House of Lords Reform

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, to seriously take note of Lords reform, we really need to be aware of our role and function. It is not to be the Executive’s little helpers but to hold them to account. As such, it is Commons reform that we need to look at. Having been there for 27 years, I am entitled to be a critical supporter. I was sent here not to undermine the elected House but to help with scrutiny and revision.

Our big mistake in 1997 was effectively to guillotine every Bill in the Commons. Okay, we called it timetabling, but it has exactly the same effect. Bills arrive here in the Lords not properly scrutinised by the elected House. I once suggested that all the Bills that arrive here should come with a Speaker’s certificate, pointing out what parts of the Bill had not been scrutinised, but I was told this was not practical when it was looked at. But it remains the case that we have to clean up the Commons’ failure to do its job properly, and it annoys those down there, who are ignorant about our function.

I always start sessions of the Peers in Schools programme—now Learn with the Lords—as I will do again in a couple of weeks, by saying that the Lords is, in effect, a large sub-committee of the Commons, with the role of asking it to think again. The elected House always has the last word, but we are the thinking Chamber, which thinks for itself rather than being told by the business managers what to think. We ask the Commons to think again and maybe again.

I think the Learn with the Lords programme needs to be extended from schools and colleges to Whitehall and the Commons. We need to confront the sheer ignorance—which I shared until I came here—in Whitehall and the Commons about our role and function. The obsession is always with composition and numbers. They are important but not the key event. I will never forget the day when, as a Minister, I went with my noble friend Lord Grocott, who was then the Government Chief Whip, to a senior Cabinet committee in charge of legislation. We were there merely to explain the rules and conventions here in the Lords. The chair of the committee wagged his finger at us and said, “You’ve gone native, you two”, based on his ignorance of what we were trying to explain. So far, that ex-Cabinet Minister has not arrived in your Lordships’ House. Ministers need the odd session, particularly if they have been only a Minister on the bridge, rather than, as I was, a Minister of State, always in the engine room. Those Cabinet Ministers who have never done any other jobs have not got a clue, and need to be better informed.

I am coming to the end now. We are not a threat, but we are here to stop the executive takeover of Parliament. Having served for nearly three years on the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, I know that the move continues bit by bit as the Executive take more power from Parliament for Ministers at the expense of scrutiny. There is no question but that—people on all sides have seen it—and it continues today. It has continued since the general election; that committee broke a precedent recently and summoned Ministers about an appalling Bill taking powers from Parliament. In my three years it never felt the need to summon Ministers, but it has since the last election.

Yes, we need to reduce our numbers, but kicking out the superactive noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and keeping the once-a-year Russian is not the sensible way to do it. I wait for a big defence of that from the Prime Minister. We should revisit the Commons and Lords Joint Committee on conventions of the UK Parliament. It was chaired by my noble friend Lord Cunningham, and its report was published in November 2006. After it was published, it was agreed by both Houses. If you are going to argue about changes in the conventions, both Houses have ownership. There should be a specific form of agreement. What better time to revisit it?

Human Rights Violations: Consular Assistance

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rooker]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to create a legal right for British nationals to access consular assistance in cases of human rights violations.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)]

My Lords, our consular operation offers British nationals a 24/7, 365 days a year service. We welcome feedback to help improve our support to British nationals, including from those who use our services and other stakeholders. The Government are examining options on strengthening support for British nationals abroad, including a right to assistance in cases of human rights violations, as set out in our manifesto.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

In the meantime, will the Government issue a warning to academics and curious tourists not to visit Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and China as these are locking people up and denying them consular access. Is the Minister aware that Australia, the United States and Ireland— I repeat, Ireland—have secured the release of citizens from the Chinese Communist Party prisons by taking a tough line on trade? Yet our Foreign Secretary went off to China with no trade demands—and not even having met Jimmy Lai’s legal team here in the UK—and came back empty-handed. Jimmy Lai, a British citizen, has been locked in solitary for four years and denied medical treatment. Why can the UK not take the same tough line as Ireland?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend, but I think he knows very well just how seriously we take Jimmy Lai’s imprisonment. He will recall my questions to the previous Government on this. He will recall my statements on this, where we have taken a very strong position. Let me reassure my noble friend: the idea that the Foreign Secretary goes to China and does not raise these issues is ridiculous. I assure him that the Foreign Secretary said in his response to the Oral Question on Monday that it was because he had been out of the country visiting a wide range of countries he had not at that stage been able to meet the family of Jimmy Lai. But Catherine West has and will continue to do so and the Foreign Secretary said he would do so. I reassure my noble friend that we take this very seriously and will raise it at all levels.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 18th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move government Amendment 264 and will speak to Amendments 265 and 266, which the Government have tabled. They respond to the concerns raised about Clauses 223 and 224, which provide powers to replace the Health and Safety Executive as the building safety regulator.

When the Government made the decision to locate the building safety regulator in the Health and Safety Executive in the aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy, this was rightly because of its outstanding reputation in ensuring rigorous safety standards. We continue to work closely with the Health and Safety Executive, and I take this opportunity to thank HSE colleagues for what they have already done to bring this regime to life.

As we await the findings of the Grenfell inquiry, the Government recognise that we must provide a stronger, wider stewardship role to ensure that we regulate effectively across the whole built environment, with consideration and management of sustainability and quality sitting alongside the safety of buildings. The Government believe that these powers are a key part of ensuring that oversight of the built environment is delivered appropriately.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, who has tabled Amendments 265A, 267 and 268, and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for its scrutiny of the Bill. In response to the concerns raised by the committee and in earlier debate, the Government are making a number of changes to improve these measures.

Amendment 264 restricts the powers in Clauses 223 and 224, so that they can be used only to transfer existing functions of the Health and Safety Executive in its role of building safety regulator, and specifically cannot be used to create additional functions or to amend the building safety functions as defined in the Building Safety Act 2022. I hope that this principle of the preservation of existing powers provides the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, with reassurance on the intentions of the Government.

Amendment 265 limits the provision that can be amended, repealed or revoked by regulations under this clause to provision made by or under listed Acts, namely: the Building Safety Act 2022, the Building Act 1984, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.

Amendment 266 removes the ability to extend the sunsetting of the power to create a new regulator. These measures do not affect the timeline for the regulator’s important work. We expect the regime to be fully operational by April 2024, and are determined not to impact on that programme. Finally, I remind noble Lords that the powers in Clause 223 are all affirmative and so any future use will be subject to the consideration of Parliament. I beg to move.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to address the amendments in my name, Amendments 264A and 264B. These amendments raise an aspect of electricity supply which involves potentially dangerous network faults. I first declare an interest as probably the most out-of-date chartered engineer in Parliament, having been here full-time for 49 years, and a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. I still pay my subs after more than 60 years, and skim the technical journals.

In April, I read in Engineering & Technology about concerns relating to the risks of neutral current diversion, known as NCD. The author was investigative journalist, Conor McGlone, who wrote of experts expressing concerns of the real risk of deadly gas explosions and fires in the UK due to a common fault on the electrical system. They claim that the fault is neither acknowledged by distribution network operators or the Health and Safety Executive. In short, and keeping off the detailed techy stuff, a neutral current diversion can occur when the combined protective earthing and neutral conductor fails. The current is then diverted by making a circuit via exposed metal workings on buildings including gas, water and oil pipes. In other words, electricity can flow through gas meters in these circumstances.

NCDs are causing gas explosions. Gas meters are not designed to carry electricity and, if a current is diverted, creating heat due to the high resistance, an explosion can follow. The fault is such that, when changing gas meters, engineers attach jump leads between pipes because neutral current diversions are so prevalent and sparks can be created. After an explosion, of which there have been more in recent years, we are simply told: “possible gas leak”. In fact, a house in the Kingstanding part of my former constituency disappeared in such an explosion last year.

One example given by Conor McGlone was when Gordon Mackenzie, formerly of SP Energy Networks, became aware of a resident’s coat falling on a gas meter and catching fire. He detected a 35-amp current flowing through the metallic gas service pipe entering the property, affecting 72 houses. There was nothing whatever to indicate a problem: no flickering lights, nothing.

Neutral current diversions are not routinely considered after an explosion. Having read this, I therefore tabled some Written Questions, answered by the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, on 2 May. I was informed that

“no additional action is required by the regulator”—

the Health and Safety Executive—

“to manage this risk of neutral current diversion at the present time”.

In other words: “We’ll keep it under review”.

Now these can cause fires in ordinary domestic appliances due to the high resistance. Voltage surges occurred in properties without a gas supply. As a result of the Hansard reports of the Written Answers, I was contacted about the wider problem of safety checks and weaknesses in electrical regulation. I am informed that the charity Electrical Safety First and certification giant Bureau Veritas have both expressed more concern than the Health and Safety Executive, whose approach has been described as

“nothing to see, move on”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, if nobody is getting up, I will just let the Minister and my Front Bench know that I agree with the content of all three speeches I have just listened to. My message to the Front Bench is that things have to be done differently. The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, did not just invent this system; it has virtually been his life’s work and it has been a success. It is not like the good old days and the bad old days; we have to learn lessons and do things differently. The present arrangements have not worked.

In the last Labour Government we made mistakes, but we are in a different world now, by and large. There is going to be a general election, when there may or may not be a change of Government, but there ought to be a change in policy about the way that these issues are dealt with. They cannot all be one size fits all, which is the apparent view of the present Government, whether of the public or the private sector. Partnership, good leadership and a willingness to share responsibilities is the only way to success.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, and his fellow signatories to the amendments in this group. As we have heard, they refer to very important issues relating to how such a complex and far-reaching Bill should be implemented.

There was much discussion earlier about the wasteful and partial way in which the levelling-up fund was implemented so that, instead of making a real contribution to levelling up, it became a beauty contest of who could spend the most on consultants to put their bids together. There is no better example of the rationale for close and careful consideration of how the Bill will work in practice. I hope the Government will pay close attention to the wording of these carefully considered amendments, to how they will ensure cross-departmental working—which is not a feature of this Government nor of past Governments—and to the committed devolution of powers and funding, which will be necessary to deliver any meaningful levelling up. But I fear that this might have to wait for the Labour Party’s “take back control” Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I want to put on record that I support the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on this issue. The Government have to give an explanation. The experts say it is impossible to decarbonise our electricity supply by 2035. Labour has planned to do it by 2030, but if it is impossible to do it by 2035 then it is certainly impossible to do it by 2030. One has only to look at recent papers—for example, the one by Professor Dieter Helm, an expert. It lists completely all the points that we are going to miss.

One of the missing ingredients is of course onshore wind. I have seen these huge onshore wind farms under construction in Shetland. It is true that they took rather longer in terms of planning applications that I thought they would—instead of eight years, I thought they would be pretty quick. The biggest problem will be that they are so big that the grid does not have the wires to get the power to the mainland. That is crazy.

Then there is the matter of alternative jobs. I find the windmills magnificent, whether they are in the Lake District, Cornwall or anywhere else—they are not an eyesore—but where are they made? We are losing out on manufacturing. We are importing far too much because we do not have an energy plan. We have 20 bits of energy, but that is not an energy plan. Without one, we are going to be importing and importing, and we are going to lose the jobs that the green policies should give to our people.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, we strongly support the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, in this amendment. It is important that we continue to discuss where our energy comes from, what kind of energy we want and how it is going to help us meet our net zero and low-carbon targets. Onshore wind has to be an important part of that. She is completely right to draw attention to the problems we have been facing in recent years in getting onshore wind built. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, talked about the issues of the results of round 5 recently. That puts a sharp focus on some of the issues we have had around wind farm development, whether offshore or onshore.

Elections Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I also apologise for not speaking on Second Reading; I was unable to. I was not planning on speaking in this debate, but the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, raised the point of some of us being here permanently. I have been here a mere 30 years, but I cannot actually see the fact that I have been here 30 years as a legislator making that much difference to the country. I would love to say that being a Back-Bench Liberal Democrat is the bedrock of our whole system, but I cannot really put that forward. When I came here, it was the mantra that only Lords, lunatics and criminals could not vote, but that is no longer the case—though it depends on what bracket you put us in.

I have one question for the Minister. I am standing as a candidate in the local election, and my wife is standing as the agent for the Liberal Democrats in Islington. The complexity of the forms you have to fill in, with the understanding of the minutiae and detail, is incredibly difficult. What is the cost to the country of us being taken off the electoral register? Everybody has to be trained; it has to go through the whole system; it has to be part of the process. The cost is not insignificant for 800 people to be treated in a different category. Of course, it goes into a number of different areas. If the Minister could give us an indication of just how much our privilege of being taken off the register, so we can carry on with this view that we are a permanent part of the process, would cost, and whether that is worth it, I would be very interested.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a question—and I did not come in to speak either. Since I have been a Member of this House, which is 20 years, there is at least one Member—I think only one—who was here when I arrived, subsequently got elected to the other place and is now back here. Yes, he is here today. At the time that he left this place and got elected to the other place, was he able to vote in the election he stood in? I am not sure what his status would have been.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

Yes, I was allowed to vote.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Well, that is the answer to my question.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, we talk about piecemeal reform, and changes to this House have not necessarily been a result of legislative change or even reform. I have mentioned in previous debates the excellent book by Antonia Fraser about the debate on the Great Reform Act 1832. What I found most fascinating was that most Members of the House of Commons were sons of aristocrats and were put there by their fathers to have proper training to come into the House of Lords. Of course that was in the days when the powers of this House were great, as noble Lords have mentioned.

What recently shocked me even more—and I have cited this too—were the diaries of “Chips” Channon, who, when he was writing pre-war, leading up to the 1938 Munich debacle, mentioned that most of his friends in the House of Commons were sons of aristocrats who eventually ended up in this House. I hope things have changed. Constitutionally, things have radically changed, quite rightly, in the powers of this House, which can no longer challenge the democratic mandate of the House of Commons. The question is not simply about whether we are here for life or not; it is about what we do here. Even where we have particular circumstances of power, I am one of those people who would not use it to challenge the democratically elected House of Commons.

My noble friend made a very powerful case, and the point that struck me was that not many people in the public out there are aware that we have not got the vote. I remember campaigning in the 2017 election and a young, radical activist stopped me and asked if I had voted yet. When I explained I could not vote for Jeremy Corbyn, she nearly issued an internal disciplinary notice. Once I had explained, I was eventually forgiven. But I think it is a point worth making that most people assume that everyone in this country has a free and fair democratic right to vote, and it just seems ridiculous that we do not.

Elections Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

As I said, I do not suggest that these amendments in their present form cover all aspects of the issue, but when my noble friend comes to reply I would be grateful if he could tell the Committee whether this is an area of policy that could usefully be explored further with a view to stopping the sort of impropriety that I think we all agree disfigures our national scene.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I will say a few words about Amendment 212G, which is in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell. It concerns risk assessment and due diligence policies, controls and procedures by political parties. This would be a major change for political parties, and is very strongly suggested by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, particularly in chapter 4 of its report published in July last year. This contains several recommendations and is a very powerful case for anti-money laundering style checks. Like others, it specifically cites the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report at paragraph 4.24. I shall give some examples later.

Dirty money in UK political finance leaves parties exposed to malign influence, fosters dependence on the proceeds of crime and other dubious sources as a source of party finance, and, as my noble friend said, risks undermining the integrity of the electoral system. Under PPERA 2000, political parties are not required to run anti-money laundering checks on donors. There is no indication that UK political parties do robust checks on the source of donations, nor that parties ever reject donations after such checks have been made. I would very much welcome being contradicted on this.

As the UK’s anti-money laundering framework has progressively tightened over the last decade—I applaud the Government for the changes they have made—the checks that political parties should undertake have stayed largely unchanged since 2001. Examples from the media suggest that if parties check the source of donations at all they are woefully inadequate and fail to prevent the flow of tainted money into UK politics, with damaging effects on the health of our democracy.

The Electoral Commission, which the Government clearly do not like, has argued since 2018 that risk management principles from anti-money laundering checks by business could apply to election finance. This would greatly increase transparency for voters. The Committee on Standards in Public Life has also recommended that.

As I was listening to a CD in the car the other week, the present system reminded me of the song “Money, Money, Money”. I will misquote Tim Rice’s lyrics from “Evita”; I have changed only one word, and I will not try to sing it: “When the money keeps rolling in, you don’t keep books. You can tell you’ve done well by the happy, grateful looks. Accountants only slow things down, figures get in the way”. That is the reality of our political parties at present: they do not do the checks.

So how does this amendment address the problem? It would update PPERA to require political parties to develop and publish a reasonable and proportionate risk-based policy for identifying the true source of donations above the figure of £7,500. Parties would need to have reasonable and proportionate risk assessment and due diligence controls and procedures in respect of those policies; the framework of the policies could be set out in statutory instruments.

For any donation or aggregated amount within a year exceeding that figure, parties would need to

“undertake enhanced risk assessment and due diligence checks”

to identify

“the donor’s principal place of business if different from its registered office … the nature of the donor’s business … the people with significant control of the donor’s business, and … the names of the donor’s directors or senior persons responsible for its operations.”

Donors giving more than £7,500 would need to give a written declaration as to whether their business is in a high-risk sector—these are listed in proposed new Section 54C(13) of PPERA—and whether they have been

“under formal investigation by a regulator or law enforcement body for, or convicted of,”

a range of offences; these offences broadly reflect the mandatory grounds of exclusion in the Public Contracts Regulations. Further, a political party would need to

“include a statement of risk management in its annual accounts that identifies how risks relating to the true source of funds have been managed.”

All major UK political parties have accepted potentially suspect donations, including from individuals and companies that have later been found to be involved in economic crimes.

I want be fair and clear on this; I will give one example from the Labour Party. However, as the party in government since 2010—although it constantly forgets this—the Conservative Party has accepted the majority of such donations in recent years. Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has increased scrutiny on the large sums that the Conservative Party has received from donors with links to the Russian state. I will deal not just with links to the Russian state but with those who have been involved in criminal activity and economic crime, and I will use media and official sources to do so.

My noble friend referred to the £1.9 million from Lubov Chernukhin so I will not go into detail on that, but my source for the following example is the Guardian. Between May 2018 and May 2021, the Conservative Party accepted £366,765 from Aquind. It was first reported in January 2021 that Aquind’s major shareholder, Viktor Fedotov—a Russian-born oil tycoon—was alleged to have been involved in a major fraud in Russia during the 2000s involving the siphoning of funds from the Russian state pipeline monopoly Transneft.

My source for this example is the Financial Times. Between September 2018 and January 2021, the Conservative Party accepted £484,570 from Mohammed Amersi; he figures in a lot of examples but this one is worth going over, even though my noble friend alluded to it. In 2006—well before that time—a Swiss tribunal found that Amersi was closely involved in a business deal involving one of Russia’s largest telecommunications companies, which was later revealed to have been controlled via Cyprus by Leonid Reiman, then Vladimir Putin’s telecoms Minister. Reports in the press claim that Amersi acted as an adviser for a Swedish telecoms company on a transaction that was later accepted by the company as a bribe to the first daughter of Uzbekistan’s ruler, Islam Karimov. Despite the existence of an internal Conservative Party memo circulating in late 2020 warning of Amersi’s business dealings circulating, the party accepted an additional £50,000 in January 2021. Naturally, Mr Amersi has denied any wrongdoing.

My sources for this example are the Daily Mail, the Financial Times, the Independent and the Guardian. The Conservative Party accepted £202,540 from New Century Media Ltd, which represents

“an extensive list of state-connected Russian clients.”

Whichever way you check, it is basically a Russian front organisation. These clients include the Firtash Foundation, which is run by Dmitri Firtash,

“a Ukrainian gas and chemicals oligarch wanted by the US for bribery”.

He still is wanted; I think he is locked away in Austria. Of course, as I said in a recent speech, Ministers at the Ministry of Defence did business with him regarding the selling of a property to him while he hides from the United States.

New Century Media’s £900,000 a year contract with Firtash includes reputational management, personal introductions to individuals within politics, and support for his passport application. The firm has other notable—or should we say, in its terms, successful—dealings, introducing figures close to the Putin regime to Conservative politicians via donations. This included the introduction of Russian MP Vasily Shestakov and billionaire oligarch Andrei Klyamko, both close friends of Putin, to then Prime Minister David Cameron at a donors’ ball in 2014. New Century’s owner had already arranged for Shestakov to meet Prime Minister Cameron at the previous year’s ball in 2013. New Century also arranged for Sergey Nalobin, a senior diplomat at the Russian embassy, to meet Prime Minister Cameron at a Tory donor dinner in 2012. Nalobin, the son of a senior FSB spy, was expelled from the UK by the Home Office in 2015.

These Russian meetings with Cameron when he was Prime Minister take on a really new shape after the astonishing letter in the Financial Times last Wednesday, 23 March, from Carl Scott, a retired air commodore. He was the UK defence attaché in Moscow between 2011 and 2016, sending back regular reports, pointing out Putin’s long march to war in report after report to the Government. At exactly the same time, Cameron was Prime Minister and being nobbled and cossetted by these Russian interests.

The Independent noted in 2014 that:

“Unlike the vast majority of lobbying firms, New Century fails to provide details of its clients to the industry’s voluntary register of interests.”


While New Century Media did subsequently register with the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists in November 2019, it has still never declared a single client.

As I was preparing to speak when I thought this might come up last Thursday, I was casting around with respect to my own party. All I had to do was open the Times last Wednesday, 23 March, to see pages 20 and 21 devoted to the “king of bling”, one Peter Virdee. The opening paragraph stated that:

“One of Europe’s most wanted men was welcomed as a donor by the Conservatives and Labour despite being under investigation for bribery and fraud.”


Even after his arrest by the NCA, both parties continued to take his money. It does appear from the figures given in the Times that he favoured Labour somewhat less than the Conservatives, but we still took the money. He lied about his membership of charity trusts, the ENO and NSPCC. It is not a good story for Labour, and even less so for the Conservatives.

There are other dubious donations from sources not connected necessarily to the Russian state. I will just give one, because of time: £726,300 from Javad Marandi, an Iranian businessman with close links to the kleptocratic Azeri regime. Marandi’s business relationship with individuals reportedly connected to the Azerbaijani laundromat was first identified in 2017, after which the Conservative Party accepted the majority of his total donations of £520,000. The source there was the Guardian and the OCCRP, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

These are just a few examples. There are more I am not going to use, and other Members of the Committee will have their own. It is a simple process: political parties and other voluntary organisations—I fully accept that they are voluntary, but they are not charities—are more regulated now than they used to be, and it is just as well. Given the importance of the money, I cannot see any reason why the approach of anti-money laundering regulations that the Government have used over the last decade for other companies cannot be used for political parties. I would be interested in due course to know the views of the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I will come to the subject of caps on donations in a moment.

On Amendment 212E, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, recently tabled a Question for Written Answer about the uncommenced provision in the 2009 Act. This provision, Section 10, refers to residence and domicile for income tax purposes as a criterion for permissible political donations. Although a response was issued to him by my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh on 14 March, I hope that it will be helpful if I repeat it briefly for the benefit of the Committee.

The Government have no current plans to bring into force the uncommenced provision, Section 10 of the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, regarding donations from non-resident donors. There is a very good reason for this: the provision is not workable given that an individual’s tax status is subject to confidentiality. It may therefore be difficult or even impossible for the Electoral Commission, political parties and other campaigners to accurately determine whether a donor meets the test set out in Section 10.

Furthermore, as a matter of principle, taxation is not connected to enfranchisement in the UK. If a British citizen is able to vote in an election for a political party, they should be able to donate to that political party subject to the requirements for transparency on donations. There is clear precedent here. Full-time students are legally exempt from paying council tax but still have the right to vote. Likewise, those who do not pay income tax rightly remain entitled to vote. For these reasons, the Government cannot support these amendments.

The other key theme that this debate has focused on is that of donations made by companies or other entities such as unincorporated associations. I will address Amendments 197, 198, 200, 210, 212 and 212G in the remarks that follow. As I have said before, only those with a legitimate interest in UK elections can make political donations, such as UK-registered companies which are carrying out business in the UK, trade unions and other UK-based entities. There is only a very limited exception to this, whereby, as I indicated earlier, for political parties registered in Northern Ireland permissible donors are a wider category.

The law is already clear that, if a company wants to donate to a party or fund a campaign, it must be a permissible donor. The recipient of a donation is responsible for checking that the donor is eligible; that is to say that it is registered in the UK and carrying out business in the UK. The recipient must also report the relevant donations to the Electoral Commission quarterly, and weekly during election periods. To ensure transparency about party funding, donation reports are published by the Electoral Commission on its online database.

Unincorporated associations are permissible donors only where they carry on business or other activities wholly or mainly in the United Kingdom and where their main office is in the UK. Further to this, any unincorporated associations making political contributions of more than £25,000 in a calendar year must notify the Electoral Commission and are subsequently subject to various reporting requirements relating to their own funding. Members’ associations, many of which are unincorporated associations, are separately regulated as regulated donees and must report on donations and loans that they receive.

Amendment 197 would introduce a new obligation on unincorporated associations to take all reasonable steps to check whether donations they receive intended for political purposes come from a permissible donor. At first glance, “all reasonable steps” appears perfectly reasonable. However, this would represent a significant change for unincorporated associations which, as I outlined previously, are already subject to significant reporting requirements. It singles them out from other types of donors and puts them instead closer to the level of political parties in their due diligence obligations. This could mean many voluntary groups and local sports clubs and societies all facing a significant extra due diligence cost simply because they fall into an unlucky category. That does not strike me as fair, and I would be concerned about the possible chilling effect on democratic participation of those groups.

Amendment 198 is an attempt to restrict donations from organisations. As drafted, it would exclude UK-based companies with fewer than five employees from making donations. Furthermore, it is unclear how one would determine who has “significant control” of an unincorporated association, as their governance structures are not regulated in the same way as other legal entities. Although I am sure this was not the intention, it demonstrates quite well the risk of serious unintended consequences if amendments which place restrictions on who can participate in our democracy are made with haste and without consultation. Furthermore, Amendment 198 would make it an offence for an ineligible company to even offer a donation, regardless of whether it is accepted and regardless of whether it was aware the donation it was offering is impermissible. This is unnecessary.

Donations from impermissible donors are already illegal, and it is the political parties and campaign groups receiving the money, the ones which better know and understand this area of law, which are accountable and responsible for checking, returning and reporting impermissible donations. In addition—this point has been highlighted previously—it is an offence for a donor knowingly to facilitate the making of an impermissible donation.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hodgson for his Amendment 210, which would prohibit donations from individuals or companies that hold public contracts with a value equal to or exceeding £100,000. The complexities of procurement frameworks are slightly beyond the scope of this debate, but let me say that, while well-intentioned, it is not clear how this amendment would operate in practice. Seemingly, there is no limitation on a person making a donation to a party prior to entering into a contract with a public body, and it is unclear whether the prohibition extends beyond the lifetime of the contract and, if so, for how long. It is important to note that the existing legislation already provides for publication of donations to political parties, regulated donees and recognised third-party campaigners, therefore enabling any discerning citizen and our free press to scrutinise any large donations.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for his Amendment 212. As he explained, the intention of this amendment is to prevent shell companies being used to make large donations. Similar concerns on source of donations underpin Amendment 200 and the substantial Amendment 212G from the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Butler, which would introduce requirements for registered parties to carry out risk assessments and due diligence checks on donations.

However, as I have already outlined, there are strict rules requiring companies making donations to be incorporated and carrying out business in the UK. Existing rules also prohibit circumventing the rules through proxy donors. That is on top of a legal requirement for political parties and other recipients to conduct permissibility checks and report to the Electoral Commission.

The principle of strengthening the system to provide greater levels of assurance on the sources of donations to ensure they are permissible and legitimate is important. We take seriously the risk of donors seeking to evade the rules. Indeed, the Government recently set out their final position on the reforms to the corporate registration framework, ahead of introducing legislation, in the Corporate Transparency and Register Reform White Paper.

The introduction of mandatory identity verification for those incorporating and filing with Companies House will be essential for making information on the companies register more reliable. It will mean that those with the intention of fraudulently misusing the UK corporate registration framework will have their activities traced and challenged. For example, all directors of UK limited companies will be required to verify their identity in order to be registered, and overseas companies will be required to verify the identity of all their directors. This, in combination with a new power for the Companies House registrar to proactively pass on relevant information to law enforcement and other public and regulatory bodies, including the Electoral Commission, will help ensure that any company making political donations is properly trading in the United Kingdom.

However, we do not want to impose disproportionate legal obligations that hinder the ability of parties and other campaigners to generate funds against the cost of carrying out checks on donations to ensure that they come from permissible sources. To do so would risk it not being cost effective for parties to accept smaller donations and therefore exclude some people from being able to participate in our democracy in this way. The current rules are proportionate and achieve this balance.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I am listening carefully to the Minister. Going back, say, a decade before the Government started to tighten up the anti-money laundering rules, companies, accountants, company secretaries and company lawyers all said, “Our professional obligations and institutions require us to do all these checks.” But they were not doing them, hence the Government had to bring in some anti-money laundering rules. Why are political parties any different?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I hope I have already explained how the Government intend to legislate in the future to create greater transparency of companies. As I said at the beginning, all we can do is keep the rules under review. I am suggesting that in this particular area, the balance is about right.

Procedure and Privileges

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I begin with my thanks all round to everybody who has been involved in making this place work. I have had 12 months of the hybrid system, not 16, and I have had massive help in operating remotely. In fact, other than a year ago when I had to come in person to be sworn in—because that is the only way you can do it—I think I have turned up on four or five occasions in the last couple of months. I found the Chamber eerie and uncomfortable in some ways, yet I love the Chamber and want to get it back as near to normal as possible as quickly as possible. In fact, other than on the merchant shipping Motion later on, this will probably be my last Zoom contribution.

In some ways, I much agree on the oral ballots. After I became a Back-Bencher and realised how to get a Question tabled, on occasion I spent a couple or three hours on that because, once I had determined that I wanted a date, the only way I could guarantee to get it was to turn up outside the office with books and papers by about 10 am or 11 am and sit there until 2 pm. That way, I would get my date. In the ballots I have not had much trouble getting an Oral Question—although it is true that I put in one Question on life expectancy for 23 consecutive days before it came out in the ballot. Nevertheless, it came out.

On the lists for Questions issue, by the way, I did not vote because I refused to accept the stark conditions of one or the other. I had said so in the debate as well, but decided that I would not vote. If the amendments today are pushed to a vote, I will vote for all three of them because I agree with bits of them all. I am not saying I agree with every part of them, but the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, certainly has my support.

The possibility of instant reaction in the House is pretty crucial, but not under the old bearpit system. It was a bearpit and, while I will not embarrass them by naming them, we have some Members with exceptionally foghorn voices who were verbal bullies at getting their way. I used to notice this because, at one time when I was a Minister, I served as deputy to my noble friend Lady Amos for two years. I was then saddled—that was the word, in a way—with the regulation of Question Time when things went wrong. It was not an easy time, but the fact is that it was a bearpit. Many people were put off, so they can see the benefit of the speaker system, but a complete speaker system is controlled by the Front Bench. I agree with my noble friend Lord Grocott on this: the Front Benches on both sides should not really be involved in choosing the questioners.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, made a very fair point: are Members going to come back in their large numbers in September as participants or spectators? I know which I would prefer: as participants. Coming back just to watch people on speakers’ lists is not really effective, although it would be cushy for the Minister. To go back to my time as a Minister, it was easy to work out who the questioners would be. You could more or less guess with your staff the issues they would raise, because you would cross-check what they had done in that field in other areas, including debates and other Questions. It should not be like that. My view on the speakers is that it is probably impossible to have four on a list and maybe six chosen by the chair. I can see the impracticality of that. Nevertheless, there is merit in having a bit of precision to start with.

The right reverend Prelate made a point. I do not wish to be critical, but the Bishops are not in the same position as everybody else because, under the old bearpit system, the minute one of them stood up, everybody shouted “Bishop! Bishop!” and the right reverend Prelate got to speak. They did not really have to get involved in the bearpit; they just had to stand up.

Some issues need looking at again. I do not deny that I would prefer to avoid the bearpit but to have some precision. It is therefore about the chair, and the chair has to be trusted. I know people say, “You want to make this place like the House of Commons”. Well, in some ways, including in this respect, the House of Commons is better organised than we are; there are other aspects where we are better organised than the Commons. We do not have to mirror each other but, for heaven’s sake, if the Commons does something really well and it is organised with satisfactory conditions, we could adopt that here.

I know that we tried it in the past and had a vote, with people saying, “We’re self-regulating and don’t want to give the chair any powers”, but it is time to trust the chair. That would not put politics into the chair because we can all work it out: the chair will take advice—that is where the clerks are in the wrong place, of course, which is another issue of making the Lords like the Commons. The fact of the matter is that today’s debate is not an open and shut one. There will still have to be some flexibility on changes after we get back in September. We cannot carry on as did.

House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, the report from the Constitution Committee is helpful but the important paper of 21 April, headed “The marginalisation of the House of Commons under Covid has been shocking”, by the Hansard Society and others, is more worrying. I shall refer to it as the Hansard report.

So far as the Constitution Committee report is concerned, paragraphs 42, 54, 81 and 89 are references to the fact that all was not well in the House of Lords before the pandemic with regard to accountability, scrutiny and adherence to the Ministerial Code. The hybrid working of the House benefits those in poor health, which prevents them attending in person, but it only works if those Members are sworn in after a general election. To be sworn in, one has to do it in person. That is a statutory requirement and it needs to be looked at if the system is to be retained.

My experience during Covid covers Oral Questions, Statements, Second Reading, Committee and Report. For years, I have not been at all certain why we bother with Second Reading debates. We do not vote on Second Readings and would never reject a Bill sent from the Commons for scrutiny. Second Reading debates here add nothing to a Bill. However, the Committee stage is crucial in more ways than Report. There is the ability to speak more than once and interact with Ministers and departments to receive the mood of the House. I know that, having been on both sides of the House. Departments get the mood of the House back. Those interactions should be restored as soon as possible. Assuming a that degree of hybridity continues, there is no reason to continue with equal treatment. Those in the Chamber should be able to intervene and, indeed, do so on behalf of remote Members, according to my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, who I received a message from.

As for secondary legislation, paragraph 48 of the committee’s report highlights obvious defects that should be addressed because some of them are pre-pandemic. Two aspects are of concern. As the Hansard report states, the use of the made-affirmative procedure can be addictive for the Government. The other aspect is their casual scheduling of debates, meaning that SIs are in force for weeks before MPs and Peers get to scrutinise them.

I like having the lists for Oral Questions. It stops the bullies shouting for a place. What would really help, though, would be to dilute the Front-Bench control of that list. The Lord Speaker should be able to choose four out of the 10 supplementaries. The conclusion in paragraph 85 is worth further work. I could agree to a limit on numbers of speakers and minimum times for business, but only if the Front Benches are not controlling the list.

I cannot speak about committees. Given that I was not sworn in until June last year due to illness, I could not participate and am, disappointingly, not currently a member of any committee.

On voting, we need to get back to as near normal as possible. I always defended the system in the Commons and Lords as being useful for back-benchers. Perhaps that day has gone, but votes should be limited to those in Parliament—I repeat, in Parliament—either remotely or using pass readers.

We are part of Parliament and not a legal symposium, which is what we will get from some of the lawyers later on. We need to be able to challenge Ministers and other speakers. Efficiency should not necessarily be the watchword in procedure; it is Parliament’s ability to be the inquest of the nation, scrutinise the Government of the day and watch how the money is spent.

The Hansard report concentrates on the House of Commons but creates questions for this House. We are here to revise the Commons’ work; it always has the last word. The Hansard report identifies five areas that lead to the erosion of parliamentary control: emergency legislation, regulations, money, the denial of MPs’ equal participation rights and the wholesale and unnecessary use of proxy votes. Individually, each of those five is shocking. Collectively, they amount to a fundamental undermining and exclusion of Parliament and its elected Members from crucial decisions on policy, spending and the management of the Commons itself, so my question is this. If the Commons does not reassert itself and prioritise the full restoration of parliamentary democracy and MPs’ rights to participation, what is the role of this House in helping the Commons achieve those ends?

Covid-19 Update

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As my noble friend says, we are a leading member of COVAX, and we are certainly doing everything we can to ensure global access to vaccines. We are looking to help all our global partners—one can obviously look at the support we have given India—and I am sure we are considering all the requests we receive from countries that need our help. I can certainly assure him and other noble Lords that we take our international responsibilities very seriously, and that is why we are a leading member of COVAX and are trying to push forward to ensure that we get global access to vaccines.

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this is a very important Commons Statement from the Prime Minister. Can I ask the noble Baroness the Leader of the House if she has watched, along with 17 million others, the video by Peter Stefanovic regarding the constant untruths uttered by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons? Why should we believe a word he says in this Statement?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

No, I have not seen the video.

Financial Services Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, unlike the noble Baroness, I consider both the amendments to be probing in nature. As I said at Second Reading, I have no expertise or knowledge. I visited Gibraltar privately on holiday in 1977 and 1979, both times quite deliberately to give support because at that time the border with Spain was closed. As I had talked to the Foreign Office beforehand, I had the opportunity to speak with the Governor and members of the Government and the then trade union leader who later became First Minister. The dockyards were winding down, but one thing those people told me they did not want was Gibraltar to be dependent on being a brass-plate economy, and in effect that is what we are talking about. The right reverend Prelate gave some good examples. Transparency is crucial. It is a global issue. Identification of what is going on is required. The gambling figures the right reverend Prelate gave are a concern. My noble friend Lord Eatwell gave the figure of 20% of UK motoring. It is not for no reason that the biggest single donor to the Brexit campaign for exiting the EU has his insurance companies working out of Gibraltar, so there must be some reason that you can make a lot of extra money working through Gibraltar than you can in the UK.

The danger is that if we leave it as it is and build on it, Gibraltar will become the UK’s state of Delaware, the backstreet way to money laundering and other issues. Frankly, the EU will not stand for it. The financial structures of the services of the EU will be working closely and looking in detail at what is happening following Brexit. They are not going to stand for, effectively, a state of Delaware that has been inserted into Europe by the UK. Therefore we have to find a better way of doing this. One way of dealing with it is by openness and transparency. As the right reverend Prelate said, this is in no way an attack on the people of Gibraltar or, indeed, on the structures of Gibraltar. I have always been a strong supporter of Gibraltar having the right to choose, and 96% of Gibraltarians voted not to leave the EU. It was right at the time we did it that we incorporated Gibraltar into one of European UK constituencies. It is different from the other overseas territories of the UK, and because it is different, we must not allow the undermining of the financial system, so we have to find a better way of dealing with it. I look forward to the Minister giving some assurance on this and perhaps explaining, in answer to my noble friend’s question, why such a large proportion of the UK motor insurance system is worked out of Gibraltar. What is the reason for that? It cannot be the sunshine. The only reason can be money and profit—profit where less tax is paid. That is the basic reason that we have these probing amendments today. I look forward to the Minister’s answer.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. What we might label in shorthand “the Delaware danger” is very real. It was my pleasure to attach my name, as has the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, to Amendment 46 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. I also welcome Amendment 47 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Eatwell. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, a clear and welcome outline of the peculiarities of the Gibraltar authorisation regime and the reason why we need to hear a lot more from the Minister about the justification for it and an explanation for some of the peculiarities that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, just outlined.

I do not regard Amendment 46 as a probing amendment; I suggest that it is a modest amendment for improvement. It builds on an amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, debated last week, which made broader country-by-country reporting proposals. Given that we have just seen the Government’s welcome incorporation into the Domestic Abuse Bill of a significant number of amendments proposed by noble Lords in that debate, we might hopefully see the same thing here before we get to the next stage of this Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, suggested that this might be extraordinary, or be targeting Gibraltar in some way. As the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, outlined, we are incorporating it in a truly extraordinary way within our system, so it is surely important that we have full transparency about what is happening. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said that we should not make it more difficult for Gibraltarian businesses. Whether it is motor insurance or the gambling industry, we are not talking here about the issue for Gibraltarian businesses; we are talking about businesses operating and making their profits in the UK, which should be paying their tax in the UK. On the Tax Justice Network corporate tax haven index—what might be called the ranking of infamy—I note that Gibraltar is ranked 28 on a scale where number 1 is the worst. While it is not the worst, given that there are scores of tax havens around the world, it is pretty well right up there.

It is estimated by the Tax Justice Network that the tax loss that Gibraltarian arrangements inflict on other nations is about US$4 billion. I do not have a breakdown of figures of where those losses are inflicted but, given what we have heard about both the motor insurance and the gambling industries, it is clear that a very significant portion of them will be in the UK. We also have to think about the nature of those industries; the gambling industry, in particular, inflicts significant major damage on individuals and communities in the UK and I believe that even the Government are looking to tighten controls on it.

Certainly, Amendment 46 offers a modest measure towards transparency, honesty and openness. If that should mean that certain industries pay tax on their profits in the UK, I do not see how that could be opposed. I ask the Government to comment on that.

Covid-19

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con) [V]]

We have in fact put in place one of the world’s most comprehensive economic packages in response to the pandemic, spending over £280 billion on support so far. That is absolutely not to diminish the situation that many people have found themselves in, or to question the hardship that many have faced, but we have put an extremely generous package in place. We have continued to review and refine it as and when it has been necessary. I also remind the noble Lord that we have protected more than 12 million jobs through the furlough and self-employment schemes, both of which have been extended until April.

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the question from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, showed that we currently suffer from an immature system of national leadership. I spoke earlier today with a year 8 pupil. She wants to get back to school. She said she did not feel that schools would be safe at present, and that she wants a staggered return, announced as soon as possible after 8 March. She also thought that support for the staff to be vaccinated was a good idea. Is she being sensible?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con) [V]]

She sounds like an extremely sensible young lady to me. I hope that the noble Lord reassured her that the issue we face with school closures is not that schools are unsafe for pupils or teachers. The problem is that the new variant is so pervasive that we need to use every lever at our disposal to reduce all contacts outside households, wherever possible, to reduce the pressure on the NHS. I am sure she will be aware that her teachers will, I have no doubt, have implemented a lot of protective measures to ensure that children who can still attend school are safe. Perhaps he might also like to let the young lady know that we are offering biweekly asymptomatic testing for all secondary school and primary school staff. Over 90% of secondary schools and colleges have now registered for this testing.