House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wakeham (Con)]

My Lords, I fully support the Bill from my noble friend and I add my congratulations to those of other noble Lords. There is very little for me to say; I said most of what I wanted to say 14 years ago, in the royal commission report. It is interesting to note how many suggestions that came up around the Chamber today we had put into our report 14 years ago. The conclusion that was drawn in that report was also drawn by other Members of the House, which was that incremental reform is the only way we will do it. We quite deliberately put forward proposals that were a compromise. I do not believe that any one of us on the royal commission would have agreed with everything we said; instead we worked out something that we thought could be lived with by people who wanted elected Peers, those who did not want them, and so on. The compromise was not acceptable, so incremental reform is the only way for this House, and the Bill is a very good example of what needs to be done.

I will make only one point, on the question of whether a Member who leaves this House should be able to stand for the House of Commons. We discussed that in great detail, and my noble friend hit on that very important part in our report. We said that that should happen in a reformed House—with elected Members in this Chamber as well as in the other. That was the important point. As far as I was concerned, at the time in our deliberations, I wanted to make it for life. The lawyer said that that was impossible, as the Human Rights Act would make sure that that would be overturned anyway. I then tried to get 25 years and that was not acceptable. We ended up in our report with 10 years, and Nick Clegg put four years in his Bill. I have no worries whatsoever about the issue of Peers leaving this House under the unreformed arrangements now, although I would have worries if there were a substantial body of elected Peers in this House.

I wish the Bill all success; I need add nothing more.

Procedure of the House

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard]

Perhaps I may detain your Lordships for just two minutes. I am in the very unusual position of agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. It is not something that happens daily in this House, and it certainly did not happen over reform of your Lordships’ House. However, I am bound to say that I came to this debate in a wholly neutral frame of mind. I was not sure whether I liked the idea or whether I did not. One argument seems to be absolutely critical, and for me conclusive. When I was Leader of the Opposition in this House, when I was Leader of the House and indeed since, it struck me—as I suspect it has struck every other Leader—that the one great gap in our procedures is that one cannot raise an urgent issue. It is almost impossible. If one wants to secure a debate in this House on an issue such as the Arab spring or North Korea’s nuclear policy, unless the Government are prepared to give it time, one cannot get it. That is wrong. A parliamentary assembly ought to have a procedure whereby issues that are clearly urgent and topical are capable of being discussed. That gap is partially—only partially—filled by the proposals for this experiment. For me that is the conclusive argument. It fills a gap in the procedures of our House that has existed for many years, and we would then be in a position, like other parliamentary assemblies, to deal with urgent, topical questions, which at the moment we are not.

[Lord Wakeham]

I will say a word or two because I was the Leader of the House when the noble Lord was the Leader of the Opposition. I listened to my noble friend putting forward a housemaid’s baby-type argument; we will have a little experiment and it will be all right. I also listened to the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. I have no doubt that if he was in charge of all this, it would work very well whatever the rules because he is that sort of person and he would make sure that it did. However, I am still worried about the central proposition that a Back-Bench committee should be able to decide which Back-Bench topics should be debated. The committee will come under enormous pressure and a great deal of lobbying. Inevitably it will end up, in order to keep the peace, taking on the big issues and leaving some of the smaller issues to one side. That is what worries me. Of course I accept the argument that we have to have more topical debates, but I am not sure that a Members’ Back-Bench committee is the way to do it. I would prefer it if we found another way. Therefore, I will vote against the experiment.

[Lord Kakkar]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask the Leader whether any thought has been given to the objective criteria that will be applied to the experiment to determine finally whether it has been successful or not. There is a lot of talk about this being an experiment, but at the outset it is vital to determine how we are going to judge whether it has been successful when we come to re-evaluate it.

Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

I wonder if I could intervene briefly. I was elected in May 1979. The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, referred to the photograph of the first Thatcher Government. I can tell him that there was a group of about a dozen newly elected MPs—because that was all there was of us—deciding whether it would be better for our morale to be photographed as a group or individually. We decided that it was probably better to do it individually, although if I had had the wit I would have asked if we could have borrowed the Cabinet Room to do it in.

In a way one of Margaret Thatcher’s achievements was that she forced the Labour Party to reinvent itself. Following the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, I should say that it was also what Clement Attlee, later Lord Attlee, made the Tory party do after its reputation in the 1930s. Both those people had very different personalities but had a similarly dramatic effect on changes in the country. We need to remember that.

I also recall Jim Callaghan saying to me in May 1979 that the people he felt most sorry for were those of us who had just been elected, because, he said, “You will be in opposition for about 10 years”. Well, we were 18 years in opposition, which was when we forced ourselves to change. It is an important impact in British politics that our system forces political parties to change. If you do not listen to the electorate, the electorate ignore you, and you pay a very high price for that.

I want to say a few other things. Jim Callaghan also said to me at the time that he had hoped with North Sea oil that we would be able to make some changes to the economy that we needed to make. That was really where he was at. He felt that the economy needed to change, and that with the advantage of North Sea oil we could do it. Margaret Thatcher took a different view. She felt, as has been indicated a number of times, that you had to force change on people. This is where I part company, and it is a fundamental difference between the two parties. There were ways of bringing about the changes that were necessary then without some of the conflict that we experienced. You need only look at what Germany did, particularly with East Germany, to see how change of that type can be brought about differently. That is an important lesson. It is a powerful one.

Margaret Thatcher also had, as the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, knows, a strong suspicion if not dislike of trade unions. He and I debated that on one or two privatisations. I noted the good comments made by Matthew Parris in the Times yesterday about how she hated the closed shop, and hate was underlined by Margaret Thatcher. That is one of the ways in which she made some of the negative aspects of the trade unions change. I have never taken the view, and still do not take it, that trade unions are not a very important defence in a democracy; they are an important right for people. But I also acknowledge what we were blind to in the 1980s: that some of the practices within the trade union movement were not only doing us damage but were bad practices that needed to change. That is another message we should emphasise.

This may sound patronising but it is not intended to: when I questioned Margaret Thatcher in the House I sometimes felt that she was very much on the right track but was somehow missing the big opportunity. Council house sales are one such example. In my view, selling council houses would have been a brilliant policy if she had done what Hugh Rossi, I think, had suggested: reinvesting all the money from the sales of council houses into the building of new houses. Margaret Thatcher took the opposite view. If she had not, that would have been a truly brilliant policy. As it was, it was the right policy, but it was not followed through in the way I would have liked. Most people here have said that she followed through all her policies with determination. However, I should have liked her to have pushed over to the other side a bit on that policy so that we could have had the investment in housing that would have saved us a lot of the problems we have today.

I certainly did not like some of the language that was used. It has to be said that the language used about the trade unions was deeply damaging to the fabric of Britain, particularly in the north and the west. I was shadow Home Office Minister at the time and I looked at what the police were doing during the miners’ strike, the print union strikes and others. What troubled me was that when the phrase “the enemy within” was used, you had to know that the police officer facing the picket line was often a relative or close friend of the miner on the other side of the line, particularly in south Wales but also elsewhere in the UK. The phrase “the enemy within” began to fragment society in a deeply unsatisfactory way. In a way, her love of an argument and pushing it through with a passion and fury of her own made her enemies, which perhaps need not have happened.

I agree entirely with the comments made earlier about the Anglo-Irish agreement, although, as I think I have said in this House once before, we owe an awful lot to Jim Prior for that and for his strategic thinking on the Anglo-Irish agreement. That was absolutely right.

Fairly soon after I was elected, the Falklands issue came up. I have heard the quotes from Enoch Powell, and they were absolutely right. What interested me and taught me a lesson was that, as a result of defeating General Galtieri, the dictatorship in Argentina fell. It might be beneficial if the people of Argentina think about that. Although it might not have been the intention in the first instance, it was the outcome. It might be contentious to say this, but it also is my belief that that helped to bring about the end of the juntas in South America, which we all took for granted at that time. One after another they fell. One of the messages was that you need to stand up to dictators. Again I might regret some of the language that was used—not least in the Sun at the time, which played on the worst aspects of nationalism—but the reality was that standing up to a dictator like that had benefits for the Argentinian people as well as being the right thing to do.

In a way, what saddens me the most is the divisions between the north and south of Britain and with Wales. If the policies in Scotland had been different, the Tory party would still be significant in Scotland. I for one as a Labour politician often prayed for the Tory party to recover in Scotland. If it had not been destroyed, the SNP would not be where it is today: namely, a threat to the union, which Margaret Thatcher would have been appalled by. In part, it came about because of the assumption that Scotland could be taken for granted. It cannot, and the same applies to Wales and other parts of Britain, including the north of England.

I think that history will judge her well. She was a major political figure by any standards. She argued dramatically and with great passion, but in doing so at times she sowed the seeds of bitterness. She loved an argument, she loved a challenge and she loved change. In that way, she was a Tory radical, not a one nation Tory. It is an important lesson for us all that you can be a great leader in a democracy but that no great leader changes things without hurting people. I say this not as any criticism of Margaret Thatcher, but I think that we should be careful about going down the road of military involvement in funerals, because there is danger in linking that to political parties. That might cause us problems in future.

Margaret Thatcher was an extraordinary performer as Prime Minister and very influential. That taught me a lot, but it is important that we recognise that there is a balance. People who are doing what are to my mind foolish things, such as having parties in the street, are totally wrong, but we need to recognise that in a democracy minorities have to be heard. No Prime Minister can govern entirely compassionately—Prime Ministers have to take tough decisions and hurt people—but in doing that they need to try to get some balance in the community. That requires compassion as well as conflict.

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords—

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, I sense the mood of the House and shall be as brief as I can. I do not intend to say anything about the great issues surrounding Margaret Thatcher, but I was her Chief Whip for the whole of her second term in office, and I want to say one or two little things about what I would call the human and personal side.

Frequently, late at night, I would have a long talk with her about the events of the day. I am afraid that the things that she said on those occasions will go with me to the grave, but anybody who had the slightest doubt about her sense of humour had only to be there on one of those evenings. She had a very agreeable sense of humour, even if, on some public occasions, she managed to conceal it.

Secondly, I have to say to my noble friend Lord Tebbit how much I appreciated what he said about the kindnesses that we received after Brighton. The kindnesses and support that we got were way beyond the call of duty, to the point where I held my wedding reception at No. 10: the first time, I think, that anybody had been married in No. 10 since Lloyd George’s daughter when he was Prime Minister. It was very special that we were allowed that.

My last point has a degree of topicality. I remember when the chairman of the Procedure Committee in the Commons came to see Margaret Thatcher to say that he had a wonderful idea for improving Prime Minister’s Questions. He had the bright idea that instead of Questions being on Tuesday and Thursday, they should be on Wednesday for half an hour. She looked him steely in the face and said, “What do you think the House of Commons would like?”. That was the end of it. Things stayed as they were.

She had more madness—not madness, more reason—than she admitted. Of course she knew that every Tuesday and every Thursday, she had to be, as she put it, match fit for Prime Minister’s Questions. That was a great advantage. However, there was a second great advantage in that her whole Government knew that on Tuesdays and Thursdays the boss was in the House of Commons defending the Government. If any department had not sent a note as to what issues were coming up, I used to get the message and would very tactfully ring some fellow who was towards the end of his political career, although he did not know it at the time.

We have heard great things from all noble Lords, but all I would say about her is that she was an extremely human person to work for and that to do so was of course the greatest privilege.

Arrangement of Business

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords—

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, in my experience there is very little that is new in this House and I have no doubt that inadmissible amendments have been tabled in the past. However, can my noble friend the Leader of the House tell me what the experience in the past in this House has been? Has the House ever voted on an inadmissible amendment and, if so, how often?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the records reveal that the Public Bill Office has had to correspond in these circumstances on only five occasions in the past 20 years. On every occasion, the Member concerned respected the advice of the Public Bill Office and the amendment was not moved.

House of Lords: Reform

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Monday 8th October 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Wakeham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the Deputy Prime Minister’s Statement on 3 September, what their plans are for reform of the House of Lords.

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, the Government have decided not to proceed with the House of Lords Reform Bill, and it has been withdrawn.

[Lord Wakeham]

I thank my noble friend the Leader of the House for his reply. Might I assume from his Answer that the Government have no plans for further reform of your Lordships’ House in this present Parliament?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the hard work of many Members of this House and the other place to shape this Bill has of course inched us forward in this great debate, but Lords reform is now a matter for future Parliaments. I can confirm that the coalition will not be able to deliver Lords reform during this Parliament, which in a way seems extraordinary, given that more than 70% of the House of Commons voted in favour of the Bill at Second Reading.

Financial Services Bill

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Barnett]

My Lords, I do not want to talk about the other parts of the short debate that we have had but rather about where the Bill should go and where it would be best scrutinised. I know that the noble Lord, with whom I normally disagree, is very keen to see the Lords Reform Bill go through. He has always made that clear, but it is irrelevant to what we are discussing.

I am bound to say that the Government’s management of the lengths of recesses and the business of the House has not been of the best. My noble friend Lord Grocott was right to deal with those issues. The important issue for me, as it was when I spoke in the relevant debate, is where the Bill will best be scrutinised. I have a little experience of taking two Finance Bills a year through the Commons over five years, and did so with great difficulty. A major part of the scrutiny of those Bills was taken upstairs in Committee in those days. Now Governments of all parties are very keen to guillotine Bills in the Commons, and they are rarely properly debated. In fact, when we get Bills here, especially large ones, they have rarely been properly scrutinised at all. Therefore, the really important issue for me is not all the other stuff that we have talked about briefly today but where the Bill will best be scrutinised. The Bill is important; I do not deny that.

As I have said before, giving a huge amount of powers to the Bank of England is not unimportant. However, for me the question is: where will the Bill be best scrutinised? I have no doubt whatever that that will be in Grand Committee. If any Member of your Lordships’ House has great expertise and wants to speak, there will be no difficulty in them doing so in Grand Committee.

One has to understand that in Committee this House does not normally vote on the Floor of the House or in Grand Committee. On top of that, the Bill will come back to the House for Report, when votes can and do take place, and again for Third Reading. As I said, personally I prefer a Bill to be properly scrutinised in Grand Committee, and this is a rare occasion when I feel bound to speak in support of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde.

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, I do not often intervene in these matters, and no one could expect me not to understand the position of the usual channels, but I have listened to this debate with some horror. In my view, these matters should have been resolved by the usual channels and it is very disappointing that the Front Benches are unable to find a sensible and satisfactory agreement. Often, finding such an agreement means persuading their Back-Benchers to do something that initially they may not want to do. If I may say so, the job of the Front Benches is not to be the cheerleader for the Back Benches; it is to find the best solution for the House. When there is no agreement between the Back Benches, the question arises of what the House should do. In my view, the responsibility then falls on the Leader of the House to do what he thinks is best for the whole House. Without going into the details, where there is a disagreement between the usual channels, the House would be right to support the Leader of the House in what he proposes.

[Lord Naseby]

My Lords, I just make an observation as a former Chairman of Ways and Means and as someone who was responsible for the Finance Bill for five years in another place. In my experience, each Bill was very different. Sometimes the usual channels, and indeed individual Members, chose to make representations that certain clauses should be taken on the Floor of the House, with others—often the majority—being taken in Committee. I remember one occasion when a great deal of a Bill was taken on the Floor of the House, mainly due to representations from the minority parties that went against the proposals from the usual channels. Nevertheless, I reflect that last Monday night the key issue to come out was unanimity across the House that this was the most important financial Bill that this House had seen in probably the living memory of anyone here. The second thing that came out was that it was not a partisan Bill—there was no inter-party challenge—and that this House, with its width of experience, was best able to debate the Bill in depth.

I deeply regret that now, on the first Monday since then, what I thought had been settled by the usual channels in the normal way is not settled. That is a very unsatisfactory situation, and maybe my noble friend, as the Leader, will either follow what my noble friend Lord Wakeham said or recognise that the House as a whole may need 24 hours to quieten down a little. Looking at the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, on the Cross Benches, I am reminded that she once said to me, “You didn’t give them long enough to settle it, Michael”.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure for me to follow the Convenor of the Cross Benches. I have always had great respect for Convenors of the Cross Benches. I remember that when I arrived in the House as Leader the Convenor of the Cross Benches was Lady Hylton-Foster. I consulted her on the appointment of someone to an important position and said that there was a question as to whether they might be a little too old because they were 75. She looked at me as if I was absolutely out of this world. She told me how old she was and that was the end of the discussion. I have always treated Convenors of the Cross Benches with considerable respect.

Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that I want to say a few words about Lords reform. As has been mentioned by both Front-Bench speakers, some 10 years ago I was the chairman of the royal commission which produced a report on Lords reform. Everyone will probably have forgotten what we said, but it was that the Lords should continue to be mostly appointed but that there should be a significant proportion of elected Members, particularly because we thought that the regions and nations of the United Kingdom were not well represented there and that that would be a way to increase the spread of membership. We recommended what is now, in common parlance, the 15-year non-renewable term.

I have to say that our report got an extremely bad press. A number of people said that it was an interesting report, well argued and everything else, but that it had come to the wrong conclusions. We did not mind that it got a bad press, because we expected that, although it was slightly embarrassing to me because it was at the same time as my youngest son was taking his A-levels and he had to write an essay on an article by a Guardian reporter which referred to the timid and cautious report of Lord Wakeham. When I saw the paper afterwards, I said, “I hope you told him that it was an extremely bold report”, to which he said, “No, Dad, I said that it was timid. I want to pass the exam”. That was the sensible thing to do.

The one bright spark at that time was the Labour Party, because it put in its manifesto that it had accepted the Wakeham report and would implement it. It was slightly embarrassing for me to have my name in a Labour Party manifesto, but it was encouraging. When the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, tells us about the need for a 100% elected House, I can remember a time when that was not quite the Labour Party’s position. That is not my recollection.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for allowing me to acknowledge the excellence of his royal commission report. He will remember that we tried, and produced a White Paper, but, alas, we did not get anywhere with it.

[Lord Wakeham]

It is another story as to why the noble Lord did not get anywhere with it. I will not bore the House with it now, but he and I know many of those reasons.

The main lesson of my report has not been learnt even to this day. Our report recommended a compromise, and that is why people did not like it. Everybody compared their ideal solution with our compromise, and our compromise looked weak and wishy-washy compared with what they wanted. We talked about a compromise; in the modern jargon, that is a consensus, but it is the same thing. We did not reach our consensus easily, I can tell you. One of my noble friends who was on the commission told me privately when we started, “I have already been party to a published document that said that there had to be an elected element in any reform of the House of Lords”. One very distinguished Labour Member of Parliament—a good many noble Lords will guess who I mean, but I shall not mention his name—came to me to say, “If the commission so much as discusses elected Members, I will not attend any more of the meetings”. I persuaded them both to stay. They both signed the report, and we got consensus. It is therefore possible for people of goodwill to get consensus.

What do I mean by consensus? I mean that all our preconceived positions, both of and within the parties, have somehow to be melded together in a form of compromise for a way forward. As my noble friend the Leader of the House has acknowledged, as a result of the Joint Committee report the Government have to think again about a number of the things which they are doing. If I may say so to the Labour Party, it, too, has to think again about the idea that it can have a 100% elected membership. It is quite simply unrealistic. A consensus outcome will not produce that. We have in Parliament a very big responsibility to get this right and to get consensus because, as people have frequently said, outside this Chamber there is no great interest in what goes on in here. They are not interested in what we do and for us therefore to try to put through a solution that was highly controversial within the House would be a grave dereliction of our total responsibilities as a Parliament. Consensus is therefore what we have to achieve.

Let me say three things about the position as I see it. First, the Government are right to try to see whether they can find a consensus. This issue has been hanging about long enough, and if it is possible to find consensus, we ought to move forward. Secondly, in my view a consensus will involve a partly elected and a partly appointed House. There will be some very tricky negotiations as to how they are going to achieve that. An issue which is now highly relevant, but was not realised 10 years ago, is the effect that that will have on the House of Commons. It has to be thought about very carefully. Thirdly, and of this I am quite sure, if the House of Commons reaches a consensus and sends us a Bill that reflects that consensus, the responsibilities of this House are clear. We should treat the Bill like any other coming before the House. We should give it a Second Reading, try to improve it in Committee and give it proper scrutiny in the normal way. This applies, I am afraid, particularly to noble Lords who do not like things going on as they are. All of us have a responsibility to act in accordance with our precedents.

Finally, I have been in this House for 18 years and was also in the House of Commons for 18 years. I had the honour of being Leader of each House. There are still Members of this House in all parties and of none who are of great distinction, but the place has changed in the 18 years I have been here—and not for the better. When I first came here, I remember Lord Callaghan and Lord Whitelaw getting up time and time again when their Governments were in difficulties to say, “I completely accept the right of your Lordships to pass this amendment, but is it wise?”. They were really saying that there is no point in a revising House passing series after series of amendments which will just be reversed when they get to the House of Commons. A revising House should be looking at the legislation that has come forward and seeking to improve it, particularly where the House of Commons is singing on an uncertain note. That is the moment to make amendments towards effective legislation, rather than sending back hundreds of amendments. I hope that people will not be offended if I suggest that we use with some humility the position that we are somehow superior in public perceptions and in our judgment of the public good. The House of Commons is the elected House, its Members accountable to their electorates, and we should not live in a world of wishful thinking, make-believe or has-beens.

[The Earl of Sandwich]

Would the noble Lord care to make a comment in his search for consensus on the original Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel?

[Lord Wakeham]

I will be frightfully indiscreet and say that if I were still in charge of business management, I would be 100% in favour of my noble friend’s Bill but probably would still not have given it government time to get it through, because I know perfectly well what happens. Every single amendment you can think of would have been added to it, and the timetable of the Government would have been lost. I have no idea whether that is the Government’s view, so while I am in favour of what he wants to do and think it a disgrace that we have not found the time to do it, I can see the difficulties of business management if you bring in a Bill of that sort when there is no consensus on the way forward.

Procedure of the House (Proposal 1)

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

That following the completion of the trial, the procedure at question time and during oral statements should revert to its current form, pending a review by the Procedure Committee.

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, I declare an interest in these matters. I am a member of the Procedure Committee, a former Leader of this House and the only living person who has been Leader both of this House and of another place—in fact, only the fifth person in British history who has ever held both jobs. I say all that because I think what I am going to say will be pretty disagreeable to a great many people in the House, and I thought that if I said it now, at least they could not accuse me of a lack of experience. My view is that proposal 1 is grossly unfair on the Lord Speaker, is bad for the House and would be the end of self-regulation.

First, the proposal is bad for the House. The working practices report seems to be based on a number of misconceptions. The Leader’s role is not to make decisions but to advise the House of what he thinks the will of the House is, and that expression of view can of course be challenged. The Leader, as is clear from the proposal before us, advises only which group or party he suggests the House may like to hear. That, of course, leaves a big gap regarding what happens, as is often the case, when two Peers from the same party rise to speak.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[Lord Wakeham]

I do not mind.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

A document was issued by the Government Whips Office saying that the Lord Speaker should call sides at Question Time, but the Order Paper talks about calling groups. Which is correct?

[Lord Wakeham]

I have no idea. I am speaking only on proposal 1; that is all I know about. I have had many years’ experience of whipping and I consider that, like other things, it is best done in private.

[The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara)]

My Lords, it might be convenient if I intervene at this point to assure the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, that the paper that we should be referring to is the Procedure Committee report and/or today’s Order Paper—and nothing that has been issued by anyone else.

[Lord Wakeham]

If I may resume, the first point that I was making was that the Leader of the House does not direct the House but offers advice. The second point is that the proposal before us today deals only with which party or group the Leader thinks should have the next turn; it does not deal with the question of two Peers rising from the same Benches.

The third point on this matter, and in my view the most crucial, is that the working party committee completely omitted what is very clear in both the Companion and Erskine May: that the Leader of the Opposition and the Convenor of the Crossbench Peers have a role to play in the order in the House. That is very important. In my view, in the circumstances when two people from the same party or two Cross-Benchers get up, it should be for the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the government party or the Convenor to advise the House which of the noble Lords he thinks the House should most like to hear. It is these failures to implement self-regulation over recent years that have got us into our present difficulty, and the sooner that we get back to proper self-regulation, the better. In my day, the Leaders of the opposition parties, the noble Lord, Lord Richard, who is not here, and the late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, were both very helpful to the House over matters of order.

Secondly, this proposal is unfair on the Lord Speaker. When we set up the office of Lord Speaker, the House had the benefit of three separate Select Committees manned by some of our most experienced parliamentarians, taking evidence from virtually all the other experienced parliamentarians who were not members of the Select Committee. Those reports were very strong in saying that our unique system of self-regulation needed to be preserved and those conclusions from such an authoritative source should not be overthrown from a report which was based on misconceptions and did not in any case consider many of the issues, nor as far as I can see took any evidence from those with the appropriate experience.

The recommendations that the role of the Leader should be taken over by the Lord Speaker poses this problem for self-regulation: will the advice of the Lord Speaker be capable of challenge as is the advice of the Leader? It is not a comfortable thought. It would be disastrous if it were and the end of self-regulation if it were not. It would produce a regime for this House which is more restrictive than even the House of Commons which deals with these matters by points of order. So we need to think very carefully.

Secondly, we are asking the Lord Speaker to assume responsibilities not just from the Leader but also from the Leader of the Opposition and Convenor that are not even written down or clearly defined. There are also some very practical matters to be considered. I just wonder whether the lonely Woolsack is the right place for a Lord Speaker with these roles. When I was the Leader of the House sitting here, it was the nods and the winks from the Leaders of the other parties, plus, if I may say so, the mutterings of the Clerk, which were very valuable in making sure that I did not make mistakes. Even if we pass this Motion, the Lord Speaker stuck up there will not be in a position to administer it in any fair way. Therefore, my advice to the House is not to pass this Motion, and, secondly, to go back to self-regulation as it should be, because I do not believe that there are many people in this House who properly understand what self-regulation is.

[Lord Geddes]

My Lords, I did not expect to be intervening quite this early in this debate. When we last discussed the report by my noble friend Lord Goodlad, I used the expression that this recommendation was a “slippery slope”. I do not move away from that consideration. I intervene with a decade of experience as a Deputy Speaker and very much in support of my noble friend Lord Wakeham. There are practical problems in this proposal. I will mention just one or two of them.

The first is that from that position it is impossible to see the original Cross Benches. You simply do not have a view. Earlier this year, my noble friend Lord Colwyn had a brilliant suggestion for resolving that: he would use his dentistry experience and get an elevated Woolsack. That had considerable appeal. More seriously, of course your Lordships will know that in another place—and I use that expression advisedly—the Speaker sits in an elevated position, so he or she is able to see the House. Believe me, from the Woolsack that is not possible.

The only other point I would like to mention is that if this proposal were agreed to, the Lord Speaker or the Deputy Speaker would be able to call groups. However, as my noble friend Lord Wakeham said, if three members of Labour Party—I am not picking on the Labour Party, but use it merely as an illustration—were to rise simultaneously, they would all have to sit down again as the Lord Speaker rose, so there would be confusion to start with. Secondly, if none of those three or only one gives way, there would be a confrontational position and the Lord Speaker would be almost obliged to start naming names. That is not in this recommendation and I would vote very strongly against it. This means that the Leader of that party or the Leader of the House would then have to nominate or suggest the Peer concerned. In that respect, we will have gone round in a circle and will be back to self-determination. I do not approve of this proposal and I will certainly vote against it if it comes to a vote.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords—

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, my noble friend has given a great account of the Deputy Prime Minister’s proposals for the House of Lords, which we will all of course study very carefully. However, a very important issue is the effect of the weakening of the House of Commons resulting from these proposals. Does my noble friend consider that to be a proper subject for the Joint Committee to consider in the work that it will shortly undertake?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, my noble friend has had years of interest in this issue—not only in Parliament but on the royal commission, which completed its work just over 10 years ago.

I have long believed that giving this House an electoral mandate would make it stronger, more independent of party and more assertive. That would obviously have an impact on the Executive and on another place, but whether it would be weakening or strengthening I am not sure. Many people argue that the House of Commons and the Executive have become too strong and that this could be one way of changing that balance. I believe that the Joint Committee should examine the issue.

Many commentators believe that the question of the reform of the House of Lords affects only this House. It does not. It affects both sides of the building and I am sure that Members of another place will take a great deal of interest in the announcement that has been made today.

House of Lords: Allowances

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, I thank the House for its courtesy in allowing me to contribute on behalf of my colleagues to this important debate. I shall be brief.

Let me say straight away that we support the Motion. I am delighted that it has the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, from the Opposition. The matter of allowances paid to Peers has been discussed by my party on a number of occasions. My noble friend Lady Scott participated in the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham. The present system is cumbersome and my colleagues often felt uncomfortable about claiming allowances which were often not backed by proper receipts. I am also aware that there have been various interpretations of what constitutes a main residence. Many new Peers have relied on the advice of other colleagues, with the result that we have subscribed to a system which would not be accepted in any other institution.

It is therefore right that we subscribe to a system which is simple to operate, clearly understood and commands the confidence of both the public and Parliament. I well recollect my discussions with my noble friend Lord McNally as early as 1997, when I was introduced into the House. He then advocated a system of per diem allowances, and I am glad that we are referring to that matter today.

However, there remain anomalies in the proposed system. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will look at this to see what we can do to iron them out. I am uncomfortable that there would be two types of allowances—£300 and £150. The administration of a system which allows discretion would be difficult to operate. A uniform allowance system for all noble Lords is appropriate, and it should be left to individuals if they wish to claim or not. We do not wish to be in a position whereby the newspapers can prey on who claims what. There have been examples in the press whereby reporters have waited outside the railings of the House of Lords to count how long a noble Lord has been in the House. This is not something that I welcome.

On the two amendments in the names of my noble friends, I say that there is substance in what is recommended, and I hope that we will look seriously at their comments on the amendments.

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, I support the Motions.

As noble Lords will be aware, I chaired the ad hoc group of Members which was established to consider the recommendations of the SSRB review and advise the House Committee on how they might be implemented. It may be of assistance to the House if I say a few words about that process.

However, I first thank the Members of that committee who worked with me. It was not what some people might refer to as a patsy board. We had a series of vigorous discussions and reached conclusions, but I would not pretend that the group had an easy task, and I hope that our report has made a useful contribution to the debate. I am pleased that most of the group’s recommendations have been accepted by the House Committee and by the Government. We placed great value on conducting as thorough and wide-ranging a consultation of noble Lords as possible, and we were rewarded—if that is the right word—with a wealth of views, diverse though they inevitably were.

If I was not aware at the beginning of the process, I was certainly aware by the end of it that no one would be able to design a system of financial support which would meet with universal support. Inevitably, any change to the current system would create winners and losers.

In carrying out our report, the group stuck to the principles and structure of the SSRB review. That was our remit from the House and it was right to do so. I believe that the recommendations in the group report represented a much needed adjustment, simplifying to an extent the SSRB proposals while keeping their core and remaining cost-neutral to the current scheme.

Yet the further we went in preparing our report, the more I was convinced that, in an ideal world, we should put in place a still simpler scheme rather than increasing the existing scheme’s complexity and attendant bureaucracy. The case for a simpler scheme grew stronger with the coalition Government’s announcement of their intention to reform your Lordships’ House for the start of the next Parliament. It seemed to me less and less sensible to overhaul the current scheme with more complex arrangements, possibly on a very temporary basis, particularly when the political consensus appeared to be that a reformed House would in fact be a salaried House. For this combination of reasons the group, with one Member dissenting, decided to invite the House Committee to consider the possibility of,

“a simplified allowance, to replace the daily allowance … recommended by the SSRB”.

We thought that such an allowance,

“might operate for the life-time of the … Parliament”,

until the “reform of the House” and that such a scheme would be “simple”, easy to operate and,

“easy to explain to the public”.

On publication of the group’s report, the Leader of the House put forward his proposals endorsing such an approach.

I shall mention one further point, which is on taxation. I welcome and agree with the opening remarks made by my noble friend the Leader of the House. The SSRB suggested in its report that,

“in principle fees for attending the House of Lords should be taxable”,

and that,

“until legislation is amended to bring … the House of Lords into the tax system, the fee should be set at a lower level so as to make an approximate allowance for the absence of tax”.

I understand that officials from the House authorities met officials at HMRC to confirm that it was their view that, in the absence of legislation, the fee or allowance would not be subject to tax. The level of the allowance is set on the assumption that it is not taxed. If it were to be so as a result of new legislation, the level would have to be looked at again. Speaking entirely personally, I do not think that the Inland Revenue has the slightest desire to get involved in the complications of taxing at all. It does not think that it is losing a penny piece by these present arrangements.

As I have said, I believe that there is no perfect solution; my noble friend’s proposal is, however, a fair solution. It is straightforward and sweeps away the expenses system as it stood. It will be cheap to administer and easy to explain. While I regret that some noble Lords will be worse off, I believe that the proposed level, combined with the reimbursement of travel costs, will mean that all noble Lords will have sufficient support to enable them to contribute to the important work of this House. On that basis, I agree entirely with my noble friend’s proposals.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords—