EU: Salaries
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the European Union institutions all together employ approximately 55,000 people. EU staff are exempt from national income tax, a similar situation to that found in other international bodies. As in other international bodies, the EU deducts a proportion of salary as a form of extranational taxation, proceeds from which are returned to the EU budget. This is applied progressively, rising from an initial 8% to a 45% marginal rate for the highest-paid. In addition, there is now a special or solidarity levy, which last month was increased from a top rate of 5.5% to 6%; most officials pay an average of 2%. I should declare an interest. My wife was for five years the director of the Robert Schuman Centre in Florence, whose staff regulations were those of the European institutions. We have examined her payslips and established that an average of 28% of her gross salary was deducted in community tax each month.
Lord Flight
My Lords, would it not be more sensible for civil servants working for the EU to be taxed on the same basis as civil servants working, for example, for the Foreign Office; namely, for them to pay the rates of income tax applicable to the country where they are otherwise normally resident?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are now into the whole question about residency, non-residency and international organisations. It has been a common rule for international organisations that you do not pay national taxes but are given a degree of exemption. If we were to reclassify the European Union as not an international organisation but as rather like going to work in Manchester or Leeds, different processes would apply. As a former international banker, the noble Lord will be well aware of the many complexities of international taxation, expatriate allowances and the like.
Lord Tomlinson
Is the Minister as surprised as I am by the low number of European Union institution employees? How does that figure—I think he said 55,000—compare with a large-scale local authority in the United Kingdom?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the figures I have are that Paris employs 50,000 people and Birmingham employs 60,000 people, so it is a relatively modest number. I am sure the noble Lord will admit that the inefficiencies of the Commission—in particular, the rather inadequate personnel policies, the relatively generous allowances and an expatriate allowance which, unlike the NATO expatriate allowance, does not phase out after a number of years and is rather more generous—are things that we should be looking at, particularly when all national budgets within the European Union are being squeezed.
Lord Dobbs
Will my noble friend help a confused man who has trouble with numbers? We have one European Union which has two parliaments, three presidents and dozens of employees who earn more than our Prime Minister. I understand that the second parliament in Strasbourg, over the course of the parliamentary cycle, costs our taxpayers €1.5 billion. Do any of those statistics make any sense to him?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, there are a number of built-in inefficiencies in every international organisation to which we belong. It is not two parliaments, it is two parliament buildings. The British Government and British Members of the European Parliament have campaigned for several years for a single seat for the European Parliament. If I were to go into the enormous costs of the UN having a base in Geneva as well as New York, we would note that the EU is not the only international organisation that suffers from these inefficiencies.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, lest the Question be viewed as in any way anti-European Union, which I am sure is not the noble Lord’s intention, will the Minister confirm that the tax regime he mentioned not only applies to the United Nations but also to a number of other organisations based within the European Union, such as the OSCE and NATO in Brussels? It is general and in no way a feature of the European Union.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I have already said that this applies to a large range of other European and global organisations, of which there are a great number. That does not mean, however, that Her Majesty’s Government and their allies in like-minded Governments in the EU are not entirely correct to say that we should be squeezing more efficiency out of the EU institutions and that the Commission has grown rather complacent over the years.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, what is the average annual cost to the taxpayer of Members of your Lordships’ House and what is the average annual cost to the taxpayer of Members of the European Parliament, including all the latter’s special perks and allowances?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, it may surprise the noble Lord, but I do not have the exact figures to hand. Of course, any international parliament costs a great deal more because of the travel, dual residence and so on that are involved. Members of this House who also attend the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe or the NATO Assembly also cost rather more than the rest of us.
Lord Howell of Guildford
Does my noble friend have any figures on the European External Action Service? Has he noticed recent criticism that it is not performing very effectively? Does he have any measure of cost versus performance for that body?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I do not have that. The European External Action Service is still very much in its early stages. It is now performing rather better than when it was originally established. Multinational operations take longer to get going than others—I am looking at various people here who have served in the European Commission—and have a level of built-in efficiency.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Is the Minister aware that the European Union Committee on which I have the honour to serve is about to produce a report on the European External Action Service? I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, will read it with the greatest of interest?
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I wish to place on record, and ask the noble Lord to accept, that although we on this side of the House are very pro-European, we, like the Government, seek reform of the institutions, including all the salary levels, and so on.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I thank the noble Baroness for that expression of consensus. She will know from her time working for EU institutions that the staff regulations and staff unions in Brussels have a certain element of the 1960s about them which requires a little modernisation.
Syria
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the recent Friends of Syria conference in Rome, what assessment they have made of the political situation in Syria.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Foreign Secretary has stated that there must be a political solution to the conflict, which has already claimed more than 70,000 lives. The longer the conflict continues, the more radicalised and sectarian it will become, with an increasing risk of regional overspill. There is no sign that the Assad regime intends to enter into a genuine political process. We must, therefore, increase pressure on Assad and his regime to push them to the negotiating table.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the increase in pressure proposed today in the Foreign Secretary’s Statement may be too little, too late? Does he further agree that the West’s interests are now profoundly engaged, as a failed state in Syria will result in an expansion of international terrorism, increase the dangers from WMD, endanger the supply of energy and destabilise Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq and even Turkey? Therefore, will Her Majesty’s Government now work with the United States and France to arm the non-jihadi opposition forces, recognising that the use of force will be the only way to bring the Assad Government to the negotiating table or to bring about an eventual forced peace, should Assad not be available to bring about peace?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are balancing a number of extremely difficult choices all the way through. We are attempting to force the regime to negotiate. We do not have all the permanent members of the UN on our side. The Russians continue to support and, reportedly, to supply the Assad regime. The Iranians are of course supplying the Assad regime. We have taken what we regard as a carefully calibrated decision to upgrade the amount of support, including non-lethal armour, to the Opposition, but we are all conscious that once you start supplying high-end weapons to a civil war, you never quite know where they will end up, as the French discovered in Mali.
Lord Wright of Richmond
My Lords, I hope that I may be permitted to ask a few of the many questions which I would have tried to ask if the Foreign Secretary’s Statement had been repeated in this House today. First, does the Minister accept that even the supply of non-lethal assistance to the so-called Opposition represents a dangerous escalation of our involvement in what is now, and has been for a long time, effectively a Sunni-Shia war? What reason do the Government have for thinking that the Opposition, which HMG have now recognised as the legitimate Government of Syria, would be any more accountable or democratic than the present regime in Damascus?
Secondly, can the Minister confirm that we still support Ambassador Brahimi’s mission? Does he agree that, instead of rubbishing President Assad’s recent interview in the Sunday Times, we should encourage Ambassador Brahimi to follow up President Assad’s offer of unconditional negotiations with such parts of the Opposition as have also expressed their readiness to negotiate?
Finally, I welcome the decision of the United States Government and HMG to withhold lethal military assistance from the Opposition. Are we similarly encouraging our friends in the Gulf to do likewise?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, there were a large number of questions there. I say simply that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is meeting Lakhdar Brahimi this afternoon. He is also meeting the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister. The Foreign Secretary and other Foreign Office Ministers are extremely actively engaged. It is not yet a Sunni-Shia conflict. We are all conscious of the danger that it will deteriorate into a Sunni-Shia conflict. Working with the Opposition, we are doing our best to encourage them to represent all the different communities within Syria. Our aim is to bring a negotiated end to the conflict and to prevent it from deteriorating further.
Baroness Uddin
My Lords, what assessment have the Minister and his department made of the impact of the Saudi Government’s leadership in regional discussions with regard to the ongoing disaster and destruction in Syria, where 1 million people are fleeing persecution and violence according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are working with the Saudis, the Qataris and a number of other states in the Middle East. We are very conscious that Lebanon and Jordan are particularly affected by the Syrian conflict. In Lebanon, the number of refugees is equivalent to 10% of its population. If we imagine the impact on British society of the arrival of 6 million refugees, that is what Lebanon is currently going through. We are very conscious of the potential for this conflict to spill over Syria’s borders.
Lord Eden of Winton
My Lords, will my noble friend return to one part of the question asked of him by the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond? Can he give any assurance at all that if President Assad is removed, his replacement will not be more repressive?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, by its nature when a very localised civil war is under way, it is very difficult for any of us to control what the outcome will be. The only assurance that I, or any other international actor, can give is that Her Majesty’s Government are working with our allies and partners in the Middle East and attempting to persuade the Russian and Chinese Governments to work towards the achievement of a negotiated solution that would see a more inclusive Government replace the Assad regime.
Lord Hylton
My Lords, have the Government studied the recent proposal for transitional justice in Syria, put forward by the Syrian Support Group? If implemented, would it not have the effect of separating ordinary, innocent Alawis from the regime?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, there are a great many efforts under way to protect the Alawi minority, the Christian minority and the smaller number of Druze within Syria from what could easily deteriorate into a sectional jihad. We are all very worried about that possibility. A great deal of work is under way, quite a lot of it funded by DfID, to advise the Opposition about negotiated transition, rebuilding local communities and providing the basic services that people need to start the process of reconciliation.
Crime: Sexual Violence
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Baroness O'Loan
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for bringing this debate today. I have worked with women in conflict in many countries and I want to share some of the things that they say donor countries could do to help.
The UK Government in their engagement with the UN could contribute by seeking to place the issue of sexual-based violence on the agenda at peace negotiations. There can be no amnesty in law for rape and violent crimes in times of war. However, very little has been done not just to bring offenders to book but even to articulate that rape is a crime and action will be taken against those responsible. These issues rarely form part of peace negotiations and that is because the offenders are the people at the table and they have no interest in bringing the issue to the table. If supporting Governments, such as the UK, could make it clear that aid and assistance will only follow if women have a place at the negotiating table and if the peace agreement contains a clear statement about sexual violence and its consequences, this would provide a context for beginning to address the problem. The UK could also use its influence to promote compliance with the requirement that peacekeepers deal with their own perpetrators of sexual violence and most particularly that they deal with, and provide for, the UN babies—those born out of the conflict.
Another contribution that the UK is very well placed to make would be in the context of criminal investigation. Any complaint that a rape victim makes has to be in the context of local and national law. Women often have to accept that they have no access through criminal law courts and their only redress is through local laws. The Government could, in their aid packages, prioritise a functioning police and judiciary. Women in these countries express the fact that they need to be able to work closely with the social guardians to disseminate messages about GBV. They say that when church and state and any UN and EU peacekeeping units work together with the women to say these things, it works.
Women want recognition of the level and extent of that violence. They want databases established to demonstrate that. That will make self-evident the need to address the issue. They need to be able to report. They need a functioning police service. They need aid which will support the development of policing, with an emphasis on the need to provide for women. They need, above all, more than a desk and a computer in a sexual violence unit. They need cameras to photograph injuries. They need properly equipped medical services. They need medication. They need the capacity to carry out investigations. Most of all, they need a methodology through which forensic science facilities can be made available to produce, for example, DNA testing of semen left in women after rape. Properly retrieved and handled, that evidence can be conclusive. It may negate the need for investigation.
We have highly developed forensic science facilities. I am not suggesting the creation of labs across the world, but it should be possible to develop a system by which evidence could be sent to a forensic science lab for analysis and reporting. That might provide a breakthrough. Women would see that there might be some point in reporting; it would encourage and affirm them. Of all the issues that I have discussed with women in the third world, this is the one that they most want.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I know that we are very tight on time, but perhaps people will remember that when the clock shows two minutes, you have had your two minutes. Most people are taking a good two and a half minutes or more. Please can noble Lords keep their remarks brief.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, I, too, thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield for securing this extremely important and timely debate. In this week of International Women’s Day, I am glad that we have this focus tonight and that so many noble Lords chose to contribute, albeit briefly.
The statistics on violence against women and girls are shocking. Globally, one in three women is beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime. In conflict and post-conflict situations, sexual violence can be even more widespread, as the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, pointed out. As the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and others have said, women and girls are the poorest and most marginal in society, with the least power. In conflicts, they are the most vulnerable. As the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, and others have pointed out, we also see rape being used as a weapon against the woman, her family, her community and her society. However, as the right reverend Prelate says, and my noble friend Lord Hodgson emphasised, we also see sexual violence against men and boys used to degrade and destroy. We see that now in Syria. The noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, rightly emphasised the stigma of rape.
How do we break the silence on this and change behaviours? Unless we do, we undermine the likelihood of peaceful resolutions. We know that sexual violence causes huge physical and psychological trauma. My noble friend Lady Hamwee referred to that. But it also exacerbates ethnic, sectarian and other divisions, further entrenches conflict and undermines efforts to restore peace and stability. It reduces progress towards the millennium development goals and represents one of the most serious forms of human rights violation or abuse. For all these reasons, tackling violence against women and girls is central to the Government’s work overseas. We agree with the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, that women and girls must continue to be at the heart of whatever replaces the MDGs.
This year, 2013, is a hugely important year for this agenda. We are working hard with other Governments to ensure that this year’s UN Commission on the Status of Women, whose focus is on violence against women and girls, is a success and agrees a set of robust global standards to protect women and girls from discrimination and violence. My honourable friend Lynne Featherstone is leading the UK delegation. We also want to see women and girls at the heart of the new millennium development goal framework to be published later this year. Their inclusion is critical to achieving our goal of ending extreme poverty.
This year will also see greater government action to address the use of sexual violence in conflict as we further develop and implement the Foreign Secretary’s preventing sexual violence initiative, to which noble Lords have referred. In our own lifetimes, millions of women, men, and children have endured this horror, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to which noble Lords have referred, in South Sudan, in Colombia, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, said, in Bosnia and in Syria. The truth today, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out, is that the perpetrators of these appalling, life-shattering crimes more often than not go unpunished.
We believe that more must be done to combat the use of sexual violence in conflict. We want the international community to address the culture of impunity that has been allowed to develop for these crimes and to increase the number of perpetrators brought to justice, both internationally and nationally. As other noble Lords have mentioned, the Foreign Secretary has placed this issue at the top of the G8 agenda for 2013. We want G8 Foreign Ministers at their April meeting to speak out against those who use sexual violence in conflict and to declare that rape and serious sexual violence amount to grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. This is a very significant step in the development of international humanitarian law. Declaring that serious sexual violence and rape amount to grave breaches sends the message that these crimes are to be treated in the same way as the most serious category of war crimes. I can therefore reassure my noble friends Lady Tonge and Lord Alderdice that these crimes will become the most serious category of war crime in international law. I can also assure my noble friend Lord Alderdice that they can be taken to the International Criminal Court. Consultation with prosecutors at the ICC has clearly identified that a lack of clarity over investigations and collection of evidence led to the low number of prosecutions in the ICC and other international tribunals. The protocol will directly address this.
We are also proposing a set of practical G8 commitments that, taken together, will promote justice and accountability and provide greater support to victims. I hope that my noble friend Lady Hamwee, the noble Lords, Lord Parekh and Lord Judd, and others will welcome them. These commitments are, first, to improve investigations and the documentation of sexual violence in conflict, including through endorsing a new international protocol; secondly, to provide greater support and assistance to survivors, including child survivors, of sexual violence, so that they can rebuild their lives and attain justice for what they have endured; thirdly, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, emphasised, to ensure that the response to sexual and gender-based violence is fully integrated into wider peace and security efforts; and fourthly, to improve international co-ordination, including through the UN, because a co-operative approach to addressing sexual violence will have a much greater long-term impact.
To underpin these international efforts, the Government have established a new specialist UK team of experts, to which the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, referred, who can be deployed to conflict areas to help local authorities and organisations address sexual violence. This team has already been deployed to the Syrian border to help train local health professionals. In answer to the right reverend Prelate, we aim to work with, and support, those who can document these abuses in that area. We also plan to deploy the team to at least five other countries this year. It will go to Libya, to support survivors of sexual violence committed during the revolution; to South Sudan, to work alongside the UN and the Government to strengthen local justice; to eastern DRC, to help doctors and lawyers to investigate crimes against the hundreds of women and girls who are raped each month; to Bosnia-Herzegovina, to help courts and prosecutors address the backlog of war crimes cases; and to Mali, to provide human rights training to the Malian armed forces on preventing and responding to sexual violence. As the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, emphasised, in order to address these issues, we need first the law to protect and then we need to work with those who can help to ensure the implementation of those laws: the police, the judges, civil society and the media.
Our plans for the initiative have been developed in consultation with UN agencies, other international bodies, NGOs, and—I can also reassure the right reverend Prelate—representatives from faith groups. These groups have a particular role, not least because of their ability to reach out across communities. We want to continue to work closely with them as we challenge the myths and stigma associated with victims of sexual violence.
There were a number of questions. My noble friend Lady Tonge asked about the proposals we brought forward earlier this year in terms of international humanitarian law. In conflict situations, even if it is contrary to national law, abortion care can be offered where its denial would amount to torture or cruel treatment. We need now to focus very much on bringing our international partners with us on this. We are very forward-looking on this, as we have been in the area of safe abortion as well, and it is extremely important that we take others with us. However, if the noble Baroness has any evidence that UK aid is not being used appropriately and is not reaching women, will she please let us have those details?
The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, asked about Columbia. PSVI is working in partnership with the UN special representative’s office and its team is leading on these issues in Columbia. We support that. I will be very happy to provide further details for the noble Baroness.
My noble friend Lord Hussain spoke about the abuse of human rights in Kashmir. I hear what he has to say in this regard, and we welcome the invitation by the Indian Government to the UN special rapporteur, who is to look in detail at those allegations. We are not willing to put up with abuse of human rights, wherever it happens in the world.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, asked about funding. I will be very happy to spell this out further in writing. The G8 commitments are essentially very practical, but groundbreaking. By working with our international partners we have moved this forward in a very significant way, and we now need to take our international partners with us so that we can ensure that this is as effective as it needs to be. It needs to be done right across the international spectrum.
Tackling the impunity of those responsible for sexual violence is essential for any conflict or post-conflict society seeking to come to terms with past abuses. It is also essential to prevent their recurrence. This is an absolutely key year as we seek to take this forward. This is the year to ensure that we make the difference for those who are at risk of this horrific form of abuse.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, as several of the final speeches were shorter than time allowed for, and as one speaker withdrew at the last minute, we have now come rather short of our time limit. I thank everyone for their indulgence at the unpleasant roles that Whips have to play, and I suggest that the House should now adjourn until 9.36 pm.
EU: Subsidiarity Scrutiny
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Lord Kakkar
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the working of the European Union subsidiarity test procedure under the Lisbon treaty in view of the two recent reasoned opinions submitted by this House to the European Union institutions.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the power of national Parliaments to issue a reasoned opinion that an EU proposal does not uphold subsidiarity has been exercised many times since 2010, including five times by your Lordships’ House. Only once, on the Monti II proposals on the right to collective action across borders, have enough Parliaments done so to trigger what is called a yellow card. However, the views of national Parliaments have been influential on a wide range of issues and the continuing use of this procedure should give them an increasing role.
Lord Kakkar
My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of your Lordships’ European Union Committee, Sub-Committee B. Under the current test procedure, this Parliament can only challenge the Commission on the basis of subsidiarity, as the Minister has said, if at least eight other Parliaments also raise concerns. What obligations does the Lisbon treaty place on national Parliaments to participate actively in the scrutiny of directives, because without such scrutiny and participation, the subsidiarity test cannot possibly work? Under what circumstances would the Government consider using the red card in the test procedure, to seek judicial review by the European Court of Justice, where this Parliament, through its scrutiny, has raised substantial concerns about subsidiarity and where other Parliaments may not have participated in the process?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, in the nature of events, red cards are to be used in an emergency situation, not as part of the normal procedure. Perhaps it would help the House if I point out that last year, the Swedish Parliament issued 20 reasoned opinions; the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies issued seven in 2011 and a larger number in 2012; the French Senate issued seven last year; and the House of Lords issued five. It is not the case that we are the only Parliament to be active in this regard.
Lord Elton
My Lords, under what circumstances would my noble friend consider that Her Majesty's Government should exercise themselves through the diplomatic network to engage the interest of other Parliaments in matters that concern us and appear not to have reached their attention?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, Her Majesty's Government do operate a diplomatic network in precisely that area. I hope that scrutiny committees through COSAC—the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union—also now operate actively in this regard. I am told that it has become a much more effective body since I used to attend COSAC meetings many years ago when I was the chairman of a sub-committee. There is now a set of offices in Brussels of national Parliaments which provides a network where national scrutiny committees can get together. I hope that the Lisbon treaty arrangements will allow that network to become more and more active.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, remembering that for the past 33 years all British Governments have promised not to allow enactment of proposed EU legislation which is still being scrutinised by our Select Committees here and in the other place, will the Minister confirm Written Answers which reveal that this scrutiny reserve was broken no fewer than 403 times between January 2010 and June 2012? Does that not make 403 pieces of EU legislation that Parliament has not agreed but which have been steamrollered through by the juggernaut anyway?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord uses his characteristically robust and colourful language. There is always a tension between the time that national Parliaments wish to take for scrutiny and the pressures that national Governments, including our own, may wish to give to taking decisions. There are those in national Parliaments who regard the eight-week limit for taking a scrutiny decision as unfortunate, but I am informed by those who know the Brussels situation better than I do that the earlier national Parliaments submit reasoned opinions in the process of negotiation, the greater effect they have.
Reasoned opinions in the form of reports issued by the European Committee of this House are widely respected throughout the European Union in other national Parliaments and elsewhere. I recall with delight a Member of the European Parliament being appointed to head a committee in the European Parliament. He was asked by his clerk to start by reading three documents, two of which were reports from the House of Lords EU Committee.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, would the Minister not agree that in the short period of time that the yellow-card system has existed, the main lesson to draw is that we have to get better at enlisting other national Parliaments when we use the yellow card because that is the shortfall? Will he confirm that on the one occasion when it was used, the Commission withdrew its proposal—the Monti II proposal? Will he also confirm that the right to take action in the Court is one for this House, not the Government under the Lisbon treaty?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I can confirm all of those matters. On the Monti II proposals, some of the reasoned opinions submitted by national Parliaments were much more about the principle of the proposal rather than the subsidiarity issue. Her Majesty's Government did not suggest that we should submit a reasoned opinion on subsidiarity issues because they objected to the principle of the proposal.
Lord Spicer
My Lords, is not one of the ironies of subsidiarity that it requires greater centralisation to determine with whom the subsidiarity should remain?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am not entirely sure that I follow the logic of that. We are in an increasingly globalised economy. That economy requires increasing international regulation of one sort or another. We are in a constant situation of tension between international regulators—not just the European Union but many other international bodies as well—wishing to extend the process of regulation and national Governments, national Parliaments, local groups and other lobbies wishing to resist it.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, does my noble friend agree with the European Union Scrutiny Committee when it took evidence from Professor Dashwood who, in respect of arguing before the European Court of Justice, said that,
“the subsidiarity principle was most useful in the state of law-making rather than at adjudication, at which point it was ‘largely inoperable’”?
In other words, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, has said, we need to build alliances in good time rather than wait to go to court.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the principle of subsidiarity is in many ways a difficult concept to get hold of, and of course it is highly political. There are those here who think that a number of things should be dealt with in Wales and Scotland and not at the national level, while I wish that the principle of subsidiarity was better applied in England than it is at present. This is part of the way we play politics between different levels of government.
Lord Wigley
My Lords, can the Minister clarify how this procedure works in practice, bearing in mind the comments made by the noble Lord with regard to the power being with the Chambers and not with the Government themselves? As the UK has two votes on the basis of being a bicameral system, one of which is allocated to this Chamber, what would be the outcome if there was a difference of opinion between the House of Commons and this Chamber? Would we have to defer to the House of Commons as it is the elected Chamber?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, no, we would not. It would be interesting if, for example, the House of Lords decided on one side while the House of Commons decided on the other. I think it is unlikely, but I should say that there have been occasions on which some national Parliaments have issued reasoned opinions objecting to particular proposals while one or two others have issued opinions that are strongly supportive.
Referendums
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Baroness Quin
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are considering further legislation concerning the holding of referendums in the United Kingdom.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government believe that the legislative framework set out in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 has worked well. We have no immediate plans to amend this framework. Each referendum held under the Act, however, requires its own separate primary legislation to set the date and question, and to make any other necessary technical changes.
Baroness Quin
My Lords, as many with long memories will know, the first national referendum on Europe in 1975 had quite a lot to do with tackling internal divisions on Europe within the Labour Party. Now it seems that we are to have a referendum on Europe principally for party management reasons as the Prime Minister seeks to appease his party critics. Does the Minister think that this is a satisfactory way of deciding on referendums? If not, will he heed the report of the Constitution Committee of this House, which advised Governments against holding referendums for ad hoc tactical reasons and advised building up a wider political consensus about when and if they should be used?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I had indeed reread that section of the Constitution Committee’s report, which said, as the noble Baroness has remarked,
“we regret the ad hoc manner in which referendums have been used, often as a tactical device, by the government of the day … Where possible, cross-party agreement should be sought as to the circumstances in which it is appropriate for referendums to be used”.
Let us hope that we can reach cross-party agreement on such matters in the future.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, given the precedent of the Scottish independence referendum next year, is it now the Government’s position that any future national referendum with long-term consequences should extend the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we have debated this before and I do not want to go too far down this road. The Scots have decided that for this one referendum they would like to extend the vote to 16 and 17 year- olds. No doubt we will discuss time and again how much further that should be extended.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, has the Minister read the article by our friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, in the Tablet? In it he reveals that the Cabinet has taken two decisions: first, a wise decision not to have any pre-negotiations with the Scottish Government in advance of the referendum; and secondly, what is in my view an unwise decision not to have any contingency plans to deal with the situation in all our areas of concern if the referendum gives a yes vote. Will he ask his colleagues in the Cabinet to reconsider this? We will all be fighting to ensure that there is a no vote, but in the unlikely but unfortunate event of a yes vote, we have to be ready to deal with the consequences.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on the catholicity of his tastes in reading. I had indeed read that article because the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, was kind enough to give it to me.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, as it was a Liberal Democrat commitment to have a referendum on Europe, surely there should not be too much difficulty for the coalition partners in agreeing that this is the way forward?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we will wait to see what is in the manifestos of all the parties for the coming election. The proposal by the Prime Minister in his capacity as Conservative Party leader is to hold a referendum, after some considerable further renegotiation, in the mid-point of the next Parliament.
Lord Tomlinson
Does the noble Lord recall that we spent a long time a couple of years ago debating the extension of referenda to transfers of power to Brussels? Does he agree with my understanding that the fact that we have had no such referendum called indicates that Brussels is not always acquisitive of our powers?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I vaguely remember some discussions on the subject. The question of whether we are heading towards treaty change is not primarily a matter for Brussels; it is much more a matter for different national Governments. The opinions of the French, German and Polish Governments and others weigh very heavily in this.
Lord Taverne
My Lords, will the Minister recommend to his colleagues in the Government the address of Edmund Burke to the electors of Bristol, its comments on the role of Members of Parliament and its relevance to the current addiction to referendums?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am surprised that the noble Lord has not also called in aid Mrs Thatcher’s comment in the mid-1970s on the dangers of sliding from parliamentary democracy to plebiscitary democracy. Our political system depends on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and that is something that we have to cling to.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, further to the supplementary question of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, does the Minister agree that opinion polls consistently show that more than 80% of the British people want a referendum on our membership of the European Union? Perhaps that should be of some significance even to our present political establishment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am glad that the noble Lord is such a man of the people in all these respects. I recall that, three months before the 1975 referendum, opinion polls were overwhelmingly in favour of leaving, but that, in the course of the campaign, opinion was informed and thus altered.
Lord Grocott
While we are reflecting on the wisdom of the British people, would the Minister like to reflect on some very successful referendums that have been held in the past two or three years: first, on the good sense of the public in rejecting any notion of a fancy new electoral system for Westminster parliamentary elections; and secondly, on nine out of 10 British cities rejecting fancy directly elected mayors? On the basis of this, might it be a good idea to hold just one more referendum, on deciding whether the elections to the European Parliament next year should be on the basis of first past the post?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord, as always, demonstrates what a splendid conservative he is on all matters of constitutional reform.
Presumption of Death Bill
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Presumption of Death Bill, has consented to place her interests, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
Strengthened Statutory Procedures for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation: DPRRC Report
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I approached this debate with considerable trepidation. When I first came into this House, I was told by several people that, after the Clerk of the Parliaments, the greatest expert on all matters of procedure was the then head of the Liberal Democrat Whips’ Office, Celia Thomas, who is now my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester. When I started to read into this subject, I discovered how little I understood about the processes of scrutinising secondary legislation and, indeed, about the difference between a remedial order and a legislative reform order. I now understand, and I hope I still will in a week’s time, but it has been a journey of exploration.
This has been a very useful debate, and I start by agreeing with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, that this is a success story. What we have seen in this Chamber over the past 20 or 30 years is a gradual rise in its effective ability to give scrutiny. As a young academic, I was an adviser to Lords and Commons committees and I discovered that Lords committees were much more serious in many ways than Commons committees and much less partisan. Members had read their papers, they came and they asked about paragraph (15) and what precisely the Government thought they meant by it. That is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, said, a different function from that of the Commons, but it is a very useful function. We should be very proud of it and cling to it.
Much of the best work this House does is done in its committees, and I hope that will continue to be the case. There is a necessary tension between the Executive and the legislature and listening to this debate I was thinking that much of the press comment on British government is a matter of seeing a conflict between the Government and the Opposition, but there is also a very positive, necessary tension between the Executive and the Legislature, whatever that may be. We play our role—the Cross-Benchers and others in this House—by providing the detailed scrutiny that does not get on to the front page of the Daily Mail but does improve the quality of legislation. For that reason, I have more sympathy for the suggestion from my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester that we should move towards looking at draft SIs than for the Goodlad proposal that the House should assert its right to vote down. As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said, that should be regarded as the reserve option, the exceptional circumstance. Greater dialogue with the Government about progress on SIs is a much more effective way to influence.
When I first came into the House of Lords, I was asked what I thought the power of the Lords was. After a bit, I said, “I think it’s the power to embarrass”. That is quite an effective power in the dialogue we have with Ministers. The power to publish and to whisper to a visiting journalist that this Minister has not really got it right yet are quietly effective in the corridors of Whitehall, and that is the way this Chamber should operate.
A number of noble Lords suggested that the number of SIs and the area of subordinate legislation are growing. I am pleased to say that, from looking at the statistics, that is no longer the case. In the legislative year 2007, nearly 1,200 SIs went through. In 2011, there were some 750. Cynics might suggest that the longer Governments are in power, the more they are likely to resort to SIs. If that should be the case and this Government stays in power for long, I trust that Members of this House will point that out and keep Ministers up to the mark.
I have some sympathy with those who say that slower government is better government and that less legislation is better legislation. The problem, which we all recognise, is that in an era of 24/7 media and of lobbies insisting that Ministers should take on everything they are lobbying for, it is very difficult for Ministers to resist those outside pressures. It is thus up to Parliament to keep pushing back and saying, “Think about proportionality. Think about whether this is necessary. Think about whether this is desirable”.
I am fascinated—I now at last understand this aspect of Henry VIII powers. I thought when I first heard about Henry VIII powers that they were a way of keeping numbers in the House of Lords under control. I have sometimes wished that they might be reintroduced as a means of keeping the numbers down and allowing new blood to come in, so to speak. Henry VIII powers are clearly something we always wish to question. The question of how clear Governments should be about the implications when they put new legislation through is something we can accept as desirable in terms of good legislation. The Government accept all those criticisms and the House of Lords will, I hope, maintain its effort to keep the Government, of whatever variety, up to the mark.
The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, incidentally, suggested that 80% of legislation consisted of SIs. I am not sure where that statistic comes from. If the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, was here he would say, of course, that 80% of legislation was forced on us by the European Union. I suspect these statistics are both a little—
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, I was saying that it has been calculated that 80% of the impact on people comes via SIs, not that 80% of legislation is made through SIs. That is why I find it difficult to source. I will try to find a source for the Minister.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I understand. This was an extremely valuable report, in particular for pointing out that we have wandered into a situation where there is considerable diversity—indeed, almost a confusion—of different sorts of arrangements under secondary legislation. I can imagine how these will have grown up with Ministers from different departments making specific concessions on different Bills. The committee is quite right to say that we should exert pressure to bring things back to as common a model as possible.
The former Leader of the House, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, wrote to my noble friend Lady Thomas last November, accepting the committee’s conclusion that, wherever possible, existing procedures for enhanced scrutiny should be used. In his response, which I have deposited in the Library, my noble friend noted that there may be exceptions where existing procedures are not suitable, but where the Government sought to create a new procedure they would clearly set out the case for doing so.
The committee’s report also invited the Government either to set out the case for not requiring supporting documents to be laid with draft orders under Section 19 of the Localism Act 2011—to which a number of noble Lords have referred—or to give an undertaking to lay supporting documents when laying any draft order under that section. I can confirm that the Government have given an undertaking to produce material setting out the detail of, and the rationale for, any proposed order under Section 19 of the Localism Act 2011, and to provide relevant background to support the parliamentary process.
The committee’s report also looked at orders made under Section 14 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. We welcome the recognition that the existing scrutiny procedures for 2006 Act are robust. The committees scrutinising such orders can choose which scrutiny process should be used. They also have the power effectively to oppose any highly controversial measures. Ministers are obliged to consider the committees’ recommendations and cannot easily set them aside. They would need to persuade the whole House to overturn any recommendation by a committee to reject an order.
In practice, any legislative reform order that has been identified as highly controversial during the consultation stage has been withdrawn. Some measures have returned with increased scrutiny in a Bill. Neither committee has ever felt the need to exercise its veto when considering draft orders. This is why the Government have not felt the need to renew the undertakings given by the previous Administration. This is not a change of policy. The undertaking was given by the previous Government in 2006, at a time when it was not clear how the powers in the Act would be used. It is now clear that the process of bringing forward draft orders and the scrutiny process has worked well. However, I recognise that some noble Lords have strong views on this issue, so we are willing to take it away and consider it further.
The Government believe that legislative reform orders are important tools to reduce burdens on business, taking forward deregulatory measures that do not fit into other legislative vehicles. The report also touched upon orders made under Section 85 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, Section 102 of the Local Transport Act 2008 and various orders made under sections of the Local Government Acts 1999, 2000 and 2003. Some of these have been rarely, or never, used. Section 85 of the Northern Ireland Act has been infrequently used and, following the devolution of policing and justice in 2010, its use is likely to decline further. No orders have been made under the powers in the three Local Government Acts. In relation to the Local Transport Act 2008, the committee’s report on the original Bill at the time noted:
“We consider both the delegation and the level of scrutiny proposed for the powers”,
in these clauses “to be appropriate”.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, touched on the mechanism by which we debate and approve secondary legislation, particularly the system of consultation and the time allowed for it. Any changes would of course be a matter for the Procedure Committee. I would not wish to pre-empt its discussions, but I acknowledge the importance of the process of consultation and of having a process which commands public confidence. Again, I will take that back to the Cabinet Office.
There is of course a great variety in the significance of secondary legislation laid before the House. It is worth remembering that Parliament itself delegates powers to Ministers and, advised by the DPRRC, decides which form of scrutiny—negative, affirmative or super-affirmative—is appropriate for any particular delegation. In addition, a significant proportion of secondary legislation is already published in draft, with the consultation process beginning long before instruments are laid.
The noble Lord, Lord Butler, suggested rationalisation of the committee structure and greater use of Joint Committees. I think a number of us would want to take that away and think about it further. I am more persuaded by the arguments of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, about the different functions of the two Houses. My limited experience of serving on one Joint Committee suggested that the two Houses do not always blend terribly well. A great deal depends on the subject. To the credit of this House, we tend to approach things in a less partisan and more detailed manner. Perhaps there is an argument that maintaining a degree of duality may therefore be functional.
Lord Soley
I understand that. I have some concerns about the idea of making it totally Joint Committees; they are difficult. However, that does not rule out looking at the way in which the two Houses are examining the same bit of legislation at the same time, without being aware of each others’ views. In a way, it is also about harmonisation.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I take all those points on board. This is the sort of question that we would naturally want to continue discussing.
I very much hope that the quantity of secondary legislation will continue to decline. The general power of competence for local authorities, for example, reduces the necessity of detailed secondary legislation on a range of issues.
Baroness O'Loan
Perhaps I may ask the Minister to check that the quantity of secondary legislation is declining. It is possible that the number of statutory instruments is declining while the amount of secondary legislation is increasing.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I will get the Cabinet Office to check and will write to the noble Baroness and others if my figures are way out, but I am hopeful that we have seen a reduction in the past three years. I also hope that the efforts that the Government are now making to decentralise within England and to give a power of general competence to local authorities will result in a further reduction in the number of secondary legislative measures.
This has been a very useful and constructive debate. It is the sort of thing that the House needs to do from time to time. I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester. I continue to learn from her about the procedures of this House, and I hope that I will continue to learn from her, as many others will, for many years to come.
Charities (Incorporated Church Building Society) (England and Wales) Order 2013
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That the draft order laid before the House on 22 January be approved.
Relevant document: 18th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 27 February
Charities (Incorporated Church Building Society) (England and Wales) Order 2013
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That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Charities (Incorporated Church Building Society) (England and Wales) Order 2013.
Relevant documents: 18th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this order is made under Section 73 of the Charities Act 2011 to give effect to the provisions of a scheme settled by the Charity Commission for England and Wales. The purpose of the scheme is to amend the existing trusts of the Incorporated Church Building Society, the ICBS, a charity which gives grants for the building and repairing of Anglican churches and chapels, and to simplify its administrative provisions.
The charity is regulated by the Church Building Society Act 1828 and therefore this order is needed to give effect to the changes to that Act contained in the Charity Commission scheme. Because the 1828 Act is a public general Act, the scheme cannot be made without the draft order first being approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament, in accordance with Section 73(4) of the Charities Act 2011.
The ICBS was founded in 1818 and incorporated by Act of Parliament 10 years later. Its purpose was to,
“remedy the deficiencies of places set aside for Public Worship in our towns and cities”.
For the next 100 years, it enjoyed considerable public support and contributed to the building and repair of Anglican churches and chapels. By 1845, the society was assisting with the building of more than 50 churches a year. It was the principal voluntary society for promoting the building and restoration of Anglican churches in the 19th century, the most active period of church building since the Middle Ages, and provided funds via grants and loans.
Over the next century, however, public support waned to the extent that by the early 1980s the society’s activities had shrunk considerably. The then trustees were concerned that the administrative costs of maintaining it as an independent charity, though modest, were absorbing an unjustifiable proportion of its income, which by then was derived largely from investments. To improve efficiency, another charity with similar objects, the Historic Churches Preservation Trust, now succeeded by the National Churches Trust, agreed to administer the society’s affairs for a small fee.
The ICBS was registered with the Charity Commission in 1962. A commission scheme is now needed to enable the National Churches Trust to take full trusteeship of the ICBS. However, due to the statutory basis of the ICBS, a parliamentary order is required to give effect to the scheme, which repeals all but the preamble and four sections of the 1828 Act, and provides for the administration of the charity.
The National Churches Trust is the only independent UK-wide charity supporting and promoting Christian places of worship. It does this through the provision of grants for repairs and modernisation, and through the provision of support, advice and information. The general committee of the ICBS has aligned the use of the remaining funds of the society with the general aims and objectives of the NCT, subject to ICBS funds being used to support those buildings with which the society is associated, namely Church of England buildings constructed from 1818 onwards. To this end, in recent years, and in anticipation of the implementation of the scheme, the remaining ICBS funds are being used to provide repair grants to churches that fall within this criterion.
The proposed scheme, which is being made at the request of the charity’s current trustees, sets out the powers of the new corporate trustee. The 1828 Act specifies that the trustees of the charity are the management committee. This governing body is more than 80 strong and includes the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, 44 diocesan bishops of the two provinces of Canterbury and York and 36 elected lay members of the charity. Members of the charity are,
“anybody who makes a donation of 10 guineas or an annual donation of one guinea”.
The trustee body is too large and it is difficult to know who is currently a member of the charity. The scheme replaces the existing trustees with the NCT, which will be the sole corporate trustee of the charity. The existing trustees are in agreement.
The charity’s objectives set out in the scheme are similar but not identical to the original objectives. In the 1828 Act the purposes are defined as,
“enlarging, building, rebuilding and repairing Churches and Chapels in England and Wales”,
whereas the proposed new objectives refer to churches and chapels of the Church of England. This narrowing reflects the charity’s close links with the Church of England and the fact that its support has traditionally been provided only to Anglican churches.
I declare what is almost an interest here. I am very conscious that Sir Titus Salt, who built Saltaire, not only built two churches in Saltaire for a village with a population of only just over 1,500 people but gave a very considerable amount of money for the erection and repair not only of Congregational and Methodist churches but also of Anglican churches all over the north of England. As I walk around Yorkshire, I am not entirely sure that the “repair” of a number of medieval churches during this period was something of which I entirely approve, but no doubt at the time it was regarded as entirely necessary.
The 1828 Act does not set out the charity’s powers explicitly in the way that modern charity governing documents do, so the scheme also provides the charity with standard powers, most of which are found in the model governing documents on the commission’s website. A significant motivation behind the trustees applying for this scheme was to modernise the governance and governing document of the charity. The scheme provides the charity trustees with the powers that they need to operate effectively and efficiently in the modern world.
I am confident that the new scheme will be beneficial to the charity. It will ensure that administrative costs are kept to a minimum and that a greater proportion of the charity’s funds can be used to fulfil its purposes. I therefore commend this instrument to the Committee.
Lord Jones
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his commanding introductory remarks and my noble friend for her youthful remarks. I have read the helpful policy background in the Explanatory Memorandum which the department has composed, and for which I am grateful. Paragraph 7 of the Explanatory Memorandum, headed, “Policy background”, states:
“The purpose of the Charity is to provide for the better collection and application of voluntary contributions for the purpose of enlarging, building and repairing Church of England churches and chapels situated in England and Wales”.
It has occurred to me that those churches and chapels in Wales are not Church of England, they are Church in Wales. So the question I have for the Minister is: has the department come forward with this order not knowing that there is an error in the Explanatory Memorandum? Is it therefore proceeding in error on that basis?
It was nice to hear the Minister refer to churches in Saltaire. St Ethelwold’s of the Church in Wales is a splendid church in north-east Wales in the town of Shotton. Would this order enable the tower of St Ethelwold’s to be completed or allow for that possibility?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their welcome of the order. I particularly welcome the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on the translation of churches into spaces for the local community. I have experienced shock on one or two occasions when going back to churches in which I had worshipped, or in whose choirs I had sung as a boy, to discover that all the pews had been removed, including one very old-fashioned church which we went to when my father was the local bank manager. The bank manager’s pew was the second one from the front on the right-hand side, and one had to sit in the bank manager’s pew. Thankfully, that has now all gone. The pews have all been removed and it is an open space for all sorts of purposes. As we know, that has happened all over the country. I think that that is part of the transformation of the Church of England in making sure that it does continue to hold together local communities for people of all backgrounds and all faiths.
On the question of churches in Wales, there is a separate Welsh Religious Buildings Trust, which was founded in 1996 to care for redundant historic places of worship of all faiths in Wales. To avoid duplicating the work of the Friends of Friendless Churches, those of the Church in Wales are excluded from this. The trust currently cares for six buildings and is in discussion with regard to a seventh, but I am very conscious, as I know the noble Lord will be, that there are a great many churches and chapels in Wales which are open to the desirability of assistance. There are other comparable charities. I happen to know the Historic Chapels Trust very well because I have good friends in Yorkshire who are actively engaged in that. There is a Scottish Redundant Churches Trust, a Scotland’s Churches Trust and an Ulster Historic Churches Trust, so this is dealing with England partly because the devolved Administrations have parallel and comparable bodies.
Having answered those questions, I welcome the general acceptance that this is a desirable and useful adjustment of an early 19th century charity. We have to modernise charities from time to time and it is entirely within the principle of the public interest of charities that this amendment should be made. I hope that we all welcome the extent to which churches, which are often at the historic centre of communities, are being restored, opened and transformed to provide places where members of the communities can get together. I commend the order.
Elections: Voting Age
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for bringing this debate to the Lords. He started his speech by referring to a debate in the Commons on 24 January, which I read with some interest, and I have to say that I found the most novel argument to be one that in a sense complements the argument just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, which is that of the increasing imbalance in the electorate between the over-65s and young people. That imbalance will grow, and all political parties know that we are pulled in the direction of those who vote and thus are pulled towards putting resources into the over-65s and not into young people. The argument was made in one of the Commons speeches that this might be one way of beginning to redress the balance and to encourage political parties and Governments to think more actively about the needs and interests of young people. It is an argument that I think we all need to take into account.
Let me stress that the Government have no plans to lower the voting age in this Parliament and that, as has already been mentioned, there is no consensus within the coalition Government. That in turn reflects the different views held across society at large and the divergent positions on this topic both within and across the various political parties. After all, we have discovered over the course of the past two and a half years just how difficult political and constitutional change is and how on any proposals for political and constitutional change there are always at least 15 different and contradictory arguments for why nothing should be done, while fewer arguments are made in support of the case for change. Nevertheless, we welcome the ongoing discussions and debate on this issue and we would encourage the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and others to maintain their approach.
On the question of the age of majority, which was raised by a number of noble Lords, I simply repeat the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, that there is no standard age of majority within the United Kingdom. The process of moving from childhood to majority takes place over several years, and the question of where that should be standardised would itself open up a very difficult process. However, the question of how to re-engage young people in our democracy, in citizenship and in local society is important and we all need to address it. When taking the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill through the House of Lords, I was struck by how severe a problem this is becoming. Younger people do not feel engaged in politics and they are not committed to political parties. In one way or another, we all have to address that problem. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said that providing the vote at the age of 16 is not the answer, but it may be one of the ways of contributing to an answer. It would certainly mean that schools and parties would pay much more attention to citizenship education, which is important, and we would have to think about how else we could hook young people into their local communities and into wider engagement as a whole.
We all recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, pointed out, that young people are already the least likely to vote. That is the problem, of course, and the question is how to tackle it. We know that a number of things have contributed to it: the increasing remoteness of national politics; the decline in local government and local politics; the decline in respect for our political institutions—above all for Westminster—and the decline of participation at all levels in intermediate bodies from churches and chapels to trade unions and social organisations. The question is: where do we go from here and how can we ensure that engagement in democracy at all levels from the local to the national does not continue to decline in the long term? We cannot let this question go.
Perhaps, as the noble Lord, Lord Wills, suggests, deliberative democracy on the Granada 500 model—I think that was what it was called—is something that we should be experimenting with again in terms of bridging the gap between the governors and the governed. However, I suspect that television companies would be less willing to invest in such activities today as they were 20 or 25 years ago, partly because they would be less convinced that it would command the sort of audience that those very interesting experiments did in the 1980s.
We have a real problem here; we do not yet have a consensus on how we should move forward, as the debate has again shown. The research that there has been in a number of different activities is itself inconclusive. The Government do not disagree with the conclusions of the youth commission report that the approach of using independent commissions to review this should not be used again in the near future. However, we all need to focus. All of us who are committed to democratic politics and want to see a high level of political engagement have a huge and rising problem. All the research that went into looking at the shift to individual electoral registration persuaded me that this is a large and secular issue to which we do not have much of an answer. In a week in which the combination of the Eastleigh by-election and the Leveson report has encouraged the press to throw almost everything it has got at politicians of one sort or another—and people cheerfully say, “Well, don’t worry, they will move on to another set next week”—we recognise how deep a problem of democratic disillusionment and disengagement we have.
Lord Tyler
I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for giving way. Since we have a few minutes in hand, will he specifically address the fact that both the Electoral Commission and the Youth Citizenship Commission have said that there is a real gap in the research in this area, which has been reflected throughout your Lordships’ discussion this afternoon? Will the Government at least give an undertaking today that they will look again at that lacuna, which has been so clearly identified, and invite the Electoral Commission to look specifically at this again?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I hesitate to make a commitment as broad as that, but I will certainly feed it back and we will look at the question of whether there is a substantial lacuna. One of the issues that we all face here is that we know what the situation is now, and we know that the evidence of demand from young people for votes at 16 is weak. The question that I take particularly from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is whether we are happy about that, and whether we ought to be getting out there to persuade young people that they should be interested in having the vote and they should want to be re-engaged in politics. That is a much larger set of issues.
The previous Government, to their great credit, did their best to get at the question of citizenship. A number of distinguished political scientists contributed to that with modest success. We all recognise that schools have all sorts of other priorities, and that PSHE has not been one of the grandest or most glorious aspects of the secondary curriculum. There is a large issue out there, and we need much more public debate on it. This is part of a much larger issue about popular disillusionment with democratic politics as such, which has to concern us all. None of us would wish to suggest that lowering the voting age would begin to solve that; it would be only a small part of a strategy which I suggest all of us interested in democratic politics, from whichever point of view, should recognise is a shared problem to which we all need to find some shared answers.