Public Services: Update
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating yesterday’s Statement. He will know that we share the Government’s aim to save lives and rebuild our economy and well-being. In this context, there is much in the Statement that we applaud, particularly its acknowledgment of the role of volunteers, the health service, food growers and retailers, pharmacists, care workers, educators, charities, the police and the military. I would also add the BBC and indeed Ministers and civil servants, who have had to respond to previously unimaginable demands.
Unlike anything we have ever seen, this crisis has literally involved every single one of us. It is a national challenge like no other. We therefore have a population who are part and parcel of the country’s response and, in return, we owe it to them to be honest and transparent about the risks, the difficult trade-offs, the certainties and uncertainties, the data, and what the Government are actually doing, and planning to do. The Prime Minister, on his return to Downing Street from Chequers, pledged to act with “maximum possible transparency”. We therefore hope that we will soon have reliable data on the rate of BAME infections and deaths—an issue of major concern to our Caribbean and Asian communities.
We very much welcome that, from today, the statistics will include deaths in care homes and in the community, as well as those in hospitals. This is right in itself, but it is particularly important because of the numbers involved—perhaps 19,000 Covid-related deaths; a near tripling of the number of deaths in care homes over three weeks—and because of the failure to ensure that these people in society’s care, and the staff who look after them, were properly protected with equipment and testing. This is no time to look backwards and consider why that was, but it is time to look forward and ensure that the situation is remedied. This is especially true as it looks as if the UK’s overall coronavirus death rate could outstrip that of Italy, France and Spain, and may even be the highest in Europe.
We need the Government to take all necessary steps, and that includes heeding the very wise words “to underpromise and overdeliver, rather than overpromise and underdeliver”—as we saw, I am afraid, with PPE and testing. The Cabinet Office has a key role in this, not just on procurement, as mentioned quite rightly by the Minister, but on cross-departmental working and liaison, ensuring that lessons are learned as speedily as they are in the medical world, where advances in treatment of the virus in one week are disseminated around the health service profession by the following Monday. The Cabinet Office has a similar role in ensuring that everyone knows the lessons being learned elsewhere.
The Cabinet Office also has a role to ensure that all our citizens are fully informed about what is happening and what is being discussed. In that context, could the Minister explain why, if the Welsh, Scottish and indeed other Governments can ensure that signers are available and on-screen in daily press conferences, somehow No. 10 cannot quite arrange this? It can easily be done at a distance and so not break social distancing rules. Our deaf communities feel very strongly that they are being excluded from daily updates.
Going forward, plans to test and trace will affect all sectors of society, including those with a disability, and we will need every agency to help inform, encourage, test, safeguard and trace. That is a real cross-government task, involving local government, devolved authorities, charities—especially those working with the vulnerable—service providers, civic society, businesses and trade unions.
Until now, there have been some forgotten groups in all this, such as those who receive care in their own homes and domiciliary care staff. All these people must get the PPE that they need, and social care must be properly funded to deal with the extra costs of the pandemic.
These are some of the “here and now” issues, but we also need a viable and sustainable national recovery plan, which I assume will be Cabinet Office-led. For these next decisions, involvement across the piece is needed, not simply to help craft those plans, but to ensure that businesses, schools and other organisations have time to prepare, such that the infection rates do not increase again. Transparency and consultation will be vital, so will the Government publish their next- steps framework?
We stand ready to help—it is in the national interest—to ensure that the NHS, public services, businesses, workers, families and communities recover and become more resilient. But we need to understand, and contribute to, the Government’s thinking, so we ask that there is that involvement. Will the Government agree to hold talks with teachers, trade unions, businesses, charities and local authorities on how their forward strategy can be developed and implemented to rebuild the economy and jobs?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
I, too, welcome this Statement and the remarkable change of tone it contains about public sector workers used by Conservative Ministers and advisers until a few weeks ago. Last December’s Conservative manifesto, and even more the writings of Conservative advisers such as Dominic Cummings and Rachel Wolf, condemned the Civil Service as “incompetent” and wasteful, as ignorant about science and looking after their own interests rather than the public as a whole.
Happily, Ministers have now realised that civil servants and others across the public sector believe in the concept of public service, which right-wing libertarians and public choice economists have rubbished for so long. Across our entire public service, from the NHS to the police and military to Whitehall and local authorities, we have seen people rising to the challenge, moving jobs to help others, and working all hours. Many of them, we should also recognise, are far more modestly paid than their equivalents in the private sector, but they have shown their commitment and their loyalty to the communities they serve.
I am glad to see the reference to local resilience forums, and the recognition that this is a series of local crises across the country as well as a national crisis. I hope that this will persuade the Government to reverse their marginalisation of local authorities and to recognise the vital contribution that effective local government makes to a thriving democracy. I was struck when I read the section on democracy and political reform in last December’s Conservative manifesto that it contained no reference at all to local democracy. I hope that the Minister will argue for its inclusion in the agenda for the constitution, democracy and human rights commission which the Government have promised to set up this year.
The Statement expresses gratitude to
“to colleagues from the devolved Administrations for their participation and their constructive contributions to all our discussions. Those discussions have helped us to understand how the virus has affected every part of our United Kingdom.”
Can the Minister tell the House how the Government have ensured that they have understood the impact on every part of the UK, given that the large majority of the UK’s population lives in England and that there appears to have been no visible mechanism for consultation with the English regions or even with the city mayors from outside London?
The Minister mentioned that the military has now been brought in to help out with logistics but also with expanding testing for the virus. The Statement does not explain why the initial programme of testing was contracted out to a large private consultancy firm: a contract which, the Daily Telegraph has reported, was awarded without the normal tendering process. Was that because of an instinctive Conservative assumption that the private sector is always better than the public sector? The underutilisation of the first testing centres, reported and repeated difficulties with the booking system, and the apparent assumption that all care and health workers had access to their own cars and had time to drive up to 50 miles to be tested all show this to have been one of the weakest aspects of the response to the epidemic. I am glad that the military have now been brought in to expand testing. Why were they not brought in at the outset? My own experience in government, dealing with the digitisation of Whitehall, suggested that outside consultancies often charge more and deliver less.
The Statement refers also to the redeployment of a large number of civil servants across Whitehall to cope with the crisis. What other tasks of government have had to be put on hold as a result? I understand, for example, that the Government’s promised White Paper on data strategy, for which the Minister is responsible to the Lords, is now several months behind schedule, since officials had been transferred; first, to help with preparation for Brexit and now to respond to the epidemic. I understand that officials working on the Brexit negotiations have also been redeployed in response to the epidemic. Will the Minister commit to informing the House in the near future whether the team negotiating Brexit is still sufficiently staffed to handle the complex negotiations that we are engaged in or whether the demands of this emergency will enforce a change of pace if we are to avoid confusion or failure?
Finally, I welcome very warmly the Government’s tribute to
“the stoicism and steadfastness, the hard work and heroism, the compassion and commitment of those working at the front line of public service.”
We all make that tribute, and long may the Government’s change of tone continue.
Lord True
My Lords, perhaps I may begin by congratulating the Prime Minister and Carrie Symonds on the birth of their son. It is a story of movement from near death to new life in a few weeks. I am sure that that is what we all avidly pray for for this economy and this nation as we look ahead to a way out of this crisis and to new hope.
I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their responses to the Statement and the constructive way in which they put forward their points of view, many of which I share. I endorse their admiration for all that is being done in the NHS, social care, the public services and the private sector in the face of this crisis. Naturally, I add my own respect and prayers for those people and their families who have given, literally, all they had to give. None of us, as the nation showed at 11 o’clock yesterday, will forget them.
Everyone across the land, which includes central government and, yes, local government, is doing the best they can, as fast as they can, and the most they can in these difficult times. As the noble Baroness said, there has been an extraordinary response from the public in the coming-together across the land, and long may it last.
We must not forget that some remarkable things have been achieved. I acknowledge to both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord that there have also been things that have not gone as well in every detail as all would hope. I think that it was General Moltke who said that no plan extends with certainty beyond first contact with the main force of the enemy, and Covid is a new, hidden, mutable and invisible enemy with characteristics not met before. However, I assure the House that the Government and all their agencies are working night and day to ensure that our front-line health and social care staff have the equipment they need to tackle this virus, and we have delivered more than 1,000 million items of PPE since the outbreak began, including 36 million to care homes.
I agree with the noble Baroness that transparency is important. As she acknowledged, we are moving today to bring together the different strands of statistics in relation to care homes, which will give full and proper transparency on that. Her point on BAME is very important. Work on that is under way, as the scientists have said at the daily briefings. I cannot give her a date for an outcome to the work.
Care homes are obviously a sector of enormous importance, and they have been of concern to the Government all the way through. As I have said, 36 million items of PPE have already been delivered to care homes, but it is a vulnerable section of the community where I acknowledge the need always to strive to do better.
On communications, I will take up the noble Baroness’s point; I understand it very well. I acknowledge her point on the need for the broadest co-operation if and when we move into test and trace. On publishing frameworks, I think that the noble Baroness and the House know that the Government’s position is that we have first to keep on with the effort that that public are making to contain this virus and to meet the five tests before we move forward to any release from the current lockdown provisions. As the Prime Minister acknowledged when he came back to work, over the next few days, the Government will continue to examine carefully all these issues.
On the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, I do not need any reminder of the need to commend the Civil Service. I have always had the highest respect for it and have worked with it through my life. The ideal of public service is one that I personally consider to be of the highest importance, and it is something to which I have always aspired. I assure the noble Lord that that is shared widely, if not universally, across the Government. On the importance of local authorities, I referred to the local resilience fora. Local authorities are making a great contribution. We will continue to work to improve and maintain communications with them and with agencies right across England, as the noble Lord rightly said.
I welcome what the noble Lord said about the military. Its role has been extraordinary. The Armed Forces have made a great difference and perhaps have not had as much attention in the media as they might have done, but I was grateful for what he said on that score.
So far as the redeployment of civil servants and the delay of business is concerned, there has been an impact on some aspects of government business, of course. It is right that full priority should be given to confronting this crisis, but on the noble Lord’s concerns about the negotiations towards the transition on 31 December, I assure him that a very effective team with a large number of civil servants is at work there, as was said in the recent Statement. Indeed, if he read Monsieur Barnier’s statement, he will have seen how Monsieur Barnier himself commented on the professionalism of David Frost and his team in carrying forward those negotiations. I believe that we can have confidence in that.
I hope that I have answered most of the points made. If not, I will write to noble Lords.
European Union: Future Relationship
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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The Lord Speaker
I call the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley. No? I call the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, then. No? Then I call the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, seven months ago the Government presented to Parliament the political declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship which did not talk about a free trade area, but rather about,
“an ambitious broad, deep and flexible partnership”
including
“foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of co-operation.”
The paper presented to us by the Government in February set out a much narrower free trade agreement, as the Minister has just said. It says nothing about a wider partnership. Should we now accept that the declaration made last October is no longer a reference point for the Government’s negotiations?
Ministerial Code
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, many years ago, when I was a graduate student teacher at an American university, I used to discuss with the students the differences between the British and American constitutions. The American constitution is based on the idea that you cannot entirely trust people in power; you need a carefully written constitution and checks and balances to prevent the unconstrained power of the Executive going too far. It has advantages and disadvantages; sometimes it leads to policy not getting through or even to complete deadlock.
Our system is based on a much more flexible unwritten constitution and what the noble Lord, Lord Young, has called on more than one occasion the “honour code”: that people will behave well in British politics, that the conventions will be respected and that the mechanisms which hold the British establishment together and exclude those who do not accept its rules ensure that people do not behave badly. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has called it the “good chaps theory”. The Lords plays a certain role in this as a backup against the popular House being swept away by a surge of populist enthusiasm; successive Marquesses of Salisbury made many speeches about the quiet, calm deliberation that the Lords could bring to British politics.
Part of our unwritten constitution was the relationship between Ministers and officials. It is not only a British aspect; Max Weber once wrote that the difference between politics and administration is that politics is the realm of campaigning, emotions and principle while administration is the realm of reason, evidence and advice. That is an unavoidable tension, made even more difficult when ministerial turnover in Britain is so extraordinarily high, as it has been in the last few years. Officials have to try to keep the show on the road as Ministers pass through every six, nine or 12 months.
That consensus has clearly broken down. The current Cabinet has two Members—one being the Prime Minister—who have broken the Ministerial Code. Indeed, the Prime Minister broke it in three places when he resigned as Foreign Secretary, extending that by continuing to live in his official residence for a further three weeks. In December 2018 the Committee on Standards in the Commons rebuked him for a “casual failure to declare” £52,000 of expenses. Even old Etonians nowadays do not entirely obey the codes of political and social life.
We have a Government who present themselves as insurgent and anti-establishment. Indeed, they often present the establishment, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord True, approves of, as the “liberal elite.” We have a Government who occasionally describe themselves as post-liberal and even suggest that they have some sympathy with those who have an illiberal approach to democracy. I found the deeply partisan responses to the resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam in the Commons very worrying. There was neither a sense that one had to think about the national interest as a whole nor a recognition that politics and campaigning are different from carrying on the complex problems of government.
The will of the people may establish the principle that we should leave the European Union but it cannot decide whether we should leave the European Aviation Safety Agency or the European medical emergency alert process. That is government; it is complicated and needs officials. Therefore, we need to reconsider some of these fundamental issues. I hope the Minister will say something about the Government’s plans for the commission they have promised to hold on the constitution and democracy, so that we can discuss how to adapt our flexible rules and honour codes to a less British-establishment style of politics—which is what we have now achieved—and how the relationship between Ministers and officials, which is at the heart of that, works in a constitution that we do not want to be on the American scale of constitutional restraints, but which we clearly need to revise.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, many of whose thoughtful remarks struck a chord not only with the House in general but with me. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for giving us this further opportunity to debate the Ministerial Code. I have been a Minister for less than a month; in that time, I have signed the Ministerial Code and responded three times to your Lordships on this subject. I am therefore left in little doubt that it is a matter of importance and one in which your Lordships, quite rightly, take a great interest from a position of great experience.
I will try to answer as many questions as possible that have quite reasonably been raised in the debate, but perhaps I might offer a preface. Here I echo some of the comments made by a number of those who have spoken. We must strive to secure good governance, which means that Ministers and officials work well and harmoniously together. That is the aim of effective administration, and it is from that sense of a shared objective that good decisions and implementation should follow.
I was there in 1992 when Prime Minister Major agreed to publish the Questions of Procedure for Ministers. I suspect that some of us on the political side probably gave similar advice to the noble Lord. However, we must not overdramatise; we must recognise the issues that we have to address, some of which have been raised in this debate. In general, however, the quality of governance in this country—I do not accept, as some noble Lords put forward, that a dramatic new kind of cowboy Administration have come in—and the standards are extraordinarily high, and we do not serve good governance by denying that or overdramatising the situation. I was asked whether I wanted to defend the indefensible: I do not think that I am defending the indefensible when I say that governance generally operates well, and the Ministerial Code is part of that.
When an Administration change and when a new Prime Minister comes in, it has always been the case that there is a challenge. I remember talking to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, two days before the change of administration in 1997, saying to him, “Here you are at this stage of your career; a change of Government will present a great career challenge.” The noble Lord quite rightly relished that. Of course, we all know that history proved that a new Government came in and I am sure that the Conservatives said some of the same things about the incoming Blair Government as are being said today.
That takes me directly to the point made about the position of Mr Cummings and his authority. The cases of Alistair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, who were given direct authority over officials in 1997, is not analogous. Following the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, to which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred—I thank him for his work on that—the position of special advisers was put on a statutory basis, and Mr Cummings’s role is governed by that Act.
Turning to some of the other points that were made, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said about balance and degree. That is inherent in what I just said about not exaggerating the degree of the problem. Every case and every serious allegation that is made must be subject to a testing of the facts. That is the way things are going on currently, which has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords. That must always be the case. In any judgment, at the end of the day—I do not refer to this particular case; I refer to any judgment—an element of degree must always come into it, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said.
My noble friend Lord Young asked me a series of questions, some of which he was kind enough to give me notice of, so I will try to answer one or two of them. As far as training is concerned—this issue was raised by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, at the start—all Lords Ministers have done the Valuing Everyone course or have slots booked to do it. I have done it myself and agree that it is a very valuable and important course; I would encourage everyone to undertake it. There is quite a queue to take the course in this large House, as noble Lords can imagine, but I assure noble Lords that this training is being given. It is vital that all parties in both Houses continue to encourage completion of that training.
On the case of Ms Khan, I cannot comment because it is subject to litigation. I hope that the noble Lord will understand; he has put his point on the record and I am sure that that is there for people to see.
On the point about a story in the Daily Mail, it may surprise some noble Lords in this House that I do not believe everything I read in that paper. I am particularly surprised that my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham is such an aficionado of the Daily Mail, but one lives and learns. I am aware of no such contract. The advice I am given is that Mr Cummings is a special adviser and subject to the special adviser code of conduct.
As far as contractors are concerned—I was away for a week when Mr Sabisky was enjoying his career in government—contractors are subject to the Civil Service code of principles, but again it would be inappropriate for me to comment on a particular vetting status or contractual arrangement applying to an individual. I hope that I have answered, or at least responded to, most of the points that my noble friend made.
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, raised the issue of ministerial training and I have sought to respond to that. On the question of the employment of special advisers, I thought we were discussing the Ministerial Code but I will always try to assist your Lordships. On special advisers, the point has been made that, as set out in the 2010 Act, they are selected for appointment by Ministers, and Ministers are ultimately responsible. However, all appointments must be approved by the Prime Minister, and it is inherent in that that the Prime Minister has a role in ensuring that special advisers are appropriate to their appointment and are conducting their activities appropriately. I see nothing particularly sinister in that.
My noble friend Lady Finn made some strong and powerful points, and I am sure that everyone who heard them will reflect on them. I said earlier in my remarks that I think there is a shared challenge in making good governance work. Sometimes there will be robust exchanges and sometimes friendly ones. When a Government come in with a new approach and a new mandate, or are refreshed by a general election, of course it is incumbent on the system to seek to implement in the most expeditious and effective way what that would-be Government have promised to the people.
Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, I am not afraid of using the word “people” because ultimately it is from a popular mandate that a Government’s authority arises. It is always interesting to hear a Liberal criticising insurgency; I thought that the beauty of the Liberal Party was that it had always been insurgent.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I was talking about Conservatives describing themselves as insurgents. I always thought that the Conservative Party was the establishment. It is a matter of puzzlement that we have so many Conservatives now describing themselves as the anti-establishment.
Lord True
I will not ensure that Hansard records that remark from a seated position; I would not like to think that anyone would think that of me.
With regard to reviewing the code, my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth pointed out in a very authoritative speech the progress of the code over time. It is periodically reviewed, and Mr Johnson recently published an update in August. Ultimately it is not for me to say; it is for the Prime Minister if he or she wishes to make a change, but it has recently been revised and reviewed. I believe that the Ministerial Code is strong. It is subject to review and an assistance to good government—
Ministerial Code: Breaches
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord True
My Lords, in answer to the second question, any Minister holds office at the wish of the Prime Minister and if he considers, in the case of any Minister on any subject, that that Minister is not performing, that Minister will be subject to the appropriate sanctions. As for the noble Baroness’s first question, my right honourable friend answered this in the other House. Allegations have been made that the Home Secretary breached the Ministerial Code and the Cabinet Office has been asked to look at the facts, as reported.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I fear that this affair may have some further way to go. There are, for example, various reports in the newspapers that there was a hitlist of other Permanent Secretaries that the Government would like to get rid of. None of us, I think, wants to go down the road of Washington, where relations between members of the American Cabinet and its staff are clearly toxic in a number of ways. Do we not now need some sort of investigation that will be published to re-establish the necessary confidence between Ministers and civil servants, without which effective government is very difficult to carry on?
Lord True
No, my Lords, the allegation of a hitlist is false and has been denied. All in this House would agree that good government depends on all the elements of a ministry and a Government working well together. I had the privilege of working in the Civil Service as a special adviser in the past and I know that to be the case. This Government wholly respect the role of the Civil Service; they need the Civil Service to be free to give robust advice and there needs to be proper respect between all arms of government decision-making.
EU: Future Relationship
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
I welcome the noble Lord, Lord True, to his role. He is the fourth Minister covering Brexit that I have faced. Two retired hurt—one fell out of a helicopter, and I think the other fell out with his political masters—although the last left the field having successfully delivered for his Prime Minister. While I wish the noble Lord well, I obviously hope we will be able to persuade him to listen to views other than just those emanating from No. 10.
Somewhat unusually, the lead negotiator—the Minister calls him a Sherpa—is a civil servant, David Frost. He is not a Minister; he is a civil servant, answerable neither to the Commons nor therefore, via a junior, to this House. We therefore welcome the Minister’s confirmation that he will be Mr Frost’s man in this House and report regularly as the negotiations proceed. Perhaps he will speak, or I can do so via him, to the Chief Whip to ensure we can have a proper debate on this document in the near future.
Today’s Statement is, needless to say, on a crucial and vital issue, but sadly I fear it does not bode well, since it leaves us with a query as to whether the PM really wants a deal, or at least whether he is willing to risk no deal simply to please his friends—whether Trump or the ERG—such that he prioritises a US deal over and above one with the EU. Without an EU deal, we would see tariffs, checks and barriers to trade implemented very fast, by January, in a way that would damage the whole economy. The price of a US deal, even if we got one, would be lower consumer standards, workers’ rights being jeopardised, and environmental concerns being downplayed. What would be the purpose of that?
The only reason seems to be the avoidance of the ECJ—a court—and, as we just heard, this reassertion of so-called “sovereignty”, which was mentioned 11 times in the Statement: a bit of a hang-up there. This is an interdependent world, where the value of currencies, confidence in economies, global interest rates, international tax and wage rates all impact on UK businesses every day. The idea that we live in this independent sovereign world unaffected by anything outside is a figment of the imagination. The best way to confront these global uncertainties is to work closely with our nearest partners and as part of a half-billion market to absorb the ups and downs in world trade and to secure a thriving market for UK goods.
Any idea that a deal suitable for a faraway country—3,500 miles in the case of Canada—would suit the sort of trade that we have with a continent 12 miles away at its nearest is surely pure fantasy. Do the Government understand that the imports and exports of meat, cheese, milk, nuclear medicines, flowers, fruit and vegetables depend on short distances, fast travel and a virtually identical time zone for that easy flow of trade? Or that our car manufacturers need rapid supplies of parts as well as exports of finished products which depend on easy access to the continent? Easy means quick and cheap. No wonder the Treasury predicted that a Canada-style free trade agreement would shrink the economy by up to 6.4%.
The Government seem to accept that there will be customs posts, tariffs and checks, and they even occasionally acknowledge that these will be between Northern Ireland and GB. But those cost money to businesses, to consumers, and to the taxpayer. I hope I have read it wrong, but this Statement seems to smack of a negotiating position which is seeking a very distant relationship with the EU, happy to establish barriers for those businesses trying to continue to trade with our largest economic partner. Despite the warm words which the Minister has just repeated, the Government’s commitments on rights, protections and standards, which were written into the political declaration that the Prime Minister signed, now appear to be at risk because the Minister seems to be saying that because some of ours are higher, we can junk all of the commonly agreed minima.
The political declaration promised that the Government would seek a free trade agreement that was underpinned by provisions that ensured a level playing field—the Prime Minister signed that—and safeguarded workers’ rights, consumer rights and environmental protections. Today’s Statement seems to back-track on both. That is not just bad for the people concerned, be they workers, consumers or those interested in the environment, but it is bad for business, with this new variable and reckless approach to negotiations taking business straight from one set of uncertainties to another. We know what businesses want from our deal with the EU: first, ambitious co-operation on regulation with regard to goods to reduce red tape for exporters; secondly, comprehensive coverage of services to maintain the competitive edge of UK providers—a vital part of our economy and, unfortunately, an element not mentioned in the Statement; and, thirdly meaningful customs facilitation to keep costs and complexities low.
It is no good the Prime Minister’s spinners attacking the CBI, as they did earlier this month, accusing it and others of neglecting their duty to prepare their members for the realities of a Canada-style free trade deal. Briefing from No. 10, referring to the CBI and others, said that they have a responsibility to their members that they are not fulfilling, and individual businesses might consider whether they are getting the best representation from the umbrella groups that they are funding. That sounds to me like Downing Street trying to encourage the CBI to mute its criticism of the Government’s strategy. That is not an open Government willing to listen to the views of others.
Without thriving businesses, we have no chance of levelling up or continuing to grow, so I urge the Minister to engage with representatives of consumers, of industry, of farmers and of the service sector so that real hard economic facts, rather than ideology and wishful thinking, will be the lodestar in the negotiations. Can the Minister confirm to the House that the Governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as of Gibraltar will be fully involved in all stages of the negotiations so that the interests of all parts of the UK are safeguarded?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I, too, welcome the Minister to his new position and look forward to a series of robust exchanges in the months to come. As I was coming down to the House, I was interested to learn that there is now a revised version of the Statement. Perhaps it might be of interest to the House to point out what has been revised. The original text stated that
“as a sovereign, self-governing independent nation we will have the freedom to … lower all our taxes”.
The Minister correctly read out the revised version, which is
“to set all our taxes.”
That seems a wise revision by a Government who are about to produce a Budget which intends to increase spending very considerably. If they were to promise in a wonderfully populist way to lower all our taxes at the same time, it would be a little more Trumpian than even Johnsonian.
I would like to tackle the language and assumptions of the Government’s current approach. This is a very harsh, autonomous independence. As has been pointed out, sovereignty—independent sovereign equality—runs all the way through it, as does the notion of the people’s Government, the “servants” of the people. Saying that
“we follow the people’s priorities”
is the not the language of Churchill or Thatcher. It is the language of Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, or even President Erdoğan of Turkey. This is not constitutional parliamentary language. This is not Edmund Burke. The Conservative Party has to recognise that it is slipping into different territory.
In his speech last week, David Frost started and finished by quoting Edmund Burke, but he also rubbished the idea of shared sovereignty. I recall listening to Geoffrey Howe and Margaret Thatcher talking about shared sovereignty and how we benefit in constructing a multilateral international order by sharing our sovereignty through international treaties and agreements, international organisations and international law. Britain has done a great deal in that regard. The language of the Statement suggests that we reject most of that and that we think we are now dealing with a power—the sovereign European Union—which is threatening our sovereignty and independence.
I have not yet heard any Minister say that in dealing with the United States we will expect the United States to treat us as a sovereign equal. I hope the Minister can assure us that we expect the same from the United States because it would not be desirable to establish our independence from the European Union hostile force—as it clearly in many ways is—by reinforcing our dependence in security, intelligence and a range of other ways on the United States. We see it in current extradition procedures and in the presence of American intelligence operatives in this country, who are not fully covered by treaty arrangements and not fully reported to Parliament. That is a degree of dependence which is certainly an evasion of British sovereignty, if we are going to talk about our sovereign independence.
How are we going to establish our political and economic independence by January next year? If we are going to be economically independent, are we going to ensure, for example, that all our key telecommunications equipment is made inside this country? Are we going to ensure that we have an independently owned steel industry, or at least a steel industry of some sort, or is that not part of economic independence? Do we think that supporting offshore financial centres under British sovereignty is part of independence, given that integration into the offshore world which is the ultimate denial of sovereignty in taxation and other terms? If we are not, that is misleading, populist language. It is wonderful to suggest that we stand for the people, but actually, we do not.
Free trade limits sovereignty. Protectionism is what protects sovereignty. North Korea is in many ways one of the most sovereign countries in this world. Once you open yourself to foreign investment and trade, you limit your sovereignty, and that is what we have done. We are one of the most open countries to foreign takeovers and, as a result, we have limited sovereignty and we have to share it with others. If we are talking the language of sovereign equality, we should remember what that great realist Thucydides said: strong states do what they like, small states—and we are smaller than China or the United States—do what they must.
There is no understanding of Britain’s position in the world now we have left the European Union. We have no foreign policy at present. That is not part of this current populist dimension. How do we approach climate change and how do we deal with pandemics? We have to share sovereignty. I hope, when it comes to the climate change conference, the Government will sign up to new international obligations, which will also limit Britain’s sovereignty. Perhaps it is only signing up to shared obligations with the European Union that we object to and we do not, apparently, object quite so much to signing up with China or India.
Can the Minister also assure us that what I understood the Statement to mean on regulatory divergence is that we demand the principle of regulatory divergence but, in practice, we shall be fairly closely aligned? We are standing up for the ideological dimension that we choose but, when it comes to it, we will probably go along with them. Of course, the alternative, if we do not align with European regulations, will be to align more closely with American regulations, rather than, I suspect, to choose our own.
I hope the Minister recognises that the change of tone from the political declaration we signed last October is very worrying for anyone who cares about our position in the world. He will have read the Times editorial the day before yesterday, which said that if we now suggest that we are not bound by agreements that we signed up to last year on Northern Ireland and on the political direction, no one will be prepared to trust us and we will not be able to get a future agreement. When a not particularly left-wing newspaper, such as the Times, says that about the Government’s approach to their negotiations, we should all be very worried indeed.
Lord True
I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord. Obviously, I thank them for their references to my arrival here. I feel privileged to follow my noble friend Lord Callanan in answering on this subject at this Dispatch Box. He was often stoic and always willing to be open to the rest of the House. I assure both noble Lords who have spoken that I will endeavour to be fully open and I look forward to working with them. I know my noble friend is a hard act to follow and I will try to do that.
I will come to each of the contributions in a moment. I felt that they had something in common. One was, perhaps, slightly more robust but there still seemed to be a lack of recognition on the Benches opposite of the fundamental change in the circumstances in which this nation—and, frankly, this Parliament—operates and, I submit, has a duty to operate. Not only was there a very clear referendum result some years ago, following which this House did not cover itself in glory in the way it behaved, but there has recently been a general election—as referred to in the Statement—in which the British people gave a decisive steer. It is a mandate—whatever people on the other side may feel —and an instruction that, as the Statement said, we on this side feel an overwhelming duty and responsibility to respond to. Everything that this Government will try to do in this House will start from the fundamental fact that the British people have voted to leave and they have voted to be independent and that is the policy that this Government will pursue.
I come to some of the points raised. With respect to the noble Baroness, it was a little like hearing the briefing on the process before Brexit actually happened. The Government are trying to be as open with the House as possible right from the start, publishing this mandate before the negotiations begin. We are in a new phase. Brexit has happened. In the period up until 31 December, we are seeking to reach an agreement with our friends and allies in Europe; that is, an agreement based on full respect and friendly co-operation, and centred on free trade. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, it sounded as though he was seeing the Government as inspired by Stalinist socialism in one country. The Government are fully alive to our international friendships and obligations, which stretch right across the world. I repeat that the key position, which this House must understand, is that we want friendly relations and co-operation between sovereign equals, but it must be informed by the decisions taken by the British people—by our mandate.
On workers’ rights and environmental matters, the Statement was unequivocal. The position taken by the Government is that we aspire to the very highest standards in those areas. We had exchanges earlier about environmental matters. There is no question of the Government resiling from that aspiration.
The noble Baroness asked about friction. Our objective is free trade. That was the proposal put forward by our European friends. But, if it turns out that some element of friction—which we hope will be minimal or non-existent—is present, we have made clear the importance of our need to be an independent, sovereign nation. The noble Baroness talked about a different relationship. We do not want a different relationship in the sense of being hostile, as the noble Lord implied. We bear no hostility to our European friends but we do want a free trade agreement as sovereign equals. In that sense, the relationship is certainly different.
Financial services are, of course, absolutely critical. The noble Baroness asked about this. The position is that, again, it is an area of hopeful co-operation. We have a common interest with the EU in establishing an enduring relationship on financial services, based on mutual trust and co-operation. As my right honourable friend said in the other place, that means completing equivalence assessments, one hopes by the agreed June 2020 deadline.
We must not run ahead of the negotiating process—it is yet to begin. It is disappointing to hear in your Lordships’ House the assumption that everything is impossible. I do not agree with that. I am happy to repeat that we will, of course, try to keep the House informed in an appropriate way as the negotiations go forward; yes, we will keep the devolved Administrations informed. Indeed, in the House of Commons, my right honourable friend expressed his gratitude for the valuable recent discussions he had had with representatives of the devolved Administrations.
On language, I was invited to be robust, but I must try to stop being robust now that I am a Minister. I want full co-operation and friendship with the noble Lord, who I enjoyed working with in coalition, but it is a bit rich to be given a lesson on language by a party that went to the last election planning to revoke Article 50 without any reference at all to the British people. To my reckoning, that seemed mildly harsh. I will not go into a philosophical argument about what sovereignty means. Some things the noble Lord said were true; some were not. This Government intend to be a leader on climate change, as we have already demonstrated.
I have tried to answer the questions, but I am sorry to have gone over time. We must accept this as a fresh phase, and I hope the whole House, on all sides, addresses this phase in the positive spirit of wishing to get a good outcome by the end of this year, both for this country and for the European Union. That is the position of this Government and what we will try to achieve.
Ministers: Training
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the paragraph that the noble Lord just quoted actually says that the Prime Minister
“may ask the Cabinet Office”.
What is the status of the Ministerial Code? When we had an exchange in this House at the time of the resignation of a previous Foreign Secretary, now the Prime Minister, and it was pointed out that he had been reprimanded for breaking the Ministerial Code in several places, it was also pointed out by the then Cabinet Office Minister that the Ministerial Code is an honour code and based on the idea that Ministers will always act on their honour. Is it now time that we had some stronger sanction than that?
Lord True
My Lords, I repeat: Ministers hold office at the Prime Minister’s request and remain in office only for as long as they retain the Prime Minister’s confidence. I note what the noble Lord says. The current position is that the Prime Minister is the ultimate judge of the standards of behaviour expected and the appropriate consequences. The conduct of any Minister in office is subject to the most absolute scrutiny—that is, public scrutiny—and this Government intend to hold, and do hold, to the very highest standards of ministerial behaviour at every level.
Brexit: Other Policy Areas
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
On the issue of social care, the noble Baroness will have heard responses from my noble friend who was pressed on the progress of the Green Paper on social care. I cannot add to what she said. As regards Brexit squeezing out legislation, we made it clear at the beginning of the session—which we knew would last slightly longer than usual—that Brexit would be a priority. However, we have so far introduced 63 government Bills, 44 of which have received Royal Assent, and, in addition to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, 10 exit-related Bills are in Parliament or have received Royal Assent. So we have introduced 52 Bills that are not related to exit. It is not the case that Brexit has squeezed out all relevant social legislation.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Minister referred to the capacity of the Civil Service. The Conservatives were keen to reduce Civil Service numbers, did so in 2016 and planned to in 2017. Since then, I understand that they have had to go through some emergency recruiting to bring numbers up to what is needed to handle preparations for Brexit—and in particular a no-deal Brexit—and have not yet started on the number of extra civil servants we will need to staff all the agencies that will have to be created to replace those EU agencies that provided us with shared services. Can he give us some estimate of the additional number of civil servants who have already been recruited and the extra numbers we will need if and when we leave?
Lord Young of Cookham
I wish I could, but I honestly do not have those figures in front of me. The Civil Service has always had the flexibility to reflect government priorities and move people around from one department to another. At the beginning of the Blair Government, when constitutional reform was a priority—with the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and reform of your Lordships’ House—resources were pushed into that. In the 1980s, when we had nationalisation, resources went there. So the Civil Service has the capacity to respond to challenges and, in my view, has always risen to that challenge.
Future Generations
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
I am a great fan of the Youth Parliament and when I was in the other place I attended some of its sessions there. It gives young people an opportunity to taste public life and I hope that many of its members will go on to become Members of Parliament. Perhaps I may reflect on the broader issue the noble Baroness raises about whether we might give more powers to the Youth Parliament. It is a helpful and positive suggestion.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, is not part of the problem of short-term policy-making, when we should have long-term thinking, that the ministerial churn is enormous? A number of senior ministerial posts are on their third postholder since 2015 and are expecting a fourth within the next four to six weeks. The noble Lord is an absolute pillar of the example of long-term postholding in government. Does he have any recommendations to make about how we may shift from this constant change of ministerial office to a longer-term prospectus?
Lord Young of Cookham
The noble Lord makes a valid suggestion. I was a Minister 40 years ago and since then I have been churned many times, often against my will. The noble Lord makes a serious point. It takes time to come to terms with a portfolio and then to develop one’s own priorities and initiatives. It is demoralising, just when one has discovered one’s responsibilities and what one wants to do, when one gets the call from No. 10 to say that one’s talents have been recognised but need to be deployed elsewhere. It is right that Ministers should spend at least two years in the same position. However, it may not always be possible—as next month may show.
Referendums
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, that I was never a fan of my party’s behaviour on referendums. They require a great deal of care. I entirely support what has been said about the need to define much more tightly how and in which circumstances referendums are used.
We are now in an awful mess. We have an institutionalised two-party system, in which both parties appear to be irrevocably split, so it does not work. We have a number of people saying that the referendum has given us the will of the people, but we are a representative democracy. We have had three years in which those who led the leave campaign—Liam Fox, David Davis and Boris Johnson—were given responsible positions to try to implement the will of the people, and have failed to. So we are stuck. What we need, therefore, is a debate on our constitution and a concern for how to educate our masters, in a society that has failed over generations to have political education in schools or any sense of civic responsibility, so that we understand that democracy is a dialogue in which the people and the political elite hold each other to account.
That leaves us all with the requirement to talk about how we understand the British constitution. As has often been said, our constitution requires government by good chaps. When we have a large number of people in our political elite who are not exactly good chaps—I make no reference to any particular contenders for the Conservative leadership—it becomes difficult to make the constitution work or to maintain its conventions when they are challenged. The fact that we are three years away from a referendum campaign which was fought on the principle of restoring parliamentary sovereignty and we now have contenders for the Conservative leadership outbidding each other in their determination to dissolve Parliament, or at least to suspend or prorogue us so that executive authority can be used to drive through a hard Brexit, demonstrates what a mess we are in.
Democracy is a dialogue between citizens and the political establishment. That requires responsible political leadership. It also requires checks and balances which we only have in a conventional form in Britain, unlike the written constitutions of the United States, France, Germany or other countries. It requires responsible parties, and that has clearly broken down. It requires the re-establishment of a relationship between the public and the political elite which re-establishes trust. We all understand how that has broken down. After this very short debate we need to address, publicly, the issues of how we reshape and re-explain the British constitution.
European Parliament Elections: Non-UK EU Citizens
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
As I said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, the Electoral Commission will carry out its normal review and inquiry into the European elections. It will certainly look at the issue raised by the noble Lord that some of the forms do not reach the people eligible. The Government will of course take notice of any recommendations made.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will recall that, at the weekend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer suggested that the Conservative leadership election makes it now practically impossible for us to leave in good order on 31 October. Mr Michael Gove, as a candidate for that leadership, has also suggested that we might take rather longer. This begins to open up the prospect that we could indeed have the 2020 local elections before we get to the point of deciding whether we finally leave. We need to make absolutely sure that the position of EU citizens resident in Britain and their right to vote is clarified before we come to the next round of elections in which they are entitled to participate. Can he ensure that the Electoral Commission has that fully in mind?
Lord Young of Cookham
Is the noble Lord suggesting that there is a scenario where we have another round of European elections?