House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, this is the second Bill that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has introduced on this matter. Neither has ever found favour with the Government, who have consistently said that they will not give time for the Bill in the other place—that is, if it manages to pass through your Lordships’ House. No new arguments have been made in favour of the Bill, although the debate on who should sit in the House has moved forward with the thoughtful contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, yet the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has not found it possible to adjust his Bill at all.

I should add that I have come here not to stop further debate on the Bill; I am here to play a part in the Committee stage, but I have put forward this amendment to ask the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, whether he might reconsider his Bill rather than continue with it today. It would be unfortunate to do so, as it would be better to continue by agreement and give the noble Lord the opportunity to think again. If he does not wish to reconsider, we will no doubt press on with the amendments tabled for the Committee stage.

To add to my point that we have discussed this Bill many times since the debate at Second Reading, we have had the report of the noble Lord, Lord Burns. His is an important contribution to the overall debate about who should sit in this House. As your Lordships may know, in the long term I am actually in favour of the rather unfashionable idea of electing our representatives to Parliament, but I know that many Members of your Lordships’ House profoundly disagree with that—some, no doubt, think that they are better themselves.

Be that as it may, there are many ways into this House. First, there is the traditional route. Since the start of the century there has been a massive increase in political patronage by party leaders. That is the most straightforward way to become a Member of your Lordships’ House. Next, we have what used to be called “the people’s Peers”, selected by a small but outstanding group of individuals chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar. Those selected make a useful contribution and sit on the Cross Benches. We also have the spiritual Peers—the Bishops and Archbishops—who grace our Benches and make such a difference to our debates.

We used to have the Law Lords, and I am sorry that they have gone, but there was an excellent suggestion in the Burns report that the Justices of the Supreme Court should be given seats in the Lords. If we ever had an 80% elected House, I would support the judges being part of the other 20%. Not only do they help to improve the quality of legislation but, as judges, they see very clearly some of the compromises that parliamentarians wrestle with every day and, ultimately, have to make. This better understanding of the legislative process is good for them as the most senior members of the judiciary and good for us as legislators as we hear their views.

Then there are the remaining hereditary Peers—92 Members of your Lordships’ House, or about 12% of the total—who are entitled to sit here by statute passed as recently as 1999. That legislation was, incidentally, agreed across the parties in both Houses as a useful compromise in passing what was then termed “modernisation” of our constitutional arrangements.

When we debated this Bill last year, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde explained the genesis of the current number of hereditary Peers and the by-elections tied to them—the so-called Weatherill amendment, which was passed in the House of Lords Act. The by-elections that we are discussing today were an integral part of that overall deal, which in part was designed to win over those Peers and MPs who did not favour a wholly appointed House and believed that in the longer term the only practical way forward was to have an elected second Chamber but accepted that that might take some time.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

Perhaps I may ask the noble Lord a question. He is presumably very proud to be a Member of this House, as we all are, but does he not accept that the amendment he has just referred to was supposed to last for a few months? As the Government are not going to legislate on House of Lords reform, the present arrangements will go on until at least 2021. Is he really proud of the fact that, by blocking this Bill and by blocking, as he did, the same provisions in my Bill in 2014, he is bringing the House into disrepute by sustaining for over 20 years a system which cannot be justified?

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I do not agree with that. I am in favour of House of Lords reform. Indeed, I would have supported the Bill introduced back in 2012, for a largely elected House, which of course did not even manage to get through the House of Commons.

However, the by-elections do serve a purpose, beyond helping the Government to get their Bill though Parliament in 1999. First, they are a strong link with the past—a golden thread that links us with the ancient Parliaments stretching back for generations. Secondly, they are a reminder that we have come from a House that was, only recently, entirely hereditary. Thirdly, and this is a point that I would like to expand upon, by-elections provide a different way into this House—a way which is not dependent upon prime ministerial patronage.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has often said that his Bill is not personal, yet his mocking tone, and the use of the word “laughable” in his recent article in the House magazine, creates a very different impression. In his article, the noble Lord mocked the Liberal Democrats who recently voted in a by-election for the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, to rejoin this House after a spell as an elected Member in the House of Commons. I was pleased to see the noble Viscount back in his place—he makes a valuable contribution to our debates. However, that is apparently not sufficient for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. He described that by-election as “indefensible” and “laughable”.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise that I missed the later speeches this morning because I was attending an event at which our old friend Shirley Williams was receiving an award. I found myself sitting next to Baroness Trumpington, who greatly misses the House. She assured me that, had she been here in this debate, she would have been giving this Bill hell, and I can well believe that. She encouraged me and reminded me that, in her post-Bletchley years, she spent her life trying to piece together the bits of Europe, like Lord Carrington who was quoted earlier in this debate.

Last week, we had a debate on devolution and Europe, and the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, made a shrewd point when he said that it was a bit like having a Committee stage debate before we had the Bill. I plead guilty to doing the same again today, because I want to concentrate on one issue only: the effect that the Bill has on the Scottish Parliament.

The Scottish Government were promised an amendment to the Bill in the House of Commons. That never happened. The excuse was given that Damian Green had left the Government, so there was a bit of chaos. Chaos is almost the middle name of this Bill. It was not a very good excuse. I believe that the Scottish Government have been treated rather badly throughout this whole process. In the beginning, the Joint Ministerial Committee set up a European sub-committee, which was to meet monthly and to oversee the negotiations. In fact, it met monthly until February last year, when it suddenly stopped and did not meet again until October. Again, an excuse was brought forward—that there was an election. Come on, was it an election taking eight months? That was another excuse that did not wash. My noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness pointed out to the House that the principle of the Scotland Act of 1998 is that everything is devolved to the Scottish Parliament unless it is specifically reserved by statute in the schedules to that Act. This Bill cuts across that principle, in my view.

There is a serious problem, particularly with Clause 11. This is not just the view of the SNP in Scotland; it is the view of the Scottish Parliament as a whole. Its constitution committee said that Clause 11 of the Bill is,

“incompatible with the devolution settlement in Scotland”.

Now, the devolution settlement has worked extremely well, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, was arguing. We were debating that way back in 1997-98, when I came into the House, and very good debates they were. I think that Bill has turned out to be very satisfactory, but the genius at the heart of the devolution settlement, which was endorsed by the Scottish referendum and encapsulated in that Act, was that it gave a stable and sensible form of government. The trouble with Clause 11 is that it sweeps up the entirety of EU law and puts it beyond the powers of the devolved legislatures, and I think that is not really acceptable.

My noble friend pointed out that, when the Canadian Government were involved in the trade agreement across the Americas, they made sure that the provincial legislatures were in on the negotiations. Of course, they have a proper federal constitution and we do not, but that is still the principle that should have been adopted here. In the debate on Thursday, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, lamented that the SNP has no representation here in the House. It is now unacceptable, when the SNP forms the Government in Scotland, that they do not have anyone here in the revising chamber. That is largely their own fault, but the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, and I agree, that if the Burns committee report proceeds and the Government agree to the principle that future peerages are of 15 years, at that point the Scottish Government should reconsider their position and bring their voices to this Chamber. In the meantime, it is up to the rest of us to voice their concern, which is that of the Parliament as a whole and not just the SNP. The Conservative Members of the Scottish Parliament in particular fully support their constitution committee. It was a unanimous report that I quoted from a moment ago.

Earlier, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, spoke much more eloquently on this subject than I do. He is quite a remarkable man, because he gets away with saying things that the rest of us would not be allowed to say. He has that air of judicial authority and scholarship. When he says that King Henry VIII did not go to Scotland and Oliver Cromwell did, it is a devastating reflection on the state of this Bill. It is not the Henry VIII powers that matter; it is the fact that Oliver Cromwell dispensed with Parliament altogether. What this Bill does is to dispense with the Scottish Parliament. That is why it is unacceptable, and that is why we must have an amendment during Committee that puts right a totally unsatisfactory Bill as it stands.

Constitutional Convention Bill [HL]

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Friday 11th December 2015 Lords Chamber

Debate on whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, I was not able to be present at Second Reading and wish to say a few words on the proposal that Clause 1 stand part of the Bill. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Purvis on introducing the Bill. He is also my House of Lords office mate, so I know how much work he has put into this.

My main point is that those of us who attended the proceedings on the Scotland Bill earlier this week must have been struck by the number of speakers in all parts of the House who regretted the fact that we continue to have piecemeal approaches to constitutional reform, and by the number of noble Lords in all parts of the House who begged the Government to reconsider their rather supine attitude to the whole question of a constitutional commission or convention.

We not only have the Scotland Bill proceeding through the House without knowing what the financial arrangements are between the two Governments but the row in the other place over English votes for English laws. We also have the Constitution Committee of this House, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Lang, and the constitution committee of the other House, under the chairmanship of Bernard Jenkin. We have also had the all-party group on further decentralisation, of which my noble friend is a key member, and we have the other all-party group under the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, arguing very effectively for a new Act of Union. On top of all that, we await the deliberations of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on the relationship between the two Houses. And so it goes on and on, piecemeal approaches to constitution making—not to mention all the outside work that has been done by people such as Professor Bogdanor, the UCL Constitution Unit and many others. All the time, the Government seem just to guddle through on constitutional reform. That is a great mistake. Therefore, I strongly support Clause 1 and hope that the Government will give a positive response to it.

Clause 1 agreed.

Constitution: Gracious Speech

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, the House should be grateful to the Labour Party, and, indeed, to the noble Lord, Lord Wills, for introducing this timely subject. I suspect that much of this Parliament will be taken up with arguments on constitutional issues. We look forward with no hesitation to the Private Member’s Bill that my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed will introduce to the House for further debate in due course.

It was interesting that during the days of the debate on the gracious Speech so many Members on the Conservative Benches spoke in support of the idea of a constitutional convention. I hope that, at the end of today’s debate, the Minister will not be—how can I put it politely?—disappointingly coy on the subject of a constitutional commission or convention. I am sure that that is what is needed, rather than endless debates in both Houses of Parliament.

I shall make six points in my speech today, which means one point per minute. First, there is some confusion in the Government’s mind between devolution and home rule. My party has always believed in the latter. Jo Grimond put it very well when he wrote about the distinction:

“I do not like the word devolution … It implies that power rests at Westminster, from which centre some may be graciously devolved … Power should rest with the people who entrust it to their representatives to discharge the essential tasks of government. Once we accept that the Scots and the Welsh are nations, then we must accord them parliaments which have all the normal powers of government, except for those that they delegate to the United Kingdom government or the EEC”.

Jo Grimond was my great guru and I have always thought that that is a perfect description of the difference between devolution and home rule.

Secondly, people talk loosely about devo-max. I would rather talk about the maximum amount of home rule consistent with common sense—and it is common sense to retain a united foreign and defence policy together with a common currency, pension arrangements and macroeconomic strategy. The SNP based its financial forecasts at the time of the independence referendum on oil income at $105 per barrel. It has since fallen below $50 per barrel and is forecast to stay below $60 for the foreseeable future, which is why full fiscal autonomy is a dangerous myth.

Thirdly, that is why we need a constitutional convention or commission which would include more than just the political parties—as the noble Lord said in introducing the debate—to pursue a confederal approach to the United Kingdom. The arguments are not new. My distinguished predecessors as Liberal leaders, Mr Gladstone and Mr Asquith, both wrestled with “Home Rule All Round”, but were balked by the Conservative majority in the House of Lords. I hope that history will not repeat itself.

After the Parliament Act 1911, we had a very large, heavyweight constitutional commission, which reported in 1918 and recommended that this place should be elected by the other place. Of course, that was long before we had a Northern Ireland Assembly, a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly. The electoral potential today is much greater than was available to that commission in 1918. Professor Vernon Bogdanor, in a somewhat unprofessorial phrase in a recent article, said about the constitution of this country:

“If one joined a tennis club, paid one’s subscription, and asked to be shown the rules, one would not be pleased to be told that the rules had never been gathered together in one place, that they were to be found in past decisions of the club’s committee over many generations, and that they lay scattered among many different documents”,

and that in any case some of the rules—conventions—were not written down at all. That is a pretty good description of the constitution as we know it today.

Fourthly, I believe that any constitutional convention would have to include on its agenda a proposal to replace this House with a smaller senate elected by the component parts of the United Kingdom—the institutions in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland—and that, as far as the House of Commons is concerned, any such election should be by region to avoid the overweighting of London membership in a future Chamber. It should also include plans for an independent element such as we have now on the Cross Benches, which we would not wish to lose.

Fifthly, we in Scotland must wake up to the dangers of a one-party state. We are all proud patriots, but nationalism is never of itself a satisfactory creed, as has been seen in other countries, and can be seen today in the utterances of the cybernats. It is to the credit of Nicola Sturgeon that she has done her best to counter them, but at the next Scottish Parliament elections, less than a year away, we must roll back the drift towards an unhealthy one-party autocracy which we have north of the border.

Sixthly, and lastly, the noble Lord who introduced the debate mentioned electoral reform. It is interesting that after almost every election there is criticism of the electoral system but somehow, as Parliaments progress, that discontent dies away and we never get electoral reform. In creating the new Scottish Parliament, we at least created a proportional election system. I am not a great fan of the regional list system but at least it is proportional and it does mean that people are represented correctly in that Parliament. We also managed to obtain proportional representation for local government in Scotland, which means that every council elected in Scotland correctly represents the people in their area. I do not wish to be put off by reference to the past AV referendum, because that was not about proportional representation at all.

There is much work to be done by a constitutional commission. I hope that this little debate moves us directly in that direction.

Palestine: Recognition

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

That this House takes note of the Resolution of the House of Commons of 13 October 2014 that “this House believes that the Government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel, as a contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution”, and that this recommendation has also been adopted by the European Parliament, and the Parliaments of Sweden, France, Ireland, Portugal and Luxembourg.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, we might now add Spain to the words of the Motion. I am gratified that so many Members wish to take part in the debate, and I am conscious that the House expects to rise at seven o’clock. I join in that expectation, as I am booked on the last plane to Edinburgh, so I will attempt to be brief in my opening remarks.

First, I declare two interests. I was for seven years president of the excellent charity Medical Aid to the Palestinians. I am delighted that the current president, my noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton, will be taking part in the debate. Secondly, I am a paid-up member of the Friends of Israel, for the very good reason that I think that it is important always to distinguish between the State of Israel and the policies of the present Government of Israel. They are not the same, and too many people equate the two rather sloppily.

When I was leader of the Liberal Party, my Palestinian friends used to say, “It’s all your fault. It was under a Liberal Administration that the Balfour Declaration was first promulgated in 1917”. I am very proud of that, but I also remind people of the second part of that declaration, which states,

“it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.

I am afraid it is that section of the Balfour Declaration which has so often been forgotten.

As a young MP, I went on the parliamentary delegation to the General Assembly of the UN in 1967. I remember the excitement and enthusiasm of sitting in on the meetings with Lord Caradon, who was then our representative at the UN, when we secured UN Security Council Resolution 242. There was a sense then that this was the start of a really effective peace process, after the war in that area. How sad it is that more than 45 years later, we have to say that that optimism was completely misplaced.

Then in 1980, when I was party leader, I took a delegation of six colleagues around the Middle East to study the situation in detail. We were extremely well received by Heads of Government including President Assad in Syria—the dictatorial father of the current President—President Sarkis in the Lebanon, President Sadat in Egypt and King Hussein in Jordan. The one place where we were not received by the Head of Government was Israel. Why? Because Prime Minister Begin disapproved of the fact that in Damascus, we had had the temerity to have a meeting with Mr Yasser Arafat, the leader of the PLO. The fact that we had spent time in that meeting trying to argue him out of a section of the PLO covenant and into recognising the State of Israel was beside the point. We had spoken with the unspeakable. It is interesting how history repeats itself: just as it would not speak to the PLO then it will not speak to Hamas now, for exactly the same reasons.

On other occasions, I have visited the border towns in Israel of Sederot and Ashkelon. I therefore fully understand the sense of fear and terror under which they have to live, with the quite unacceptable raining down of rockets from Gaza on to these communities. These are not only disastrous but positively counterproductive for the peace process. The rockets of course inflict casualties on the citizens of Israel, but none of these casualties justifies the reaction of the Government of Israel in their two invasions of the Gaza Strip: in 2009, Operation Cast Lead, and, in 2014, Operation Protective Edge. In the first invasion, some 1,400 Palestinians were killed and in the second some 2,500—500 of them children. I visited Gaza again after Operation Cast Lead and I find it difficult to describe in the House the scale of the devastation that had been inflicted, never mind the deaths. Houses, schools, factories and even hospitals were destroyed in that operation. Indeed, I am surprised that there has not been a stronger reaction among the taxpayers of the European Union and the United States, considering that the airport opened by President Clinton in 1998 was destroyed. That airport cost us $86 million.

In 2002, the Arab Heads of State launched the Arab peace initiative, which promised to fly the Israeli flag in embassies in every Arab capital. It was an amazing breakthrough, repeated in 2007. Last year, some of us had the privilege of meeting upstairs in a committee room a group of Israeli businessmen. I say that they were businessmen because they stressed that they were not politicians. They were launching an Israeli peace initiative in response to the Arab peace initiative, and arguing that the peace process really ought to be conducted at international level by the Heads of Government. That is still a compelling process, given that the Israelis and Palestinians seem unable to reach any kind of peace agreement themselves.

Unfortunately, the present Government of Israel under Mr Netanyahu have consistently rejected those initiatives and continue to build settlements on the West Bank, now occupied by half a million citizens of Israel. They are, of course, totally illegal, as defined by the international court. Mr Netanyahu rejects that court: he even rejects the Israeli Supreme Court when it criticises the route of the security wall. Israel does not like the reference to apartheid, but the separate roads on the West Bank that can be travelled on only by Israeli citizens, and which I saw on recent visits, are strongly reminiscent of what I used to find in South Africa, as is the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel itself. In 2012, the 27 European Foreign Ministers issued a report saying that the attitude of the present Government of Israel threatens,

“to make the two-state solution impossible”.

The truth is that, under the present Administration, Israel has been losing friends. The one stroke of comfort we can take is that current opinion polls indicate that the Government may lose office in the coming election and be replaced by something a good deal better.

Why should we now echo what the House of Commons has already done? I use the words of our consul-general in Jerusalem, Sir Vincent Fean:

“The voices of moderation on both sides need encouragement. Those Palestinians who eschew violence and practise security cooperation with Israel need something to show for their pains—to prove that their peaceful efforts, not indiscriminate Hamas violence, will lead to two states”.

We are sending a signal from this House that we welcome and echo what the elected House has already done.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

I respectfully remind your Lordships that we have suggested an advisory time of four minutes to enable the House to rise at its customary time of 7 pm. It would be very much appreciated if your Lordships could keep to that advisory time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, I thank everybody who has taken part in this debate. It has been a very serious and sombre debate, and a very constructive one. I noticed two threads on both sides of the argument where we are in agreement. First, I think that everybody who has spoken spoke in favour of a two-state solution. That is quite important because so many commentators outside have rather given up on that. I thought that was a common thread in this debate, which was significant. Secondly, everybody agreed that we must reach the peaceful situation that we want to see through negotiation. That is not a quarrel between us and I quite agree that we have to get into negotiations.

The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, reminded us at the beginning that the recognition of the state of Israel came into being when it was not really in a fit state, so the same would be true of the state of Palestine. However, my mind goes back to the meetings in 1980, to which I referred. Although we did not meet with the Government of Israel, we met with the official opposition, which was then led by Shimon Peres, for whom I have always had a very good regard.

I will end by quoting something that was said by Abba Eban, who was Israel’s first representative at the UN and its Foreign Minister. He said this about the 1967 aftermath:

“The Jewish people fail to understand that there was something contractual in our entry into the world. We promised to share the territory. The present position (that is occupation of the Palestinian territories) is a deviation from our birth. I never knew of a country that could successfully throw its birth certificate away”.

I just hope that in the coming elections in Israel, we will find other statesmen of that calibre to replace the present promoters of government in that country.

Motion agreed.

House of Lords: Membership

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Higgins has done the House a great service in tabling this debate and I thank him warmly for it. I want to limit my remarks directly to the paper which has been tabled by the Clerk, but of course it originated in the report of the Leader’s Group entitled Members Leaving the House, which was published way back in January 2011. The group was chaired by the other Lord Hunt, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral. Paragraph 47 states:

“We recommend that a reduction in the number of members of the House should result in an overall saving to the taxpayer. We recommend that the possibility of offering a modest pension, or payment on retirement, to those who have played an active part in the work of the House over a number of years, should be investigated in detail, though on condition that this should come from within the existing budget for the House and should incur no additional public expenditure”.

I think we all agree on that, but we do not want to see ourselves pilloried in print for increasing public expenditure. The object of this exercise is to reduce it, as the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, made clear.

The Hunt committee went on to say, in paragraph 67:

“Whilst we cannot recommend that there should be a moratorium on new appointments to the House … we do urge that restraint should be exercised by all concerned in the recommendation of new appointments to the House, until such time as debate over the size of membership is conclusively determined”.

That, of course, has been cheerfully ignored. As we know, not only are the numbers going up but the cost to the public purse is going up. That will continue until we deal with the issue that the Clerk has very kindly put forward in the paper that has been put in the Library.

A couple of weeks ago, the Bill already passed by this House was taken up by Mr Dan Byles in the Commons. It got its Second Reading, and a pedantic Motion to put the Bill on the Floor of the House was defeated, so it has, properly, gone into Committee. We must hope that we will get that Bill back here. As we have already approved it, it should not be a problem to put it through the House. The important point is that the Bill simply confers the statutory authority that the Hunt committee said that it believed was necessary for the House to decide on what sort of retirement scheme should come into effect. The present so-called retirement scheme is nothing of the kind—it is simply an extended leave of absence. All those who think that they have retired from the House will find that, after the next election, they still get the Writ of Summons, because there is no capacity to create a retirement scheme at the moment. That is why we need the statutory provision and why I hope that the Byles Bill will succeed.

In an appendix to the Clerk’s paper, the finance director estimates that even if a voluntary retirement option was taken up by only 50% of those eligible in year 1, although it would cost £4.7 million, it would save £5.2 million. If the scheme kicked off at age 80, it would cost £3.9 million in year 1 and save £4.4 million. Whichever way you look at it, and however low or high the take-up, there would be a saving to public expenditure. We must, as a group, commend the Clerk’s report to the House as a whole and thank the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, for bringing it to our attention.

Human Rights: Burma

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords—

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I know that my noble friend Lord Alton is a courteous man, and will know that my noble friend Lady Berridge has been trying to get in, and indeed has started her question on four occasions. I am sure that the House might give my noble friend Lady Berridge a chance.

EU: Scottish Independence

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it would be quite a tall order for an independent Scotland to seek to negotiate opt-outs of both the eurozone and the Schengen agreement? While I am always very keen to see employment in the Scottish Borders, border posts were not something I ever had in mind.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It opens up all sorts of questions about the future of Gretna Green. There would also be a number of questions about Scotland having to negotiate for fishery quotas and for the financial contributions that Scotland would wish to make. Those who argue that it is Scotland’s oil would recognise, perhaps, that it would also be Scotland’s financial contribution.

House of Lords: Appointments

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I would welcome proposals from noble Lords as to how we achieve that. I have mentioned already the voluntary retirement scheme. Let us discuss off the Floor of the House the possible acceptability of a maximum age.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords—

[Lord Scott of Foscote]

My Lords—

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

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Friday 29th June 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, I am conscious that we have two other important Bills to deal with today and I am hopeful that we shall have a short and effective debate. The Bill contains precisely the same three provisions already approved by your Lordships in the previous Session in the Bill that we sent to the other place, where, in the words of the Leader of the House, it languished for some weeks. I hope that that will not happen again. I am reasonably assured that it will not and we therefore wish to send the Bill to the other place as soon as possible—I hope without any Committee or Report stage, given that we have discussed the provisions in detail on many occasions.

The Bill is neither in opposition to nor complementary to the government Bill that was published this week. The Government are dealing with fundamental changes to the House up to the year 2025. This Bill deals with changes to the House that are needed, and could be implemented, in this Session. That is a big difference. In any case, my view is—and I hope that I will not be misunderstood—that the least said about the other Bill during this debate the better.

This Bill has undergone some professional redrafting, including the change to the Short Title, which makes it clear that it has no ambition to be described as a reform Bill. It deals specifically with cessation of membership of the House. It introduces a fundamental change because, until now, all of us in this Chamber, whether we are here created as life Peers under the 1958 Act or as hereditary Peers under the 1999 Act, remain Members of this House for life, and there is nothing we can do about it. The Bill changes that in three important ways. Before I start describing the details, I am conscious that I am in danger of being guilty of tedious repetition, given that I have described the Bill on many occasions. However, let me briefly outline the three provisions.

First, it proposes that Members may cease to be Members of this House on a voluntary basis if they choose to retire. The Bill simply gives statutory effect to the recommendations of the all-party committee under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral that were published nearly two years ago. The committee recommended a voluntary retirement scheme that would reduce the numbers in this place and save the taxpayer money. There is of course no money provision in the Bill. It would be a matter for the House authorities, as recommended by the committee, to work up a scheme and, at the end of the day, for the House to approve any scheme. It would probably contain not a golden handshake, or even a silver handshake, but perhaps a bronze handshake as a token of recognition of service to the House. However, that is a matter for the House to decide in the future. What is required, as the committee told us, is a statutory authority, which is provided for in the Bill.

The second provision is for compulsory retirement for those who fail to attend in one Session. It may surprise Members to read, as I did the other day, that in the previous Session some 72 Members of the House failed to turn up; but, of course, they still receive papers and the Writ of Summons, and some of them occupy desks. Therefore, a provision that would reduce our numbers by some 10% would save money and administration, and is a sensible measure that every local authority in the land already implements.

The third provision is simply to bring us into line with the other Chamber by removing from Membership of the House those who are guilty of criminal offences and sentenced to a year or more in prison.

Those are the three provisions that we have discussed many times. I hope that we have a short debate and that the Bill will have a quick passage to the other place. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, the political classes are once again whipping themselves into a frenzy over the Government’s comprehensive reform Bill. As the comfortably familiar arguments from all sides roll out once again, the noble Lord, Lord Steel, continues on his quiet and indefatigable quest to reform your Lordships’ House piece by piece. Here is the latest instalment.

In my view this is a practical and sensible Bill. It makes provisions for membership of your Lordships’ House that are long overdue. The only conceivable reason for opposing it is that it will soon become unnecessary when the Government’s proposals for comprehensive reform for the House of Lords are passed into law. That might—I stress “might”—be a problem for the Bill. Why should precious legislative time be spent on a Bill that will soon become redundant?

The cynical may see this as an attempt to tackle an obvious problem with the way your Lordships’ House operates in order to weaken the case for more general reform. That might dispose those who favour making the House of Lords more accountable through the election of its Members—I am such a person—to oppose the Bill. However, that would be a mistake. The mishandling by the Government of their House of Lords Reform Bill has almost certainly doomed it. I regret that. I fear that the Government’s revised proposals—this is not the time to discuss them in detail—still fail adequately to address the Bill’s two fundamental flaws. One is a failure to provide an adequate mechanism governing the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament. The second is the length of term of the elected Members of the House, and the fact that they will not have to stand for re-election. I fear that the Government have botched the legislation so severely that it is too late for the Bill to make any serious progress in either House in this Parliament.

If this gloomy analysis is correct, it follows that the House must reform itself piecemeal—while at least some of us wait for a general election and perhaps another attempt at more comprehensive reform. This Bill contains some necessary reforms. Many noble Lords have long argued that there should be provision to retire. It is absurd that a Member of the House should be forced to remain a Member if they no longer wish to be one. It is a hangover from the days when membership was entirely hereditary, and it has no place in a modern Chamber. Nor can it be acceptable for anyone to enjoy the status and privileges of membership of the House when they cannot be bothered to turn up. Again, the Bill makes sensible, proportionate provision for that.

It is also clear that there must be an ability to expel Members of the House who have been convicted of a criminal offence. The current position, which is that no matter how grave their offence, a convicted criminal can remain a Member of the House, demeans Parliament. However, I should be grateful if the noble Lord would explain in a little more detail how he decided on his criteria for expulsion. I understand from the Library that they differ from those that apply in the other place. There it remains a matter of judgment for the House whether a conviction merits expulsion. In contrast, the Bill seeks to set down objective and immutable criteria. I understand the advantages of removing subjective judgments from the process. There is always a risk that Members of either House will be more sympathetic to those they know and may have been friendly with for many years than the cold facts of the case would merit and the public would consider fair. However, there is also a risk that rigid criteria might in certain circumstances lead to expulsion in cases where such a punishment may not be justified. I find it hard to imagine what those circumstances might be, but there must be at least a possibility that they could occur.

For example, let us consider the case of a Member of your Lordships’ House who takes part in a political demonstration for a cause in which they and many others passionately believe—not all passion is spent in your Lordships’ House, as we see in debates for example on this issue—and is found guilty of violent disorder. The offence often results in a sentence that would, under the terms of the Bill, lead to expulsion from the House. Such a sentence could be imposed for the offence of throwing a flimsy wooden placard in the direction of the police but not hitting anybody, in the heat of the moment. Would that really merit expulsion from the House when someone convicted in a magistrates’ court of head-butting a nurse while drunk in an accident and emergency department would receive a sentence that would allow him or her to remain a Member of the House?

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

The answer to the noble Lord’s question lies in Clause 3(5), which states:

“The Lord Speaker shall not issue a certificate under subsection (2) in respect of a conviction … if the House of Lords resolves that subsection (1) should not apply to the conviction by means of special circumstances”.

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the noble Lord but, with respect, the “special circumstances” do not take us much further. I would be grateful if he would say why he has not allowed the latitude that the other place allows but has set down specific requirements—for which I well understand the need—while then allowing the get-out clause that refers to “special circumstances”. I would be grateful if he would spell out what special circumstances are in his mind. I have given an example from my point of view and would be grateful if at some point—not necessarily today—he would spell that out. With that proviso—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I have given way a great many times, and I think that I ought to draw what I hoped would be my brief remarks to a close. The Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, is an extremely modest and incremental proposal. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, has already given notice that he intends to table amendments in Committee, but I trust that the Bill will pass relatively quickly through this House and will be perhaps an indication that there are at least some ways in which this House is willing to move on reform. On that basis, I hand back the wind-up to the noble Lord, Lord Steel.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all those who have taken part in this debate. I particularly liked the reference by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, at the beginning to not mentioning the war. It was inevitable, of course, that the two Front-Benchers, when winding up on my Bill, would talk of nothing else except the war. As for my noble friend Lord Fowler, he did not just mention the war—he positively conducted it single-handedly. I cannot possibly associate myself with his remarks of support. In the brief moment that he referred to my Bill, he made one point to which I would like to respond. He thought that I had been too generous in the drafting in saying that non-attendance should apply to a whole Session. I remind the House that I rather agree with that and, in the original Bill, the time of non-attendance was six months. But I was giving way to the feeling in the Committee stage on that Bill, which is why it ended up as a whole Session. So I do not think that we can keep going back and revisiting this issue; we discussed it at great length under the previous Bill, which is why we are where we are now. I hope that my noble friend accepts that.

In relation to the general war, let me say that this Bill is required even if the Bill as drafted by the Government were to sail through both Houses and come into full effect in 2025. We would still need this measure up till then. So regardless of any views that Members may have on the Government’s proposals, I think that this Bill should be proceeded with as soon as possible.

The noble Lord, Lord Wills, the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, all made reference to there being no appeal procedure for those expelled for reasons of criminal conviction. Initially the intention of my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth and me was to bring the rule in this House entirely into line with that in the House of Commons. If in the course of the redrafting we have somehow lost that, I will certainly look at it very carefully before Committee, in the light of the comments that noble Lords have made, and be in touch with them about it in the hope of trying to avoid amendments—but we may have to have amendments in Committee. It is a reasonable point. I assure Members that the intention was to make the rule in this House exactly the same as in the House of Commons.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, about retrospection, I assure noble Lords that I took very careful account of this, because I was concerned that it should not be retrospective. All the legal advice that I had was that it is not retrospective. In fact, no law is retrospective, unless it says so otherwise. So I was advised that it was not necessary to put a provision in saying that it was not retrospective because it manifestly is not. That is what I have been told and, therefore, Members can be assured that it is not retrospective in any shape or form.

My noble friend Lord Tyler was kind enough to refer to my excellent article in the Independent last week. That is not so much mentioning the war as, certainly, mentioning guerrilla tactics, so to speak. We certainly should not be trying to debate that now, but I disagree with his comments on my excellent article because the suggestions that I put forward for an elected House avoided a lot of the dangers which are present in the government legislation. However, that would be taking me away from the purpose of the Bill which, as my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire said, is a modest, effective measure. I hope that it will proceed.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.