Charities (Incorporated Church Building Society) (England and Wales) Order 2013

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

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

Motion agreed.

Charities (Incorporated Church Building Society) (England and Wales) Order 2013

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Grand Committee

Moved By

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Motion agreed.

Elections: Voting Age

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Grand Committee

[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.

Ministerial Code

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Hendon]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the constitutional convention of Cabinet collective responsibility, as confirmed in the Ministerial Code, remains in force.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, yes.

[Baroness Miller of Hendon]

I thank the noble Lord for his very helpful and complete reply. However, as noble Lords are doubtless aware, in the votes that took place last month in both Houses, none of the Liberal Democrats who are members of the Government supported the proposals of the independent Electoral Commission to ensure fair voting by making equal, even-sized constituencies. What are the current sanctions available to the Prime Minister against Ministers who vote against government legislation?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, perhaps I may read from paragraph 1 of the Ministerial Code:

“The principle of collective responsibility, save where it is explicitly set aside, applies to all Government Ministers”.

Three sentences before that, it states:

“The Ministerial Code should be read alongside the Coalition agreement”.

[Lord Kakkar]

My Lords, in coalition government, does the application of sanctions against Ministers who fail to respect the convention of collective responsibility lie with the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this is, as the noble Lord said, a convention. I am sure he recalls that it was developed in the 1780s as a way to protect the Cabinet as a whole against the monarch, who wished to call Cabinet Ministers in one by one to ask them what they personally thought; it was not originally concerned with Parliament at all. There is a very useful document with which noble Lords may not be familiar, which accompanied the coalition agreement, entitled the Coalition Agreement for Stability and Reform, which states:

“There is no constitutional difference between a Coalition Government and a single party Government, but working practices need to adapt to reflect the fact that the UK has not had a Coalition in modern times”.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords, is it not the case that, apart from the words as written down in the paper, there is much more to collective responsibility? Does not a moral judgment apply here? Should it not be a matter of honour, or does the story that there is honour among thieves not apply in this case?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, if one compares this Government with the previous Government, there has been much less briefing by Ministers against other Ministers than there was between 1997 and 2010. If I may cite my favourite senior official, this coalition Government are rather easier for officials to work with than their predecessors because, “You have to have your discussions out in the open rather than in secret”.

[Lord Mawhinney]

My Lords, given that collective responsibility exists, how can the Minister stand there and answer as he has, with a straight face, as if we are expected to believe what he is telling us? Will he do me the honour of personally asking the Prime Minister what disciplinary action he intends to take against Lib Dem Ministers at both ends of the Corridor, and then do me the courtesy of writing to tell me what reply he got?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am happy to write to the noble Lord but I reiterate: this is a coalition Government. Working practices have to adapt to accept that this is a coalition Government. That is what was formed in 2010; that is what I trust will continue until 2015.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, does the agreement between the coalition include that one party should be whipped to vote against the coalition?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we proceed case by case as we move ahead. There are a number of issues on which it is agreed that neither party will be whipped. As on the question of same-sex marriage, some issues are not whipped; however, the programme Motion in the Commons was whipped. One takes it case by case and on particularly sensitive social issues we do not have a Whip at all.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, the coalition agreement does indeed make the point about collective responsibility, where the two parties agreed that on certain issues they might not be able to vote together. I have two points. First, does the noble Lord not acknowledge that the coalition agreement has had no endorsement from the British public and that it is very odd for the current Government just to set aside what the Ministerial Code says, of their own volition? More specifically, can he tell the House where in that agreement there was a specific set-aside on the issue of the vote that took place a couple of weeks ago when his own party—and he as a Minister—did not support the Government?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, points out, I was in Berlin at the time so I was not involved in that particular dimension. I recall some time ago being asked by the noble Baroness, when she was on a committee, whether I felt that one could operate as a Government against the mandate of the manifesto. I pointed out that the strongest mandate in the 1997 Labour manifesto was a commitment that the Labour Government never fulfilled, so there is a degree of flexibility in all these issues.

[Lord Tyler]

Does my noble friend accept that on the specific occasion to which the noble Baroness referred, the Prime Minister himself accepted that there could not be collective responsibility where there had not been collective agreement? That was explicit in the coalition agreement and, as with Leveson, which we will refer to later, there are disagreements that are accepted. In a grown-up society, it is surely right to be transparent about that rather than covering up artificial disagreements, as in the previous Administration, where collective responsibility was disguised.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As the opening paragraph of the coalition’s working agreement also stresses:

“In the working of the Coalition, the principle of balance will underpin both the Coalition Parties’ approaches to all aspects of the conduct of the Government’s business”.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, of course we hate to intrude on private grief, but will the Minister tell us whether we will have one response on the charter or two?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that question is currently under discussion, although of course the doctrine of collective responsibility prevents my telling the House exactly where those discussions are at present.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, did the Liberal Democrat Ministers change their minds as well as their votes, bearing in mind the Deputy Prime Minister’s earlier firm agreement to boundary changes?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, coalition government is a matter of constant negotiation and discussion. Unfortunately, we have not managed to deliver much of the political reform agenda that we agreed to in the coalition agreement. All three parties bear some responsibility for failing to deliver that agenda.

Drones

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what bilateral and multilateral discussions they are having on the regulation of the civil and military use of drones.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government and the UK Civil Aviation Authority are working with both the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the European Commission and EU member states on developing harmonised rules and regulation for the safe integration of civil remotely piloted aircraft systems into both European and global air space. The Ministry of Defence is not involved in any bilateral or multilateral discussions specifically on the regulation of the military use of remotely piloted aircraft systems but is involved in more general discussions on arms control, such as the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that encouraging reply. Does he not agree that, as far as the domestic situation is concerned, whatever the value of drones for emergency services and the like, their increasing availability makes the need for some sort of code an urgent priority? When it comes to the international scene, how do the Government define the difference between extra-judicial killing and legitimate killing? How can transparent accountability for every civilian, not least innocent children, be ensured? How can the use of drones in areas not defined by the UN as conflict zones be justified? Is there not a desperate need for something like the Geneva Conventions?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord has asked several complex questions and I will try to answer some of them. The development of civil systems is clearly a complicated area. Basically, for large unmanned systems, the same rules apply as for manned aircraft. For small unmanned systems—there are now some very small unmanned systems—provided they are within the sight of the person controlling them, regulations need not apply. Clearly, a lot more work is needed in that area. On the international dimension, the question of extra-judicial killings is something which, as those who have read this morning’s Guardian will know, is being actively debated in the United States as we speak.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, on 20 November 2012, the Senior Minister of State at the Foreign Office, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, assured me that the UN special rapporteur for human rights and countering terrorism was preparing a report to the UN on the issue of drones. That was in response to a question I had asked her along the lines of the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, today. Can the noble Lord tell the House what progress there has been in terms of Her Majesty’s Government’s contribution to the report of the special rapporteur and when we can expect it to be forthcoming?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not briefed on that specific question and will have to write to the noble Baroness. We are, of course, in conversations with others about the use of drones. On the specific issues being discussed in the United States at the present moment, I simply stress that the United Kingdom has used drones for military purposes only in Afghanistan.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the control of the military use of drones is absolutely necessary internationally? The carrying out of extra-judicial killings in the sovereign airspace of other nations is a very dangerous precedent. Something needs to be done about it very urgently.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the question is very much about the use across national boundaries in areas where there is not an active conflict. I simply stress again that the United Kingdom has used military drones only inside Afghanistan and that we are in Afghanistan at the invitation of the Afghan Government. There is an active debate in the United States about the American use of drones across national frontiers in areas where it is a question of terrorist threats to the United States rather than local conflict.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

Since we know that 51 states now have the technology to use drones, does the Minister agree that it is essential that a proper legal framework is urgently put in place and that action is taken to ensure that there is accountability and reparation when things go wrong as a result of a drone attack? Does the UK support the stated view of the UN special rapporteur, who is to conduct an investigation into the spread of drone technology, that we urgently need to know the extent of civilian casualties, the identity of militants targeted and the legality of strikes where the UN does not recognise that there actually is a conflict?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, unmanned aerial vehicles are spreading around the world. My figures say that some 80 countries now have some capacity, or have been involved in purchasing such capacity, so this is spreading very quickly. Clearly, we do need to develop international law and practice on this. We also have large issues about what happens in ungoverned space, such as aspects of the Sahel and, until very recently, some parts of Somalia. I stress that the largest single use of unmanned aerial vehicles for military purposes is in surveillance and reconnaissance and not in direct strikes.

[The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s remarks about the progress in the United States. However, does not a world characterised by the proliferation of armed drones, without an internationally supported framework of regulation, undermine our core interests such as preventing armed conflict, promoting human rights and strengthening international legal regimes? Could the present role of the United Kingdom be one which enables and begins the process of trying to find some kind of international regulatory process?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there are some benefits from unmanned drones, particularly in terms of reconnaissance—maritime reconnaissance off Somalia and so on—because these aircraft have much longer endurance than manned aircraft. I would add that the question of whether distantly controlled aircraft encourage people to be less careful in their use of military weapons is one which I have spent some time studying. I am rather reassured that, because of the ability of unmanned aircraft to loiter over the site, not only is target acquisition more carefully attended to than if you are in a fast aircraft but you are asked to look at what happened afterwards. I am told that this means that those who are controlling these aircraft have a thorough sense of responsibility for what has been done.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, following on from the Minister’s previous answer, whenever one makes war less horrible—war is horrible, death is horrible and being involved in the risk is horrible—and kills people remotely from some leafy suburb in the middle of one’s own country, it makes it remote, which has huge implications and is very worrying. It needs a lot of control. Does the Minister agree?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Armed Forces are well aware of that and that matter is under active discussion at the present moment.

Accountability of Civil Servants: Constitution Committee Report

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I declare a professional and personal interest: I am, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, remarked, a member of the Civil Service reform board; my wife is a former civil servant; and I have a family member who is a current civil servant.

The Government welcome this report. We apologise profusely for the late completion of the response. We were keen to ensure that the committee received a carefully considered and positive response to the report and were hoping to include some of the ongoing work on accountability and Civil Service reform. That resulted in a delayed response, but I appreciate that it was a lack of courtesy to the committee to leave it quite so late. We look forward to the committee’s further work on this theme. The report is a contribution to a continuing discussion about our state, our constitution and the relationship between the Executive and Parliament.

We should not exaggerate the degree of current disagreement or discontent, or the supposed threat to the principles of Northcote-Trevelyan. It is clear that recruitment is still by merit, and I am happy that recruitment is going extremely well. The Diplomatic Service and the domestic Civil Service attract intense competition from graduates. Promotion is also by talent, although I have noticed during the past 30 or 40 years that ministerial favour has rarely hurt the careers of particular civil servants under different Governments. There are some queries about retention, particularly in the Treasury, where I think churn is one-sixth of staff a year. I am still puzzled as to why the Treasury should pay much less than some other departments in Whitehall. Those are the sort of things which some of us are querying inside government.

We still have the principle of a permanent Civil Service, although I think that it would be fair to say—and the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, will certainly remember—that when we had a large number of temporary civil servants in World War II, many of them turned out to be the great civil servants of the following generation. The idea that one has a permanent Civil Service in which there should be no movement in and out is one with which I think none of us entirely agrees.

There is of course a necessary and continuing constructive tension between Ministers and officials, and between government and Parliament. When I first came into this area as a graduate student studying under Max Beloff at the University of Oxford, the new Labour Government were then deeply suspicious of the conservatism of the Civil Service after 13 years of Conservative Government. Again, in 1974, a Labour Government came in who were suspicious of the conservatism of the Civil Service. When the Conservatives came in from 1979, there was, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, remarked, a mood of “Is he one of us? Are they too close to Labour?”. When new Labour came in again in 1997, there was some suspicion that many senior civil servants were too close to the Conservatives. We have now had a coalition from 2010, and some people have natural suspicions that people are too close to the previous regime.

The development of the role of special advisers during the past 25 to 30 years has, in my opinion, helped the relationship between Ministers and officials, although, of course, there are always exceptions to every case. The transformation of government during the past three generations has also changed the challenges posed to Whitehall. We have moved from policy to management, to a very large welfare state and thus to a much greater concentration on delivery, and from local delivery to central control. I note the argument as to how far the Secretary of State for Health should continue to be personally responsible and accountable for actions within the National Health Service across the whole of England. That is an interesting question. If one adopted the principles set out in the very interesting new report by the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, which proposes a substantial decentralisation of delivery, it would mean that Ministers would be less responsible for delivery on the ground. However, 50 years ago, delivery on the ground was the responsibility mainly of local authorities and not of central government. That is an issue which we will no doubt also continue to discuss.

The sharpness of financial constraints under which the Government are now operating, and they exist not just in the United Kingdom, pose real challenges for all departments of government. Major shifts in skills are needed. Permanent under-secretaries two or three generations ago did not think that they needed strong managerial skills. It is clear that in what we now call “the delivery departments” managerial skills are extremely important. Management of major projects, which the Civil Service reform plan is much concerned with, requires skills which are not always easily available within the Civil Service. We have just set up a major project academy and are well aware of the managerial failures during the previous Government and before in the management of major innovatory projects. Digitisation—which is just beginning to hit the Civil Service—might lead to a total revolution in the entire relationship between the state and the citizen, in which the state moves from paper to a much greater reliance on electronic exchanges, enabling us to have a smaller central state.

There is also the move to formal coalition, in which civil servants have to balance between two parties in government, although that is not entirely novel either. I cherish the senior official who said to me a year ago that this coalition was in many ways working much better than its predecessor because it was a formal coalition, meaning that we had to have argument in the open and in committees, unlike in the coalition between Brownites and the Blairites which had plotted behind closed doors.

There has been a comparable shift in the relationship between the Executive and Parliament: the rise of Select Committees, a far greater seriousness of parliamentary scrutiny and the development of committees in the Lords. As I sit in the Cabinet Office, I hear people talking about “the three key committees” to which the public service now relates; that is, the Public Accounts Committee, the Public Administration Select Committee and the Lords Constitution Committee. That relationship did not concern civil servants very much in the 1970s. I cherish a comment that I came across, on the recommendation of the author of the volume, a couple a weeks ago. It was made by a senior official during an off-the-record conference on open government in the late 1970s. The civil servant said to the journalist concerned that he had a “nightmare” of being subject not just to Parliamentary Questions but to Select Committee inquiries, investigation by the ombudsman, the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Community Relations Commission and an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. “And now”, he said, “you’re trying to impose freedom of information on us”. He said it was a totally different landscape from that which he had to steer policy through than the terrain he had entered as a young assistant principal in the 1950s. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, for that quotation.

We have moved a great deal, without, of course, resolving some of the central tensions within our informal constitution between executive sovereignty or parliamentary sovereignty. All Governments tend to favour executive sovereignty and all Oppositions tend to favour parliamentary sovereignty. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has taken note and will use in his next volume the wonderful quotation by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, that the lines in the sand need to be kept under review. That is as good a definition of our unwritten constitution as one could possibly hope for. It recognises that much of our constitution works on trust. We only go into demands for detailed writing down of rules when trust has broken down.

The Northcote-Trevelyan principles have been retained, but have to be reinterpreted for changing circumstances. I am not involved in great, grand parricide; we are involved in adaptation.

Civil Service morale is not as bad as the FDA report suggests. The Civil Service annual survey provides a much more confident interpretation of the way in which the Civil Service currently sees its role than that which the FDA itself has provided. My own informal conversations with my former students across the Civil Service suggest that morale is still good, although, of course, there are concerns about the rapid changes which are under way.

There is not an atmosphere of hostility to the Civil Service within the current Government. There were one or two temporary officials when the Government came in, but the leading force of hostility has departed to California.

The transformation of Government over the past three generations has taken us a very long way. The Prime Minister in his statement to the Liaison Committee said very clearly:

“I do not want us fundamentally to change the system from ministerial accountability with a permanent civil service”.

But there is scope to consider how we can sharpen accountability and make it more transparent in some areas. The distinction which is made and much contested between accountability and responsibility is part of trying to ensure that Parliament is able to get at a much more complex government machine.

There is a quotation in the report which remarks:

“When Haldane established the constitutional convention that Ministers are accountable to Parliament and civil servants are accountable to Ministers, there were 28 civil servants in the Home Office”.

Today, when one is dealing with a much more complex department, in particular the Home Office, with a number of executive agencies and arm’s-length bodies, Ministers have to retain responsibility and accountability, but, of course, Parliament is entitled to ask some of the heads of those arm’s-length bodies as well to come in and give evidence.

The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, suggested that Mrs Thatcher had never actually changed the order of the recommendations that were given to her. I can remember, and I will tell him afterwards, at least one occasion on which she did indeed change the order of the recommendations given to her.

I regret that on Action 11 of The Civil Service Reform Plan we have had such a battle in the press about one of the less fundamental issues in Civil Service reform. I do not want us to go back to the situation in which Richard Crossman as Secretary of State and Evelyn Sharp as his Permanent Secretary hated each other and went on nevertheless living with each other. There has to be a relationship between the Secretary of State and the Permanent Secretary which is one of trust and it depends on both of them maintaining that level of trust.

Ministerial turnover has been much reduced since 2010. Permanent Secretary turnover has indeed been higher, although I am informed that one reason for that is that a number of Permanent Secretaries were asked to stay on longer than their original term of office in order to ease the transition between one Government and another. That I believe was passed by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell. The Government believe that there has been far too much rapid turnover in the management of major projects. We wish to insist as far as possible that people appointed to manage major projects will spend longer in post. The degree of official churn from one job to another is a matter of concern to many of us. Civil servants move very rapidly from one job to another just at the point when skills have begun to be really well established in that particular post.

On the question of short-term contracts, I do not recognise some of what the press has been saying about this. Let me give one example of a temporary contract with which I am familiar. The Government digital service is concerned to lead on moving towards digital by default. The head of the Government digital service is on a temporary contract. It might be said that he had an unfortunate political background; he was previously developing the Guardian online, but that is not something that can be held against this Government as a political bias. The people I have met from the Government digital service are incredibly good and incredibly professional and have skills which are not easily available within the existing Civil Service. That is exactly the point that we are looking at.

On special advisers, I think that is more a matter to discuss another day. I hope noble Lords are familiar with the Commons Select Committee report on special advisers. Lines of accountability for special advisers are clearly set out in the Ministerial Code and in the code of conduct for special advisers.

On the question of appraisal, again, I compare what I see inside with what I hear from the outside. I have been asked to write appraisals, both on civil servants with whom I have worked particularly closely and on special advisers. I have not yet been asked to write an appraisal on a Minister, but I look forward to that with hope.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked about contracting outside advice. This is not entirely novel. The Government have contracted for outside advice over a long period. From the 1980s, when I was director of studies at Chatham House, we had a particular study contracted by the then Department of Trade and Industry, on which we got into a sharp argument between the officials who were trade negotiators and the departmental economists over which of them approved and disapproved of the tenor of our report, which ended up in discussions with the departmental solicitor over whether we were allowed to publish it. Government benefits from outside advice and it is cheaper to ask academics and think tanks than to employ large numbers of outside consultants to provide it.

On the Osmotherly Rules, the Cabinet Office has begun a review of the guidance given to civil servants on providing evidence to Select Committees and it will be liaising with the House of Commons Liaison Committee as part of the review and also with the Lords Constitution Committee. It would not expect there to be any change in the current position, which is that the document is a Government publication and has no formal Parliament standing or approval.

On the question of interviewing named civil servants for evidence for Committees, the presumption again is that Ministers will agree to meet such a request but that civil servants are doing so to contribute to the process of ministerial accountability to Parliament and on behalf of their Ministers.

On the question of responsibilities to Parliament, let me also underline that Parliament itself has some responsibility in return. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, talked about the bullying of civil servants by parliamentary committees. That is something which those committees have to take on board very fully. The case of Dr David Kelly is one from which we have all learnt a number of bitter lessons.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, asked about Ministers answering to Select Committees and I hope I have given her reassurance on that. The Ministers will continue to answer to Select Committees and to be responsible to them. They will also answer for arm’s-length bodies, although others will be allowed to answer as well.

I noted the comments she made about the transparency of the structure of the Civil Service and will take back concerns about the transparency of the website. I do not have an answer on the number of secondments at present but will write to her on that.

Finally, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, that rumours of an amendment to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 are much exaggerated and that no such rumour has reached my ears. On Action 11, I do not detect the whiff of politicisation that a number of noble Lords have suggested is there. I am reassured to hear that the informal arrangements which have operated across several previous Administrations are not too dissimilar from where we are now and reiterate that this coalition Government retain a high level of confidence in our Civil Service. We are committed to the future of a politically impartial and independent Civil Service and intend to maintain the principles of Northcote-Trevelyan, although necessarily and unavoidably adapted to the present day. I still have confidence in William E Gladstone and the legacy which he left us 160 years ago.

Israel and Palestine

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this has been a very encouraging debate and it is good to hear how many of the Members of this House are themselves engaged in working with enlightened civil society across the divide in the Middle East conflict; I am gratified to hear that. I knew, of course, quite a lot about it before and I hope that everyone will be talking about it as widely as possible and encouraging others to come in.

I am a disillusioned liberal. Not all civil society organisations promote peaceful harmony, just as not every charity is charitable to everyone in the society in which they operate. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, referred to those who fuel the flames. There are civil organisations that fuel the flames on both sides, as we are aware—the extremist settler organisations and some of the more extreme organisations, particularly in Gaza. Therefore, we are talking about enlightened civil society, which we all wish to support and wish our Government to support in beginning to heal this embittered conflict.

Since the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993, dozens of Israeli, Palestinian and international non-governmental organisations have been, and continue to be, active in the field of promoting peace between the two peoples. Camp David and Annapolis were also usefully supported by civil society think tanks and experts. We need their help.

Of course, this cannot be separated from the wider issue of the Middle East peace process. I hope that all noble Lords are aware that the UK Government consider this a very urgent issue over the next year and a half, and give it one of their highest priorities in foreign policy, as my honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs has said on a number of occasions.

We fear that the time left to preserve and reinstate a two-state solution is now limited. If we fail to make progress in the next 18 months to two years, it may possibly be too late. We welcome the announcement that President Obama will be going to Israel; indeed, the new US Secretary of State will be going to Israel and to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We want to see intergovernmental negotiation back on track. However, fostering peace is impossible without a society that is willing to embrace it. Our fear is that with each passing day, month and year without progress, the prospect of peace becomes less likely and both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples lose hope that it is possible.

During these times, when formal negotiations remain stalled, it is very important to ensure that both societies continue to foster an environment for peace. Civil society organisations play a vital role in fostering that environment. Through our embassy in Tel Aviv and consulate-general in Jerusalem, we engage with two main groups of civil society organisations: first, those that are actively involved in promoting peace and coexistence as well as promoting a final settlement of the conflict; and, secondly, those focused on managing the conflict with a focus on monitoring, legal work or advocacy against certain practices that increase tension on the ground.

In the past year the Conflict Pool, the joint fund of the FCO, DfID and the MoD, has contracted just over £1 million to Palestinian and Israeli civil society organisations. This is in addition to wider FCO bilateral funding.

The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, also asked about the EU. Its Partnership for Peace programmes disburse between €5 million and €10 million to 15 or 25 projects each year. Other Governments are of course involved. A recent joint study of textbooks in Palestinian and Israeli schools by scholars from Yale, Tel Aviv and Bethlehem Universities was funded partly by the US State Department.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked about moves to limit funds from the outside. I am well aware that this has been mooted within Israeli political circles. To follow the example of Russia, which has done so, would be regarded by all as deeply damaging to Israel’s reputation around the world. I sincerely hope that the new Government will not give in to their own right wing on that.

I hope that noble Lords will understand if I cannot mention in this short speech all of the organisations with which we engage. I hope to give noble Lords a sense of the breadth of British engagement with civil society, both in the region and in the UK. Our embassy in Tel Aviv is close contact with many of the organisations mentioned, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, OneVoice and the Peres Centre for Peace. I had not heard about Hand in Hand; it sounds fascinating and I look forward to hearing more about its work in future. The British Government have taken important steps to support such organisations, including contracting funds to various organisations that monitor settlement expansion and continue to work with the Israeli legal system and law enforcement authorities to reduce illegal settlement activity and violence against Palestinian civilians. As we have seen, one of the barriers to finding a way through the conflict is the increasing lack of belief among both Israelis and Palestinians that a solution is possible.

On the ground in Palestine, the situation continues to work against the achievement of a final status deal. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the Geneva Initiative and Addameer all do important work to increase the prospect of reaching a two-state solution in which both Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and security. Work also continues to be done to address the immediate issue of Palestinian rights under international law. Palestinian civil society plays a vital role in highlighting and helping to address some of the most negative aspects of the Israeli occupation, including human rights violations.

The UK firmly believes that the focus between the Israelis and the Palestinians should be on steps to rebuild trust, with the aim of giving momentum to restart negotiations. House demolitions and the evictions of Palestinians from their homes cause real suffering to ordinary Palestinians. We have made our position on this issue clear to the Israeli authorities. Our consulate-general in Jerusalem has supported the International Peace and Cooperation Centre, implementing urban plans and community surveys that help prevent house demolition and land confiscation. In December, for the first time, five IPCC master plans for Palestinian communities in Area C were approved. This is a major milestone for Palestinian planning efforts and the development rights of Palestinian communities.

I note what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said about UNWRA. I do not entirely accept what she said, either on that or on the position of Palestinian refugees. The FCO funded an independent report on Palestinian children in Israeli detention, which was released in June 2012. It was written by a team of respected British lawyers led by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland. The FCO funded and provided diplomatic support throughout the visit, on the shared understanding that the delegation was to be entirely independent. The content, conclusions and recommendations of the report are the delegation’s own.

The report’s conclusions focused on the legal disparity between how the Israeli justice system treats Israeli children on the one hand and Palestinian children on the other. It concludes that Israel is in contravention of various aspects of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it asserts applies to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It also notes that the transportation of child prisoners into Israel and the failure to translate military orders from Hebrew are violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, as a fellow lawyer, will particularly wish to discuss that with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland.

We continue to promote respect for human rights in the OPTs through work with local Israeli and Palestinian implementing partners. This year the Conflict Pool has contributed to the dismantlement of illegal outposts on Palestinian land, along with the return of hundreds of acres of Palestinian agricultural land in Areas B and C of the West Bank. It has funded groups that monitor and provide access to justice for victims of settler violence and lobby for more robust law enforcement. It has supported work to challenge Israel’s West Bank-Gaza separation policy and litigation on the right to education, livelihood and the freedom of movement on behalf of Gazans who wish to seek educational and economic opportunities or family reunification outside the Gaza Strip. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, mentioned the extremely important area of water; as he well knows, a great deal of work is going on regarding that but there are severe obstacles.

There are also a number of civil society organisations within the UK that do important work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The FCO has a regular dialogue with a wide range of UK-based civil society organisations at both official and ministerial level. The British Government consistently raise our concerns with the Israeli authorities regarding human rights abuses under the occupation. We value enormously the role that civil society can and does play in monitoring such issues. The UK will continue to work with civil society organisations and research groups to advance the powerful case for peace on both sides of the Green Line.

The role of British civil society, including our Jewish and Arab diasporas, is clearly an important contribution in getting away from this frozen conflict. We cannot leave the resolution of this embittered conflict to government alone. I pay tribute to all those, including many here, who do so much work on this issue. I am particularly glad to hear mention of my very old friend Ronnie Cohen—I think by the noble Lord, Lord Stone—who continues to do really superb work in this area.

Yes, of course, this is only palliative. Civil society can do only so much. Resolution of the conflict requires direct negotiation. That is urgent and, I repeat, Her Majesty’s Government consider this to be an urgent priority for the next year.

House adjourned at 5.17 pm.

PACE Trial: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Layard]

My Lords, I too greatly welcome this debate. This is a terrible condition and we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people who are suffering from it. While it is clear that although there have been many studies relative to the seriousness and pervasiveness of this condition, there is far too little research into what is causing it. I want to focus on treatment, as there have been terrible misunderstandings and misconceptions put about on that score.

I want to make just four points. First, the issue of what causes the condition is often quite different from how we can best treat it. This is such a basic point but it is not fully understood by many of the people suffering from this condition. Coronary heart disease may be caused by cholesterol but we treat it with a stent. In the same way, chronic fatigue may be caused by a virus yet the best treatment available at the moment may include psychological therapy. This form of treatment implies nothing about what we believe to be the cause. People who suffer from CFS, and who in almost all cases feel that it is not psychological in origin, are surely making a mistake when they reject psychological support for their condition on the grounds that this implies something about its cause. In their own interest, they should focus on what is the best possible treatment available on the evidence.

Secondly, we have quite a lot of evidence about which treatments work. More will surely be discovered in future and some of them will surely be biological. In the mean time, we have a large amount of evidence that both CBT and graded exercise therapy enable many more people to recover than if the only treatment they have is standard medical care. My main point here is that this is so, whatever the definition of recovery. It is wrong to suggest that this all depends upon that definition; you can put the cut-off for recovery in many different places and you will always find that people who get CBT and graded exercise therapy do better than people who have only standard medical care. There are many studies preceding PACE to show this. Of course, that is the main finding of PACE, which I would say is a fine piece of work by all normal standards. Some of the criticisms are really misleading but some of them have been answered already.

I come back to this question of the change in the protocol to stress that this was made before any analysis was done of the results. It was not that they looked at the results and said, “Let’s change the recovery criteria”. The changes were made because of discussions affecting the whole research world and agreed by the trial steering committee. What is very interesting is that a separate paper has been written simply on the recovery issue, which uses five or six different criteria of recovery. Again, in the PACE study it is shown that whatever cut-off you use, you get the same difference between the outcome of CBT and graded exercise therapy. There really is not a conjuring trick going on here and it is wrong for this impression to be given to the community of people who are suffering, if that leads to them not receiving help which they could really benefit from. Instead of criticising the study, we should be rejoicing that we again have more evidence that something can be done which is better than standard medical care.

My third point has, in a way, been made before but given the strength of this evidence that we have these treatments which work, it is shocking that they are so little available. This is part of a wider story of the non-availability of psychological therapy. The survey that was done by Action for M.E. found that a large number of PCTs were providing no specialist treatment clinics for this condition—or were not providing any kind of care, let alone this most evidence-based care. That is a disgrace and I hope that the Minister can say something about that.

The treatments are not unsafe, a claim that is often put about due to the fact that, of course, some people get worse during treatment. The only argument against the treatment, if it were the case, would be if people who did not receive it were less likely to get worse. Again, the statistics are absolutely clear: the proportion of people who get worse in treatment is no higher than that for people who get worse who are not in treatment. There is no argument whatever that this is unsafe.

My fourth point is about how we can get a better deal for this large group of sufferers. Obviously, the worst possible way to get it is to turn the area into a battleground. It gives the commissioners the perfect excuse for doing nothing and gives people of good will, who might come in and try to help people with this condition, a serious disincentive for getting into this field. As we know, and has already been said, many—or certainly some—of the people who work in this area have received repeated insults and even death threats. I pay particular tribute to Sir Simon Wessely at King’s College London, who has led the field for many years in this area and has stuck to it, despite all this harassment. He and his colleagues—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord is in his seventh minute. We are very tight on time and I am worried that the Minister will not have time to reply.

[Lord Layard]

I will stop at this point.

Ministerial Code

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will review the arrangements for enforcement and monitoring of the Ministerial Code.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Prime Minister is the ultimate judge of the standards of behaviour expected of a Minister and the appropriate consequences of a breach of the standards set out in the Ministerial Code.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, now that it has been clearly established that the Cabinet Secretary, Jeremy Heywood, totally failed to carry out a full inquiry into the Mitchell affair, by discarding the evidence and in doing so, perpetrating a huge injustice on Andrew Mitchell, the former government Chief Whip, is it not now time to transfer the responsibility for carrying out inquiries into alleged ministerial transgressions from the Cabinet Secretary—indeed, anybody in Downing Street—to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for Commons’ Ministers and to the Commissioner for Standards in the case of Ministers in the House of Lords? Surely we all recognise that all Ministers are Members of Parliament and should be subject to rules set by Parliament.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I remind the noble Lord that the Cabinet Secretary’s recommendation to the Prime Minister was that the e-mails were unreliable evidence and that Andrew Mitchell should stay in post. In the evidence that he gave to the Public Administration Committee on 10 January, he said:

“My report to the Prime Minister basically said that there were some inconsistencies and inaccuracies between the account in the e-mails and what I could see in the CCTV footage. What was fundamental was the conclusion, which was that you could not rely on these e-mails to terminate Andrew Mitchell’s career”.

What then followed was a continuing press campaign, possibly with others involved, that led to Andrew Mitchell later offering his resignation.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, does my noble friend regard it as really satisfactory that the allegations of misbehaviour by the Metropolitan Police in respect of Mr Andrew Mitchell are being investigated by the Metropolitan Police?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I need to be very careful about commenting on an ongoing police investigation. Given that the investigation is ongoing, I will say that I note the noble Lord’s concern.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, under the Ministerial Code, Ministers are responsible for their special advisers. In the Sunday newspapers there were allegations that the special advisers of the right honourable Michael Gove MP might have been acting improperly. If that were to be the case, what would be the consequences for the Secretary of State?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Baroness will be aware that allegations of this sort arise from time to time. She will remember the case of Damian McBride in the previous Government. On the whole my experience in government is that special advisers work very well with their Ministers, but the Ministerial Code is quite clear that special advisers are appointed by Ministers, subject to the Prime Minister’s approval, and are accountable to their Ministers. If they behave outside their responsibilities, it is their Ministers who should hold them to account.

[Lord Grocott]

That does not seem to square with what happened in the case of Jeremy Hunt if, as the Minister has just said, Ministers are responsible for the activities of their special advisers. We had a Secretary of State acting in what was described as a quasi-judicial capacity who was clearly and demonstrably sympathetic to one side rather than the other in a very important ministerial decision. Surely it is an odd conclusion that the special adviser should lose his job and the Minister should not only remain in his job but be promoted.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not fully aware of exactly what happened in that case, and I am fully prepared to write to the noble Lord if I can get some further information. Of course, if special advisers operate beyond what the Minister has asked them to do, they must take responsibility as the Minister requires.

[Lord Elis-Thomas]

My Lords, will the Minister address himself to the Question put so succinctly by the noble Lord? Should there not be, outside of government, a way of dealing with complaints against Ministers, which is equal to how Members are dealt with in this House and in the other place?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, at that point we begin to get into fundamental constitutional issues about the relationship between the Executive and Parliament. While preparing for a Question on collective responsibility that will come up next week, it occurred to me that this was something over which we fought a civil war in the 17th century and then had a further revolution in 1689. However, we never quite resolved the question of how far it is the Executive who have independent authority or how far Parliament is able to assert its sovereignty over the Executive.

[Lord Elton]

Is the Minister aware that Parliament was invented to control government and not to serve it, and therefore that it is perfectly proper for Parliament to have a view on these issues and to try to change them?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is perfectly possible for Parliament to have a view. Having read several recent reports by the Public Administration Committee and the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons, I can say that Parliament makes its views felt extremely actively and frequently.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford]

May I ask my noble friend the Minister whether the Government are considering changes to the Ministerial Code in the light of the Leveson report, or whether they are putting their energies into achieving an agreed code of practice that would apply both to Ministers and the opposition Front Bench, in order to ensure the transparency of future relationships between all leading politicians and senior media executives, as recommended by Lord Justice Leveson?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Ministerial Code now makes it clear that Ministers should report their meetings with all interested parties—which clearly includes those covered in this part of the Leveson report concerning media proprietors, newspaper editors and senior executives—so such meetings should be covered by the Ministerial Code.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Ministerial Code in Scotland is so narrow and lax that the First Minister gets away regularly with lying to Parliament—and other transgressions?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I will tell noble Lords about the transgressions later. Seriously, do we have any reserved powers to look at the Ministerial Code in Scotland and tighten it?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not sighted on that supplementary question, but I look forward to the enjoyable evening on which the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, tells me about the transgressions that he feels have happened in the Scottish Executive.

Antarctic Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 1st February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Montgomery of Alamein]

That is a very good question. I will refer it to the Minister to answer when he speaks later.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

For the assistance of the House, the most evident environmental emergency was one where an Argentinian ship ran aground in the Antarctic Ocean and lost a considerable amount of fuel oil. That is the most likely environmental emergency with which this deals.

[Viscount Montgomery of Alamein]

I am most grateful. I knew I would get into difficulty sooner or later. The Bill will treat the British Antarctic Survey, which provides a British permanent presence in the British Antarctic Territory, and other parts of the public sector who enter Antarctica on official business, as part of the Crown. It will also have the benefit of exempting those organisations from requiring insurance, as the UK Government provide self-insurance for their operations.

Now I come to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, wanted me to answer. He was just a bit premature. [Laughter.] The Bill defines an environmental emergency as an accidental event that results in, or imminently threatens to result in, any significant harmful impact on the environment of Antarctica. This definition is derived directly from Article 2 of the liability annexe to which I have already referred. The definition of response action sets out the action that operators would be expected to undertake following an environmental emergency arising from activities. The Bill includes a definition of what constitutes reasonable response action. This is also derived from Article 2 of the liability annexe. Operators will need to ensure that any response action they take meets these criteria.

The proposed amendment to the Act would enable the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to issue permits to non-UK nationals wishing to undertake such activities, for the purpose of education or scientific research, while they are participating in a British expedition. Under the Antarctic Act 1994, it is an offence to damage, destroy or remove any part of a site or monument designated as a historic site or monument. However, in recent years, as a result of the warming climate in Antarctica and increasing access to such sites, it has become necessary to undertake considerable conservation work on historic sites and monuments in Antarctica. The provision to amend Section 10 of the Antarctic Act 1994 would enable a permit to be given for such conservation work including, where necessary, the removal of historic artefacts for their conservation or repair, consistent with environmental protocol obligations.

Annex II to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty sets out the framework for the protection of Antarctic fauna and flora. As a result of a lengthy review, some small changes have been made to that annex and these are reflected in the Bill. That concludes this part of the proceedings. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this has been an excellent and expert debate. It demonstrates that there is a complete consensus on the importance we attach to vigorously defending and protecting the environment of the Antarctic. The Bill allows us to ratify a further addition to the corpus of international law that governs the Antarctic continent. As noble Lords will know, Her Majesty’s Government regret—and have for several years—that we were not the first to ratify. However, if the Bill passes—as we very much hope it will—we will be the seventh country to ratify. That answers the question of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne.

So far, Finland, Peru, Poland, Spain and Sweden reported to the most recent Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in June 2012 that they had ratified. Since then, Australia has ratified. When the Bill has completed its passage through both Houses, subject to the will of this House, I know that my honourable friend Neil Carmichael MP is planning a reception to celebrate the Bill and our ratification, to which representatives of the other state parties will be invited. This will provide us with the first opportunity to encourage others to follow us as rapidly as possible in completing the ratification of the treaty. I have just been passed a note stating that Argentina has indicated its intention to ratify the liability annexe.

We maintain absolutely our commitment. It is not just a question of the British Antarctic Survey. We are all aware of how competent and expert the FCO team covering this is. It was a slight shock to me when I met them this morning, having corresponded with them for some time. I had assumed from their level of expertise that they were all about my age and had been studying the Antarctic for 40 or 50 years. To discover that they were about half my age and nevertheless very expert was even more impressive.

I will rapidly respond to a number of points made in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked about the timescale for the appointment of a new director of the British Antarctic Survey. The Natural Environment Research Council has advertised for a new director. The closing date was 17 January. We understand that the NERC plans to interview candidates in March, so we are making good progress.

In an extremely interesting speech, the noble Lord raised a large number of interesting points. I am amazed and sometimes appalled by the level of his expertise on parts of the world that often I have to start researching by looking them up on a map. On the question of how we might charge for permits to cover clean-up costs, the Government’s consideration on this is that the limits on charges and maximum liability set out in the Bill are already significant. Liability for the smallest vessels is just under £1 million. For larger vessels we are talking about anywhere between £12 million and £30 million. These are generous limits for the potential emergencies that we could envisage. Once the liability annexe comes into force, the Antarctic Treaty parties will review the liability limits. Many consider that they will then need to be raised, for example to come into line with the new limits to be introduced under the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims.

The noble Lord raised the question of protecting Mawson’s huts. The noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, also talked with particular passion about the protection of historic sites and monuments across all Antarctica. The Government are aware of a very extensive Australian restoration programme for Mawson’s huts and so do not think that they will fall into disrepair without British involvement. However, if the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust was invited to contribute expertise to that restoration project, I am sure that it would seriously consider the opportunity, which the Government would encourage it to accept. The Bill’s provisions on historic sites and monuments apply across all Antarctica, and we are engaged with other signatories in co-operative work in their protection.

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, also raised the question of marine protected areas and fisheries. I confirm that Clause 9(3) specifically excludes the activity of fishing for profit from all requirements in Part 1 of the Bill. This is primarily because the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty does not cover fishing activities, which, as the noble Lord pointed out, are the subject of separate rules and regulations under the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, which I am told is pronounced “Camlar” as an acronym. As a result, they are specifically excluded from this liability annexe. However, they are covered by other existing international laws.

The British Government are committed to the protection of the Southern Ocean from excessive fishing. We note that fishing for Chilean sea bass has rapidly increased. When I am offered it, I will look at sea bass with an entirely different attitude, having read a number of things about it in the past few days. We have demonstrated our commitment to the designation of marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean. Earlier this year, the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands announced one of the largest sustainable-use marine protected areas in the world, covering their entire maritime zone. This year we have developed a further proposal to designate marine protected areas in areas of the Antarctic peninsula that are currently covered by permanent ice.

The UK will also give its full support to the designation of marine protected areas in the east Antarctic and in the Ross Sea during the meeting of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. The Ross Sea is one of the most biologically productive areas of the Southern Ocean. Therefore, as the noble Lord remarked, it is a potentially rich source of global protein. However, it must be fished responsibly and sustainably. That will require international collaboration in policing fishing activities—in which the British, of course, will play a full part.

A number of noble Lords raised the question of environmental emergency thresholds. There is no explicit threshold, either in the Bill or in the liability annexe, for what constitutes an environmental emergency. It is defined in Clause 13(3) as,

“an … event that results in, or imminently threatens to result in, any significant harmful impact on the environment of Antarctica”.

So ultimately it will be down to judgment as to what constitutes an environmental emergency. This is why Clause 8 is so important and is constructed to include a broader set of circumstances than simply environmental emergencies.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am sure that my noble friend did not mean to misquote the Bill but it does not actually say that. It does not say an event,

“that results in, or imminently threatens to result in, any significant harmful impact on the environment of Antarctica”.

It says, “an accidental event”. Could he deal with my point as to why the event is qualified by the word “accidental”?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Certainly. I will come to that briefly and I thank the noble Lord for his intervention.

A number of marine-based activities undertaken in Antarctica are currently covered by earlier, existing conventions such as the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims. However, those not covered by such conventions, particularly yachts or land-based operations, are not currently liable for pollution costs. That explains why this extends to the liability set of issues.

The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, asked about non-accidental events. Sanctions can be brought under the Antarctic Act 1994 against those who are deliberately causing environmental damage in Antarctica and any person causing such damage will, by virtue of paragraph 1(5) of the schedule be subject to unlimited liability for costs incurred in responding to it. This reflects Article IX of the liability annexe. This is extending existing law to accidents where existing law already covers deliberate environmental degradation.

The noble Lord, Lord Greenway, asked about liability provisions. Paragraph 5 of the schedule ensures that no shipping operator can be held liable for the same cost twice. This means that liability cannot be sought for environmental clean-up under both the LMMC and the Antarctic Bill. If the environmental clean-up work includes vessel salvage, the operator cannot be liable twice under the salvage convention and the Antarctic Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, asked about UK engagement with the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I apologise to my noble friend. I expect that I am being a bit thick, but I still do not understand why this word “accidental” is included in the definition of what constitutes an environmental emergency. I understand the point that he makes about deliberate action which causes damage being covered by other legislation, but it is not clear to me why the definition within the Bill of an environmental emergency is qualified by this word “accidental”. There are events that could be an environmental emergency that would not arise from an accidental activity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We are reaching the limits of my expertise on this issue. My understanding is that deliberate environmental degradation—mining, the setting up of flights and the sort of things that the noble Lord has been talking about—would be already be covered by the Antarctic Act. The intention here is to extend liability to cover increases in tourism and shipping and the extent to which accidents, collisions, sinking and so forth happen. This is an extension. Much of what the noble Lord is concerned about is, we understand, covered by existing law. Of course, if I have not given him a full explanation I will write to him. I do not in the slightest consider him thick: I consider him, like my noble friend Lord Greaves, a thorough scrutineer of all legislation that passes through this House. I intend that as a compliment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, talked about UK engagement with the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat. I am happy to be able to confirm that we have full and effective engagement with the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat in Buenos Aires. It has international organisation status within Argentina.

I assure the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, that Her Majesty’s Government do their best to maintain a relationship with Argentina that is effective for the Antarctic, which keeps that as separate as possible from the current and long-standing differences over the Falkland Islands. We do our best to maintain the difference as far as we can. This is, after all, an important multilateral issue in which a number of Latin American countries, most of all Chile, are involved.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, asked whether the Treaty parties were also talking about future risks. I confirm that the clause that he referred to in the Bill does not limit in any sense the Secretary of State’s powers and liabilities. Of course, we are concerned and we are talking with others about future risks to the Antarctic environment. The suggestion of improving the existing secretariat website to include this information is a matter for discussion with our treaty parties, not for this Bill. We are of course ratifying a negotiated international convention. The UK will consider the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in discussion with other treaty parties.

Finally, I can confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, that we, as with the predecessor Government, are entirely committed to vigorously defending the pristine character of this continent. We have demonstrated today that this is warmly supported across this House. We look forward to the passage and ratification of the Bill. This country is rightly proud of its Antarctic heritage and we want to continue to be proud of it.

We thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, for introducing the Bill. We look forward to its speedy passage through this House and ratification. This will help us to demonstrate continued UK leadership in the Antarctic treaty system. I am therefore delighted to be able to give the Bill the Government’s wholehearted support today and I encourage all noble Lords to do likewise.