Holding the Line Against Tyranny and Anarchy (Constitution Committee Report)

Lord Waldegrave of North Hill Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure not only to follow the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who, happily, is restored to full health, but to find oneself on the same side of the argument as him, because for a good many years in another place, I had to suffer being on the wrong side of the argument. That was very uncomfortable. I also join with all the other members of the committee who have spoken in paying tribute to our chair and to the other members.

The other day, I read that Michelle Obama said that she had never met a white man who suffered from imposter syndrome. All I can tell you is that when the noble and learned Lords on our committee got going, I certainly felt imposter syndrome. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and the noble and learned Lords, Lord Bellamy, and Lord Burnett, are all wonderful, but they are also practical people as well as being very good lawyers. We have heard from two of the other members already, and we can all be proud of this report.

It is fitting that we debate this fundamental matter in the same week that we grieve for Lord Mackay who, if you wanted an embodiment of what the rule of law meant—practical but also learned—he was it. I will not go into too much detail, because I would get in trouble with former colleagues, but there were a couple of occasions in the Cabinet in which I was privileged to serve with him when more robust colleagues were going off in one direction or another. That beautiful Scottish brogue brought them back on to the safe line. Nobody wanted to argue with him.

I will make three short points and, although I endorse everything that has been said, I will not repeat what has been mentioned so far by colleagues. First—and this reflects something just spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes—there is a terrible cliché about at the moment that everything is broken in this country. Whenever we say that, we give succour to our enemies, both abroad and at home. The rule of law is not broken here. That is not to say that we should not be very careful to identify where new threats may come from, as this report does, and where corrections to present failings should be undertaken. But let us have enough of that cliché. We have the rule of law and we must protect it.

Secondly, for most of the last century, when civilisation faced destruction, either by Hitler or by Stalin, most attention was perhaps paid to the rule of law’s guardian against tyranny. Big Brother was the most potent fear, and it was a reasonable one. The danger of tyranny remains, of course, and a very real danger it is in much of the world. But now we must also watch for the other danger: anarchy. The irony is that our far bigger state has not become an all-powerful Big Brother. Can we really imagine that any of our departments of state would be as efficient as the terrifying departments in George Orwell’s book? I do not think it would actually work; it might even be described as being broken. The point is that as the state has become bigger, the paradox is that it has also become weaker. It has become an enormous juggernaut with its wheels stuck up to the axles in mud. We face that paradox—an enormous state which cannot plausibly reassure its citizens that it knows how to carry out its two central tasks: defence against foreign enemies and satisfactory maintenance of the law for ordinary people at home. It is the report’s concern for maintaining the confidence of ordinary people in the rule of law to which I want to add a little more colour today.

To quote the then Lord Chancellor and present Home Secretary when she was giving evidence to us, we cannot accept a situation where there

“is a sense that someone came in, robbed a shop…and absolutely nothing happened”.

When I asked her if she thought that the illegal arrival of small boats on our shores without apparent consequence undermined respect for the law, she answered yes—and she was right. There is beginning to be a real anxiety that elements of the rule of law are a bit of a bluff.

All is far from lost, though, and the splendid report by the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Herbert, will greatly help to strengthen the police if it is followed through. It is vital that the ordinary citizen understand that the state has not backed off from its fundamental duty to face down criminality, big or small, at home as well as abroad.

Thirdly, the rule of law is based on consent, or at least acceptance. Law long precedes democracy, but without it, in Lord Sumption’s words to the committee, society is

“simply a fight for the more effective deployment of force”.

Consent or allegiance means understanding of and acceptance of the process by which laws are made.

For us, it is Parliament and the ancient and subtle generation of common law. That is why there is a problem with, for example, the ECHR. It is not that the judges are wicked or that all the judgments are bad; many are easily accepted as excellent. The problem is that the citizen’s consent is not embodied in the process by which those laws are developed. There is not—or not yet, at least—a genuine community of Europe which lies behind that body of law in the way that England, Scotland and the whole of the United Kingdom lie behind our law. When the convention stops this Parliament doing things that the people want, people do not understand why.

Now we face an expansion of jurisdiction by the International Court of Justice. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, has written powerfully about this. That is going to drive us mad if we are not careful, and will face us with the same problems. Those who raise these issues are not against the rule of law or the rules-based order in the world; we are warning and anxious that if we simply sign to courts and laws which our people feel do not embody their own feelings then we will end ourselves in difficulty. It is very difficult to leave these things, but it is not a criticism of the rule of law to raise questions about those issues.

The UK remains a bastion of the rule of law. It is well defended by the outstanding practitioners who appeared before our committee, but it is a bastion whose defence we should never take for granted.

King’s Speech

Lord Waldegrave of North Hill Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the well-argued speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Mattinson. I suspect we will have plenty more argument on that subject. However, today belongs to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, although we were privileged to hear a powerful maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Case.

Can this really be the troublesome young journalist for the Times with whom I used to have lunch in the early 1970s, in direct disobedience of the predecessor of the noble Lord, Lord Case, Sir Burke Trend, who had forbidden any contact with this dangerous figure? Can this ermined and gartered figure really be the same person? Yes, it is—my goodness, Burke would be surprised, but pleased.

The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, together with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, and the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, has put paid to a traditional part of the British constitution. Perhaps after some advice from the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, he put paid to Lord Melbourne’s dictum that “there is no damn merit about the garter”. This was an essential part of our constitution and laying it to rest, as it now finally has been, is to be welcomed.

I come not only to praise the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, but to say how much I valued our personal friendship over many years, plotting about more open government and many other things, and that we must listen to him. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, was before, I am a member of the Constitution Committee. I will put before fellow members, of whom I am only one, of course, that we should now be looking to the very present dangers that exist for our constitution and try to identify the weaknesses, bolster the strengths and say that sometimes there should perhaps be more legal backing, although the introduction of lawyers into the process of government is not always to be welcomed. We should look to the weaknesses while we have time because, like the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, I predict that this is going to come under grave attack, or is liable to, in the years ahead. It is no news to any noble Lords that, at the moment, we have powerful forces about in the political world of the United Kingdom who are blaming the instruments of government, and not their own policies, for the problems we face.

I believe there is, in a prominent position in this country, the son of a tool-maker. He should surely know the phrase, which we were all brought up with, that a bad workman blames his tools. It is not the independent Civil Service, or some imaginary deep state, or any of that nonsense, which stops good policy being made; it is that we have lost, in the House of Commons, the capacity to debate new legislation in the way it ought to be debated. That is at the heart of quite a lot of the ills and problems that this House now faces. It is considered, consensual patriotism—consensus in its broadest sense, which linked Sir Winston Churchill to Mr Ernie Bevin, two people who could hardly have been more different in background and in every other way—which leads to good long-term policy.

I, for one, hope in a small way to respond to the appeal from the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, and that the House as a whole listens carefully to what he says.