Armed Forces Bill

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dannatt (CB)]

My Lords, I also support Amendment 4. I ask your Lordships to reflect on the origin of the Armed Forces covenant, which we find in the Armed Forces Acts, going back to 2011. It was not a new idea dreamed up by the Government of the day but the beginnings of the codification of something that had existed for quite some time as an informal covenant or agreement between those who serve and the Government who require them to carry out certain operations.

The covenant is effective when the balance between the requirements placed on the Armed Forces community and veterans is itself in balance. In the days and years leading up to 2011, when the Armed Forces covenant went into law, and particularly during the most difficult period when operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were being conducted together, the balance was definitely out of kilter and we were out of balance as far as the informal aspect of the covenant was concerned.

Who could better personify and embody the government side of the balance between the Government who require the Armed Forces to carry out operations and the servicepeople who conduct those operations than the Secretary of State? I fully support Amendment 4. I support the further codification of the covenant and any moves to increase its scope, but particularly the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, which would make the Secretary of State a pinnacle and personification of the Government’s side of the covenant. That is absolutely critical.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I too support Amendments 4 and 17. What brings me to this conviction is a case in which the widows of four soldiers from the Royal Marines were asked to leave their houses within three months of their deaths. They had nowhere to go. Another soldier who survived the same battle came to see me in Bishopthorpe, together with four other members of the Royal Marines, to say that we had to protest about the way widows were treated. There was talk about the covenant, but it had not yet come through. To raise the profile of this issue, they wanted me to join them in a parachute jump. At my age, this is quite serious business, but I thought that yes, I would join them. We were up there, at 14,500 feet, and, thank God, I survived; there was no real trouble, and I landed properly. Do you know what happened? People who saw this and learned what had been done donated a lot of money, and those four widows were housed in new builds, supported by a landowner who gave them a place to build houses.

That is what the covenant is about in the end: that we should look after anybody who has done their duty for the service of the Crown and the nation. The Bill is right to require local authorities and other places to have due regard to the covenant, but I would have thought that the Government should be first in line to have due regard to it, because the Secretary of State is answerable to Parliament, unlike local authorities. We could have some junior Minister reporting on what is happening and what is not happening, but the issue of democracy at the heart of this is that members of the Government are answerable to Parliament and can therefore be asked questions. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, is right to include the Secretary of State in Amendments 4 and 17. If they were agreed, the covenant would no longer be given to people of good will to try to do whatever they want—the Government would actually be answerable, and we could ask them questions.

This amendment is timely. I hope we will all support it and that the Government will see it as an improvement, not an attempt to create more jobs and work for the Secretary of State. In the end, our soldiers ultimately look to them for a voice, for help and for support.

I did that parachute jump and was very glad to see the covenant a few years later, but it still did not quite do what this amendment is trying to do. I say to the Government: do not come back to this again—include the Secretary of State.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 4, which I have co-signed, and Amendments 3, 5, 6 and 7 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and my noble friend Lady Brinton. We have already seen this afternoon one of the slight peculiarities of our system, which is currently not quite hybrid: we had a long delay on the first Division, because somehow the technology did not quite work. At the moment, the technology does not quite work either for noble Lords who seek to be both in Grand Committee and in your Lordships’ House, in the main Chamber, simultaneously. For those of us here physically, it can be possible to move very quickly between the Moses Room and the Chamber. Our colleagues appearing virtually have to log on half an hour before an item of business, so my noble friend Lady Brinton apologises for not speaking on this group.

I will speak to the amendments she has co-signed with the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. There is one aspect in particular which ought to be mentioned: paragraph (i) of Amendments 3, 5, 6 and 7, which mentions an immigration function. If we are going to talk—as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have done—about Hong Kong service personnel who served with our Armed Forces, initially as citizens and then losing that citizenship and perhaps having only the right to BNO status, I fear that we need to think about immigration questions and the Home Office.

I am aware that the Minister will be responding on behalf of the MoD, even though obviously she is also responding on behalf of the Government as a whole. I am therefore aware that some of the things we will ask might not be within her gift, but I very much endorse the impassioned calls from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, and my noble friend Lord Alton about the situation for Hong Kong veterans. They served for us. We owe them a debt of gratitude and the citizenship rights they expected.

If the Minister cannot commit, as I suspect she will not, to changing this piece of legislation in the way that some of us might want, can she at least undertake to go and talk to her colleagues in the Home Office and discuss ways in which we can look at veterans—not just the Gurkhas or Commonwealth veterans, who will appear in later groups of amendments, but the Hongkongers? This is vital, in part to demonstrate that the United Kingdom respects those who have worked with us. We have a moral obligation. Can we trust the Government to live up to it?

We heard the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, suggest that he actually had some sympathy with this group of amendments, particularly Amendments 3, 5, 6 and 7. He would like to bring in these additional functions, alongside healthcare, education and housing, but thinks it is too much, too soon. But, as we have heard, we will not have another full Armed Forces Bill for five years. Would it not be appropriate to bring forward and approve these amendments now, acknowledging that maybe they will not all be brought in on day one? Indeed, if they were all brought in on day one, that would be nothing short of a miracle—but, if they are enshrined in the Bill, it means that the Government will have a duty to look at these additional functions, and even the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, who appears to be most sceptical about the amendments, acknowledges that these functions should be considered. So I ask the Minister to think again about these functions and whether they should be added to the Bill.

I particularly want to speak to Amendment 4, to which I added my name. It seems quite extraordinary for a Government to say, “We are so committed to the Armed Forces covenant that it has to have statutory status, yet it should not place a duty on us. We ourselves should not have to pay due regard to it, but we will ask local authorities, local health authorities and housing associations to do so”. Why are we not asking the Secretary of State for Defence to have a duty? Why are we not asking the Secretary of State responsible for levelling up, houses, communities and whatever else is now part of that portfolio?

We have heard from the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, that it would also be important for the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to play a part. As he pointed out, the amendment refers only to England. It would be very simple to have additional lines that would give it validity in Northern Ireland, and indeed Scotland and Wales. If the Minister were to say, “We can’t do something that’s for England only”, could she perhaps consider bringing back at Third Reading some amendments that would deal with this?

From the letter that the Minister sent to us last week, we know that she will say that the Government are out of scope of the Bill because, actually, it is at local level that we see problems. Well, if it is only at local level that we see problems, surely it would be of no difficulty whatever for the Secretary of State to find himself in the Bill and for the Government to have a duty enshrined in this piece of legislation. The Government should be leading, not simply setting duties for other—lower—levels of local government. The Government themselves should take responsibility and the moral lead.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 15th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. The example she cites illustrates very well that whether the exemption applies will depend very much on the facts of the individual case and would ultimately be for a jury to determine, if a case got that far. In her example, it would need to be established whether drugs were available for the person or not and the likelihood of their being available. She will notice that the wording is very carefully drawn to say that if, at the time, the person suffers from a progressive disease and their death in consequence of that disease can reasonably be expected within six months—it is that reasonable belief that we need to focus on. It is possible, of course, that the exemption could come under one of the other headings in the amendment: for example, for aid of a humanitarian nature.

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords, will the Minister contemplate another example? Megrahi was sent from a Scottish jail back to Libya and expected to die within a short period, but he lived for longer than six months. What if someone was here and the same thing applied? President Pinochet was allowed to go back. Everybody expected him to die but he walked off the plane and lived for quite some time. So the six-month period could become a problem. One needs to find a way of describing it in another way. People have died within six months but some have lived longer. Can the noble Earl help us with that quandary?

[Earl Howe]

I am grateful to the most reverend Primate. Again, we come down to the words “reasonable belief”. If it is reasonable to believe that somebody is about to die within the six-month period, I feel sure that the police will not argue that point to the nth degree.

Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2015

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard]

I hear what the noble Baroness says but, as far as the financial privilege of the House of Commons is concerned, if this House decides to vote for my noble friend Lady Hollis’s amendment—as I hope it will—it would not kill the statutory instrument. It would not mean that it was dead. It would mean that its implementation was delayed. According to the clerks—and I understand it is broadly accepted by most people—that is not a fatal attack upon these regulations. If the House were to do that, we would get the best of both worlds. I am not in favour of voting for the Liberal Democrat amendment because I do not, on the whole, think that voting for fatal amendments on statutory instruments is a good thing for this House to do, and I do not think I have ever done it. However, an amendment to postpone the statutory instrument until the other House has a chance to look at the evidence that has now arisen makes a great deal of sense. I hope that, when it comes to a vote, that is what will happen.

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords, I want to a repeat a few words of the noble Lord, Lord Richard. I, too, have been listening to this debate, and I listened to the argument made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. He persuaded me that the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, to decline to approve the regulations is fatal and perilously would raise all kinds of constitutional matters.

The amendments moved by the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Hollis, simply decline to consider the draft regulations. They do not say that the regulations will not be approved. In fact, they tie our hands because when the regulations are produced, we will have no choice but then to approve them. If the Chancellor is being very mindful, as we have been hearing from the Lord Privy Seal, and is willing to negotiate and to listen to our advice, well, we are giving him our advice, so why does he not take it? I think that the amendments moved by the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Hollis, are not fatal. They are simply delaying, and we can do something about it.

My right reverend friend called on the Government to further consult on the draft regulations and revisit their impact. It is a question of trust. If you are legislators and do not have the facts before you before you finally approve these draft regulations, you are abrogating your legislative responsibilities. If you are a revising and scrutinising Chamber, surely you must do it. If you do not, who else is going to do it? They may even be glad that some people are planning; it will become very clear that some were probably not all that important. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, in her moving speech, outlined clearly the unintended consequences of this hasty way of reducing and cutting tax credits because the people who are going to suffer most are those who up to now have been relying on them. They are in work, and they are managing to get their things in order, and then suddenly the Government say they are going to take it away. That is not good. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is more likely to meet his target reduction of the budget deficit of up to £4.2 billion a year by introducing the real living wage first, which I trust will be calibrated soon by the Living Wage Foundation.

What is my basis for saying this? Two years ago, I chaired the Living Wage Commission which brought together people from business, the trade unions, industry and civil society to look at how we could inspire and create a brilliant way of dealing with this difficulty. How can we tackle the blight of low pay? We looked closely and objectively at the case for the living wage, and we were sure about what should be done. Let me give the House the evidence. It is in the report. The evidence pointed to the living wage being good for employees, good for business, good for the economy, good for society and good for low-paid people. Employers who have already adopted a living wage policy have lifted thousands of people out of working poverty. They are not claiming tax credits because they have been lifted out. The Exchequer could gain up to £4.2 billion a year in increased tax revenues and reduced expenditure on tax credits. That is a much neater way of doing it. Businesses are reporting increases in productivity and improved morale. The truth is that you and I lose out on poverty wages. Billions of pounds are being spent every year on topping up the incomes of low-paid workers at a time when private finances are very tight. Demand is sucked out of the economy by the lack of spending power of a fifth of our workforce—about 5 million people—and where inequality grows, all of us end up diminished.

Economics was not always divorced from moral and ethical considerations. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, had been professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow before he wrote The Wealth of Nations. To him and later classical economists such as Ricardo, Mill and Henry George, ethical considerations were of prime importance. Economic justice on a global scale is the only way we are going to deal with this. The issue we are facing here is not just economics divorced from morals and ethics. The decisions we take will affect a lot of men and women throughout the country who want to get out of poverty and out of depending on tax credits, and we should consider them properly and fairly.

Britain has struggled through very challenging times. I hope that the work being done by government, business and the people of the United Kingdom will enable us to take a huge step forward. The minimum wage, when introduced, went some way, but it did not go far enough. Let me give some recent research which seems to suggest that the legislature has considered the possibility of delaying in order that further facts may be brought out. What are they? There has been a rise in demand for unsecured credit, with many people reporting an increase in their need to borrow. This is likely only to get worse in the winter months. Do you want people who have hitherto been dependent on work and tax credits to be driven to the loan sharks of this country? That would be quite unhelpful. What about UNICEF saying that a quarter of children in Britain are living in poverty? Britain is at risk of becoming a place where the haves and the have nots live in parallel worlds, where the common good, or the big society, has been a pious platitude rather than genuine. I want to listen more, and I hope the decision to delay the draft regulations until further facts ties our hands and allows the Chancellor, who is willing to listen to our advice, to come back with all that information. We are almost saying that we will pass it, we will agree with it.

Finally, a wonderful report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Will the 2015 Summer Budget Improve Living Standards in 2020?, states that over seven years there has been a decline in living standards. It is pausing for the moment, but many low-income households are still much worse off than in 2008, leaving them struggling to make ends meet and reliant on benefits to top up their finances. Today, we want to say to hard-pressed families on poverty wages that the Government are serious about deficit reduction, but they want to do it in an orderly fashion that will not leave men and women in the hands of loan sharks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe]

The regulations before us account for £4.4 billion of public expenditure in the next financial year. That is a large slice of the defence budget, but it is not the total defence budget. It will however mean that the Chancellor has more money at his disposal to spend on schools, hospitals and those with disabilities. Incidentally, I say to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York that the national living wage is possible only because the economy of this country is strengthening, and it is strengthening because there is a high degree of confidence in the Government’s economic programme and their ability to deliver economic stability by, among other things, reducing the deficit. One has to look at the totality of what the Chancellor’s programme consists of.

[The Archbishop of York]

The Living Wage Commission, which I chair, was working in conditions when the economic climate was not very good. We were very clear that those companies that can afford to pay should pay a living wage. The noble Earl will be interested to know that, even before the economy started improving, a lot of companies acted out of an ethical conviction about their workers. As Churchill said here 100 years ago, the greatest evil is that some of Her Majesty’s people are not being paid a living wage. Those companies actually took on the need to pay a living wage and were doing so even when the economic climate was very poor. Of course, I agree that the economy has improved, but if it has improved, why are we not helping the poorest who need us most?

[Earl Howe]

We are doing so. We are doing so through the national living wage. We should welcome the fact that these companies are already paying the national living wage. There are 200 major companies already doing so. That is a very good thing. I congratulate the most reverend Primate on the work that he has done in this area. I do not think there is anything much between us on this, as a matter of fact.

[The Archbishop of York]

Sorry—this is about the impression that was being given. I am suggesting that the Chancellor of Exchequer actually may meet the £4.2 billion that he wants to cut in tax credits through the living wage, because the report actually shows that if the 5 million are being paid a living wage, it is more likely that less tax credit would have to be taken off. My worry relates to the people who are going to suffer. That is what my speech was all about.

[Earl Howe]

Interestingly, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said in terms in its report that the Chancellor made quite a big choice in the Budget to protect some of the poorest people on tax credits. That is self-evidently true. I would add in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, who I am sorry is not in her place—oh, she is, I beg her pardon—that the disabled and severely disabled elements of working tax credit will not be cut through these measures. They will be uprated by inflation. In fact, the Government are making savings in tax credits, so that they can protect disability benefits which have been protected from the benefits freeze and the welfare cap, including DLA and the support group component of ESA, as well as disability elements of the tax credits, as I have mentioned. I hope that that is of some reassurance to her.

Despite all that I have said about why what we are doing is both necessary and right, I recognise that there are noble Lords opposite who will remain unpersuaded. Let me therefore address the amendments. Other than in the rarest of circumstances, it is against the long-standing conventions of this House—and, therefore, I would suggest wrong—for us to vote down or block secondary legislation. Those rare circumstances, I would argue, do not include this situation, in which noble Lords are seeking to challenge the House of Commons on a matter of public spending and taxation, a point made very effectively by the noble Lord, Lord Butler. The sums involved are not trivial. The regulations before us, as I said, would account for welfare savings of £4.4 billion in 2016-17. We can argue—as I am actually quite interested in doing, but I do not think it would be profitable—about the technicality of whether these regulations are or are not financial, but in substance they are very definitely and very obviously financial. I therefore say to the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, that her fatally worded amendment should not be put to a vote.

On the amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Hollis, the situation, I contend, is simple. There is a choice before this House to approve or not to approve these regulations. It is a binary choice. The noble Baronesses are inviting the House to withhold our approval. We can argue endlessly once again about the technicality of whether the wording of these amendments is or is not fatal in nature. But the reality is that if either amendment is passed, this House will not have approved these regulations. It is no good saying that this would merely amount to asking the House of Commons to think again. They can do that with Lords’ amendments to primary legislation, but with secondary legislation there is no mechanism for a dialogue between the Houses and no mechanism to allow the will of the Commons to prevail in respect of this instrument—