King’s Speech

Lord Strathclyde Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, I echo my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie in welcoming and congratulating the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General on his excellent maiden speech. I know we will hear from him a great deal in future, and I for one look forward to that.

On 11 July, the Lord Speaker wrote to all of us and sent us an email in which he said:

“We will, as always, continue our detailed scrutiny of legislation and debate the key issues of the day, while maintaining the respectful and thoughtful tone that characterises the work of this House”.


Those were good and noble sentiments from the Lord Speaker, yet within days the Government were planning a consultation to remove Peers over 80 and fling out Peers such as the Convenor of the Cross Benches, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull; the deputy Leader of the Opposition, my noble friend Lord Howe; several shadow Ministers; the Deputy Chief Whip, my noble friend Lord Courtown; and many former Ministers who have served in Governments and served the nation over many years—I should perhaps declare an interest. A respectful and thoughtful tone? I think not, even though the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General did his best to sugarcoat the pill.

Why are the Government proposing this? Some say it is because the House is too big, and there was an echo of that from the most reverend Primate who just spoke, but a reduction from 800 Peers to 710 is hardly going to have them cheering in the streets of Islington. Furthermore, the numbers in the House are not an obvious problem. In the last Session of Parliament, over 450 Peers voted on 16 occasions, nearly all of which were on the Rwanda Bill. That does not sound to me like an overcrowded House.

There are also many better ways of reducing the numbers if you really want to: by age, by failure to attend or by electing those to remain in party groups. It is all quite simple, really, and it has been done before. History tells us that Labour Governments have managed to get their business through quite easily within the existing conventions and normal practices that have governed our House’s behaviour since 1945. Just look at Attlee’s radical agenda in the late 1940s, Wilson and Callaghan in the 1960s and 1970s and Blair and Brown this century.

I am told that, for Labour, this is all unfinished business. It is unfinished business, but not in the way that Labour now means. The Government’s predecessors struck an important and worthy agreement, negotiated by the then Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, to let the former hereditaries remain in the House until a proper stage two reform was enacted. So I ask: is this really it? It is thin gruel indeed and not much to show for 25 years of thought or, more properly, lack of ambition.

Labour’s manifesto is more ambitious—age limits, tougher scrutiny through the appointments process and attendance or participation hurdles—but, as soon as Labour is in government, all that is conveniently put to one side. As for elections or even indirect elections, there is not a glimmer.

In 2012, another place voted overwhelmingly in favour of a genuinely democratic House of Lords Reform Bill that included an 80:20 split of elected Members. The Bill foundered for lack of agreement on a timetable Motion. Perhaps we should ask this House of Commons whether they have become more flexible.

The hereditary peerage was abolished in 1999. As my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie said, no right of succession has existed since then. I accept that heredity is a qualification for the excellent by-elections, but even I can see that the intention is that they will not remain for long.

So I ask the Minister: why on earth are the Government continuing some strange vendetta against a small group of Peers who are generally younger, more regular attenders and better participators in the House than the average, yet the Government are still unable to tell us their long-term vision for the House? We should not accept more bungled piecemeal reform until we have the certainty of proper reform that has been promised for so long.

Scotland within the United Kingdom

Lord Strathclyde Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

I congratulate the Government on this Statement and the response of the Labour Party by the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, for its unity of view. It fulfils the first part of the promise that was laid out during the referendum campaign and which has been monstrously slurred by the separatists over the course of the last few weeks. The noble Baroness is right and I share her view that when it comes to the commission of our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Smith, he will find it very difficult to produce anything that the separatists themselves will not say is too little, too late, not enough, will not do, and breaks the fundamental promises given during the referendum campaign. I very much hope that the Government will be wise to that and give full support to the noble Lord, Lord Smith, in his endeavours.

My noble and learned friend correctly pointed out the scale of the victory in the referendum for those who wished to remain part of the United Kingdom. This Statement is rightly about strengthening the Scottish Parliament. However, there is another side to this equation, which is also strengthening the United Kingdom and strengthening other parts of the United Kingdom within the overall devolution settlement. The two or three issues do not need to be tied together, but they cannot be left behind. We have to come forward with constitutional proposals which are going to be fair for representation and for taxpayers right across the United Kingdom. It is only in that way that we will avoid in another generation being faced with an argument about separatism again.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his words and for the contribution that he made in chairing the Conservative Party’s contribution to the debate on the powers of the Scottish Parliament. He is right to indicate that it is Scotland within the United Kingdom. I think we made it clear that it is time for the United Kingdom to come together and move forward. Part of that will be a balanced settlement that will be fair not only to the people of Scotland but also to the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. He will be aware that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has asked the Leader of the House of Commons, my right honourable friend William Hague, to draw up plans for that. I hope that they can be taken forward on a cross-party basis. But my noble friend’s underlying point is correct: we need to ensure that there is a sense of fairness in all parts of our United Kingdom.

Scotland: Independence

Lord Strathclyde Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham has regrettably been called away but I very much hope that we shall hear from him again on another occasion.

I am a unionist. I believe that because of our shared culture, economy and geography the people of these islands are better served by being part of the governance of the United Kingdom rather than being divided. I am Scottish and British; I have no difficulties with any of that. I wholly support my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness when he listed all the great things that Scotland has achieved over the past 300 years as part of this extraordinary union, rather than in spite of it.

However, there is a voice that is missing in this afternoon’s debate: the voice of Scottish nationalism. I know that this will sound strange, coming from me, but there is nothing like the power of debate. I do not actually know whether anybody is going to speak up in favour of breaking up the United Kingdom—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, may be tempted to do so—but we need to hear another view. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, and his noble friend Lord Wigley will forgive me if I say that on this occasion, Welsh nationalism is not enough.

I very much regret that in my time in government, I did not succeed in getting Scottish nationalists into this House. I urge the Scottish National Party to nominate one of their number to sit in this House, and if not I urge Her Majesty’s Government to invite a Scottish nationalist to come and sit here. I can tell them from experience that the invitation of this honour is rarely refused. We all know that there are eloquent and capable Scottish nationalists—I will not name them for fear of damaging their chances of coming here or of embarrassing them—who would make excellent Peers even if we disagree with their views.

I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton has taken over as chairman of the Constitution Committee. He brings an experience, a knowledge and, if I may embarrass him for a moment, a wisdom that is shared by very few: that of being a former Secretary of State for Scotland, with all the complexities of that, and of being a Secretary of State for a UK-wide department in the Cabinet. I am sure that that experience will be brought to bear during the course of his chairmanship and that we will all be the richer for it. The strength of his report is to highlight the long and difficult process of division. The report is dry as dust and all the better for it. Let no one be under any illusions about the huge complexities of disentangling the British constitution.

As the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, pointed out just now in his examples, there are many things that few of us have thought about which would need to be disentangled and reinvented—and for what? We really are guddling about in the entrails of the ties that bind us. It would be much worse than any divorce that any of us have witnessed.

Last year, the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, Ruth Davidson, invited me to chair a committee on the future governance of Scotland. The premise of this commission was a simple one: in the event of a no vote, what should be the position of my party in Scotland? Our analysis was also very simple. First, we said that the Scottish Parliament is an immensely powerful body. It has not always used the powers that it has available, but it is a very powerful body within the United Kingdon.

Secondly, the Scottish Parliament can spend an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money, but it does not raise any money. Therefore, our primary recommendation —to try to avoid that grievance culture that is sometimes apparent between Holyrood and Westminster—was that the Scottish Parliament should be responsible for raising income tax, setting the rates and the bands within Scotland, so that anybody earning money in Scotland should be paying income tax, and that income tax would go to the Scottish Parliament and should be spent in Scotland on the priorities of the Scottish Parliament. It is a substantial and visible tax paid by many, and an attempt to bridge the fiscal gap: the difference between what the Scottish Parliament raises and what it spends. I believe that this will begin to ensure a process of greater accountability.

We also made recommendations on improving legislative scrutiny within the Scottish Parliament and improving the checks and balances. But we also concluded—and this has already been apparent in the course of this afternoon’s debate—that the United Kingdom is no longer at ease with itself. The referendum campaign has exposed some serious misunderstandings about the United Kingdom and its role and about the role of this Parliament and those who sit in it. It has exposed many people who feel cut off from the processes and happy to accept that silvery-tongued line from Alex Salmond and others. The union has been threatened like never before.

I am not one who is hugely in favour of royal commissions and constitutional conventions. They have not always succeeded in the past. But in rediscovering the glue that holds us together, we should use the new, existing institutions that have been created over the course of the past 15 years. So, the final recommendation of my committee’s report was that we should create a committee of all the Parliaments and Assemblies of the United Kingdom to consider the developing role of the United Kingdom, its Parliaments and Assemblies and their respective powers, representation and financing.

The noble Lord, Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, made some useful points precisely about this and it is important that we should try to get this right. If we do, we might just be able to create a stronger centre and a stronger acceptance of what the union Parliament is for—the House of Commons and House of Lords here at Westminster—with strong bodies in the countries and regions of the United Kingdom: in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This prize is definitely worth voting no for and building on the tremendous institutions that we already have.