Queen’s Speech
Lord Tyler Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Tyler (LD) [V]
My Lords, according to Mr Johnson, the public “don’t give a monkey’s” whether he and his party have cheated and broken electoral law, so did the election results last week bear him out? They did up to a point; 36% voted for his candidates and 64% did not. Taking turnout into account, he could claim about 15% of the eligible electorate.
Trust is an essential ingredient in our democracy. Trust in our system of governance and in those who currently exercise it is dangerously low. We do not have to go far to discover why: the public do not recognise, in the Government, respect for the seven Nolan principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. It is very timely that the Committee on Standards in Public Life is now examining the extent to which these principles are being adhered to. It will have to add the Government’s legislative proposals to its analysis.
The absurdly misnamed electoral integrity Bill should be high on this list. Evidence of the alleged problem of fraudulent voting in polling stations is virtually non-existent; there was just one conviction out of the 47.5 million people who were registered to vote in the 2019 general election, and I discovered that that case had nothing to do with fraud. The offender was told that he was not on the register, so he picked up a ballot box to try to prevent others voting.
No. 10 is so weak in its supporting arguments that it claims that photo IDs are necessary for taking out library books and collecting a parcel, which simply is not true. It is a poor advert for a Bill when Ministers have to employ obvious lies and exaggeration to justify it. Its real purpose is to exclude those eligible electors who are less likely to vote Conservative, up to 3 million people who at the moment have no photo ID, comprising of older people, some ethnic groups and new vote attainers in particular. That is straight out of the Trump-Republican voter suppression gambit. To increase trust, we should be insisting on more thorough registration of those who are entitled to vote, not driving them away.
The other related proposal seems designed to increase the number of overseas-resident millionaires who can donate to the Conservative Party. This should be read alongside the proposals from Mr Gove and his colleagues in the Cabinet Office to hugely increase the limits on national party campaign spending. Taken with the attempt to overturn the court judgments on the responsibility of candidates and their agents for spending in constituency campaigns, this is a deliberate plan to reduce the integrity of elections. Millions more could be spent in target seats, with inadequate transparency. The Government should instead be addressing the known weakness of the transparency of lobbying Act. As Mr Cameron himself said, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Meanwhile, the Home Secretary is apparently attempting to undo Parliament’s relatively recent insistence that metro mayors and police and crime commissioners should receive effective majority support to qualify themselves for wide-ranging individual powers. Fiddling the electoral system there, just because Tories benefit from the distortions of the first past the post system, is hardly conducive to trust and integrity. Taking a rigorous look at the proven illegality of leave campaigners in the 2016 referendum, and publishing in full all the evidence of foreign interference, then and since, including that from the Russians, would be genuinely addressing the lack of electoral integrity.
The Government are seeking to concentrate more power in the hands of the Prime Minister, with the right to dissolve or prorogue Parliament at a time to suit his own and his party’s interests. I have recently re-read the 1976 Dimbleby lecture of the former Lord Chancellor Viscount Hailsham, a true Tory if ever there were one. He reminded us, as has the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, today, that the Government are accountable to Parliament, not the other way round. Lord Hailsham cited the dissolution power as an example—one of many—of what he warned was an insidious slide from parliamentary democracy into “elective dictatorship”. He also, incidentally, showed how even then, 45 years ago, the electoral system had failed to keep up with the changes in British society, and recommended a fresh look at the case for more representative democracy.
Last Thursday, the majority of those who voted in English local council elections were cheated of any impact on the result. Now that their Scottish fellow citizens are already benefiting from better representation, with the Welsh soon to follow, surely it is intolerable that the English should be so disadvantaged on such a crucial democratic level, in our so-called United Kingdom. That really is an issue of electoral integrity and one that must urgently be addressed if trust is to be restored.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Tyler Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Young, because he has of course been a long-term champion of parliamentary democracy in an unrivalled way. By contrast, Mr Dominic Cummings is not a Conservative and he certainly does not wish to conserve the UK constitution. Neither is he, we understand, a member of the Conservative and Unionist Party; indeed, he seems to be all too eager to unlock the union. Yet his personal agenda is all too evident in the 2019 Conservative manifesto and its sketchy reiterations in the gracious Speech.
The proposed
“Royal Commission to review and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the criminal justice process”
raises vital issues of priority, principle and practicality. Noble Lords may query whether the emphasis is right. Efficiency and effectiveness are means to an end, but the purpose of the process is to ensure that justice is done for the citizen, not just for the convenience and funding constraints of the state.
However, at least this is to be a royal commission, with all the traditional virtues of independence of the Executive that it involves. This is not so, apparently, for the constitution, democracy and rights commission, to which the noble Lord, Lord Young, just referred. Given that the only example included in the gracious Speech under this heading is the threat to
“repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act”,
this may be a crass attempt by Mr Cummings to “take back control” to No. 10, rather than a genuine, independent, cross-party and long-overdue initiative to bring our representative democracy into the 21st century.
Incidentally, it is not straightforward, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, suggested. As Mr Cummings will discover, repeal of this Act would not just restore status quo ante. If the Government really want to take back from the Commons the dissolution decision, so that once again the captain of one political team would have the right to blow the final whistle whenever he or she thought that they were winning, this will require new legislation, otherwise it will not fulfil its purpose.
The manifesto promised to
“protect the integrity of our democracy.”
It has been the consensus across parties, and widespread in the body politic, that the most damaging threat has come from the failure of regulation and the regulators to transfer from the analogue to the digital campaign age, as has just been said. The investment of huge sums of money—much of it allegedly foreign and potentially illegal—in the 2016, 2017 and 2019 electoral campaigns by this means seems not to have been considered worthy of mention. We are still waiting for action on the various recommendations in 2019 to the Cabinet Office on this issue.
Some of the issues referred to specifically, such as
“the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts … the role of the House of Lords … the balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government”,
should certainly cause concern on all sides today—and well they may, given that the approach of Mr Cummings sounds like demolition rather than just better definition. We may well be drifting to a situation where No. 10 is trying to move towards an elective dictatorship; I see that the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, will speak later.
At St Margaret’s this morning, the order of service asked us to pray that the officers here
“may properly enable the work of government.”
Fortunately the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, was leading us at that point in the service and she firmly changed this to “the work of Parliament.” Since 1688 the Government have been answerable to Parliament, not the other way around. We may need to remind the present Administration of that at regular intervals in the next few years.
The greatest weakness in our democracy, displayed for all to see by last month’s election, was the extent to which its voting system cheats our citizens. Compare the number of votes it takes for them to elect a Green MP compared with a Scottish nationalist. The ratio of inequality is 33:1. The manifesto promises action:
“making sure that every vote counts the same—a cornerstone of democracy.”
The Government must make clear that this is impossible with the first-past-the-post system. To fulfil the promise of equal voting value, electoral reform must feature in the remit of the commission.
Dominic Cummings boasts of his insurrection against the metropolitan elite in Parliament and the Civil Service. Since he is a product of an unfashionable fee-paying school and read history at Exeter College, Oxford, just like me, I suppose that I should rejoice in his rebellious company. I do not deny the need for a radical reappraisal of our constitutional settlement. I am just not convinced that he truly believes in parliamentary democracy.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Tyler Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, I wish to concentrate of the Government’s promise to,
“protect the integrity of democracy and the electoral system”.
It has been suggested that their intention is to address only an alleged, tiny and peripheral problem of impersonation at polling stations. I shall come back to that later. Far more important and urgent are a number of reforms which are necessary, and which have been the recommendation of the official bodies that advise Parliament, to make our electoral law fit for purpose.
First, following the Supreme Court judgment last year, election candidates and their agents need the clarity of the recent codes of practice from the Electoral Commission to be approved. Without them, the dividing line between national campaign and constituency campaign expenditure will remain a dangerous legal minefield for all those involved in elections.
Secondly, and similarly, it would be unthinkable to trigger a general election in the next few months without implementing the unanimous recommendation of the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Electoral Commission and the DCMS Select Committee that there must be effective transparency for all online political messages. This should apply especially within the short campaign period for an election and for a referendum, but the law must move on from the analogue age to embrace digital campaigning. Facebook and the other platforms have recognised the need for this, but surely it should not be left to those commercial organisations to protect the integrity of our electoral process.
Thirdly, legislation for a possible people’s vote referendum has already been drafted by the cross-party and non-party group that I convened last year. We were able to demonstrate that the objections of the Brexiteers that it would take too long to implement were unfounded. It could be done in weeks. Indeed, a legal source said today that it could be done in six weeks, as was the case in 1975. The timetable we presented to the Cabinet Office envisaged a one-clause paving Bill to enable the Electoral Commission to begin its consultations immediately, while the fuller Bill would remove the defects of the 2015 Act. The choice would be much simpler than in 2016. The Government’s proposal would have to be clearly stated in a White Paper as an alternative to the equally clear proposition of remaining exactly as we are now. Where there is a political will there must surely be a parliamentary way. If diehard MPs or Members of your Lordships’ House attempted to filibuster, they would surely be exposed as wishing to sabotage the “will of the people”—to use the expression that they themselves like to use.
Fourthly, in its recent report the Electoral Commission highlights the extent to which the register is neither complete or accurate; it should surely be a priority task for government to improve the integrity of the electoral system to make it as easy as possible for all eligible citizens—at home or abroad—to register and then to vote. We should be improving the number of people voting, rather than discouraging them from doing so as active citizens.
The commission chairman highlights that only 71% of young people aged 18 to 34 in Great Britain are correctly registered and that, overall, 17% of eligible voters here are not correctly registered at their current address. These are major defects and they require immediate attention. These issues must be taken alongside the entirely justifiable challenges put before your Lordships this afternoon by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, and my noble friend Lord Beith. Our constitutional settlement is very vulnerable.
By contrast, the incidence of fraud at the polling station is minuscule. The additional cost to local authorities of providing the new ID for the millions who have no passports or driving licences should itself be challenged as dubious value for money. More relevant, surely, would be to sort out the problem identified by the RNIB with the “tactile voting device” provided for blind and partially sighted electors. The court judgment that these arrangements are a,
“parody of the electoral process”,
should lead to urgent government action.
I appreciate that the Minister replying to this debate will not be able to answer all these points, but I expect a detailed response from the Cabinet Office Minister in due course—when one is recruited. Apparently, no Cabinet Office Minister is answerable to your Lordships’ House at the moment.
Meanwhile, I make a plea for a much needed change in the level of public discourse. It has fallen to very unsatisfactory depths. Ministers’ talk of “saboteurs”, “the surrender Act” and “the people versus Parliament” may suit the short-term machinations of Mr Cummings, but it is doing long-term damage to our body politic. In the Times on 2 October, Jenni Russell summed it up:
“Talk of betrayal will rebound on the Tories: Distrust is not a genie that can be put back in the bottle once those in power have exploited it”.
My noble friend Lord Paddick referred to the need for trust in our political system, and the noble Lord, Lord Cooper, pointed out recently that his focus groups were horrified by the extent to which people misunderstood what the Government were putting before them. Oversimplified slogans do not help to reinforce trust. Given that the only sure way to avoid years of Brexit bickering—whether with the Johnson deal or even no deal—is to stop Brexit now, the slogan “Get Brexit done” is a recipe for yet more disillusion, alienation and a genuine feeling of betrayal.
Local Elections (Northern Ireland) (Election Expenses) Order 2019
Lord Tyler Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Tyler (LD)
The Minister was very generous in his contribution on this issue in February of last year, and I endorse what my noble friend has said. But that was 12 months ago, and it is precisely because these elections are important that this issue of transparency remains so clear in our minds as something that needs to be cleared up as soon as possible. Of course we know that the transparency is there for the future, but clearing up what has happened in the past remains a very important political issue for a number of the reasons that have been given. In the context of the constitutional crisis of the next few weeks, to which the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Murphy, have referred, in which Northern Ireland—where there is such a democratic deficit—is so central, the need for clarity and transparency is all the greater. I understand what the Minister is saying, but coming 12 months after he gave an undertaking that progress would be made on the issue of transparency of election funding, it is, frankly, not good enough to say that we will postpone it a bit longer because there is another election coming up. It is not good enough, and it adds to the feeling that Northern Ireland is being treated in a way which is not in alignment with the rest of the United Kingdom at a time when it is extremely sensitive. The Minister himself says that the purpose of this order is to bring Northern Ireland into alignment with Great Britain. Here is another area where it should have happened long ago.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
I will accept the criticism. I will not try to defend myself on that point either. We should be able to make progress on this matter, and I hope we can do so, but at this moment I cannot give an undertaking that progress will be made in the short term. For that I apologise.
If I may move on to some of the other issues raised in this particular debate, my noble friend Lord Lexden asked why it has taken so long. In actual fact, although we are reforming an Act which dates to the 1980s, the reform itself was not instituted in the 1980s. We are bringing ourselves into alignment not that long, broadly speaking, after the rest of the United Kingdom, and I hope that we will be able to make that progress today. My noble friend is also correct in looking at how the reorganisation has worked in Northern Ireland. As the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, has also pointed out, we do not yet have enough information to be able to assess that accurately and in the detail which we would require, but we will have to do so to make sure there was some value in undertaking the revision and reconstruction of those particular wards.
I note also the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, on how larger wards by their nature tend to create a greater distance between the individual constituents—if you will—and those who represent them. I was the former MEP for the whole of Scotland. Frankly, I was widely unknown everywhere in Scotland, but none the less I recognise that the shortening of the proximity between those who do the electing and those who do the response is a challenge. It is greater challenge for those with a larger constituency, particularly if that constituency is a rural one where there will, by its nature, be greater challenges. I accept that on the whole.
My noble friend Lord Cormack is right, as the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, has also pointed out, that we should use every opportunity to flag up where we are on the wider question. Two weeks ago, I hoped to be able to report on greater progress from the first meeting of the political parties in Northern Ireland. I was disappointed that I could not do that at the time. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland continues to meet them, and we are hopeful that we will be able to bring about the gathering which needs to take place as a precursor toward establishing the Assembly in a meaningful way with an Executive drawn therefrom.
We have not yet made that progress, but in truth we will have an opportunity to look at this in greater detail when the Executive formation extension element moves the deadline of 26 March to five months hence. I will bring back that very point to your Lordships’ House for a full debate. We can open that window of a further five months only if we have progress to report. Otherwise noble Lords will legitimately ask us, “What has changed? Why can we move forward at all?”. Noble Lords will say that to me, and I hope to bring forward on that occasion far more detail than I will give them today. At that point, I will explore exactly what we have done to try to bring those parties together.
There is no point in pretending that Brexit is not a part of it—I would sound very foolish if I pretended that—but we have to recognise that we are where we are, and it is against that backdrop that we must make progress. We do not get to choose the timing of these issues; we have to work with what we have before us.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, for raising the important report, which I have read in part. The issue of transparency is absolutely at the heart of Northern Ireland. There needs to be that confidence, which is why the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, needs to be made; we need to have confidence not just in going forward, but also in the past. We need to have that. We need it as quickly as I can bring it back here, and I will bring it back here as quickly as I can.
I am conscious that the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, flagged up an important debate next week on the wider budget, and we will have longer to discuss in some detail the functioning of the Northern Ireland Civil Service and the delivery of services, and each of the challenges which go with it. I know that we will have a thorough discussion on that occasion.
The restoration of the institutions is important. My noble friend Lord Cormack asks, “Why cannot the Assembly meet again? At least get one of the institutions sitting to explore these issues”. I will take that away again for further consideration, but I do not believe that it should be ruled out of hand. Every possible avenue needs to be explored at this point.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill
Lord Tyler ExcerptsMonday 19th March 2018
(6 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 View all European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 79-IX Ninth marshalled list for Committee (PDF, 218KB) - (19 Mar 2018)
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, before the noble Baroness leaves the issue of fees, it was fairly clear earlier that the House probably would not accept that fees could be charged without primary legislation: we do not accept that the power to do that should be by secondary legislation. Assuming that we win on that, which I think we might, when we come to Report, I think it unlikely that the House will want to accept the idea that those fees could then be hiked by a Minister without coming through the affirmative procedure. Given that the Minister said that she would look at this in the broader context that this is a new power to set up fees for new functions being brought over, raising them without an affirmative procedure is perhaps a step too far.
Lord Tyler (LD)
Further to that point, am I not right in thinking that the reference back under the amendment to Part 1 of Schedule 4 means that we are talking about public authorities, not just Ministers? Will the Minister comment on the number of organisations that may fall into this category? I recall a previous discussion where it was clear that literally hundreds of organisations might be making such modifications to taxes or charges. So this is not, in her words, a small, technical matter; it could apply to a large number of organisations which could impose considerable increases in taxes and charges.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I am an eternal optimist, which somehow goes with the territory of being a Liberal.
What a wonderful thing it would be if out of this dismal, divisive, deceptive process we could achieve a modest but beneficial change to the way in which Parliament works. This group of amendments, all of which I enthusiastically support, offers a very timely, perhaps even unique, opportunity to improve the co-ordination between the two Houses in our joint scrutiny of secondary legislation proposed by the Government of the day.
Long after Brexit has been forgotten and we cannot remember what it was all about, we could still benefit from a rebalancing of the power between the legislature and the Executive as promoted by this group of amendments. Your Lordships will have noted the formidable supporters and signatories.
I have been involved at both ends of this building in attempts to improve the quality of secondary legislation. It has been a very difficult task and a cross-party task, and it has taken place under different Governments, but at every stage I have been reminded that, if Parliament did not have an unchallenged monopoly in the manufacture of regulation, our customers would cheerfully take their business elsewhere because, frankly, the quality of our product is pretty variable. A succession of investigations and reports carried out internally, and by very professional external observers such as the Hansard Society, have come up with two perpetual areas for criticism and need for reform.
First, the interface between the scrutiny work of the two Houses has been rightly identified as at best disjointed and at worst counterproductive, and Ministers in successive Administrations have been able to divide and rule. Amendments 237 and 237A address this very important issue. They draw on the analysis of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and the principal architecture for the improved, co-ordinated sifting system, which is set out in Amendment 237, is signed by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who was here earlier this afternoon and is chairman of that committee.
The second weakness in the present system is even more profound. In essence, Parliament—both Houses individually and together—is faced at present with a dangerous false choice: either to accept an obviously inadequate addition to the law of the land, perhaps with a devastating impact on individuals or interests, or, as my noble friend Lord Sharkey said, to take the nuclear option and reject an SI outright. I remind those who claim that the latter option is “unconstitutional” that the Joint Committee on the conventions of the British Parliament, on which I served, reported as follows in 2006. Recommendation 15 read:
“Neither House of Parliament regularly rejects secondary legislation, but in exceptional circumstances it may be appropriate for either House to do so”.
That recommendation was endorsed unanimously by both Houses.
At the time of that committee and its assessment of the conventions that apply to the two Houses of our Parliament, I was very struck by the evidence given by the Conservative Party—indeed, by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to whom reference has already been made. He said:
“The fundamental view of the Conservative Party is that the executive in the UK has become too strong and Parliament is too weak. We wish to see both Houses strengthened. We do not believe strengthening of scrutiny in either House would be to the detriment of the other House”.
Of course, it was the Leader of the Opposition in your Lordships’ House speaking at that time rather than a government representative.
Ingenious attempts to get round this false dichotomy have led us to all sorts of mealy-mouthed Motions. However powerfully advocated or well supported in the Division Lobbies, regret Motions, for example, can be conveniently ignored by Ministers, even in a minority Government. As my noble friend Lord Sharkey said, the most persuasive case for a “middle way” was argued, perhaps rather unexpectedly, in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, produced for the Government in 2015. As my noble friend has referred to it and it is just past midnight, I do not think that I need make further reference to it, but I recommend to Members, particularly on the other side of the Committee, the logic that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, used in arguing for the middle way that we are now promoting.
It is absurd that, unable to express an intelligent, practical and positive view as to how an SI could be improved, both Houses continue to face this destructive dilemma. Amendment 239A, devised by my noble friend Lord Sharkey and supported by the noble Lords, Lord Lisvane and Lord Norton of Louth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, rides to the rescue, as has already been explained. The reconsideration procedure is carefully crafted to achieve all that the Strathclyde report seemed to be searching for.
I believe that the adoption of this amendment, for this Bill, for all other EU Bills and as a precedent for all future secondary legislation, would be a hugely beneficial step forward. Popular with MPs and Peers alike, in time I suspect that it would soon be seen as a major improvement in our working mechanisms by Ministers and civil servants themselves. While not abolishing our established right in the Lords to reject an SI outright, I doubt that that would happen any more often than it has in recent years. However, the major advance would be that the regret, the delay and the complicated conditional Motions would surely become almost completely redundant. Instead, the reconsideration option set out in this amendment would be far more effective and would improve the eventual legislative product. Perhaps we should refer to it in future as the Strathclyde solution.
Meanwhile, whether or not Brexit actually happens, here is a golden opportunity in a previously unbalanced area of lawmaking for this House to enable the British Parliament to take back control.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, we can already see this evening what will be the Government’s formula to get these statutory instruments through: they will produce them at 12 minutes past midnight, put forward the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, to propose them, and then they will go through on the nod with nobody daring to protest and us all thinking that it was the best possible thing that could happen.
The real danger facing us is not the procedure; I think we can get too hung up on that. In particular, I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, when he said that there was great constitutional tension caused by the rejection of the tax credits orders. The crucial thing to remember about that rejection is that the Government accepted it immediately—they did not seek to reverse the rejection in the Commons because they knew that they did not have the majority for it in the Commons. It was a legitimate use of your Lordships’ role, which is to require the House of Commons to think again. What in fact happened, under the smokescreen of the Strathclyde report, was that the Government were forced to think again, they did not have a majority and they backed down.
The real issue with these regulations, which no one has an answer to because we are in such unprecedented circumstances, is not the precise procedure—although it is better to have an affirmative procedure than a negative one for issues of consequence—but the volume of orders that will hit us. It is going to be colossal, given the scale of law that has to be transposed and the amount of consequential legislation that is going to follow in the process of transposing it. Nothing that I have heard in our consideration so far gives me any reassurance at all that we are going to be able to cope with the sheer volume of it—unless the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, with his great skill in these matters, manages to ensure that all these orders come before the House between midnight and 4 am, when they will be proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, and will all go through without us really realising what has happened, under a kind of parliamentary anaesthetic, which she does such a good job of imposing on us all.
Transparency of Donations and Loans etc. (Northern Ireland Political Parties) Order 2018
Lord Tyler Excerpts(6 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, I am pleased to support the amendment to the Motion in the name of my noble friend Lady Suttie. However, before I give my detailed reasons for so doing, I want to touch on the role and responsibilities of your Lordships’ House in matters of this sort.
Last night, in concluding the debate on an amendment relating to Europe’s foreign and security policy, my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire made a number of references to the present Foreign Secretary. This was especially relevant, since there had been some very instructive comparisons to previous Conservative Foreign Secretaries, including the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and Douglas Hurd and Geoffrey Howe, as they then were. There was an especially trenchant speech along these lines by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, himself a former Foreign Office Minister, to which the noble Baroness answering for the Government failed completely to reply—perhaps because his case was unanswerable. At that point, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, intervened to say:
“I think it is against the rules and the spirit of this Chamber to criticise a Member of another place by name. I hope that the noble Lord will see fit to moderate his comments accordingly”.—[Official Report, 26/2/18; col. 508.]
Like many others in the Chamber, at that moment I was so stunned by this suggested new rule that I did not have time to consult the Companion, although I did have my copy with me. However, I have since read it very carefully and I simply do not understand what the noble Earl was saying. I mentioned to his office that I was going to raise this issue this afternoon because it is relevant to all the business of your Lordships’ House. I have checked the Companion today and, frankly, I do not understand what exactly it was that caused such concern to the noble Earl. As my noble friend referred only to the Foreign Secretary by his correct ministerial title—not by his name—I do not understand what the noble Earl was alluding to. This is a key issue for the way in which we do business in this Chamber. If we are not free to criticise a Minister and his or her words in their ministerial capacity, then clearly that restricts and constrains the work of your Lordships’ House. I hope the noble Earl will reconsider that statement. In the meantime, I believe that I am at liberty to criticise the Government—and hence, individual Ministers speaking and acting on their behalf—in relation to this order.
My noble friend Lady Suttie has fully explained the origins and circumstances of the order. At its heart there is a continuing suspicion of serious political money laundering. The basic facts are not in dispute. The DUP received a sum approaching £500,000 from an undisclosed source for its campaign in the 2016 EU referendum. Despite supporting leave while the majority in Northern Ireland supported remain, the DUP chose to spend £425,000 on paying for wraparounds for the Metro newspaper, which does not circulate in Northern Ireland. Exclusively, therefore, that was targeted at electors on this side of the Irish Sea.
I have a few specific questions for the Minister to underline and supplement those that have already been posed by my noble friend Lady Suttie. First, why was the order not brought forward, at the very latest, in the last Parliament? As we have heard, it was anticipated that the transparency provisions could be extended to Northern Ireland at any time after January 2014 under the 2014 Act. This was the firm intention of the then Alliance MP, Naomi Long, at that time. Why the delay?
Secondly, was it a coincidence that the ministerial decision to restrict the retrospectivity to carefully avoid any reference to the transaction to which I have just referred came just a few days after the Government had to pay a price for DUP support in the Commons having lost its majority in the summer of 2017? What representations did the DUP make about timing? Was that part of the deal? Having accepted the retrospective application of this order, albeit by only a few days, surely the Secretary of State should at least have been prepared to explain why that retrospectivity could not have been extended that bit further on the lines that my noble friend has said. His letter to MPs of 6 July 2017 sidesteps that issue.
Was the Secretary of State briefed on the potentially illegal donation involved? Had any checks been undertaken at that stage as to whether it had been made through any intermediary—perhaps by a foreign agent? We now know that the Russians took a considerable interest in the outcome of our referendum. Perhaps it was Russian money being channelled by this means and covered by the particular process that was used. Was the Foreign Office consulted on this potential interference in UK politics? Has it been since?
What detailed analysis and recommendations have any Ministers received from the Electoral Commission on this episode? Has not the Northern Ireland commission head argued for the transparency to go back to 2014? The outgoing head of that commission has stated that:
“The deal on party0 donations and loans must be part of the DUP-Conservative deal. No other explanation”.
“Every party in Northern Ireland understood that the publication of political donations over £7,500 was to be retrospective to Jan 2014”—
as my noble friend has already emphasised.
Meanwhile, have not all the Northern Ireland parties, including the UUP but not the DUP, now confirmed that they would be happy for retrospection to go back to the originally planned date in 2014? The Minister and my noble friend have mentioned the possibility of further action to undertake this reform. When will we see that, because surely there need be no delay? It is a simple matter.
Finally, has the DUP privately informed the Secretary of State or the Electoral Commission who the original donor was? What was the source of that very considerable sum? Are the Secretary of State and the commission both fully satisfied that the donation was legal under the PPER Act 2000?
If any Members of your Lordships’ House doubt the public significance of this order and think that it is just technical, let me read, from the excellent advice provided by our Library, this list of relevant publicity. I will take only a few examples but there are plenty here: the Belfast Telegraph article of March 2017, “End the secrecy over political donations in Northern Ireland”; Julia Paul’s article of June 2017, “Bringing Northern Ireland’s political process in line with the UK”; the BBC News articles, “Political donations: NI Secretary to address transparency issue” and “Donations to Stormont parties to be published”; the Open Democracy articles from October 2017, “The ‘dark money’ that paid for Brexit” and “UK Government set to ignore Northern Ireland parties’ transparency calls”; the Open Democracy article from 19 December 2017, “Why is Theresa May protecting the DUP’s dirty little (Brexit) secret?”—that of course was while the House of Commons committee was looking at this issue; the Belfast Telegraph article on 19 December 2017, “DUP calls for foreign donations to Sinn Fein to be made public”—the DUP seems to be selective in terms of what transparency it supports, although it seems to be okay to demand it of Sinn Fein, which is somewhat ironic in the circumstances when the DUP has defended its own secrecy; and the Guardian article of 19 December, “Labour criticises move to let past donations to DUP stay hidden”.
These are serious concerns and issues that do not touch only on Northern Ireland. As my noble friend Lady Suttie has said, the integrity of our whole democratic system is involved in this issue. It was the subject of some debate in your Lordships’ House, including on my Private Member’s Bill on the issue of money and its power in British politics.
Unsurprisingly, the members of the Delegated Legislation Committee in the other place took this order very seriously indeed, and allowed it through by only nine votes to eight on 19 December last, under government pressure. I suggest that we, too, should take it very seriously indeed and demand answers to these questions from the Government.
Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)
My Lords, I rise to support this order, which I firmly believe will provide a framework of openness and transparency in relation to donations and loans to political parties in Northern Ireland. Given the improved security situation, it is now the right time to bring Northern Ireland legislation in this field into line with that in the rest of the United Kingdom.
As we have heard, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland sought the views of all the local political parties in January 2017, and there was general support for full transparency. At the time, only one party suggested that the implementation of the new rules should be back dated to January 2014. However, in recent months there has been considerable debate in the other place concerning this date, and the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, supports retrospective implementation backdated to 2014. I acknowledge that this earlier date was referred to in the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014, but in my view retrospective legislation is acceptable only in exceptional circumstances. It is simply not fair to reveal the identities of those who made donations on the assumption that the law as it stood at the time would apply.
Several critical comments have been made in the debate concerning the donation which the Democratic Unionist Party received during the 2016 European Union referendum campaign from the Constitutional Research Council. I would simply point out that the donation was declared and the name of the organisation was provided. The uses to which the money was put were fully disclosed to the Electoral Commission, which accepted the bona fides of the council.
I recognise that current UK legislation relating to donations by and to political pressure groups is perhaps inadequate in some respects. I am sure that we are all aware of the recent controversy concerning the large donation to the political pressure group Best for Britain by the Open Society Foundation. However, this is perhaps a matter for consideration by the House at a later date.
In concluding, may I ask the Minister for clarification regarding the treatment of foreign donations to Northern Ireland political parties? As noble Lords will be aware, foreign donations to UK political parties are prohibited under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, but donations and loans from certain Irish citizens and bodies to Northern Ireland recipients are excluded from these provisions. This order now provides that certain sensitive personal information relating to these persons and bodies will not be published by the Electoral Commission. Will the Minister confirm that all the transparency requirements, including personal identification, that will apply to United Kingdom donors will also apply to Irish donors? I am pleased to support this order.
Northern Ireland (Elections) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2015
Lord Tyler Excerpts(8 years, 12 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Tyler
At the end to insert “but that this House regrets that the draft Order is inconsistent with the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2015.”.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, on 27 October, on the comparable order for England, Wales and Scotland—to which my amendment also refers this evening—this is what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, said:
“I do not understand how shortening the transition period contributes to the accuracy of the register”.—[Official Report, 27/10/15; col. 1129.]
As so often, he summed up the situation admirably, and in so doing completely demolished the Government’s case that evening. Sadly, he did not then follow the logic of his own analysis and did not vote for our amendment to persuade Ministers to think again. Even more disappointing was that a number of Cross-Bench Peers, who rightly pride themselves on being independent of party politics, voted to support a blatant move to distort the electoral register in favour of one particular party—the Conservative Party.
This order, by contrast, follows the logic of the summary of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, but only in relation to Northern Ireland. It would delay the completion of the transition from head-of-household registration to the full implementation of individual electoral registration—IER—in the Province for a further 12 months, as the Minister explained. The Explanatory Memorandum claims:
“In essence, Northern Ireland and Great Britain currently operate very different systems”.
That is true. As the Minister explained, IER was developed in Northern Ireland earlier than on the mainland. So for those of us who have been watching these developments—this evolution—over a number of years, the initial reaction must surely be that it should be further advanced in Northern Ireland. There ought to be a prima facie case for moving on in Northern Ireland because it has had plenty of time to develop the new system. Far from that, of course, the order does the reverse.
The Explanatory Memorandum also reports, as the Minister said, that the Chief Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland and the Electoral Commission have both recommended that those electors on the register who have not since confirmed their registration details should be retained on the register until December 2016. Members of your Lordships’ House who attended the debate on 27 October will recall the strong recommendation from the commission that the same should apply to England, Wales and Scotland. Indeed, given that Northern Ireland has had more time to develop the transition, one would think that the case for England, Wales and Scotland was much stronger. On that occasion, the advice from the commission was then ignored by Ministers despite the very special and particular nature of the commission’s statutory responsibility to Parliament.
The Minister referred to the elections to Stormont next May. In the previous debate, we were looking very carefully at the implications for the elections to Holyrood and the Welsh Assembly, where it may be thought that the same arguments apply. What is so different about Northern Ireland elections and electoral registration there?
Noble Lords may also recall that, on that occasion, the Minister constantly justified the Government’s denial of the commission’s recommendation on the grounds that there could be hundreds or thousands of ghost voters—ghost entries on the register—if the transition continued for a further 12 months. I reread Hansard this evening and counted a dozen such references in the Minister’s speech alone, and other government supporters followed suit.
I pointed out in my contribution that if there were so many ghost voters in October 2015, it was highly likely that a fair proportion of them would have been ghosts in May 2015, at the time of the general election. I said then:
“Ministers claim that some or many or most of those 1.9 million entries on the electoral register may be false and potentially fraudulent … This is the register on which the general election was fought. Are Ministers really now saying that the whole election could have been based on a wildly inaccurate, potentially fraudulent register? What is the evidence for that? … Are Ministers now challenging the outcome of the election on those grounds?”—[Official Report; 27/10/15; col. 1098.]
Are the Government now claiming that there is a much greater danger of ghost entries on the mainland register, then and now, than in Northern Ireland? If so, what is the evidence for that? Others in the Chamber have much more experience of elections to the various levels of governance in Northern Ireland, but anyone studying the history of elections in the Province would surely challenge that interpretation and conclusion. Indeed, as the Explanatory Memorandum admirably explains, Northern Ireland does not have an annual canvass, so electors are not required to reregister each year. Noble Lords may be forgiven for thinking that this may mean that the register there is less accurate—less up to date—than that in Great Britain.
In truth, the only real difference between the political circumstances in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the UK is simply this: the Conservative Party has no seats in the Province, no likelihood of contesting constituencies there, and therefore no self-interest in distorting the register. Tonight’s order merely undermines the logic of the previous order and displays for all to see the double standards of Ministers. Our amendment simply reads that the draft order is inconsistent with the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2015. I beg to move.
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, I add a certain scepticism to that of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, although from a different angle. I would like to say how much I admire his concern for the proper functioning of electoral institutions in the United Kingdom. My point is different and relates to the future. The Minister has brought the draft instrument to the House and there is no choice. The argumentation on technical details is fine, although it requires a certain degree of trust in the Chief Electoral Officer—although I see no reason why he should be denied that trust. So there is no problem with the legislation as such in that narrow sense and, anyway, we must now proceed.
In his opening statement, the Minister talked about the reason why we are in this situation. It was entirely accurate from the Government’s point of view, but it is not actually why we are. The reason why we moved the date of the election to the Assembly a year later than the people of Northern Ireland had been told it would be was because of a deal between the local parties. There is no compelling, wider logic that said it must be at the same time as the elections in Scotland, and so on. There was no particularly compelling logic, though I can understand that there was a clash with the Northern Ireland general election. Essentially, the local parties themselves, worried that their performance was poor, said, “We need more time to put together a programme of governance”. As noble Lords will be aware, no such programme of governance actually appeared, even given the extra time. I simply make the point that this ruse should not be played again in the next Parliament. It is bad practice to tell any electorate, “This is a Parliament that will be there for four years—no, sorry, five years”. In Ireland 100 years ago, this was disastrous, because for very good reasons the general election that would normally have been held in 1915 was postponed, because of the First World War. That gave the people who lodged the Irish insurrection the great excuse of saying, “We are not revolting against democratic institutions, because they are dead. Do not tell us that the Irishmen in the Parliament that sits at Westminster have different views from us; of course they do, but they do not have a mandate. They were elected in 1910 on a five-year term and now their mandate has run out”.
This was a risky thing to do. What the noble Lord said about why it was done, from the Government’s point of view, is entirely correct, but it is not the underlying politics of Northern Ireland. I simply use this opportunity to say to the Minister that the next time the Government should be very careful about playing around with mandates, timing and duration. In the end, the parties that said, “Give us another year and we will give you a programme of government” delivered nothing.
Lord Dunlop
I do not have that information, but I am happy to write to the noble Lord.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, despite the advice of the Companion, on 27 October I was denied the opportunity to reply to the debate on my Motion or even to indicate whether I wished to withdraw the Motion or to test the opinion of the House. It seems to be my fate that this evening when I do not need it, I am getting that opportunity. As I shall explain, I do not intend to press this amendment to a Division.
If in Northern Ireland the process that has been described well by a number of colleagues is so much better and does not need an annual canvass, why do the Government not introduce those improvements instead of creating the entirely phoney spectre of ghost voters, as they did when they were dealing with England, Wales and Scotland? The Government have shown themselves to be adopting double standards on this issue. That does no credit to Ministers or indeed to the House or to the Government themselves.
This particular order is much more helpful than the one that we were addressing last month, and I support it. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Devolution
Lord Tyler Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Dunlop
My Lords, the Government are addressing the imbalances in our constitutional arrangement which we inherited from the previous Labour Government. Let me give two examples. The Scottish Parliament was set up with significant powers to spend money but little responsibility for raising it; and the previous Labour Government established a strong Scottish Parliament without properly addressing the implications for England. Our programme addresses each part of our United Kingdom and we are committed to a balanced settlement for all parts of it.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, will the Minister now address the wider point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth? He will be aware that a large number of Members on his side of the House—his noble friends—have consistently argued against the piecemeal, ad hoc approach to the constitution. Surely, at the very least, the present proposals put before the House at the other end of the Corridor which will be put before our House later on, should form part of the agenda of a wider consideration of the implications of devolution for Parliament and our constitution. Surely a constitutional convention is the only way forward so that these issues can be considered in their proper context.
Lord Dunlop
My Lords, when discussing constitutional conventions, what always springs into my mind is a remark made by, or attributed to, Harold Wilson when talking about royal commissions—“They take minutes and last years”. I cannot see any evidence of public support for a convention. The public want us to get on and deliver the constitutional commitments we have made to each part of our United Kingdom.