EU Council
Lord Spicer Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The noble Lord makes an interesting point. In some of the background reading that I did over the weekend about Ukraine and Russia, I was intrigued to learn that the people of Russia, notwithstanding the propaganda, do not put responsibility for the situation in Ukraine at the feet of the western world. While the noble Lord is right that we need to ensure that the people of Russia are very much aware of what is happening in Ukraine, I think that they are perhaps more aware already than we give them credit for.
Lord Spicer (Con)
My Lords, talking about actions not words, when can we expect the brave speeches about Russia to be backed by effective action on our defences?
Lord Spicer
Perhaps I may rephrase the question. When can we expect the brave speeches about Russia that we hear from our side to be backed up by proper changes in our defences?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
Our defences are absolutely secure, and there is no issue of concern there. It is worth reminding the House that we are meeting the 2% of GDP guideline for our defence spending, and we are one of only four NATO countries to do so. The Prime Minister has already committed to a real-terms increase in defence equipment spending by 1% over the next 10 years and said that there will be no further reduction in the Army, so our defences are sound.
European Union (Referendum) Bill
Lord Spicer Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to the same amendment in this group to which the noble Lord, Lord Richard, referred: Amendment 73. I would like to do so in a spirit of positive response to what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said—that is to say, to attempt to improve this Bill. I will also, therefore, speak briefly.
The point of Amendment 73, as the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said, is to deal with one of the most glaring defects in this Bill as currently drafted, which is that its sole purpose is to bind the hands of a future Parliament. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, will be able to produce chapter and verse for occasions on which legislation has had a binding effect on future Parliaments, unless they chose to repeal the measure, but I would be delighted if he could produce a single example of a piece of legislation that had no purpose other than to bind the hands of a future Parliament, which is the case with the Bill as drafted.
Amendment 73 would remedy that defect. It would ensure that a future Parliament would have to pass a resolution to bring the Bill into effect. That seems to me to restore the balance in our constitutional practice. I am occasionally astonished by the nonchalance—or, some would say, the recklessness—with which the sponsors of the Bill are lopping great chunks off our constitutional practice. It is really pretty odd. Yesterday in this House, we had a superb debate about the future of the union of the United Kingdom and there was unanimity around the House, but today Members opposite, the sponsors of the Bill, are supporting a Bill that will increase the number of yes votes in Scotland in September 2014 and decrease the number of no votes. I know that logic is not normally a strong suit of our countrymen, and probably me, but I think that we are carrying this a little far now. I hope that, when he comes to reply to this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, will take on board the importance of Amendment 73, as well as the others in this group.
Lord Spicer (Con)
May I ask the noble Lord whether he is in favour of joining the monetary union?
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
The noble Lord may very well ask me that, but it would take me too long to answer while at the same time staying within the bounds of not filibustering.
Lord Spicer
The reason why I ask him that is that, if he was in favour of joining, under the treaty of Maastricht, that would be irrevocable—it would be binding on another Parliament in future.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
The noble Lord has shifted between two tenses. He first asked whether I was in favour of joining the monetary union. The answer to that is yes. He also asked whether I am now in favour of joining the monetary union at this point in time. The answer is no.
Energy: Long-term Supply
Lord Spicer Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Spicer (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest listed in the parliamentary register, and ask this question.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford) (Con)
My Lords, forgive me. It is Labour’s turn for a question.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, luckily, the UK is the most open economy in the world and therefore welcomes inward investment, including in the nuclear sector and renewable energy, from everyone in the world.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that not enough determination has been shown by the official regulator, Ofgem, or by our competition authorities over the past decade to make sure that there is sufficient competition in the energy market, which would at last favour consumers? Would she nudge those organisations to grow some teeth and perhaps bare them, so that consumers get a fairer deal out of energy prices?
Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher
Lord Spicer Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Spicer
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Tebbit said that his top two PMs—using the terminology of today’s Sun—were Margaret Thatcher and Clem Attlee. Word has it that Clem Attlee was a very skilled sacker of Ministers. The norm when sacking a Minister would be something along the lines of, “Thank you very much for coming to see me, Michael. With your sophistication you will know that I’ve got to make room in my Government. You are a bit long in the tooth now, we’ve got younger men to look after and we would very much enjoy it if you would become Governor-General of the Bahamas and, with your wife, enjoy the rest of your life”. It is said that Clem Attlee would say, “Look, I’ve got to get rid of you by the time of the one o’clock news. Do you know why you’ve got to go?”. “No, sir”. “Because you’re no bloody good, that’s why”. The fact is that he, like Margaret Thatcher, was a strong Prime Minister.
I intend to intervene for a very short time, but I feel bound to do so. I was her PPS, although not for as long as my noble friend Lord Hamilton, and I was Deputy Chairman of the party at the time of the Brighton bomb, when my noble friend Lord Deben—he probably does not remember this—rang me from the police station where he and the Prime Minister had gone after the bomb exploded and said, “She’s got two things she wants you to do. One is to get the show on the road and the other is to open the shop at nine o’clock for the conference”. Those are my two credentials for joining the debate.
One memory I will share with the House goes back almost to her last day in government. I was Minister for Housing and she summoned me to the Cabinet Room. It was a one-to-one meeting—I was on my own with her—and she said the words that will always be in my mind. We had had our meeting and I was packing up my papers when she said, “Michael, you know we’ve failed to destroy the dependency culture”. That stuck with me. A lot has been said today about her caution, and I will say a word about it myself. What has not been said is that she did in some cases regret that caution. That is something that has not fully come over. It was not just the dependency culture, although she did regret that she had not done anything to make sure that the welfare state was focused on those who really needed support. In the modern idiom, she would have “done her nut” had she realised that it would be a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition Government who would be the first to do something about it.
On privatisation, there were all sorts of things that she would have liked. She did not privatise coal, the railways, the nuclear industry or the Post Office. With the really difficult one, electricity—as it happened I was the Minister who took the Bill through the Commons—I believe that it was very much the powers of persuasion of my noble friend Lord Parkinson against the advice of Walter Marshall, her great friend and mentor in many ways, that created the Bill that we eventually put through Parliament. It was very much touch and go as to whether we went ahead with that privatisation, because of her caution.
I stress her caution only because others have emphasised her sense of direction and the wonderful things that she achieved. Her caution stretched beyond privatisation to Europe, which has been mentioned already today. She did, I think, regret the Single European Act and how far she pushed the Maastricht treaty before it came into being.
All that is something of an antidote to some of the more critical things that have been said about her extremism and her desire to do things in a hurry. Far from it—I think that sometimes she felt that she had not done things in enough of a hurry. I want to put that to the House because I think her impetuosity has been much misinterpreted, and that has come across in several speeches today. She was a very cautious and very wise person, and that is why she was so effective. It was a great honour to serve with her in that context.
House of Lords: Oral Questions
Lord Spicer Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I think there are a number of reasons why supplementary questions are asked. I looked at some figures that took a snapshot of the first six weeks of this year. They showed, somewhat to my surprise, that nearly 230 Members of your Lordships’ House had either asked Questions or supplementary questions in that period, which I thought was rather an encouraging figure and higher than I expected. There is, however, a point which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, raised: not all those 230 Members asked one question.