Scottish Referendum

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am old enough to remember the Kilbrandon commission, which took minutes and years in its own time and achieved very little. Indeed, one will even find in the eighth volume a memorandum which I, as a young academic, wrote. I suspect that no one has read it for the last 35 years. We are clearly concerned to move as fast as we can. City deals within the United Kingdom have begun to decentralise economic power to some of the major cities throughout England and elsewhere. City deals are the beginning of what might become a major devolution of power from Whitehall to our regions.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, am delighted that the kingdom remains united. I am well aware of the implications that the Minister has mentioned—in particular, addressing the English question. However, I think that they go much wider than that, asking and redefining what it means to be British in the 21st century. I am grateful to the noble Lord for saying that the timetable will not be held to ransom—I think those were his words. However, as it is absolutely crucial that there is no ground on which anyone can suggest bad faith in relation to the vows given by the three party leaders during the referendum campaign, will he say in simple language that the timetable, as outlined—that was part of the vow—will be kept?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, later today there will be a Statement, which will constitute the first part of the timetable, and I hope that many noble Lords will be here to listen to my noble and learned friend the other Lord Wallace repeat it. Therefore, the timetable is already under way; we are observing it and intend to continue to observe it. However, we are conscious that any form of substantial devolution which will include the regions within England will necessarily take longer. Perhaps I may repeat what the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, said. Part of what we all have to understand is that one of the many things that drove the Scottish yes vote was a sense of disillusion with London as the centre and with Westminster itself. All of us in all parties need to take account of that, think it through and adjust to it on a non-partisan basis.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it was a very small seed and, sadly, the tree—looking back at British history—grew rather slowly. We had a civil war and quite a lot of killing of Protestants by Catholics and Catholics by Protestants and others on the way to the achievement of the religious toleration that we have.

I grew up as a Protestant and I was instinctively anti-Catholic. I did not have the category of Jewish in my mind so I had no concept of whether I should be anti-Jewish, pro-Jewish or what. I slowly learnt not to be anti-Catholic and so one has moved. Over the past two to three generations in this country, the levels of intolerance have, happily, gone down a great deal. When I occasionally go to services in Westminster Abbey where I was a choirboy, and where you would never have seen a Catholic priest in the 1950s, I see not only representatives of the other Christian churches, but a range of other faiths represented: the Chief Rabbi, representatives of Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Zoroastrian, Baha’i and other communities. That is the way we should be going; interfaith dialogue and understanding in our schools and among different organised churches are what we should be doing to promote and defend an open society.

In particular, I regret that as regards what I think I learnt as a child about the three religions of the book—the Abrahamic faiths—we have lost some of that sense that the three great monotheistic religions belong together.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

In the profound spirit of liberalism and ecumenicism that has pervaded his speech, could the Minister have a look at the rules concerning Catholic marriages in the Crypt?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I was going to make another point, which is that we are all deeply aware at the present moment of the current conflicts in the Middle East, including between Israel and Palestine and the extent to which that spills over to some of the misunderstandings of our discontented young. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, that I went to address the Board of Deputies before the last election on behalf of my party and said, among other things, that we all have to understand that Jerusalem is a holy city for three faiths. I was heckled by someone who said, “No it isn’t. It’s the eternal city of the Jews”. We all recognise that there are some great sensitivities here, with different understandings of the past, and that what some call Judea and Samaria others call the West Bank and others call the Holy Land. They are matters that we cannot get away from and have to address.

There are many who do a lot of good work in that respect in the United Kingdom. I recall Tariq Ramadan, now on the panel of the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, saying that he sees Europe as the society within which the necessary reconciliation between Islam and modernity will take place. Let us all work for that.

A large number of countries have been mentioned in the debate and it is impossible in these last few minutes—

Electoral Registration

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the money is being allocated among local authorities according to the results of the confirmation dry run, which showed that we are getting up to an 80% level of confirmation, and indeed sometimes up to 85%, from data matching. However, there are a number of local authorities, including Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, where, because of the transient population, registration is much lower. Places such as those, where people move frequently, and others with a large number of students or private landlords will be granted large amounts of money to target those groups.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister update us on the proposals to cross-reference the databank of the DWP with the electoral registration databank for the purposes of informing those who have not registered but are on the DWP databank, and to encourage them to register? What precedent does this cross-referencing of data from a government department set for information supplied by citizens to a government department for the exclusive use of that department and the purposes that it is meant to carry out?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very good question on a very difficult and complex area. It raises questions of privacy as well as convenience. The DWP database has been used for data matching, but in one direction and with very careful procedures so that we were not transferring data, just checking their existence. There are a number of other local and national databases that have been used. It has been discovered, for example, that you can raise quite significantly your confidence that people are there if you use local databases, such as benefit boxes and council tax, as well as national databases.

Iran

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are all conscious of nervousness in a number of other states in the Middle East about this agreement. We are persuaded that this enhances the security of Israel. The alternative, which might have led to a military attack on Iran, would have jeopardised a whole range of issues about the long-term security of the Middle East. We have said that to our Israeli friends. The Prime Minister spoke to Mr Netanyahu in the middle of the previous round of negotiations on 9 November and will no doubt be talking to him again. We have been saying the same to our friends in Saudi Arabia and the various Gulf states. We have many active diplomats and friends in Washington who will be saying the same to the American Congress; but the noble Lord knows that American politics are even more complex than those of most other states.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to everyone involved and echo the sentiments that have been expressed about the role played by my noble friend Lady Ashton. She has been subjected to what I consider to be much unwarranted criticism despite the fact that she has, unheralded and unsung, had some singular successes, not least in Kosovo. This is an occasion on which the feelings of this House should be sent to our colleague.

I have two questions. First, while we approach this with a degree of elation—it is only a step, but it is a significant first step—we can nevertheless understand why such an apparently sudden turn of events should have perhaps caused some confusion and worry among some of our traditional allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. What steps are being taken to reassure and persuade them, if necessary, that the normalisation of relationships with Iran is in everyone’s interest, not least that of the region itself?

Secondly, while we are right to temper our feelings of elation with a degree of caution, will the Minister bear in mind that each step that is taken, however singular it might be, opens up other opportunities? I am persuaded that some of the decisions to proceed as we did on Syria, rather than taking the alternative route, opened—as some in this House including the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, predicted—a gateway to further compromise and discussion with Iran. Similarly, although there is a long way to go on this, I urge the Minister to seek to use this gateway for further exploration of work in the area, including in Syria, involving Iran as the great nation it has been historically. It will surely return to the realms of the United Nations and international influence if it proceeds along the path it is taking at present.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I will be happy to convey the thoughts of this House to the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton; I may be able to do so to her husband in the next few days. While compliments are going around, I remark that I have been immensely impressed, as a Liberal Democrat, in working with William Hague over the past three years. He works exceptionally hard and has travelled extensively on this. His relationship with his Russian counterpart has been quite a significant factor in building trust and co-operation across the P5. It is also worth marking that this is a triumph of European co-operation: the British working with our German and French counterparts. Perhaps even the Daily Mail might like to note that.

On the wider region, with this deeply unstable region, with jihadists of different hues threatening even more brutal civil conflict spilling over different borders, anything which perhaps begins to reverse that potential spiral downhill is immensely worth while. We very much hope that this will help to turn that corner. We are also of course conscious that Iran is a great country with a long history, and that it has a complicated history with the United Kingdom which it has not forgotten quite as easily as we have. That is one of the many things which we need to overcome.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, in a Chamber such as this, which is peopled by so many who have borne the responsibility for authorising military action, there is a deep understanding of the gravity of such a decision. That is why there is an extensive degree of caution to make sure that we understand the justification, the purpose and the consequences of any action. It is also why I am very pleased that the Prime Minister accepted the wise suggestion of the leader of the Opposition to delay at least until the end of the inspections in Syria and the conclusions drawn by the UN inspectors, if for no other reason than that it maximises the chances of legitimising any future action and international support.

I shall say a little word on intelligence because I have read the JIC report and I listened very carefully to what the Leader of the House said. Forgive me if the scars on my back make me even more sceptical, although not cynical, when I hear words such as “highly likely”, “consistent with” and “there would appear to be no plausible alternative scenario”. Lessons have been drawn from previous conflicts, in particular from Iraq. I think the major one from Iraq has been missing. When we look back, there was no doubt that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons and had used chemical weapons. Inspectors had been in not for 10 days but, on and off, for 10 years. Saddam Hussein himself declared that he had chemical weapons. Every intelligence agency in the world concluded that he retained chemical precursors. In short, there was “no plausible alternative scenario” to the fact that he had chemical precursors. Yet we found none. However, it might be interesting, if we ever get our hands on the stocks 500 kilometres away in Syria, to see where some of them came from.

The point I make is that there was a degree of certainty, to those of us who were reading these reports, at a level of fortitude greater than “highly likely” and “consistent with”, especially given the report, to which we were alerted today by the Associated Press, by the Director for National Intelligence in the United States,

“outlining that evidence against Syria is thick with caveats. It builds a case that Assad’s forces are most likely responsible while outlining gaps in the U.S. intelligence picture”.

A cautious approach to this matter is therefore sensible as well as politically desirable.

Let me make my position clear. While certainty would assist in legitimising any military action, should it be decided appropriate, and in maximising support—it would in a sense overrule the veto that Russia might use—it should not compel us in advance to taking military action because two other questions must be asked. That is not because, as the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, implied, we require certainty but because we require scrutiny, questioning, rational analysis and an understanding of the consequences.

The first of those is inside Syria itself. How do we achieve the limited objective of a punitive response and deterrence with military means that does not spill over into the civil war inside Syria? I do not know, so I ask for advice on that. Secondly, are we fully aware that this is not just a national civil war? This is the equivalent of the European Thirty Years War. It is a regional, schismatic war between Shia and Sunni, and if we proposed to intervene—my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, says that we have already taken sides on this—I commend to the House the words of the noble Lord’s old mentor, the noble Lord, Lord Healey: when you are in a hole, stop digging.

If we have already taken sides, do not let us write it in marble so that we are inevitably on the side of the Sunni, because there is a chance for some diplomatic progress along the lines, which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and the noble Lord, Lord Jay, mentioned, around the Chemical Weapons Convention. There is no reason why Russia and Iran, which has suffered so much in that respect, would not be open, along with 189 other nations in the world, to pressurising Syria on this question. That would not remove Assad himself. But then again, that is not the express purpose of any proposed action by the Government, is it? It is to limit the future use of chemical weapons. That might be an area into which we should put our efforts, and it is more fruitful than the one which the Government appear to be contemplating at present.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, if we are engaged in a strike on Syria it will be limited and very deliberately targeted, and not intended to cause any significant number of casualties. We are attempting to deter further chemical attacks. We are also attempting to defend the principle of international law. Let me say to those who say that it does not matter how you are killed, by whatever weapons, there are differences. The international community and international law have outlawed weapons of mass destruction. Chemical weapons have been illegal internationally since 1925. That is a red line and if we do not support the principle that using chemical weapons either against your own people or against members of another state is different, we are simply allowing that major principle of international law to decay. That is the principle with which we are engaged. At the same time, we and others, including the Arab League, the World Muslim Council, the European Union, and many others are working to try to resolve the situation and the conflict in Syria.

I was amazed to hear from a number of people the question: why do we not pay more attention to the diplomatic channel? Why has the Geneva II conference not yet taken place? We had hoped that the second Geneva conference would take place this July, and the Russians did their best to delay it. We hoped then that it would take place in September; we now hope that it may take place in November. The level of diplomatic activity in which Her Majesty’s Government have been engaged in the past few months has been enormous. I was in the Foreign Office yesterday reading transcripts of conversations with heads of government, foreign secretaries and others from 20 or more different Governments, ranging from Japan, to Russia, to Australia and to the United Arab Emirates. We are actively working on the diplomatic track. Unfortunately, we have not found much support from our colleagues in Russia or very much support from the Chinese, although the Chinese Government have condemned officially the use of chemical weapons. The diplomatic track is our preferred option, and we are working on it. The use of force is a last resort to be used only if other methods break down.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

Before the Minister leaves the diplomatic issues, today’s debate is about Syria and the use of chemical weapons. I wonder whether the Minister can enlighten me. It seems to me that today the Government, when talking about Syria and the use of chemical weapons, have concentrated almost exclusively on the question of military force. When the Government have been talking about diplomatic means, they have talked about the transition from civil war to a new regime. Perhaps he can tell us a little more about the diplomatic measures that have been taken to address the question of chemical weapons, ratification, signature and mobilising the 189 countries, including Russia and Iran, which are liable to be more sympathetic to that issue than to regime change, into putting pressure on the regime. In short, what diplomatic measures are being taken to address the question of chemical weapons rather than regime change?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have also been discussing the chemical weapons question with the Russians. To my knowledge, as of late this afternoon they had not accepted that it was the Syrian Government who were responsible for the use of chemical weapons, so there are real problems there.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

Does that mean that the answer to my question is, “None”, and that, for whatever reason, there has been no diplomatic initiative—as suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and me—around the Chemical Weapons Convention and the mobilisation of international opinion to put pressure on the Assad regime to address the question through diplomacy? If there has been, will the Minister tell us about it, as this debate is about chemical weapons rather than regime change?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there has not been action within the Chemical Weapons Convention. As the noble Lord knows, Syria is not a member of the convention and we did not have the sense that the other members of the P5—the Russians and the Chinese—would support a move down the Chemical Weapons Convention road at this stage. However, I will take the noble Lord’s point back into the discussions that are continuing.

A number of noble Lords mentioned that there might be much to be gained by conversations with Iran. There are contacts with Iran, which helpfully condemned the use of chemical weapons. We all understand that the Iranians suffered very badly from these weapons in the past. However, the Iranian regime is very complex, and dealing with it is very difficult. It will take some time to make much progress in that direction.

I am conscious of the time. I will rapidly talk a little about our humanitarian response. I can confirm that the United Kingdom is providing very substantial humanitarian assistance as far as possible—although this is difficult—both to those displaced within Syria and to the very large number of refugees outside Syria. We expect to maintain and increase that further.

I was struck by the contributions of a number of noble Lords who talked about the growing scepticism about western leadership, and whether we now have to accept that others will help provide leadership in maintaining a stable and lawful international system. That is a much broader question than that of tonight’s debate. It suggests an interesting shift in elite British thinking, and I suspect that we will return to talking about the implications for British foreign policy in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords—

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords—

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I think it is time to conclude the proceedings. If I could assist the House further, I would do so. I invite the Lord Speaker to conclude our proceedings.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, this is a matter of a military operation. It is a matter of potential life and death. It is a matter on which both Houses were recalled. I would like the Government to explain this, but from my reading of it, the House of Commons has voted against an in-principle decision to have military action and against a conditional decision to have military action. When the Prime Minister said, “I will act accordingly”, we are surely entitled to know what that means.

We are asking for a 10-minute interval. We are not asking for a plan B or the plans of the US Department of State, but we are asking what the Prime Minister understands of tonight’s vote when he says, “I will act accordingly”. If there is no clarity after 10 minutes, the noble Baroness can tell us that there is no clarity. But it would be difficult to accept the Prime Minister’s statement, assuredly, that he will act accordingly if we are told that he has no idea what that means.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Reid, is inviting me to give this House an opportunity which the House of Commons does not have. That House has accepted the words of the Prime Minister and adjourned. I find it difficult that this House now questions whether the Prime Minister’s words should be examined further by this House at this hour.

If another place has accepted what the Prime Minister has said, short of bringing the Prime Minister here I do not see what further way I can adopt to assist the House. Whereas that may be a novel procedure that this House may wish to adopt in the future—I do not wish to be flippant because this is such a serious matter—much as I do my best to help this House it would be a little unusual if we were to adjourn to interrogate the Prime Minister when his words have been accepted by the leader of the Opposition in another place.

It is time. We have taken note. We have made our views heard very cogently in both Houses. It is time.

Digital Strategy

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, the disconcerting element of the Minister’s Answer to the noble Baroness in the first case was that this is at an early stage. We are now decades into the internet. We are at least a decade on from envisaging digital services. Whether it is a matter of the social justice of excluding people who cannot use this, of hygiene and security on the internet or, indeed, of the chronic shortage of skills that we have as regards cyber for the future, will the Minister reassure us that, while he may be at an early stage in this process, rapid progress will be made? I declare an interest as a twice-over grandfather.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, things are actually moving quite fast. This is not simply something that central government are attempting to impose. I am encouraged by how much is being done at the local level by voluntary organisations and by partnerships between the public and the private sectors. The assisted digital scheme is intended to pull a number of these together and make sure that they are encouraged to help precisely in those areas of the country where digital skills are least well developed. The speed at which people are moving over to digital as mobile smartphones expand is very rapid.

Government Communications Headquarters

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble and learned Lord would like me to go into specifics on specific cases, and I am going to resist that for reasons he will fully understand, while recognising the importance of the distinction made between communications data and the details of communications, which is one that we all recognise.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, first, in all humility, I advise the Minister that it would be useful to distinguish between published opinion and public opinion. He may never be able to reassure some elements of published opinion that the security services are not being overzealous until there is some great incident, and it will then accuse the security services of not having done enough. That is the experience.

Secondly, to reassure public opinion, will he confirm that the regulatory legal framework is among the best, if not the strongest, among western democracies, not only the legal framework he mentioned of the Intelligence Services Act and RIPA but ministerial oversight, independent scrutiny and parliamentary accountability through the ISC? I tell him from my own interests—I declare them as registered—not only as a former Home Secretary but in the private sector and the academic sector that there is astonishment among many colleagues in Europe and the western democracies at just how far we go to ensure that oversight.

Will the Minister confirm the simple point that international terrorism is by definition international, that the means of communication in the world wide web is by definition worldwide and that therefore, if we are to protect the lives of the citizens of this country, we have to operate on an international basis? Almost every single plot that has threatened the public, many of which they have not heard about, has involved at least two or three countries, and in some cases more than 20. Therefore, within the legal framework, the security services, operating and sharing information on counterterrorism with our close allies throughout the world, have saved literally thousands of lives in this country over the past 15 years. The whole House should note that and congratulate our security services on it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for those very helpful words. However, it is not only all terrorism that is by definition international. When I was covering the Home Office brief and spent some time with the West Yorkshire Police I came to the conclusion that all serious organised crime is now international. We therefore operate in a world in which co-operation, not just with the United States but with our European partners and others, is nevertheless essential in order to combat this global phenomenon—and, of course, some of those with whom we have to co-operate are not the easiest of partners. The noble Lord will know well that some of the websites which those who have been radicalised in this country have had access to are operated out of very distant countries.

The difference between public opinion and published opinion is, of course, that public opinion very often wants different and contradictory things. The public want security and privacy, they want the state off their backs, but at the same time they want the state to protect them. That is part of what politicians have to deal with. It is one of the reasons why referendums are not always a terribly good idea, because the way public opinion flies depends on which week the referendum is held. Attitudes to privacy among the young are much more relaxed than among the old. Whether as the young get older they become more concerned about privacy is something we shall slowly discover as we go on.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, Amendment 10 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Tyler. The Government have been trailing data sharing with the DWP database since orders were passed through this House last year. We very much welcome their aspiration to data match some two-thirds of eligible voters from the old household register on to the new individual register using this process. However, we worry that this process will not prove to be as robust or successful as everyone hopes it will be. Other databases are, in our view, needed to make a success of this project. We have talked many times at the various stages of this Bill about the need for the electoral register to be complete. I believe this amendment about the use of other databases will show whether it is really the intention of the Government to walk the walk on this issue, as opposed just to talk the talk on it.

It will be a matter of judgment as to which databases may be appropriate for automatic registration, as the DWP’s will be, and which should only provoke invitations to register from electoral registration officers. What is clear is that to restrict ourselves to the DWP’s database, in either endeavour, is missing a real opportunity to improve the completeness of the registers, even from their present positions. For all the talk there will be about the dangers of the new system, we have to recognise that the old system has proved quite unsatisfactory. We now know that the electoral register is complete up to only 82% of eligible voters, as opposed to the 92% quoted by Ministers very frequently a year ago. Whether we have the old or the new system, we need better and more comprehensive data matching and data mining in order to help overcome the difficulties of registering voters.

We believe in particular that the information held by the DVLA—a comprehensive database of drivers—could provide a rich source of information better and more diverse than that of the DWP. Its database of national insurance numbers is of course notoriously unreliable: there are 80 million national insurance numbers in a population of only 51 million. We know there are many people on the DWP database who will have real trouble voting, since they died a long time ago. It would be particularly worrying if we restricted data matching to the DWP database only, as the Government could give the impression that they were keen only to see one demographic group of voters registered and not so keen on seeing other demographic groups registered.

Pensioners are not generally underrepresented on the voting registers or in the votes on election day. It is other groups where there is a more significant problem. There is a danger of unintended consequences in proceeding only with the DWP records, because they deal disproportionately of course with retired people. It is known that they vote disproportionately, although not exclusively, more in favour of the Conservative Party than perhaps other social groups. I know that our coalition partners would not want to give the impression that they are particularly keen on assisting with the registration of voters that may aid their cause and not with the registration of voters in general, in accordance with healthy democratic principles.

It therefore seems very important that the Department for Transport allows use of the DVLA’s database in the same way and with all the appropriate safeguards about personal data that the DWP applies. We are told by the Electoral Commission that the Department for Transport does not wish the DVLA database to be used in this way. However, the DWP has given permission for its database to be used in this way. My proposition is simple: that there should be consistency across government databases, using all of them to maximum effect, with the proper safeguards about personal data, in order to ensure that as many people as possible are registered.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Simon)]

Has the noble Lord moved the amendment yet?

[Lord Rennard]

No.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I am not in principle against what he is suggesting but, as someone who bears the scars on my back of false accusations when in government of an intention to mine data, match data and cross-match data, can he tell us when the Liberal party came to the conclusion that it was perfectly legitimate to mine and cross-match the data from DVLA, from pensions, from national insurance, which the noble Lord mentioned, and from transport? Once you have created this precedent there will be very good reasons for using it, presumably with data from HMRC and others, right across the spectrum so it is not something that should be entered upon lightly.

[Lord Rennard]

Indeed, I understand that and we would not do so lightly. We had significant differences over the national identity card scheme, which we were told would cost something like £300 million. What I am suggesting in terms of electoral registration would obviously cost far less. The essential principle, rather than the costings, is that this is a one-way process with data whereby we are trying to make sure that everybody who is entitled to vote is able to vote. The safeguards that would be in place would ensure that the only information made available is someone’s name and address. If the database shows that they are there, they could then be invited to register if they are not on the register.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are in Committee but I think I am right in saying that the procedure is that until the noble Lord has moved the amendment, no others should intervene. Could we allow the noble Lord to move the amendment? Then we can have the normal Committee stage open discussion.

[Lord Rennard]

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister. All that I am arguing in my contribution is that there should be consistency across government use of databases. We should use the DWP database to help some people, and other databases which may help many other people, get on the voting register and have their democratic entitlement. We know that students, for example, are also very under-represented on the current register and may be even more under-represented under IER. However, there is an easy way in which this could be addressed. If the Government had the will to pursue what they say is their objective of maximising voter registration, students and former students could easily be located through the Student Loans Company, invited to register and reminded of their legal responsibilities to do so.

Attainers are a particularly important group. Sixteen and 17 year-olds could be identified through schools. There is a precedent for doing this in Regulations 41 and 42 of the Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2008, under which the previous Government brought in a system whereby schools had electoral registration officers visiting pupils at the age of 16 or 17 as part of their civic lessons. At the conclusion of their lesson about voting systems and registration, forms were completed to register those 16 and 17-year-olds at school. However, so far there is no such provision to do so in Great Britain. There is also a particular difficulty with transient tenants in the private rented sector. They could be tracked down through tenancy deposit schemes and, again, invited to register and reminded of their obligations to do so.

These are all government databases and my argument is that the Government should be consistent in using them for data mining and data matching to try to make sure that we improve registration to improve the health of our democracy. There are also private databases and a huge wealth of information available through credit reference agencies—many of which are used at the moment by local authorities, including many Labour local authorities. The credit reference agencies use the electoral register as their own starting point, so some of these people are already registered. Those agencies also know of many more people with perhaps several forms of credit made available to them, more than one bank account legitimately registered and, perhaps, several credit cards used legitimately. Yet they know that those people, who exist, are not on the voting register even though they are clearly entitled to be on it. I believe that they should be invited to be on the register and told of the requirements.

At the moment, many local authorities are using exactly these data to try to check on the single person’s council tax discount. They know from their data that there is often one person on the register yet several people are resident. Local authorities are using these reference agencies to write to the people they know within this household, pointing out that they know that those people are there and should be on the electoral register and that perhaps it is not appropriate for them to claim a single person’s council tax discount. Local authorities have no difficulty in doing this. I think there is a great deal to be said for using more effectively the data of the credit reference agencies. I know that the Government have been holding discussions with them. However, there is as yet no commitment from the Government to use either these other public databases to which I have referred or the private ones.

I turn briefly to Amendments 11 and 15 to 20. I would simply say that they appear to be also on the Marshalled List for the purpose of probing these sorts of issues, so I will not comment further on them from our Benches. However, we believe that the Government must look closely at all these areas and give some commitments before Report so that we can be sure that the final regulations on data sharing are far more ambitious than they are at present and that they are seen to be fair and in the interests of promoting our democracy. I beg to move.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, I am sorry if I have breached the long-standing conventions of the House. I intervened at what I thought was the appropriate point but in terms of process, I should obviously be commenting now. I had not intended to comment when I came in to listen to the discussions but the precedent being suggested by the noble Lord has huge implications and significance. It ought to be regarded and scrutinised with some care before we proceed.

I do not for a moment doubt the noble Lord’s intention, which is to maximise the number of people on the voting register in order to enhance democracy, although perhaps I might express the wish that some of the comments made during earlier discussions had been listened to. It was predictable that we would end up with a shortfall on the electoral register and an anticipated greater shortfall. I think that lies behind the measures that the noble Lord has raised.

Let me make this point. If, however good the ends, we adopt the means of proliferating the use of data mining and data matching, that would be of considerable significance. If we are suggesting that we data mine and data match records from HMRC, the DVLA, the DWP—that has already been agreed—the Student Loans Company and credit reference agencies, that is a suggestion of huge import and ought to be scrutinised for its possible consequences.

It is, with great respect to the noble Lord who spoke, a complete red herring to compare this with identity cards. I say that for two reasons. First, they were voluntary and not all of what he suggested would be voluntary in so far as the person whose information is being mined would volunteer—although in some cases he suggested that they be contacted with a view to volunteering. Nevertheless, the ID cards were voluntary. Secondly, and more importantly, part of the reason for them was the spread of databases and the anticipation that data matching and data mining would become the norm in a cyberspace-dominated environment. Biometric protection was therefore enshrined in the ID card. In short, anticipating the use over the coming decade of greater dependence on an individual’s identity marked in a data bank and the possible loss of that identity or of that data bank by a government department, no one could have used that to gain access to any of the material in it—including bank accounts and so on—unless they had the fingerprints and the iris of the person whose bank account details were taken. In other words, it was a completely separate intention: to protect people should someone wish to use their identity if a databank was lost. It did not presuppose the Government going down this road of using records, which are exclusive to one purpose, for the purposes of data mining and data matching for another purpose, however well intentioned that might be.

I do not for a moment doubt that the intentions of the noble Lord are benevolent, benign, progressive and democratic, but the process of getting there, if it includes such widespread data matching and data mining as he has suggested, has profound implications and should therefore be subject to profound scrutiny in terms of the principle before this House.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My Lords, I, too, share some reservations on this matter. I was glad to see my noble friend Lord Rennard describe these as probing amendments, so, fortunately, they are not part of the coalition agreement. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Reid, that one wants to improve the methods of registration, particularly as regards students. I am always amazed that students are relatively lowly represented in political registration. That might change because, now that they have to pay for so much of their education, their association with citizenship is made much more vivid to them at an early age. I suspect that that will be reflected in their registration in the years to come.

My concern about this proposal is that it seeks to enact that information should be provided from a series of databases, including the Student Loans Company and further education and secondary education institutions—I presume that sixth-form colleges and FE colleges would be the principal area. Those institutions would be required,

“to disclose information to another person”—

not to a registration authority but to another person. “Another person”, I suppose, could be an election agent. They could be an election agent of the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party, the Labour Party or, presumably, the BNP—anybody could have the information. I would not be very keen on passing on some of the information to such people.

The provision would be a giant step towards a more prying society which I would be reluctant to go along with. I share some of the more general points of principle set out by the noble Lord, Lord Reid. Any data swapping has to be very carefully controlled for specific purposes. I am quite sure that the Liberal Democrats would condemn private companies getting into the business of data swapping in order to determine the patterns of consumer spending, for example. Many companies could justify that in the way the noble Lord seems to justify it for electoral purposes.

A method more suitable to our constitution would be the one cited by the noble Lord in the case of Northern Ireland. I see nothing wrong with registration officers of local authorities speaking in secondary schools and explaining to students the importance of electoral registration. That is a proper thing. If action were taken, as under some of the Labour amendments here, directly by the registration authority itself, rather than our seeking to tap into other things, it would be the right way to proceed. The action could be made much more effective if that procedure, which is the more constitutional practice in our country, was preserved, rather than our seeking a fundamental change whereby information of this sort, collected for one purpose, is made available for a variety of other purposes. That is a very big step which we should take most reluctantly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, if the Government feel that the amendment is inadequate in that respect, and my noble friend has made his point eloquently, obviously they can adjust the wording at a later stage. However, the amendment is here for the very specific purpose of assisting a registration officer in Great Britain. In other words, I would take that to be somebody who was within their organisation. If my noble friend has better wording, that is fine, but the point that I have to make is simply this: we already have the precedent, which has existed for a very considerable time, of using data that are already available to Government for this purpose. We are seeking to make sure that that is as full as possible. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Reid, will understand that the great majority of DWP data, cited by my noble friend Lord Rennard, will relate to people who are already going to register, in particular elderly people. What we are concerned about is mobile young people, a concern which has been evident also in contributions from the opposition Front Bench today. One of the ways to get to them is clearly through the student loan data and those who register for provisional licences.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

I make it clear to the noble Lord, as I did previously, that I do not approach this proposal with cynicism, and I certainly did not suggest that I was in any way suspicious of either his motives or those of the noble Lord who moved the amendment. Indeed, it is courageous that representatives of Liberal Democrats want to put more students on the electoral register. That illustrates that they are not doing it entirely for their own benefit. What I am saying, however, is that you should not take a step down this road, which is to bring together data mining and data matching across government departments, unless you recognise the profundity of it.

Does the noble Lord accept that there will be increasing pressure, in times of austerity, for the government departments that he mentioned to move to the cloud, rather than retain their own databank and their own hardware? There will be great pressure—I see that the noble Lord agrees with me. Does he understand that many of the cloud servers have a business model that is dependent on mining the data that pass through their server in order to get to the databank? Therefore, you should not aggregate these data in such a way unless you recognise that the people in the private sector offering you the service of the cloud will mine those data. Maybe the noble Lord has already considered this but I am trying to make sure that we do not take such a step—not because I am cynical or doubt his motives but because real, profound questions arise out of it.

[Lord Tyler]

The noble Lord has been generous enough to say that he does not in any way question the integrity or approach of my noble friend or me. I do the same for him. I very much appreciate and endorse what he said. In the fast-moving world that we are talking about, these are proper concerns. The whole issue of who would operate the identity cards to which he and his Administration were committed raised precisely those questions, too. I think he would now accept that.

All we are saying here—I look forward to what the noble Baroness will say—is that, having already committed to the use of the DWP data, it is only reasonable to examine other databases that may be balanced in a different way demographically and politically. Maybe the terms in which our amendment is written need to be more carefully considered. That is fine; it is what a Committee stage in your Lordships’ House is all about. I entirely understand the concerns that the noble Lord expressed but we have to be very careful. If we went right down the road of being risk-averse on these issues, we would do no data matching or mining at all and the register would become even more inadequate than it is already. That is a very serious proposition.

I do not know if the noble Lord was in the House earlier, but we had to identify that the status quo now is totally unacceptable. We have dropped back to the low 80s in terms of the completeness of the register. We are not where we were 10 years ago. I think it is agreed on all sides of the House that we have to look at every possible way to improve the integrity of the register both in completeness and accuracy. That is the purpose of our amendments.

House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill [HL]

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Friday 29th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is precisely the point that the Government’s response deals with. We have a House that consists of a large number of Members who continue to have other aspects to their lives outside. The point has frequently been made on the Labour Benches that the last thing that we want is for Members of a second Chamber to spend a great deal of their time on constituency work. This response deals with that area. However, at present, I do not wish to be drawn further into discussion of a different Bill from the one before us. I merely draw attention to the excellent article by a Conservative—

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

I thank the Minister for giving way. In view of his recent comments, will he make it clear that it is the Government’s intention that people will be paid around £50,000 a year not only not to do constituency work but not to turn up here? Is it not clear from the logic of what he is saying that the public are being asked to accept that a part-time elected Member should be paid a salary of the order of £50,000?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is not the case. We do not need to get into a detailed discussion at this point. Members will be paid for the number of occasions on which they come to work in this House. Some, as now, will be here every single day; others will have a mixture of Lords and other responsibilities.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

I think the Minister misses the point. Is he being quite clear in saying that, by his estimate, the amount of money that will be paid will be for someone who will come here not full-time but part time—75% of the time, or whatever? Therefore, the figures that have been put in the public domain are what the elected Senators—or people with no name, as we must now call them—will be paid for attending, on average, three-quarters of the time.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think it is entirely clear. As now, some will receive more than others. The question of how many will be here every day will evolve with the new Chamber.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Indeed, and I am not very comfortable with that. One thing that we ought to do is to learn from our mistakes in the past, look at the problems that have arisen from things that we have done and not do it again. That is what I am arguing very strongly. It would be an entirely nonsensical system, just as it is nonsensical to suggest that an elected Chamber would not demand extra powers. That goes against every principle of politics. Look at the devolved Parliaments—they are asking for extra powers, saying, “We are elected and we want more powers”. That is just so obvious that it should be accepted by all politicians. A hybrid House would have real problems in terms of having two classes of Members.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

I wonder whether the noble Lord has given some thought to this question, which could be part of his constitutional convention’s considerations. Given that in this country, unlike many other countries in the world, the Executive are not elected separately—the Government are the Government because they command a majority in the elected House—if there were two elected Houses, which one would determine the Government?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is a very good question, and there is no answer that I can give to it and no answer given by the proponents of the Clegg Bill. What the noble Lord, Lord Reid, says is yet another argument. Day by day, week by week and month by month, the arguments accrue in favour of a constitutional convention to look at all these things to get some coherence into our constitutional changes instead of the piecemeal changes that we have had in the past.

My fourth point about the Clegg Bill is that no account is taken of the possibility of Scottish independence or indeed of the West Lothian question and the McKay commission. So let us abandon the Clegg Bill and find another way forward—in the short term, as I have suggested, with the beefed-up Steel Bill, and the constitutional convention in the long term. It is not just the extra problems of the economy and others that are facing the Government. We could do with a little less legislation considered a little more carefully and we could spend more time dealing with legislation that really matters to our people. We could also continue to fulfil the other important role of this House, which we share with the other House, of keeping a check on the Executive—and my goodness that is needed more and more each day.

[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.