Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Foster, in thanking the Minister for the way that he introduced the Bill. I welcome the Bill, principally because it gives Parliament an opportunity to mitigate some of the problems—or, if I am being charitable, some of the unforeseen consequences—resulting from our withdrawal from the EU. As I was listening to the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, castigating the Government for introducing a skeleton Bill with Henry VIII powers, I ruminated, as a Cross-Bencher, how much the late, much lamented, Lord Judge, would have enjoyed hearing that—pot calling the kettle black comes to mind, or, if Mandy Rice-Davies had been one of Henry VIII’s wives, she probably would have said, “He would say that, wouldn’t he?” I should also mention that, as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, I have skin in the game, as they say.

The Bill will guide the future regulation of standards for thousands of products. Consistency of standards across key markets helps give businesses certainty about the quality requirements they must be able to meet to be able to sell their products in target markets. I suggest that one way to provide this certainty might be to consider a formal commitment to dynamic alignment, in the same way that Switzerland, the countries within the European Economic Area and, to a limited extent today, the UK have mechanisms to ensure that regulations with the EU are aligned and continuously updated.

The UK abided by the “CE” European conformity marking system until our exit from the EU. The 2019 EU withdrawal Act created a UK-only system, using the new UK conformity assessment marking “UKCA”, introduced on 1 January 2021, which it required all UK businesses to adopt by 31 December this year—not very far away. The response from businesses has been lukewarm or rather negative. In May this year, after repeatedly extending the UKCA transition deadline, the UK Government acknowledged its impracticality and extended the recognition of many CE goods in GB markets indefinitely; covering 21 regulations across products that are estimated to save UK businesses £640.5 million in net savings from not having to manage two standards regimes.

The powers contained in the Bill allow Ministers to decide whether to recognise or end recognition of EU requirements. In practice, this would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis, either aligning them or ending that requirement, without needing any additional primary legislation. This will help with the smoother management of the somewhat contentious Windsor protocol for Northern Ireland. It also requires Ministers to have regard to the social, environmental and economic input before any decision.

In paragraph 4, in the third bullet point, the Explanatory Notes state that:

“The Bill aims to support economic growth, provide regulatory stability and deliver more protection for consumers by … ensuring that the law can be updated to allow a means of recognising new or updated EU product requirements, with the intention of preventing additional costs for businesses and provide regulatory stability”.


As I read this, it is the Government’s intention that the Bill will allow the UK to align itself to EU standards in circumstances where they judge it sensible to do so. Working with others across the House, I will lay amendments in Committee to probe whether there is a case for the Government to commit formally to a policy of dynamic alignment; to clarify how best to measure and assess the costs or benefits of alignment; and to set out a process of parliamentary scrutiny and accountability when a Minister determines that divergence is in the best interests of the UK. The intention is simple: to place the delivery of consistent regulatory standards beyond the reach of short-term thinking and to ensure the restoration of long-term stability in regulation, to the benefit of British consumers and British businesses.

I finish by wishing the noble Baroness, Lady Winterton, well. We met on the staircase that we share going to our joint offices. I have already wished her well once, and I now do so for a second time.

House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for introducing the Bill, for his long campaign to make this Chamber more effective and for something that is less well known, which is what he and a group of colleagues are doing at the moment: running a campaign to educate some of the newer Members of the other Chamber, in particular, in how we operate here and how we can work together rather better.

I am wearing three hats today in speaking. First, I am a member of the hereditary provisional wing of the Cross Benches. Secondly, I am an elected or excepted hereditary. You may argue that it is a pre-Great Reform Act sort of election, but I am none the less elected, and it means that I had the privilege of being elected where others failed to be elected. That gives me a sense of driving obligation, now that I have the privilege of being here, to participate. Thirdly, I spent more than 30 years as a professional head-hunter, recruiting people, many of whom were paid far too much, into very senior positions. They were certainly paid a lot more than we are.

Nominations to this Chamber have always been open to controversy. I am here because Lloyd George knew my great-great-grandfather and my great-great-grandfather knew Lloyd George. My great-great-grandfather was a newspaper man. He edited the Liverpool Daily Post, the great Liberal north-west newspaper, for more than 50 years. The first time his name was put forward by Lloyd George, the King said no. The King, for some strange reason, had a slightly dim view of people whose names were put up who came from the newspaper sector—slight echoes of more recent scandals, I think.

Another relative of mine, my great grandfather, was Baldwin, the last Conservative Prime Minister to leave office at a time and manner of his own choosing, something perhaps for those Benches to reflect on. When he knew that he was coming here, being given an earldom, he said to a very old friend, partly in jest, that it was a huge irony to be going somewhere that he had sent so many people, devoutly hoping never to see any of them ever again.

Therein lies the rub. While my great-great grandfather might not have wished ever to see any of them ever again, we do want to see them. We want to see them here and being active. I asked an ex-Chief Whip from the governing party in another place whether he imagined that in any of the conversations with some of the noble Lords who have arrived here relatively recently, it was put to them that if they did accept, there might be a degree of obligation to participate. He said, “Absolutely not”.

The Library statistics indicate that we have had 91 new government life Peers between the 2015 election and the beginning of this Session. Over 40% of those new Members attend less than average. Of the 91, 25 vote less than average and 18 have not spoken at all in this Session. There may be very good reasons for that, but it does not look good. We need qualified, interested, useful Members of this House. The House of Commons is not a well-run legislative Chamber. The majority of its Members who are not on the payroll vote are not legislators. They are actively discouraged from being legislators, particularly when there is a large majority, as at present. We do most of the heavy lifting. As a headhunter, the idea of appointing somebody, in theory, to legislate, who then does virtually nothing, is anathema, perverse and disreputable.

Therefore, I warmly welcome and endorse the Bill. The Government need new scandals like they need a hole in the head. This Bill is a no-brainer.

Elections Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 6th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, what really struck me from the Minister’s responses was that, if the Government felt so strongly about this, why was it not in the Bill originally? If the London elections in particular caused so much of a problem, why was it not a priority? The fundamental issue is not about the principle of PR or the supplementary vote—which is not PR. It does not undermine the position of first past the post. Our concern is that this has been introduced at a late stage without any proper consultation with those most affected. This undermines the Government’s position, especially as they inserted it into the Bill at such a late stage. I beg to test the opinion of the House.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

My Lords, I should point out that, if Amendment 39 is passed, I cannot call Amendment 41 by reason of pre-emption.

Elections Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to draw three points to the Government’s attention. The first is prompted by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, who talked about a culture of what appears to him to be institutional arrogance in the Electoral Commission. We live at a time of airborne viruses, with which we are all too familiar, and it occurs to me that perhaps they have infected Her Majesty’s Government to some degree, since I detect occasional traits of institutional arrogance in some of their statements and demeanour from time to time. I hope this debate is not going to be an example of that.

Secondly, I advise the Minister to listen extremely carefully to the forensic way in which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, laid out his argument. We have to think about what we hope is the unlikely event that something to do with the Electoral Commission and what it has done goes to judicial review or something similar. The noble and learned Lord demonstrated the way in which justice will look at the words of this law, and how they will be interpreted. So I say to the Government that, if they find themselves up against individuals such as the noble and learned Lord, they are likely to come out on the wrong side of the argument.

Thirdly, I belong to the Council of Europe, and in that capacity I have monitored three different elections. The Council of Europe exists partly to help those countries that do not have a history and tradition of western democracy as we know it to move towards a state where that becomes normalised. In the course of the three elections that I have monitored, one thing that we have always done early on is go and meet the electoral commission of the country. All that I can say from my experience of doing that is that, if we were interrogating an electoral commission and we discovered in the course of that interrogation that the commission was subject to what the Government are suggesting in these two clauses, it would start some red lights flashing. So I suggest to the Minister that the Council of Europe has a well-developed set of criteria for advising countries on how to set up their electoral commissions and how to make sure that they are fair and do what it says on the label, and I would be very happy to make an introduction to the people in Strasbourg who could give the Government access to that.

I appeal to the Minister to think very carefully about what he is trying to persuade us is the right way to proceed, because the mood of the House is very clearly that we have great concerns about it. So please let us all be careful.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, this has certainly been a very interesting debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for tabling these amendments, and I wish him well as I understand the reasons why he is not with us today. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, for his incredibly thorough and forensic introduction in the noble Lord’s absence. I cannot think of anyone who could have better gone through these clauses and explained the concerns around them.

We know that the Electoral Commission was established by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 in order to oversee elections and regulate political finance in the UK independently of government. The 1998 report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life emphasised the fundamental importance of independence for the proposed commission. It said:

“Those who have advocated the establishment of an Election Commission have been emphatic that it should be independent both of the government of the day and of the political parties … An Election Commission in a democracy like ours could not function properly, or indeed at all, unless it were scrupulously impartial and believed to be so by everyone seriously involved and by the public at large.”


In its 2007 review of the Electoral Commission, the CSPL highlighted the dual requirements of independence and accountability, saying that

“any system of accountability must also protect the Commission’s independence and impartiality from the possibility of undue influence for partisan political or electoral advantage”.

In 2009, party-nominated commissioners were introduced to bring knowledge and experience of political parties and the workings of elections from those perspectives. This is now well represented and understood by the commission.

Part 3 of the Bill would make significant changes to the way in which the Electoral Commission is accountable to Parliament, giving new powers to the UK Government to designate a strategy and policy statement, about which many noble Lords have expressed concerns. It would require, as other noble Lords have said, the commission to “have regard to” this statement when carrying out its functions. It was really important that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, went carefully through the Bill on the implications of what this would mean.

The introduction of a strategy and policy statement which enables the Government to set the strategic direction for the work of the Electoral Commission is inconsistent with the role that an independent commission plays in a healthy democratic system. This independence is fundamental to maintaining confidence in our electoral system. The commission’s independent role must be clear for voters and campaigners to see, and it must be preserved in electoral law. This underpins fairness and trust in our electoral system and provides cross-party confidence in the commission. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, explained why he thinks that public confidence could be lost if complete independence of the Electoral Commission is lost.

The commission’s accountability is currently directly to the UK’s Parliaments and should remain so, rather than being subjected to government direction. As we have heard, the Electoral Commission itself took the unprecedented step of writing to the Secretary of State and the Minister in the other place. The noble Lords, Lord Kerslake and Lord Beith, quoted from this letter and I would like to do the same. In it, the Electoral Commissioners

“urge the Government to reconsider those measures which seek to change the oversight arrangements of the Electoral Commission.”

I find it quite extraordinary that it felt the need to ask the Government to reconsider because it was so concerned.

Independence from the Government of the day is important because it prevents an incumbent changing laws or practices to suit their political interests. It can also strengthen public trust in the political process. Just as the judiciary should be independent, electoral officials should be non-partisan. As my noble friend Lord Eatwell said, the Secretary of State is both regulator and regulated.

The problem with the Bill is that, in contrast with keeping electoral officials non-partisan, it proposes to weaken the commission’s independence as well as to give the Government greater power by allowing them to designate the strategy and policy statement. It gives Parliament—but in practice, a Government, if they have a majority—the power to examine the Electoral Commission’s compliance with this. The Electoral Integrity Project describes this as

“a direct violation of international best practices and would constitute democratic backsliding because it is giving the government and future governments greater control over the conduct of elections—the process through which citizens are enabled to hold government to account”.

As we have heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, new Section 4A of PPERA, as inserted by Clause 14, empowers the Secretary of State to designate this strategy and policy statement. This would set the strategic and policy priorities of the Government relating to electoral and similar matters, and the role and responsibilities of the commission in enabling the Government to meet those priorities. The statement may also give guidance in relation to particular functions of the commission and may provide additional information. The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, mentioned “any other business”. If that is the case, can the Minister tell us where the checks and balances are as to what this could include?

Evidence given to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee included, its report said,

“strong criticisms from academics and a range of stakeholders that the measures lack justification and were characterised as a ‘retrograde step’ ‘an extremely dangerous thing to do’ and ‘would constitute democratic backsliding’

In his evidence, it continued, Professor Fisher pointed to

“surveys of election agents since 2005 which ‘have seen that confidence in the [Electoral Commission] has grown over this period ... there is no particular problem with those that the [Electoral Commission] regulates’”.

Far from requiring additional oversight, the commission already delivers good work in ensuring high levels of satisfaction in the integrity of the electoral process among those who are most knowledgeable and closely involved. A survey of electoral agents at the 2019 general election showed that 78% agreed that the rules in respect of election spending and donations were clear; 72% viewed the Electoral Commission as a useful source of advice; 75% thought that electoral guidance for candidates and agents was clear and easy to use; and 75% thought that the Electoral Commission’s written information on the verification and count was clear and easy to use.

In its response to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, whose report raised these concerns, the Government said:

“It is not uncommon for the Government to set a broad policy framework, as approved by Parliament, which independent regulators should consider”


giving as examples the relationship that Ministers hold with regulators such as Ofcom and Ofwat.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, referred to other regulators, mentioning her experience with Ofcom in particular. I too have spent many years working in regulated industries, in my case energy and water. I would instead agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, and the CSPL, which considers this to be a completely false analogy, since these are not regulators implementing government policy. The Electoral Commission regulates the people and parties that make up the Government and Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, gave an example as to why the situation with regulators such as Ofcom and Ofwat is so very different, so I do not accept that analogy. When giving evidence on this, Professor Alan Renwick stressed that

“ministers and parliamentarians should recognise their own potential conflict of interest.”

Does the Minister recognise that there is a potential conflict of interest here?

Clauses 14 and 15 are not just about increasing the accountability of the commission to a Committee in the House of Commons, to which it already reports. Clause 14 subjects the commission to strategic and policy control, including guidance on specific cases, not by Parliament, but by Ministers. It is pretty difficult to express just how appalling this is but the noble and learned, Lord Judge, did an excellent job. Policy control and even guidance on individual cases might be appropriate for other public bodies—for example, those making decisions about infrastructure or planning permission—but it can never be right for the governing party to be able to give instructions to a body whose role requires it to make decisions that might well go against the interests of that party.

Under Clause 14, Ministers could guide the commission to interpret its powers in ways that would favour the ruling party and its friends. The courts might provide a backstop in the most extreme cases, such as where guidance tries to permit illegal activities, but judicial intervention is unlikely in more strategic interventions, such as Ministers telling the commission to restrict or halt its work on voter registration, which targets mainly young people, minorities and renters living in house-shares.

Covid-19 (Public Services Committee Report)

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Lords Chamber

Motion agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

My Lords, the time limit for the following Motion to Take Note debate is one and a half hours.

UK Government Union Capability

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB) [V]]

The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, reminded us that the Government sat on their Dunlop report for 16 months and do not seem to be planning to implement it in full. They slipped it out surreptitiously, without allowing a proper debate, and their curious progress update document is still a disputed draft, 39 months into the review. Where is the drive or the urgency? Government documents are not at the level of events.

In Scotland, as in Northern Ireland, devolution is on life support. New structures could be agreed in a week if the Prime Minister were to engage and get them done. Maybe that is the problem. It is almost as if his heart is not in it; as if he meant it when he called devolution a disaster; as if he cannot see what is now the only alternative in Scotland to making it work; as if he really believes that refusing a Section 30 order would close out that alternative, and that Northern Ireland need not involve him and can safely be left to Mr Brandon Lewis.

I have time for one piece of advice only to the Prime Minister: when in a hole, stop digging. Do not repeat the Brexit negotiations mistake of excluding the devolved Administrations. Invite them into the joint committee under the withdrawal agreement now. Do not insist on an immigration policy that ignores their demography, so different from England’s. Why repeat under state aid the internal market Act’s override of the devolution settlement? Do not, with no prior warning, do trade deals with third countries such as Australia, which the three Celtic countries—possibly wrongly but deeply—believe will damage their farmers. Do not go on feeding the perception that you are not really a UK Government but an English Government. Cut out the unforced errors, stop digging the hole deeper and please scrap the hard hat, high-vis jacket photo-op visits, which only annoy. Instead, show parity of esteem, get around the table with your counterparts, settle the structures and make them work. You have not long; time is running out.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, has been unable to connect, so I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton.

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[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, has withdrawn from the debate so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, and to join many others in thanking the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for securing this debate and his introduction to it. I think he referred to creaks and groans in the union, but I would probably say that they are rather gaping cracks and heaving frustrations, as a reflection of the mood. The timing of this debate and its length perhaps reflect the way the peoples of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland very often feel their importance is regarded in your Lordships’ House and by the Government.

I rise as possibly the only person in this debate who is a Green. The Scottish Green Party is campaigning very hard for independence, and the Wales Green Party has said that, if there is an independence referendum, it will campaign for independence. I offer one very important thought in the context of this debate: I believe that the Government and your Lordships’ House need to think constructively and deeply about what might happen if the union ends—what it would look like, and how it could be done in the best possible way. If we look back to 2016, we can see that that was not done with Brexit, and we are still dealing with all the fallout. That is a very important message.

I have one other brief message. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, that we need something much more radical, although I would not particularly fault anything in this report. But I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, that a parity of esteem has to be at the foundation of this—and not just esteem but money and resources. Green political philosophy says that power and resources should rest locally and be referred upwards only when absolutely necessary. Far too much power is concentrated here in Westminster, which is the foundation of the gaping holes to which I referred.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson of Glen Clova, has withdrawn from this debate, so we will now go back to the noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn.

Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, I would like you to imagine how you would approach a Government, any Government, who always say, when you speak to them—they have to say it, God bless them—that they take the future into account. I spoke recently to quite a number of MPs and members of the Government. As always, they said, “Actually, what we are doing is probably enough”. I come along with a Bill that is nicked—stolen from our Welsh colleagues and made slightly different—and I say, “Well, actually we have to do more with the future, because the future is always being postponed.”

This is the problem that I have. How do I get the Conservative Government to look seriously at the future, in the way that the Welsh are seriously looking at the future, at the same time as trying to keep them onside, befriending them, being nice to them, being kind and thoughtful and never, ever telling them off? We know that as soon as you tell a politician off, they close their ears, in the same way that I close my ears when people tell me off—I am no different from anybody else. So, I have a problem. I want this Bill to go through and to be about the future today. I do not want the future to be continuously put off.

In my journeys around the United Kingdom, I talk to MPs, to charities and to local authorities—I talk to everybody. I am a bit like the Queen Mother; I go around shaking hands. I do not open supermarkets—nobody has asked me to do that yet—but I am a busy little lad and I go around. On one occasion quite recently, I was with a new MP—someone who came in in 2019 somewhere in the north of England, with a strong political record and a complete commitment to the well-being of their constituents. This young lady said to me, “What is your Bill going to do for my constituent who comes up to me in absolute terror or with an absolute problem? What is your Bill going to do?” I said, “Nothing”, and she said, “Well, why would I support your Bill, why would I vote for your Bill?” I said, “Ah! What would have happened if your predecessor, or your pre-pre-predecessor, had addressed the problems in the first instance that your constituent has to face now?”

Many of the problems that people face in their constituencies, and I face in my life, did not come from the future; they came from the past. In a way, had we had a future generations Bill 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago, we might have hesitated before we did certain things. In fact, we could rename my Bill. It does not have to be the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill; we could just call it the “Hindsight Bill”. Why do we not have a Minister for Hindsight? Very clever—somebody who can read the future or who can say, “Hang on, why are we always doing things that come back to bite us in the rear at some later stage?”

For instance, would we have charged our children to go to university? Would we have done that almost beautiful act of them and us-ism, increasing the divide between them and us? Many people I meet would love to go to university but are frightened because they do not have what the public school boys or grammar school boys have, or whoever it may be, whose mum and dad have got a bit of money put aside, maybe property and all that. Now, university is not everything, but the message was sent out, just after we rescued the banks, just after 2010, at the time of the coalition. Had there been a future generations Bill on the statute book then, maybe we would have said, “Hang on, what are you doing here? You are trying to solve an immediate problem, but you are being oppressed by the needs and demands of today and you are throwing tomorrow away.”

Would we, for instance, have closed down our mental health institutions in the mid-1980s? People like me, even before the Big Issue, were saying “Hang on, do you know what is going to happen? If you close the mental health institutions and have care in the community”—it looked as thin on the ground then as it does now—“you will have an enormous increase in people on the streets; the streets will fill up and the prisons will fill up.” If you go into a prison, you meet people who, 30 or 40 years ago, probably would have been in the mental institutions. That is a major problem. Being mentally ill now, you are worse off than in the days of the mid-19th century when the poet John Clare was locked up. He was first put in a private institution and then a public one.

You have people wandering around the streets. When the Big Issue started, we were inundated with Jesus Christs and Napoleons on the streets. We even had a few admirals as well, I assure you—I do not know whether they were admirals; they did not look like admirals, and they certainly did not look like Napoleon or Jesus Christ. I had people coming up to me and telling me that they were angels. That was probably about 50% of the people we were working with in 1991, because in 1987, I believe, the institutions were closed down.

With a future generations Bill, you would have something that I find missing in modern politics. When I came into the House of Lords—forgive me for saying this—I was chased hither and thither by Barons and Baronesses who said, “Look, there’s this problem, and this problem, and this problem. What will you do about this? What will you do about the homeless sleeping in stations?” All the time I was being pushed and pushed. I said, “Look, there are millions of people in this world obsessed with the crisis of now. They will continue to be obsessed with it, because the crisis of now never gets solved, because we do not think about the future.” I have come into the House of Lords to do nothing more than prevent poverty forming in the first instance, and not be controlled by worshipping again and again at the altar of the accomplished facts—that you have to do this. Of course, because we are always responding to emergencies, we think that that proves our humanity, but actually it does not. We cannot just keep responding to the emergencies; we must do much more.

I apologise, I realise that I have 10 minutes and I have only started. How are your Lordships? I hope that you had a nice Friday. I walked here. I walk everywhere; that is why I am so young and fit—and only 75. If you sit in the House and are not really a politician, you notice that we spend an enormous amount of time untangling legislation from former times. We are always undoing it. If you look at the facts, about 70% of the time of the House is spent unravelling the damage done by poverty—why have we never done this?—the damage done by lack of biodiversity and by industrialisation, and the damage done by closing down the mines, steelworks and heavy engineering jobs, largely up north, without putting anything in their place. Forty or 50 years later, we are still suffering the damage from the fact that we did not look at how the future would pan out when we did these things. The most graphic example was when I stood with many people who were mentally ill and brought them into the House of Commons 20 years ago. It was incredibly moving to be here and meet people who said, “I wish we had not done it.”

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Before I call the next speaker, I remind all noble Lords that I clearly stated that all of us in this Chamber, when we are not speaking, should be wearing face masks. I ask noble Lords to respect the House and everybody else and to wear masks when not speaking. I call the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, this Bill has attracted a large number of speakers, partly out of the huge respect in which the House holds the noble Lord, but also because of the importance of the issue his Bill seeks to address.

Let us applaud the Welsh, and the noble Lord for his passionate introduction to the Bill. This is a wide-ranging Bill, it is ambitious and challenging, and I fear that some measures may prove too demanding for a Private Member’s Bill. I have not seen any costings—that may be my mistake—but the proposals seem so overwhelmingly positive that it may be that the funds will be forthcoming.

The Bill advocates a Joint Committee on future generations and a commission to be appointed by the Prime Minister. Here I have problems. We in this House have seen how prime ministerial appointments can distort the membership, so perhaps commission members could be generated by another method. The commission would need to be and seen to be non-political, and if they are prime ministerial appointments, there is a huge danger that they will be overwhelmingly party political. The well-being of our young people can only benefit by co-operation between government and across all the parties and the public bodies. It would be good to think that such dialogue already takes place, but I suspect that it does not.

I also applaud the proposal for a citizens’ panel of at least 50 people, a large and wide-ranging selection of people, which would need an exceptional leader or convener, but which could prove invaluable in bringing expertise from all parts of our community to this subject. The bigger prize would be for the next generations to have better prospects for rewarding employment and fulfilling lives, if we all work together in the way suggested.

The Bill greatly deserves further consideration and scrutiny, and I look forward to Committee and trying to ensure the well-being of future generations by exploring in more detail how these proposals would work in practice. I very much support the intentions behind the Bill and congratulate the noble Lord on all his endeavours, especially all the work he does to improve the lives of the less fortunate and the young. He may not be able to solve all our problems—as he has so modestly admitted—but, my goodness, he does an amazing job in tackling many of them.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, has withdrawn from this debate, so I call the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Wigley.

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[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to stand shoulder to shoulder with my noble friend Lord Bird, and I hope that we will see this Bill to its end. I believe that it is an addition to our responsibility on equality duties

We live in an unequal society between those who have and those who live in abject poverty and deprivation. The Bill desires an outcome in which our country is fit for the next generation. I am thankful for this opportunity to consider the challenges to improve its life chances.

The pandemic has forced us to examine long-standing divisions, in which millions of children experience food poverty, homelessness, a poor standard of education, digital inequalities, lack of equal opportunities for work and an endemic level of violence and abuse, with a third of violent crimes being committed against women and girls, including in our schools, colleges and universities. Eradication of violence, including knife crimes and brutalisation of our young black men within the criminal justice system, requires radical overhaul, such as through the urgent reconsideration of the Prevent strategy, which for so long has been seen to target specific communities and has done so much to demonise Islam and Muslims.

It is my fervent hope and prayer that, in looking towards the well-being of our future generations, we will champion and positively promote our multicultural and multifaith society to ensure that all sections of our communities have a voice and say in the way we shape our country. I welcome the well-being duty being placed on public bodies and the proposed Joint Committee, as well as the Minister for Future Well-being. These structures will have to be embedded across government, and the well-being agenda will have to be mainstreamed to work in partnership with the Ministers for children and women, and other senior government Ministers, to effect the changes suggested in the Bill. Such a constructive approach would integrate the levelling-up and build back better agendas, alongside the poverty eradication, education, housing equality and environmental commitments that have been so prominent within this Government, and among the many demands made by young people who have marched and protested throughout our country in recent months.

We have an informed generation of young people. Many have taken the decision to engage in political activism. I take this incredible opportunity to salute the many hundreds of thousands of children and young people who have marched for a better future and demonstrated that they are conscious of building a safer and more equal society and country; who have engaged in political acts and want their voices heard in dialogues and the process of decision-making; and whose consciousness, understanding and appreciation of protecting the environment, and of poverty, health, civil liberties, drugs, social justice, inequalities, racism and Islamophobia, as well as international conflicts, is most profound. They are an exemplar to each of us in this House and elsewhere. This debate is about safeguarding their future well-being. As we consider the merits of this Bill in its next phase, I look forward to elaborating these points further.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, is experiencing technical difficulties, so I will call her later, when she is able to reconnect. In the meantime, I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins of Tavistock.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I support the principles of the Bill in the name of my noble friend Lord Bird, while questioning the extent of detail which could constrain this and future Governments in policy development. Any Government have a responsibility to both current populations and future generations. Many of the Bills being considered in this parliamentary Session are associated with trying to ensure that future generations survive and thrive in the UK—for example, the Environment Bill, referred to by many noble Lords.

The pandemic has sent a shock of seismic proportions globally, without sufficient preparedness even in G7 countries. An aim of the Bill is to enshrine in law a

“shift to a longer-term, preventative approach to policymaking”,

which would involve adopting new methods of risk analysis, planning and fiscal policy to ensure that future generations are respected and taken into account.

The need to improve the well-being of all our citizens remains a paramount responsibility of all Governments and is amply illustrated through the successful Covid vaccination programme. I fully support the concepts outlined in Part 2, but suggest that some elements are very prescriptive. Clause 4 in Part 2 contains such processes, which are the reverse of the intention of the Bill and could result in convoluted, time-consuming cycles of repetitive consultation, slowing down well-being policy-making.

While supporting the concept of establishing a future generations commission for the UK, Clause 4 makes no mention of England. Surely UK-level discussions need to involve all four countries and younger people, as was so ably mentioned by other noble Baronesses.

The vital issue that we face is that young people want and need to be able to access health promotion and ill-health services digitally, face-to-face and sometimes in hospital. However, I must disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Bird. We did the right thing in shutting the large mental hospitals but we did the wrong thing in not providing alternative suitable accommodation. They need high-quality education, safe and secure housing, and secure employment opportunities but, as the noble Lord said, long-term planning must involve listening and devising policies based on citizens’ stated desires coupled with scientific data.

Young people today will be paying off the debt associated with the costs of the pandemic for 50 years, if not a century. Unlike former generations, those going into higher education have student loans to redeem. The requirement to undertake future generations impact assessments, as outlined in Part 2 Section 11, is paramount. In summary, I hope that we can work to revise and simplify the Bill to enable nimble policy development, while fully embracing the best evidence relating to the future well-being of our population.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Her connection issues having been resolved, I call the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

May I remind my noble friend of the three-minute advisory speaking time.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton.

[Baroness Stroud (Con) [V]]

We must ensure that these issues are well examined. We cannot be content with the thousands of children who go neglected and abandoned in our cities and streets every year.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Again, I call the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Border Controls

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord. I will end as I began, by condemning all violence and threats of violence. Flexibilities have been invoked. They are required on both sides, as are pragmatism and proportionality. In the negotiation, we need to provide a reassurance that all parties will respect the basis on which the protocol was agreed. That includes full recognition of Northern Ireland’s status as an integral part of the United Kingdom, respecting its place in the UK’s customs territory and internal market and recognising the integral social, economic and cultural ties that bind the UK as a whole, and safeguarding the streamlined flow of goods between Britain and Northern Ireland on which so many lives and livelihoods rely. We are also respecting the need to maintain the support of both communities. That is our objective and it is the one to which Her Majesty’s Government are dedicated. I hope sincerely that our counterparties in the European Union will address the same agenda.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

My Lords, all the supplementary questions to this Question have been asked.

Protocol on Northern Ireland: Disruption to Trade

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I can certainly give the noble Lord the assurance that we will work extremely hard to overcome difficulties. As I just said in reply to my noble friend Lord Caine, the Prime Minister stated the position on the record in the House of Commons yesterday as far as Article 16 is concerned. Obviously, I stand by his words. As for movement of traffic, everybody should feel that they can and must send goods to every part of our kingdom normally. Flows of trucks into Belfast are now normal. There have been issues at Holyhead, but movements there are increasing and we hope to see that trend continue.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I apologise for leap-frogging over the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Lilley.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am not following any further the comment that people did not understand where they were when decisions were taken on whether to leave. I believe that we should all leave that behind us. On the specific question, at the end of the grace period, as I said in an earlier reply, the UK will continue to work with supermarkets and retailers. We have a dedicated group of officials working on this. We are seeking new end-to-end digital systems that will enable goods to be moved in accordance with the protocol in the most streamlined way, and this will be backed by a major injection of UK government funding as part of a broader support package. However, it behoves all sides under this agreement, including the EU, to behave in a proportionate manner.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.

Elections: May 2021

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for being guilty of bureaucratic gobbledegook. At the risk of repeating an earlier answer, the most unprecedented pandemic for generations is raging in this country. Occasionally, the Government are taken to task for not being cautious and advisory, but—I repeat—the Government’s position is that the elections can go ahead in a safe and secure way; there would have to be a very high bar for that not to happen. But I accept the noble Lord’s point that total clarity is always the ideal.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.