Covid-19

Debate between Lord Purvis of Tweed and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I agree with the noble Baroness’s last point but I think that she miscategorised me slightly. I did not say that antivirals were the only answer; I said that they are one part of a suite of things that we need to be doing, from ventilation through to hygiene and cleanliness. There is a whole range of things that we will need to do, but she is absolutely right: we need to understand how we can live with Covid and not continually chase our tails, because we can see the damage that it causes.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I received my two vaccines in Scotland but my booster jab in England. I have been informed by NHS England and NHS Scotland that there is still no way of having that booster jab recognised under the Scottish system. Likewise, after so many months of this pandemic, why have both Governments not worked this out together? When will this be resolved?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I completely understand the noble Lord’s frustration. My niece is at university in Cardiff and is in exactly the same position; she has had to go back to Wales over the holiday to get her jabs. I will certainly take his request to bang heads together back to the department.

G7 and NATO Summits

Debate between Lord Purvis of Tweed and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

At the NATO summit, leaders did indeed recommit to NATO’s defence investment pledge target of investing 2% of GDP in defence—10 allies meet that target now, and 20 are on track to meet it by 2024. Since 2014, defence investment by non-US allies has increased for seven consecutive years, with a real increase of 4.1% in 2021. So there is still work to do, but we are getting there.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

Unlike the UK-hosted Gleneagles summit, which had the communiqué reference to the 0.7% target and the UK encouraging all other G8 members to meet it, and unlike the Lough Erne summit, where the Prime Minister’s official documentation and public statements encouraged other G8 members to meet the 0.7% target, this year there was no mention of any Minister encouraging any G7 country to meet that target. Will the Leader, as a member of the Cabinet, take the opportunity now, at the Dispatch Box, to encourage her G7 counterparts to meet the 0.7% UN target?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am certainly happy to reiterate at the Dispatch Box that the UK is a world-leading aid donor. We have the third-largest budget in the G7 and will spend at least £10 billion in aid this year. We remain one of the highest contributors to overseas development in the G7, as a share of GNI and pound for pound.

Integrated Review

Debate between Lord Purvis of Tweed and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As I am sure the noble Lord knows, we already have a significant presence in the Indo-Pacific and we will invest more deeply in our relationships with key partners, which includes seeking ASEAN dialogue partner status and, as I mentioned, applying to join the CPTPP. But I reassure him that this is not at the expense of our close relationship with our European allies, which remains critical. One example of further engagement with the Indo-Pacific region is that, later this year, HMS “Queen Elizabeth” will lead a British and allied task group on our most ambitious deployment for two decades, which will visit the Mediterranean, Middle East and Indo-Pacific.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, Section 2(4) of the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015 states that the Government

“must … describe any steps that the Secretary of State has taken to ensure that the 0.7% target will be met”

in any subsequent year, if it was met in the previous year. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, told me that

“we are looking at legislation to ensure that we fulfil those obligations to Parliament.”—[Official Report, 2/12/20; col. 755.]

There has been no legislation, so does that mean that the Government are legally committed to meeting 0.7% in 2022, as the Secretary of State has indicated?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As I have said, and am sure the noble Lord knows, the document makes clear that we intend to return to 0.7% spending. We are acting compatibly with the Act, which explicitly envisages circumstances where the target might not be met. As I said in my first answers, we will set out more details on next steps in due course.

Global Britain

Debate between Lord Purvis of Tweed and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Monday 3rd February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I fear that I do not have that information to hand but I am very happy to go back to the department and check on the timings. I would also say that that we are considering the best way to implement the protocol and will be discussing this with the EU in a Joint Committee and specialised committees created under the withdrawal agreement. I will go back and check and if I can provide some further information to the noble Baroness, I will do so.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, that protocol highlights 371 laws and regulations that will not apply to Great Britain but will automatically apply in perpetuity to Northern Ireland. Their origin will be from the European Union. In October I asked the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, what representation UK citizens and businesses will have over rules set by a foreign entity in a trade agreement that they will have to comply with. He replied:

“Of course they will not have direct representation”.—[Official Report, 19/10/19; col. 361.]


What is the position of the Leader of the House on UK businesses and citizens who will have to comply with European Union rules over which they will have no representation? If that is the case, all the language about “one United Kingdom family” and the “whole UK family—fully and complete” will have to be scratched. It is either Great Britain and Northern Ireland or Northern Ireland alone under these EU rules.

Constitutional Convention Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Purvis of Tweed and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

Friday 17th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to noble Lords for taking part and being here today, and for the strong support from many more who are unable to be here today. I see from the speakers list that my noble friend Lady Suttie and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, will be taking part, so I know that this debate will not only concern our United Kingdom but will have an international perspective as well. I look forward to all the contributions from noble Lords today. I am grateful, too, to those outside this House, in the other place, in academia and in citizen organisations, who are supporting the Bill. These range from signatories to an open letter in the Times today, right through to the Local Government Association.

The questions we must all ask ourselves are: will our current approach to the constitution of our union be stable and sustainable for the long term; and has our piecemeal approach to reform in recent years been the best way to secure this—indeed, is it secure at all? In looking forward to the Minister’s response, I recall that he answered a question from his noble friend Lord Lexden, whom he said had marked his work when he hired him to the Conservative Research Department. In the debate on the office of the Lord Chancellor on 7 July, the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, described a constitutional convention as an,

“obvious means by which coherence could be brought to sets of separate initiatives and the framework created for a new constitutional settlement that would stand the test of time”.—[Official Report, 7/7/15; col. 123.]

I agree with him. In fact, I will struggle to put it better today, so I am hoping that his protégé, the Minister, will do so too and gain good marks for a positive response to this debate.

One of the arguments against a convention is that it is simply the recourse of inaction when political parties cannot agree or do not know how to proceed on policy. Thus a convention may be a long-grass exercise with a veneer of activity. In response to a Question by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, said that Harold Wilson once remarked about royal commissions, “They take minutes and last years”. He is actually reported to have said, “They take minutes and waste years”. We all know that there have been occasions when royal commissions have met because conferences have been convened, but not all of them have secured the delivery of their proposals.

I am not discouraged by the fact that there have been attempts at bringing people together. Rather, I am encouraged by a degree of consistency that suggests that constitutional policy should try to be forged from as wide a consensus as possible. This could be described as “the British way”. The groundwork for the establishment of the Scottish Parliament was done because of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. There have been debates on the balance of powers and responsibility of that Parliament since—I have sought to lead some of them—but its founding was based on wide consensus. It also benefited from agreement at the outset on a clear outcome, and thus sought consensus on how to get here. I will return to this important point later.

First, I will consider where we are today. There is much constitutional activity by this Government, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not. There will be much burning of constitutional calories, but the union will not be fitter as a result. In the recent Labour Party debate, I said that I feel our union is not at ease with itself. I believe that profoundly, and it concerns me. The referendum in Scotland was not just something I had to endure as a supporter of the union; it was a profound and challenging time with consequences that are still unknown. We have been too quick to assume that we know what they are, and we have not acted appropriately. It highlighted how many of us struggled to have a coherent and forward-looking definition of what our union is and what it means to young people and generations to come. We have seen nationalism coming to the fore in all parts of the union. I have spoken about this in the House before on a number of occasions, so I need not rehearse my view this afternoon, but I will return to it briefly before I conclude.

There is a real practical benefit to having a government-sponsored process with full technical assistance from the Treasury, DCLG, the national offices and Secretaries of State and the Cabinet Office to bring together the disparate changes proposed so that they are part of a coherent whole. It was rather telling that in the debate this week on the changes to universal credit, the Minister making the case for the change across the UK was unaware of the fact that the Government’s Scotland Bill, which is before Parliament, proposes the part devolution of that power. He was therefore unable to say how it would work and what a “concurrent” responsibility, which is in the Scotland Bill, means. The tensions over EVEL, the clumsy shorthand for English votes for English laws—or, as I suggest, EVET, English votes for English taxes—highlight the difficulty of a reform in isolation approach.

I am looking forward to my noble friend Lady Randerson’s speech. I suspect her strong Welsh experience and knowledge may form part of her contribution. The same could be said for the human rights agenda and for the proposals for the Welsh Assembly to become a parliament with full powers.

All these areas have recently seen Ministers at the Dispatch Box with the greatest confidence in their approach, only to be followed by pause, delay or retreat because the issues are complex and interrelated and require consideration as a whole. The list is even longer when we add the changes within England, where the approach that the cities Bill is taking has been challenged in this House and is asking more questions than it seems to answer.

We do not have a properly considered view on what powers should permanently be held within the union Government and what naturally should be the remit of the nations and of the regions within England. Neither do we have a properly considered view about the financial powers that could be balanced, and upon what principles across the union that could be done. Indeed, I see that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has a question on the Order Paper about the Government moving ahead in spite of there being no fiscal framework agreed between the Scottish Government and the UK Government.

Within England, the impressive paper on English devolution by the Local Government Association is useful to highlight this issue too. How will the new powers on tax and welfare for Scotland interact with each other, and what role does this place have within the union overall in this changed landscape? How are disputes resolved, and how will the Government work when in many areas it is an English and Welsh Executive who will become almost exclusively an English Executive? Its relationship with Parliament and the other Governments is not forming part of a holistic whole.

These are no longer theoretical questions for cerebral discussion in the academic seminar rooms or the Edinburgh salons. These are questions that we must resolve now, primarily as we are starting from a base of reform in recent years, but which need to be brought together as we are not resolving them satisfactorily by our piecemeal approach. The issue is how we resolve them, not whether they need to be resolved. Would a convention take minutes and waste years? I do not wish us to waste further years on discussing process.

I turn to the substance of the Bill and why I believe that it is a timely, focused and sensible measure that will produce a mechanism to gain wider consensus on a practical way forward for constitutional reform, and will not waste years but take only one. The Bill is already the result of a move to gain cross-party consensus. Its drafting reflects the legacy paper of the All-Party Parliamentary Party on Reform, Decentralisation and Devolution in the UK—yes, I confess that we could have come up with a better title for the all-party group. The group has been generously supported by the Wales Governance Centre and then more recently by the Local Government Association, and my co-chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I are grateful for the input across the parties. The draft terms of reference for a convention and its composition were agreed within this wider group, with considerable external academic support.

Clause 1 outlines the proposal on how the convention would be established. Clause 2 proposes the terms of reference—a narrow list but a broad one, with the issues necessary to be discussed. Clause 3 states that the convention must not take longer than a year—a tight timeframe for some, I know, but equally I believe that it needs to have a focused timeframe. Clause 4 proposes its composition and that it be inclusive, geographically and politically. It also means that the convention must have a majority citizen-led composition. This is because of my strong conviction that the convention will not work if it is simply a lowest-common-denominator agreement between political parties. It must have depth and, if we are defining what the union is and what it offers, we must take stock of the wider view of citizens. There are models for how the citizen component will be constituted, and this will be resolved before regulations in Clause 5 are brought forward. I am pretty convinced that work on how that could be brought about will have been done in government, both before and during the general election, so I look forward to hearing the Minister respond on that point.

So what might a conclusion of a convention be? There needs to be a balance of allowing the convention to take its own form and make its own conclusions but I offer my view that, as I said earlier, minds are focused when a proposed outcome is in mind; joint ownership of that outcome becomes stronger and is more sustainable.

I conclude by suggesting what an outcome could be for the convention. Some years ago I published a cross-party devo-plus paper, arguing for a statement of the new union, outlining in brief terms the necessity of a formal statement of union. I believe that the outcome of the convention should be a royal charter of new union, formed from the citizenry and in the name of the monarch. In many respects, the legacy of her own reign, with her own family, seems secure for generations to come. We cannot say that politicians are offering a similar legacy for the union for generations to come.

A charter of the new union can be a legacy from the head of state who has seen the union in peril from external foe but also from internal angst. Such a charter, perhaps ratified by plebiscite, would also be of a sufficient constitutional standing that it would stand the test of time. It also can act as a complementary statute of the United Kingdom that would be the machinery of government to resolve many of the questions I have raised today about how our multilevel and multisphere Government will operate in the union to come.

Again, I am grateful for the wide support already received, and I sincerely request that the Government retain an open mind, even though I am aware that this is not yet on their agenda: to allow this proposal to develop, to allow citizens’ groups, academics and those within all parties who believe that a process such as this is necessary to come together, and to allow the technical expertise of the Treasury and other departments to assist in that process. Our all-party group will make an exciting announcement next week to show that even wider support is emerging. I am grateful to those who are taking part today, and to those who share my view and that of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, that we seek coherence that will stand the test of time. I beg to move.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the debate, but for the convenience of noble Lords who might have missed the announcement made earlier by my noble friend the Chief Whip, I remind the House that the advisory time for Back-Bench speeches is six minutes.