House of Lords (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Trefgarne Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 1 and 3. I will not press Amendment 1; I will seek leave to withdraw it in favour of Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and Amendment 3.

In the original Bill, we agreed on Report to adopt an amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, exempting members of the Armed Forces from the new rules on compulsory expulsion from the House after six months’ non-attendance. He has since tabled another amendment to add the Diplomatic Service to that. It was my view that moving Amendment 3 and inserting into the Bill,

“, for example undertaking other public service”,

would cover both military and diplomatic service, and that the two amendments were therefore unnecessary. However, my noble friend Lord Trefgarne feels strongly that they should be included and one of my late missions in life is to keep him happy. Therefore, although I am happy not to press Amendment 1, I beg to move.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I agree with what my noble friend Lord Steel has just said and will speak to Amendment 2. I hope that is the right procedure. May I explain, in just a few seconds, why I am anxious that service both in the Armed Forces and in the Diplomatic Service should be exempt from the provisions on compulsory leave of absence? In both services, service overseas is part of the conditions of service. If you are in the Army and you are told to go to Afghanistan, you go. If you are in the Diplomatic Service and you are told to serve in Afghanistan, off you go, or you will lose your job. You have no choice. In other public service appointments, that is not necessarily the case. Therefore, these two services should be specially provided for. I will move Amendment 2 in a moment.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

I am happy to accept Amendment 2. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 1.

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Moved by

[Lord Trefgarne]

2: Clause 2, page 1, line 15, at end insert “, or the diplomatic service”

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[Lord Richard]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support what the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said. It is a difficult question. First, we have had some very complicated debates over the past few years as to power of the House to expel or suspend. I am not sure whether it is right to, in effect, give this House the power to expel a Member by a provision inserted at Third Reading of a Private Member’s Bill. Perhaps that is not the way we ought to do it. The principle that the House should have the power to expel may be right. It may even be right that the way to do it is by standing order. I am not sure about that.

Secondly, I strongly support what the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, had to say about the right of appeal. I should have thought that the one thing we would wish to do in a situation in which the House decided to expel someone was to keep the courts out of the decision. A situation in which there is an appeal to the courts or in which the courts can be appealed to, even if there is not a formal right of appea, would be dangerous. These are essentially parliamentary matters; they should be treated as such and the division of responsibility is in our constitution. It leaves the courts looking after judicial matters and Parliament looking after parliamentary matters. I do not want those two to be mixed.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I am afraid that I share the concern expressed by my noble friend Lord Caithness and the noble Lord, Lord Richard. The question of the validity of the Writ of Summons was tested at some length when the 1999 Bill was being considered by your Lordships, and the matter went before the Committee of Privileges on that occasion. It was the Association of Conservative Peers that took the matter to the committee—at some considerably expense, I might add. The answer was less than straightforward. I hope that my noble friend Lord Steel will agree that it is right to think further on this matter and perhaps to remove this provision, which may not be as sound as it should be, and wait for another legislative opportunity.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, on the second point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, I entirely agree that the phrase:

“A person expelled under this section … shall have a right of appeal against their expulsion”,

has to be read in the context of subsection (1) of the amendment, which is about the standing orders. There are two “mays” here. It is stated:

“Standing orders of the House of Lords may make provision under which the House of Lords may by resolution expel a member”.

There are two safeguards built into the wording, and I should have thought that no standing order would be agreed that tried to make this matter external to the House; it must remain within the rights of the House. I entirely agree with the noble Lord on that and it is fairly clear from the wording of the proposed new clause.

As to whether the clause should be there at all, I have to say that I was simply responding to the debates in Committee and on Report. It is not something that has just come up at Third Reading. I was genuinely trying to give effect to what other Members said during those proceedings. I am in the hands of the House. I would prefer to keep this in because the safeguard is there. The House of Lords authorities might decide to do nothing about it, but it is as well to give them the statutory authority to do it. On balance, I prefer to keep this proposed new clause in.

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[Lord Trefgarne]

I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Steel for his constructive response to some of the points that we have sought to make at various points during the passage of the Bill. On Report, he referred in some detail to his consultation with various unnamed Ministers about the possibility of financial encouragement for noble Lords who might wish to retire from your Lordships' House. When my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister came before the Joint Select Committee earlier this week, he was not wholly briefed on these matters—to put it mildly—and I wonder whether my noble friend has anything further he could say about government policy in this area.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

The answer to my noble friend Lord Trefgarne is that I wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister after Report, but it was obvious when he appeared before the noble Lord, Lord Richard, that he had not seen the letter. I am afraid that it disappeared into the bureaucracy—I have had that confirmed today—so he has yet to consider the points that I was making to him in much greater detail. So my noble friend must stop teasing me and just accept that these matters have yet to be decided and discussed.

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[Lord Cormack]

It could be a redacted version.

[Lord Trefgarne]

You could scratch out the names.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

Very well, but I trust the noble Lord, Lord Richard. I will happily send him a copy.