church of England should be doing today, he wrote the wonderful sentence,

“if gold rust, what shall iron do?”.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

That is a valuable point and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Judd.

There is a whole range of other problems. If groups campaign on a particular issue, the total costs involved will be attributed to each charity. Some of the most effective campaigns in recent years have come about because charities have combined. There are particular problems in relation to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, where the sum has now been reduced to a paltry £2,000 in the year. I am not going to deal with that now, but it might emerge in subsequent days.

Time and again we have heard the phrase “chilling effect” being used. Some people say that they cannot understand why charities are worried about it because there will be no curtailing of their freedom. It is the combination of these elements, the lower limits and the increased range of activities that count towards them, together with a continuing fundamental uncertainty about the definition of an electoral activity in practice that is making so many charities feel that their freedom to engage is in fact being threatened. The Government are worried about a large fish across the Atlantic called Citizens United and fear that it might swim over here, but instead of waiting for it to come, they have sent out a deep sea trawler which has thrown up a huge amount of sand and confusion from the bottom of the sea and put a net over charities which have been swimming quite legitimately in the waters of democracy. It seems quite absurd.

There is a case for including a number of activities in what counts for electoral purposes. I think that we can agree on that, although the question of staff time raises all sorts of difficulties, particularly in the case of voluntary time and whether it is workable at all. But what is strange is that all these activities are being brought together—the lowering of the threshold and an increase in the activities that count towards it. Will the Minister explain what the problem is that has given rise to this severe curtailment? It is rather like offering someone a sum of money for a piece of work and then telling them that the amount is being halved while at the same time they will have to complete a number of other tasks in order to earn the money at all. Surely if there were no reported problems before, and the number of activities is to be increased, the thresholds should in fact be raised, not lowered, in order to account for the ordinary activities that charities regard as part of their core duties.

As I have said, there is a logical case for including a lot of these activities, but will the Minister say something about how these charities are to assess volunteer time? The National Trust, for example, has thousands of volunteers. Are they to be taken into account?

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble and right reverend Lord, because I agree with every word that he is saying. May I just shoot one canard? It has been raised more than once. Section 87(2)(c) of the 2000 Act says,

“the provision by any individual of his own services which he provides voluntarily in his own time and free of charge”,

shall not be controlled expenditure.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. I hope very much that the Minister will agree with that.

There is just one other point I would like to make. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has suggested that the present definition of an electoral activity promoting or procuring electoral success at any relevant election is accepted by virtually everyone concerned. I think that charities have not in fact been quite so happy about that as he suggests. There is still genuine uncertainty because this is a genuinely difficult area. If, for instance, a campaigning group on climate change looks at the policies of the different parties and assesses them according to whether it thinks that their policies are desirable as far as climate change is concerned, does that count as an activity for promoting or procuring electoral success at any general election? It seems to me that people of good will could argue that either way. Therefore, is there not a need for government lawyers, Charity Commission lawyers and the lawyers of charities to get together to see whether this really is the best definition or whether we can come up with something better?

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[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak only on Part 2. I must first declare some non-pecuniary interests. I am a member of the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement, which was set up under the chairmanship of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, who spoke earlier. We will produce our report next Tuesday in time for the Committee stage of the Bill. I very much hope that all noble Lords will make a little time to have a look at it because during the past few weeks we have listened to a vast amount of evidence, including from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and we have taken, as it were, views from all parts of the United Kingdom.

What I am going to say tonight is a personal view because the report is not yet finalised. However, having listened to and read all the evidence, there have been times when my reaction was very much that of Victor Meldrew in “One Foot in the Grave”: that is, “I don’t believe it!”. How could a Government, any Government, make such a hash of an issue on which we are almost entirely united—that of transparency at election time? None of us wants money to be able to buy votes. We agree that there should be clear limits on spending and the public should be told who spends what. If anything, we should be looking tonight at a short Bill with all-party support, which makes some amendments to the Political Parties Act to improve its clarity. That would have all-party support. Instead, undue haste has produced a quite dreadful piece of legislation which has managed not only to divide the political parties but has united charities and organisations of every kind against it. How do you manage to alienate the Women’s Institute, Mumsnet, the National Trust, Greenpeace, the British Legion, the Countryside Alliance, the nurses, the RSPB and so on against you so that they combine together? You could not do it if you tried, but this coalition has managed it. When listening to the evidence, I did at times wonder whether someone with a sense of humour had slipped Part 2 into this Bill to test whether anyone in this House was awake, but the 40-strong speakers list shows that we are. If there are notably few Back-Bench coalition speakers, I can attribute it only to a number of those who normally stand up for free speech having adopted the maxim, “If you can’t say anything good, then say nothing at all”.

Part 2 is not wholly useless. It could serve a professor of politics very well as an example to his students of how not to legislate. It contains just about every error that a Government could make. There is not time tonight to detail them all, so I will take a selection of the major ones. The first thing you do is legislate in haste. Part 2 seems to have its origins in a meeting between the Prime Minister and his deputy in July, when they realised that unless something was done pretty quickly this autumn, a Bill would not reach the statute book a year before the fixed date of the next general election. There was no real urgency whatever about Part 2. We have been told by Members in the other place that Members of Parliament were not clamouring for it, and neither was anybody else.

Although the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 had its critics, and various improvements could have been made to it, it has worked reasonably well in two general elections. We were told that there has been no raft of complaints about it. There has been no formal investigation or inquiry and no prosecutions. It is not perfect: there is some lack of clarity and the Electoral Commission’s review has suggested improvements, but it is workable. Nevertheless, Part 2 was shoved into this Bill and, as we have heard, it was put before the Commons just as the House rose for the Summer Recess—indeed, the very day before.

The second error the Government made was not to consult those directly affected. They did not consult charities or campaigning organisations. Indeed, they did not consult properly those with responsibility for setting up and policing the new legislation. The Electoral Commission were, it seems, told what to do, not asked. Of the 50 recommendations it made in its review, only one was put into the Bill, and that was done in the opposite way to that which it had suggested. The Electoral Commission advised that staff costs should come into the equation, but suggested that if it were done, the limits should be raised. The Government have, indeed, included staff costs but are now trying to lower the limits.

Others have commented on the next error, which is particularly strange coming from a coalition which speaks of making “a bonfire of regulation”: that is, a massive increase in the regulatory burden and, by lowering the limits, an increase in the number of those to whom it applies. We should not forget that criminal sanctions will be applied, which are wholly disproportionate given the sums involved in many cases.

A further error is to try to push through a Bill which is so badly drafted that a specialist lawyer giving evidence to us told us that she could not conceive that it had ever been seen by a parliamentary draftsman. Lack of clarity and the sheer incomprehensibility of its wording mean that any organisation without an in-house specialist will have to seek expensive legal advice simply to understand what it means. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to that issue. I treat your Lordships to a few lines by way of a sample. Clause 28 on constituency limits at page 17, line 5 of the Bill, says:

“Subject to sub-paragraphs (5) to (7), the limit applying to controlled expenditure which is incurred by or on behalf of the recognised third party in the relevant period in any particular parliamentary constituency is the relevant proportion of the limit mentioned in paragraph 3(2A) … For this purpose “the relevant proportion” means— A/B where— A is the number of days in the relevant period; B is the number of days in the period which is the relevant period for the purposes of paragraph 3”.

How is somebody sitting in a small charity to make head or tail of that? The result, of course, is that they will be frightened off—they will be terrified of doing anything that puts them over the limit—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Does the noble Baroness not realise as a lawyer that this is a goldmine for lawyers?

[Baroness Mallalieu]

That is the other possibility, which I had not considered. It will undoubtedly increase the work of people who advise charities, such as the noble Lord.

Where are we on the rest of the so called clarification brought about by the amendment to Clause 26 in the Commons? I am the president of the Countryside Alliance. We have no idea what we might or might not be able to do as the Bill is currently worded. At the previous election we produced a rural manifesto that outlined our policies. It was widely distributed and not aimed at a particular party. We are told by the Electoral Commission we could not do that. It is clear that we could not organise a march, but could we organise hustings or have pledge cards? What of all the other public events where campaigning organisations put forward their views and express their wishes to their elected representatives? Who can tell? It is not only badly drafted; it is not readily understandable by those who need to know.

Yet another error was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—putting forward legislation which is bound to increase the number of complaints made to the Electoral Commission during an election period but providing no extra resources to enable the commission to investigate or deal with them. The Electoral Commission has had something to say on that and has asked the question and, as far as I am aware, has not received a satisfactory answer.

I could go on but I will not. I will just turn to the Government’s biggest mistake of all, one which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby mentioned. At a time when there is a deep mistrust of politics and political party membership is falling, trying to scare off the political involvement of the public who in their millions—literally in the case of some charities such as the National Trust and the RSPB—have turned to supporting extra-parliamentary campaigns is an affront to democracy. The voluntary sector’s involvement in public debate is to be encouraged, not stifled. It informs MPs and candidates. It informs the electorate. It enriches debate and very often, and perhaps most importantly of all, it provides a voice for groups that are otherwise powerless. Campaigns can at times, I have no doubt, be irksome to Governments but they are positive for democracy. Freedom of expression should be protected, not gagged.

This is a bad Bill, which I suspect in its present form is incapable of being corrected properly by amendment. We are, of course, giving it a Second Reading tonight. It misses the point. It is a wasted opportunity. It does not even begin to deal with modern ways of campaigning such as Facebook and Twitter, because nobody has consulted the people using those tools now. The Government, or whoever drafted this Bill, have not taken them into account. In common with others who have already asked for it, I hope very much that the Government will see the sense of taking this Bill away, consulting and then returning with a Bill which we could all support. After all, that is the way in which constitutional changes should properly be made. If they do not do so, I hope that Peers from all parts of this House will raise their voices and, if necessary, walk through the Division Lobby to make sure it happens.

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[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a charity lawyer of long standing and founder of the firm Bates Wells and Braithwaite, which does as much charity work as any firm in the country.

I hope that the Minister will not be too dismayed by what I have to say. I do not view this as a partisan Bill; it is a Bill that all sides should, classically, deal with as they best think fit, as they are doing. However, the problem of dealing with this as Back-Bench Peers is as intense in relation to this Bill, more or less, as to any that I have come across. It is not so much the length—it is a mere 62 pages—but that it is mostly written by reference to the 2000 Act, and there is no Keeling schedule. How on earth are we Back-Benchers, with no assistance whatever, supposed to get to grips with the fine print of a main Bill of 201 pages and a supplementary and amending Bill of 62 pages? It is outrageous: I wanted to say that. I hope that in Committee the Minister will put in hand a Keeling schedule right away because without it we cannot do our job.

I note also that as we got in this morning there were three documents, totalling another 94 pages. One was the excellent Library note, one was the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the third was the Constitution Committee’s report. They were available only this morning. Again, how on earth are we supposed to do our jobs and take into full account the very careful work done by those various bodies? That merely emphasises the fact that a Bill of this importance should not be dealt with in this helter-skelter way, whether or not it comes out of the wash in time for the 2015 election. In my view, that is of secondary importance to the need to get this Bill as right as we can. It is difficult enough if we do that in the right way.

I happen to agree with much of what has been said in criticism of Part 1, although I want to concentrate on Part 2. I do not want to see Part 2 wholly scrapped, because with regard to non-charitable entities—particularly commercial third parties seeking to influence the outcome of an election by plugging, sometimes with huge resources, a particular line or point of view—we need Part 2 although, again, it should be heavily amended. I am wholly unpersuaded that we need charities in Part 2 at all. They should be exempt from Part 2 and from the 2000 Act. I shall come to that in a little detail in a minute.

A number of Peers have mentioned the importance of the charity sector, but there are one-third of a million charities in this country, 95% of which are run entirely by volunteers. It is no good the Minister saying, “They will not be caught by this Act”. Lots and lots of them jolly well will because we have the provision about coalitions. I am damned if I fully understand the coalition arrangements, but certainly they will catch tens of thousands of small charities in their tentacles because so many of them are part of a national body, albeit that they are independently and separately registered as charities, and we know all the rest.

There has been a good deal of exaggeration and quite a lot of charities, frankly, were not even aware of the 2000 Act where a lot of this stuff resides. None the less, the charity sector as a whole is up in arms about this Bill. Broadly, the charities are absolutely right. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, used the rather nice expression that this is a solution without a problem, which is right. We have no evidence from anywhere or anyone that the last election or the one before was subverted by charities. When have we ever in this House had a Bill like this which deals with a problem that does not exist? It is bonkers. It is not even as if, if we take charities out of this Bill, there is nothing that contains and controls them: they have the Charity Commission, as my noble friend Lord Hodgson and others have said.

The Charity Commission is not a pushover. I have grappled with it for the past 45 years. Sometimes, it is pretty tough going. It has a job to do.

[Lord Judd]

Very few people know more about charities and their activities than the noble Lord, but is he not being a little naive? Even if he can sustain his argument that there is no evidence from previous elections, is not the point that there could be—for example, in Sheffield—in the next?

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I think that the Charity Commission can do the job. Perhaps I may read a couple of passages from CC9, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and others. It is a long and detailed guidance for charities which has evolved over 40 or 50 years. I have been quite closely involved with it. It gives an absolutely well thought through, pragmatically based series of yardsticks. The summary of campaigning and political activity by charities states that,

“political campaigning, or political activity, as defined in this guidance, must be undertaken by a charity only in the context of supporting the delivery of its charitable purposes”.

There is no equivocation. It can engage only in activities pursuing its “charitable purposes”. It continues:

“However, a charity cannot exist for a political purpose, which is any purpose directed at furthering the interests of any political party, or securing or opposing a change in the law, policy or decisions either in this country or abroad. In the political arena, a charity must stress its independence and ensure that any involvement it has with political parties is balanced. A charity must not give support or funding to a political party, nor to a candidate or politician”.

That is as clear as clear can be. They are not empty words, and there are a lot more to go with them. The Charity Commission enforces this, and the charity world is remarkably free of any abuse of these guidelines.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, may remember that when he was director of Oxfam we had a major battle with a statutory inquiry instigated by the Charity Commission into Oxfam having had activities outside the range of what was permissible under charity law. Fortunately we ended up convincing it that we had not, but these are not empty words. If the Minister says that they are not quite strong enough then give the Charity Commission more resources. It has had a great deal of its people power taken from it. If we remove it from this Act, it would be a big load off the back of the Electoral Commission. It would be a saving of manpower, not a waste of manpower. It would be an economic measure to give the Charity Commission a little more assistance and not to put the burden on the Electoral Commission.

Others have said it, but the charity world as it is is the jewel in the crown of our culture. More than half the adult population is engaged in charity in one way or another. Charities are the engine of civic engagement at a time when in other respects we are in dead trouble. They exemplify organic life, volunteerism, communalism, philanthropy and trust. They are cherished. Can we claim those characteristics for the body politic? I fear not. Can big business claim any of those virtues? I fear not. Yet we are on the brink of putting into force an Act which will damage the sector, particularly the smaller part of it. It will demoralise charities, it will cause bureaucratic overload and it will waste money that is hard obtained and can be used better elsewhere. I do not see that we have anything remotely approaching a justification for shackling the charity sector in the way we are when there is no proven evidence of abuse and when the Charity Commission is there to do a job which it is already doing.

I have probably said more than enough, but I hope that when we get to Committee I will not have to put down 100 amendments because it would be a waste of time compared to a much more fundamental review. My last word is to remind the Minister that charity law is severe. A charity can exist for charitable purposes only. It can act only to pursue those charitable purposes. It can act only in the public benefit. We do not need this.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I hesitate to go into a definition of politics as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, will immediately correct me. The promotion of particular policies, particularly broad policy areas, is a natural and accepted part of what charities and faith bodies do. That is a normal part of civil society. Part of my puzzlement, in listening to one or two of the speeches tonight, is that civil society is itself broader than the charitable sector. There are campaigning bodies in civil society which are not, and should not be, charities. Charities promote particular ideas, developments and social objectives which are also unavoidably political objectives, but they are not necessarily partisan objectives. That again is the line that we need to draw. I note that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said that charities are already unhappy about PPERA. Having looked at it, there are a number of difficult questions that we need—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

It might be beneficial for all of us if the Minister and his advisers were to say how far the Charity Commission guidelines fall short of what the Bill is intending to do. If there is no significant air between the two, we might all need to know that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I accept—and have also had it said to me in the Corridors—that we need to make sure that the guidance from the Electoral Commission, the Charity Commission and the Government are all in very close harmony. That is another area that we are, of course, now looking at.

The time is late. I will come very briefly to Part 3. Again, I recognise what has been said powerfully by a number of noble Lords here with trade union experience. We will come back to this in Committee, so I will say simply that unions are a major and extremely valuable aspect of our economy and our society. They have changed through a number of amalgamations over recent years and the Government consider the question of how accurate the membership lists of major unions are—we are talking about unions with 1 million or more members—is an appropriate point to be regulated. However, I take all the points—

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Thomas. I confess to speaking in this debate with some apprehension. My knowledge of foreign affairs is limited to a short period when I was the parliamentary private secretary to Geoffrey Howe, now the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon. I remember that the noble Lord, Lord Wright, was the Permanent Secretary and the patience with which he chose to educate me.

This debate is an object lesson for people who say that the House of Lords is a waste of time and a waste of space because if any of us was unsure, the quality of the speeches we have heard has been very compelling. I find myself very much in sympathy with what the noble Lords, Lord Wright, Lord Kerr and Lord Dannatt, said.

I do not know how many people were listening to the “Today” programme this morning, but Nick Robinson opined that we were in a period of great uncertainty and difficulty because it appeared that Parliament was dictating to the Government—shock, horror. Not even the BBC seems to realise that the Government are accountable to Parliament. I hope that the Government will have listened to the debate and the points that have been made in this House. It shows how far things have gone.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I cannot resist just very briefly telling the noble Lord that I met Nick Robinson coming in and I did say to him, “How on earth did you get through that programme without mentioning that we were having a debate in the House of Lords as well?”.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Clearly he thinks that that is not as much of a crisis. I very much doubt that any of the speeches that have been made today will be featuring on the “Today” programme tomorrow.

I think that my noble friend Lord Howard, who is not in his place, was a little unfair in describing the leader of the Opposition as playing party politics. When I heard on the radio that the Prime Minister and President Obama were going to launch an attack, I was filled with dismay. The contributions that have been made by the Opposition—which is their duty—have helped to make us all think twice about the issues. Of course, I absolutely agree that the use of chemical weapons is a moral question. But it is also a moral question to use high explosives to destroy women and children and inflict pain and suffering—all the events that are going on in Syria. Surely the moral question is: what can we do to bring this to an end and to end the suffering? For the life of me, I do not believe that bombing Syria is going to make things any better or any easier or advance that cause. The consensus that we have heard today has been very much along these lines.

Of course, I accept the intelligence that has been given. I was actually against the Iraq war. I could not understand why, if Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons, he would not produce some of them and say, “There you are. Take them away and destroy them”. I think he got himself into a position where he claimed he had them but could not save face by then saying, “Actually, I was lying”, so we got into a position where everybody believed he had them and we went into a disastrous war with him.

If your Lordships will permit me to tell one story that had a heavy influence on my opposition to the Iraq war, I went to climb a mountain behind K2 in the far north-east of Pakistan on the borders with China and India. We had 40 Sherpas. They came from a village without television or radio; they were carrying 20 stones at 19,000 feet; they had no education and an average life expectancy of 35. Their hostility to the Americans astonished me. They thought that the Americans acted only in their own interests and took more than their fair share of the world’s resources. I thought, “Where is this coming from?”. This was in the summer before 9/11. When we had shock and awe, I kept thinking, “Thank goodness they do not have televisions”, and, “How many people around the world are going to be radicalised by this action?”.

It defies common sense to say that if we were to bomb Syria it would not result in radicalisation. I do not know where the Joint Intelligence Committee gets its view that this would not happen. We have considerable Muslim populations in this country and elsewhere in Europe. It would be an act of supreme folly. By the way, we have not got any money to be spending on these missiles. If we have the money, let us spend it on providing aid and support to the victims of this conflict and in trying to get agreement.

I have one final point. It worries me that we are getting so far away from the Russians and Chinese. I read in the newspapers that the Russians are describing us as “monkeys with hand grenades”. This is deeply worrying. This thing is not going to be resolved without Russia being on board. As has been repeatedly said, the Middle East is in an explosive situation. We need to make friends with the Russians or at least find a way of working with them. If we fire these missiles, we will make that absolutely impossible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, 10 years ago, several of us who are in the House today took part in the Iraq debate, for which there were 115 speakers. I remember in particular the contribution of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall. It has been reflected in today’s remarkable debate by the noble Lords, Lord West and Lord Dannatt. There is no doubt that our military heroes have a rooted practicality in their view of these intensely difficult foreign affairs issues. I also recollect that on that occasion there was opposition to our going into Iraq at roughly two to one among those who contributed to the debate. This afternoon, at a rough reckoning, it is more like eight to one or even 10 to one against the notion of unilateral intervention—by “unilateral”, I refer of course to America and France as well.

As a lawyer, the legality issue is one that I cannot avoid, and we have heard some plain speaking on it. I put it to the House that the justification for humanitarian intervention depends, because it is a common law justification, on that unilateral intervention being reasonably likely to lead to less violence, death and destruction and to more chance of a resolution of the deep, underlying issues. Many other speakers have alluded to the fact that the likely consequence of a unilateral attack on the chemical weapons installations in Syria will be precisely the reverse. It will intensify the extremism, radicalise even more, and undermine the tender shoots of reconciliation within Syria. Indeed, I am not thinking of Syria alone because the whole region is unbelievably unstable, staggeringly fragile and frighteningly liable to internal explosion. One must look very carefully at the Government’s case for saying that the action they may eventuate would be justified by international law. I doubt it.

The reason why the consequences of such an intervention would be wholly counterproductive is again one that other speakers have referred to: that, sadly, the United States and the United Kingdom in particular are not viewed in the region as being honest brokers. We have form and we do not have clean hands. We are regarded as being very far from even-handed. I make these remarks having travelled extensively throughout the Middle East over the past 12 years, and that is the message I get again and again. Of course we act with sincerity and try to do our best. However, for example—I am sad to have to raise it, but one cannot avoid it—if one considers what is happening in Israel and Palestine, the fact remains that Israel is colonising the West Bank by military force and has been doing so for more than 20 years. The colonisation goes on and on, and Gaza is under siege. What happens? We go on supplying arms and America goes on giving financial support. There is no way in which the average Muslim who is interested in the politics of his country and region can view what we are doing as remotely justifying our intervention in Syria in the way that is now being contemplated. Look at our support for Saudi Arabia, which is scarcely a model state in terms of democracy and progressiveness. Look at what has happened in Iraq and Iran, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Williams and other noble Lords.

Iraq is a very striking example. As the noble Baroness said, in 1982 we supported Saddam Hussein when he invaded Iran. We supplied his weapons, and he subjected the Iranians to gas and chemical weapon attacks for some considerable length of time. What did we do about it? I cannot recollect that we did anything. Now we have the current attitudes. I emphasise that for us to go in, however good our intentions, would be potentially fatal.

Finally, I want to ask, what do we do? I liked the phrase “ferocity of diplomatic action”, which the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, used. That is just what we need, and imaginative action at that. Through the UN and through our work with Russia—and, I hope, with Iran and everybody else—we will maximise what chance there is for a peaceable resolution, not just in Syria but across the whole Middle East.

Electoral Register: Young People

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I understand that that question is under active consideration.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, is my noble friend, having twice rightly mentioned the importance of citizenship education, aware that it is currently part of the core curriculum but on present reckoning will be taken out? Is that not lunatic in light of the declining democratic adhesion of so many young people?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, my understanding is that we have not yet entirely decided the full spread of the core national curriculum. Of course, not everything that schools do is part of the national curriculum, as the head teachers explained to me on Friday afternoon. There is a whole range of other activities, including visits to local courts, the local council and the whole business of self-government within the sixth form. That is part of a broader citizenship curriculum, which is the sort of thing that good secondary schools should do.

Voluntary Sector and Social Enterprise

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, owing to clerical error, my name was not put down to speak and I am thus speaking in the break, and have four minutes in which to deliver an eight-minute speech. I commend my noble friend Lady Scott both on securing the debate and on what she said. Like, I suspect, everybody else in the Chamber, I hate to think of where we would be without our voluntary sector, because it is still the harbinger of the best values that we have inherited and seek to sustain. It is values-rich at a time when, I am afraid, so much of the commercial world, especially the big commercial world, is values-depleted.

I want to mention the role of small enterprises and voluntary organisations particularly in community life, because I think that many of your Lordships will agree that, in our lifetime, there has been a dramatic decline in the vigour and vitality of community life. It is interesting that that word “community” has the same root as “common”, and it is the communality of our lives that has been so hacked back—the common man, the common law, common sense, common land, common wealth, common fate and common fortune. All those things have been put in jeopardy by the circumstances that we all know well: mobility, work, obsessiveness, a certain degree of excessive individualism and so on. It is the small charity, voluntary organisation and social enterprise which is absolutely integral and central to a revival of the “commons”, as one might put it. They are local, rooted and embedded; they know their patch and are known in it. As was the case in my young manhood, when businesses mostly had those characteristics, you inevitably become part of the community and contribute to it informally. You did not call it pro bono, let alone charitable donation. These local organisations, whether private or not, were so integral to effective community life.

I also want to say a quick word about auditing. A number of comments—for example, from the noble Lords, Lord Giddens and Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker—have touched on the performance of business, particularly big business. The Public Interest Research Centre, a charity organisation set up in 1971—I was a trustee for 30 years and am happy to say that it still exists—had an idea whose time may now have come. Its main thrust was social auditing in public companies. I think it is well worth considering, and not just by government, whether it is not now time for us to look at what big companies and business entities, which are often global entities, do by way of social contribution as well as profit-making. I am thinking of things like minority hiring, environmental depletion and so on.

Finally I should like just to give a warning, if it is necessary, against any delusions about how much we in Parliament can achieve in relation to small, on-the-ground charities and social enterprises. I sometimes think that the torrent of laws that spew from this place have inadvertently created an attitude and expectation among people that they do not really need to contribute much and it is all down to government. Well, it ain’t.

My time is up so I shall sit down.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I will follow up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, before I turn to the issue of this House. The amount and complication of legislation is a far more serious long-term issue for this Parliament than we generally recognise. Although some may say that the Queen’s Speech is shorter than some, it still contains 20 pieces of legislation, several of them very major indeed. For example, we have reform of the courts and of security and intelligence services; we have a raft of complex reforms around children, families and parents; we have reforms of banking utilities; and so on. To legislate as we do, more than any other free democratic assembly in the world, is one of our besetting sins. I am sure that most noble Lords know that we put on the statute book between 12,000 and 15,000 pages of statute law a year, while repealing only 2,000 or 3,000. That is inevitably bureaucratising, centralising, complicating and demoralising. It has a great deal to do with the disaffection of politics by so many of our fellow countrymen. That disenchantment is tracked rather effectively—for those of you who do not know of it—by the Hansard Society’s Audit of Political Engagement. It has been conducted year by year for eight years, and at the start of the executive summary says:

“The growing sense of indifference to politics … appears to have hardened into something more serious this year: the trends in indicators such as interest, knowledge, certainty to vote and satisfaction with the system of governing are downward, dramatically so in some instances”.

The report says that,

“only …49% … agree that the issues debated and decided in Parliament have relevance to their own lives; only 38% agree that the government is being held to account by Parliament; and only 30% agree that Parliament encourages public involvement in politics”.

We need to pay much more serious attention to that piece of evidence—and there is much more like it—because we cannot go on as we are going. I suggest that one major cause of this tsunami of legislation is indeed the system that prevails in the other, superior, Chamber. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, touched on it when he spoke about the way in which that Chamber conducts its business. Some may recollect that, in the reform debate that we had last week, I referred to the degree of holding to account by the Commons. My noble friend Lord Wallace said that he would answer my questions in this debate, and I much look forward to that. I got from the helpful Library staff comparable figures for Lords and Commons over the last 10 parliamentary Sessions, from 2001 to 2012. I thank Patrick Vollmer here and Paul Lester there. In that period in the Commons there were 3,078 Divisions, of which the Government lost six—one every two years. Is that holding the Executive to account? It is a farce; it is a rubber-stamp machine down there. Whatever one says about this extraordinary place, although it certainly could not withstand scrutiny by a panel of academics drawn from across the realm, at least in 1,455 Divisions we defeated the Government 425 times, or one in every three or four votes, compared down the other end with one in 513 votes. I fear that I am out of step with the majority on these Benches, but before we take this astonishingly pregnant step of electing Members to this place, we must address what is already a fundamental defect in our parliamentary system.

We are therefore between the devil and the deep blue sea. The devil would be to go ahead with election to this House without seeking to ensure that it did not become a replica of the other place. I am afraid to say that I do not see how it could fail to become a replica of the other place. A 15-year term would not counterbalance the even greater dependence on party patronage that the regional list system would necessarily involve. Those who would effectively elect to this place would comprise a tiny caucus of party faithful—all good men and women. None the less, they would adopt those of their own kind. Once here they would be ever more grateful for the party patronage that got them here, given the system of election, given that they would have been put on the list and given that they would have been given priority in the list.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

Although the noble Lord makes the point very well, he underestimates the problem because at least under the system of election at present, although there is a party influence, there are different ideas and opinions within each party constituency, so there is a degree of separation between the patronage of the leadership and local communities. Under the list system, it is completely in the gift of the party leadership. Therefore, even before someone got in here under the list system, they would already be the creature of the ideological and political leadership of the party.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that comment as it constitutes my next point.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

Before my noble friend moves on to his next point, I hope that he will allow me to make two points. Some 60% of the Members of this place are appointed here as Members of Parliament from the other end by their party leaders. That is pure patronage, not patronage which is diluted in any way by democracy. Even though he points out flaws in the democratic system, with some of which I agree, surely a system which has some contact with democracy is better than one which has none and is based on pure patronage.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I genuinely admire my noble friend’s courage and sense of principle in putting forward his points with such strength. However, I remind him that he put me here.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Hang on, I have not finished my point. My noble friend got absolutely no encouragement from me to think that I would be a good little boy and follow my party Whip night in, night out—and I bloody well don’t. I am sorry.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. The fact that I put him here does not make the system any better; it makes it worse because I had to put him here to enable us to fulfil our functions. Although he did not give me any undertakings, I remind him that he came here to represent a party which has had this issue in its manifesto for 100 years. He must have known what was expected of him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Well, headmaster, to be honest, I did not. If my noble friend had taxed me on that point, he would have realised that I was then not certain as to what my views were on election. Having been here, I am afraid that my views are now certain: I want heavy reform of this place but not direct election. He and I will have to differ on that. Of course, the place is stuffed with party patronage but we can reform in a way that does something about that and that makes this place more representative of the nation as a whole but does not destroy its two signal virtues vis-à-vis the other place. First, there is here a depth of experience of the real world, which, sadly, Members of the other place have less and less—fine men and women though they are. Secondly, we have that level of independence that is an essential counterbalance to what goes on down there, which is one defeat of the Executive every two years. We have to exist; without us the situation would be appalling. If this place were directly elected, frankly, I would have great anxiety about the possibility of there being majorities in both places. What would happen to the volume of legislation then because the manifesto theory looms large down the other end—and reasonably so up to a point? However, when you have modern manifestos of more than 100 pages for each party, packed with 1,000 commitments to every interest group in Christendom, I fear to think what could happen if these two Chambers were aligned politically. You would see an amount of legislation—

[Lord Cormack]

And timetabled!

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Timetabled and all the rest of it. Therefore, I have to say—

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The noble Lord refers to two defeats in two years. However, he is conveniently forgetting that many amendments are accepted by the Government in the other House. They do not go to a Division.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

That is true, my Lords, but many of those concessions derive from amendments to Bills made in this place, which gives the boys and girls down there a bit of leverage over Ministers. Indeed, you hear it said that a lot of the most contentious stuff in relation to education Bills, health Bills and so on, is left for us to deal with because it is then somehow easier for them to deal with it when it goes back.

As I say, these are complex issues. I repeat that I have come to a slow but certain conviction that to elect this place directly would not even be a leap into the unknown because we know what is happening at the other end and we know that the partisanship would come up here. We also know that if you had a different majority at each end, that would constitute the deep blue sea. What would happen then? The pretence that legitimacy would be retained, as many noble Lords have said, is a total figment of the imagination because legitimacy lies not in the written word but in the hearts and minds of the people of this country. It is in the eye of the beholder. If we were elected, the man in the street would accord equal credence to us as he does to those in the other place. For those reasons if for none other, I fear that I will be a steadfast resistor of election if that time comes.

Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Tuesday 1st May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for his reminder that an issue that we need to take into account as we consider this is the balance not just between this House and the Commons but between government and Parliament, and that reform of this House should contribute to redressing the balance of power between the Executive and the legislature as a whole.

When we debate the Queen’s Speech, we will again discuss constitutional reform. If the Government produce a Bill on this, I hope that noble Lords will place this piece of the jigsaw of constitutional reform in the wider pattern of popular disengagement from politics and distrust of politicians. We need to look very carefully at the evidence. We need to consider the appropriate balance between representative democracy and direct, popular democracy before we slip perhaps a little too far down the road towards direct democracy. We need to have a concern to rebuild popular trust in our political institutions. Quiet, calm deliberation should be the way in which we seek to disentangle the knot of this highly tangled issue.

We heard some remarkably apocalyptic speeches in this debate, and even threats to wreck the rest of the Government’s legislative programme in order to prevent reform progressing. However, we serve in this House by appointment and by the privilege that that gives us—not by right. The way in which we discuss the future of the House will reflect, for good or ill, on our reputation. We will return to the subject—I hope a little more dispassionately—again and probably again.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

The Minister quite rightly made trust a major theme of his speech. Does he not consider that part of the decline in public trust in Parliament has a great deal to do with the excessive regimentation in the other place, where in the past 15 years Members voted against a government resolution only six times, while here we did it nearly 600 times? Is that not a crucial difference that will be lost if this place is wholly elected?

House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Friday 10th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, during these short recesses my noble friend Lord Trefgarne said to me that there has been an outbreak of common sense in your Lordships’ House this morning, and I hope that will turn out to be true. Before I turn to the Motion, I express my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, and his colleagues for their brevity on the previous Bill. I have to admit that when I first saw that the subterranean Bill had been tabled before mine, I had suspicions that it had more to do with undermining my Bill than anything else but, on listening to the debate and being educated on the subject—I have to admit that I am not familiar with subterranean matters in the Ettrick Valley—it has made me even more glad that I do not live in London. Again, I am grateful to the noble Lord, who was as good as his word because he is known in this House to be—how can I put it politely?—highly articulate, but he kept his remarks very short.

I hope that I can crave the indulgence of the House if I use this opportunity to make the only speech I intend to make during the time left to us today in order to describe what has happened since the Committee stage taken in October. The reason for the Order of Consideration Motion is that I wish to remove the part of the Bill proposing a statutory Appointments Commission. I shall explain briefly why I wish to do so. The truth is that since the Bill was given a Second Reading a long time ago, the Government have come forward with their own plans for a statutory Appointments Commission in the course of their promised Bill, which will come to us in the next Session. It seemed to me to be a waste of time to attempt in a Private Member’s Bill to do what the Government are planning to do anyway in a very different way later on.

The other reason I wanted to remove it was that when I looked at the original Order Paper, some 25 amendments had been tabled of which three related to the other matters and all the rest concerned the Appointments Commission, so there was also a practical reason for taking it out of the Bill. By putting those amendments at the end, once we have dealt with the other three issues, we can take these clauses out of the Bill one by one. That will enable us to proceed in an orderly manner.

The most important part of the Bill that we are now considering is, I would submit, the retirement section. Here again major progress has been made since October. The House will recall that the all-party committee under the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, recommended that the House should take statutory powers to introduce a retirement scheme. While I shall not quote the report in detail, the committee also said that that should be done without expense to the public purse and within the budget of your Lordships’ House. Since then, I have had discussions with four Members of the Cabinet. I am not going to name them, but I will say that one was a Liberal Democrat and the other three were Conservatives. We talked about what sort of scheme might be introduced if we give the House the necessary statutory authority.

At present, those Peers who attend regularly, by which I mean almost every day, can take home in allowances over the course of a year something over £40,000. In my discussions with Ministers, who agreed that this is a sensible proposal, a scheme could be devised which has two caps on it. The Government are keen on capping payments and I suspect that capping any kind of terminal allowance would be quite popular. These details are not in the Bill, but I shall give noble Lords an indication of the kind of discussions that have been going on. If a cap were set at £30,000, that would be the same as the tax-free allowance on redundancy payments made in the outside world and so would be quite acceptable and in line with other occupations.

We suggested that the other cap would be that the maximum amount any Member could claim would be no more than they claimed in the last Session of Parliament. That would prevent Members who come only occasionally suddenly deciding to claim a large lump sum. With that in place, I think that the scheme would be financially neutral. The taxpayer would benefit after one year because no more payments would be made to those who leave. I also suggest that there should be a minimum payment of something like £5,000 to deal with those Members who no longer attend for reasons of frailty, but who have given great service to the House and may wish to take advantage of this proposal.

The point of passing today the statutory provision is that we could possibly then see, in short order, the number of Members of the House being reduced to below that of Members of the House of Commons; in other words, from some 800 who will shortly receive the Writ of Summons for the new Session down to below 650. That would be very desirable and is, as I say, the most important part of the Bill.

The second part, which would remain in the Bill if we passed this Motion, is the power to expel, in line with the rule in the House of Commons, those who are guilty of major breaches of the law. This has become rather more topical following the removal of a knighthood from a member of the banking fraternity. Many people have asked why in the House of Lords we have no means of expelling those who commit serious offences. I am conscious that I have not dealt with the point raised by my noble friend Lord Dobbs in his speech a few weeks ago that we could, if necessary, add to that part of the Bill at Third Reading, but at the moment it would simply bring the rule in this House into line with the rule in the other place.

The third part is the controversial one, which is to end the hereditary by-elections. It is that part which has met with strong objection from a number of our colleagues in the House. I have not changed my view that the hereditary by-elections, particularly in the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, are really quite farcical. In the 21st century to have elections to Parliament by heredity by three votes to one is simply absurd. On the other hand, other Members of the House feel strongly about the principle that undertakings were given back in 1999 that the numbers would continue to be topped up until major reforms were made. That has been the issue between us and what has caused the sudden appearance of some 300 amendments, which is a perfectly legitimate parliamentary tactic in order to scupper the Bill. However, there have been congenial discussions between us and we have agreed that, provided I take Clause 10 out of the Bill, these amendments will not be moved. The result would be that today we would end up securing voluntary retirement and compulsory expulsion, both of which would be useful reforms.

I ought to make clear that, if we now agree this Motion, the first point of substance is to take out Clause 10. I have learned—and this may come as a shock to other Members—that because we had a vote in Committee to keep Clause 10 in, it will require unanimity on Report to take it out. In other words, when I to move to delete Clause 10, it will take only one Member of your Lordships’ House to shout “Not content” for us to fail in the endeavour. If we fail in that endeavour, the prospect of legislating at all today will be lost. I appeal to Members to watch carefully and to accept the guidance of the Lord Speaker, who has been extremely helpful in this matter. I beg to move.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Will my noble friend tell the House what the future progress of his Bill is likely to be were we to get through today?

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, I was not going to be grateful to my noble friend, but I am. I should have pointed out that I have been promised that if we get through the Report stage today, a day will be given for Third Reading. After that, the Bill can go to the other place.

House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Friday 10th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Astor]

My Lords, if it is for the convenience of your Lordships, perhaps I may also say a brief word about Amendment 288. When we discussed Clauses 15 and 16 in Committee, I made the point that I thought that the party of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, was the forgiving party: that once anybody had served their time and paid their price to society, they should be encouraged to come back into wherever they left and play their part. I realise that they have different rules in another place, but it seemed to me that in your Lordships' House we have already had two Members who have enjoyed themselves as guests of Her Majesty, and we are likely to have two more at one point.

On that basis, as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, raised the topic of the knighthood in Scotland, it seemed to me that we should have an amendment that peerages should be removed. Of course, when one looked at it one discovered that only life peerages could be removed, not hereditary peerages. That seemed somewhat unfair, because if you removed a hereditary peerage you would have the bizarre thing that a son could benefit from the misbehaviour of the father, which seemed even worse.

My reason for moving this is to ask the noble Lord, Lord Steel, a question about Clause 16 because should this Bill become an Act, as far as I can read it, a Member of your Lordships’ House who committed an offence and spent time as a guest of Her Majesty for more than one year would cease to be a Member of your Lordships’ House. However, if we then look at Clause 16 we see that there is nothing stopping them from standing for election to the House of Commons. It seemed bizarre that someone should keep their title and stand for election to the House of Commons. If someone should be forced to renounce their peerage and did so, as indeed hereditary Peers used to do when they inherited so that they could stand for the House of Commons, it would be slightly bizarre—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Is the noble Viscount certain that the phrase in Clause 16,

“unless otherwise disqualified by another enactment”,

does not catch the case he refers to?

[Viscount Astor]

My Lords, I do not have a clue because luckily I am not a lawyer. As it seems that we have rather a long time available to us, and as I suspect that we will be very short on the remaining amendments, I am briefly moving my amendment to get some elucidation from the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and indeed anybody who is more qualified than I in the legal world. I have no qualifications at all to explain whether I am right in this concern. I beg to move.

Big Society

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, for instituting this debate. In the limited time that I have, I would just like to endorse the point, which was made very forcefully by the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, and others, that local justice is the essence of the work of justices of the peace. I have the greatest conceivable regard for the magistracy system, which has served this country for nearly 800 years, stands high in the reputation of the public, delivers the most extraordinary service, and itself is a demonstration of volunteerism that all recognise.

However, the centralisation of the Courts Service has brought about serious drawbacks both to the public and to the magistracy. It is no longer justice of the people, by the people and for the people. The non-reporting now of cases because they are no longer within the purview of the local newspaper has been a disaster for the greater punishment of someone being held up to local ignominy as a result of a local offence. That is almost gone from the town I live in. Indeed, every one of the four courts in which I spent most of my first five years in the law—Sudbury, Long Melford, Boxford and Hadleigh—closed, and justice is no longer accessible, geographically or psychologically. I realise that this is more a problem of rural than of urban areas, but I ask that the Government take on board what has been said in this debate and at least stop further court closures and expensive centralised court systems and go back, wherever they can, to the dual or triple use of buildings, which rendered the expense of magistrates’ courts absolutely minimal.

I have two other quick points to make.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are very short of time in this debate.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I was told that I have four minutes but will take less time if I can.

My first point is that unless the public understand the role of the magistracy, the magistracy will not be able to do its work as effectively as it has in the past. I fear that young people today do not by and large understand, largely because of the centralisation of courts, the role of JPs and the work that they do. I hope, therefore, that my noble friend Lord McNally will take back to Mr Gove, his colleague in the other place, the importance of maintaining citizenship education as a compulsory component of secondary education, because that is one upholder of knowledge about magistracy and magistrates’ courts.

My second point relates to the magistrates’ courts mock trial competitions that are currently being run by the Citizenship Foundation—I speak here as its founder and still president—and the Magistrates’ Association. More than 400 schools and 6,000 pupils are involved. It is a massively important element of the education of the public about the magistrates’ courts system, but it is in danger because of the withdrawal of funding.

I will say no more because I am getting serious looks from the Front Bench.