Iraq: Chilcot Inquiry

Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Lord Strathclyde

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, my noble friend is correct to draw attention to the report. I can confirm the seriousness with which the Government will accept the report. It perhaps is worth pointing out that Sir John Chilcot, the chairman of the inquiry, has advised that the inquiry will be able to submit its report to the Prime Minister once it has given those who may be subject to criticism in the report the opportunity to make representations to the inquiry before the report is finalised. The inquiry has concluded that it will be in a position to begin this process, known as Maxwellisation, by the middle of next year.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, in replying to the Question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, the Minister gave no reaction to the noble Lord’s use of the word illegal. Was that an oversight or does he agree with that analysis? If he does not agree with it, will he confirm that it was a quite legal action that we were engaged in?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I would not want anyone to think that I was agreeing with either the word “illegal” or “legal”. The inquiry is taking an enormous amount of evidence, which, no doubt, will be published in several volumes. At that stage, we will be able to take a far better and more rigorous view as to exactly what happened.

EU Council

Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Lord Strathclyde

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the tone of the Statement, which I am grateful to him for repeating, was rather arrogant when it spoke about Britain “setting the agenda” and “leading the way”? That is the sort of leadership that this country can well do without—isolating ourselves from the mainstream of Europe. Will the Leader of the House also acknowledge that although he spoke about defending our interests, there is a lot to learn from Mrs Thatcher? She never sought to defend our interests by leaving a Council meeting and walking out. The way she defended our interests was to stay and fight for them. I have a specific question to the Minister. When he talks in the Statement about a fully functioning single market in services, is that supposed to include financial services?

[Lord Strathclyde]

Very much so, my Lords. We want to see the completion of a single market and the digital economy. It is not arrogant to say that the United Kingdom has been at the forefront of the growth agenda. It is Britain that has been pointing out the dangers of overcentralisation, overbureaucratising, and overexpensive institutions that militate against the interests of the free market that will in the long term provide the jobs we need, not just in this country but throughout Europe.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Lord Strathclyde

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I cannot say whether or not the Government have taken legal advice on this specifically, but my reading of that judgment and my understanding of the constitutional position is that the Parliament Act would apply to a Bill brought similarly along the lines of the draft Bill published today.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, will the noble Lord accept that the part of his Statement in which he referred to Mr Clegg’s committee and that—as I think my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition said—it last met in November, is little short of scandalous, given that it purports to be representing different points of view? Based on the number of options that we have, what has Mr Clegg been doing since November —working out permutations of possibility?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the Joint Committee—on which the noble Baroness sat and was such a distinguished and senior member—met, I think, on seven occasions. I cannot remember whether the last time was in November or December, but it is true that there has been a gap of several months before we have been able to publish this today. There is nothing in the White Paper with which the leadership of the Labour Party, the shadow Cabinet or indeed the noble Baroness would seriously disagree. It is a pretty good distillation of the consensus or, in some instances, the lack of consensus that was reached in that Joint Committee.

European Council

Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Lord Strathclyde

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

It is immensely interesting to hear of my noble friend’s dining partners and the conversations that he had. I hope that he will update us regularly.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, the Statement is in two parts. Might I ask a question about each? On the terrorist incident, perhaps the noble Lord could explain why the Prime Minister was not informed about the terrorist threat at East Midlands Airport until lunchtime on Saturday, when it became quite clear yesterday, in the answers given by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, that other Ministers in the Cabinet knew some hours earlier. I hope that he can explain that to us.

Turning to the European Council, I noticed with great interest that the noble Lord read over it very quickly, without his customary emphasis. He was, of course, trying to divert us from some of its content. First, we have it quite clearly in the Statement that,

“we voted for a freeze seeking to block the 2.9 per cent”.

But then a few sentences later, it says:

“So before the Council started we began building an alliance to take a different approach and insist on 2.9”.

We had the spectacle of our Prime Minister almost trying to deceive the people of this country by standing on the steps of the Council and claiming that he was going in there to fight for a zero increase when, as we now know from his Statement, he had before going into the Council meeting tried to build an alliance for 2.9 per cent. Does he think it an honest way of dealing with Parliament and the British people to try to pretend that he was fighting for a freeze on the one hand when, before he went in to fight for it, he was already seeking an alliance to support 2.9 per cent?

Will the noble Lord concede that if he really wants to get to grips with budget discipline, he should not be arguing just about the size of the budget? It would be helpful if he and his Government took a lead in supporting some of the ideas that came from members of the budgetary control committee—including me when I was there—to start introducing a serious attempt at zero-based budgeting, so that you look at budget lines afresh each year rather than just looking at the budget as it was and adding a bit more to it. That would be a serious attempt at budget discipline.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I cannot help the noble Lord on his question about the terrorist incident. I am sorry that he did not have the opportunity to ask my noble friend yesterday when she made the Statement.

I do not know what the noble Lord has been dreaming about on the role of the Prime Minister, the 2.9 per cent, when it was agreed and so on. I am utterly clear that unless the Prime Minister had taken a firm stand on the 2.9 per cent, we could well have seen what happened before—it happened last year when the Labour Government were in charge—where the negotiation between the Council and the Parliament ended up with a middle way, a sort of halfway house between the two figures. We wanted to avoid that; we wanted to ensure that not one extra pound should be spent, and that is what has happened. I also note that the noble Lord would have been perfectly happy to have signed up to 6 per cent. That is what most of his colleagues did in the European Council, and it is of course the cost that has increased exponentially over the past few years.

As for the question on budget discipline, we are trying to give direction and budget discipline to the European Union by sticking out for the agreement of 2.9 per cent.

Financial Provision for Members

Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Lord Strathclyde

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

I have already said how grateful the House should be to my noble friend. He has come up with an immensely useful and helpful report. It is now in the Printed Paper Office and I hope that noble Lords will take the trouble to read it.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords—