(12 years, 1 month ago)
Lords Chamber
That the draft order laid before the House on 9 May be approved.
Relevant documents: 2nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 25 June.
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, this is the sixth sitting day since Easter for us to enjoy being able to discuss aspects of Lords reform. It is a pleasure to hear a number of positive speeches about some degree of Lords reform being made around the House. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, opened up the wonderful prospect of a whole series of extremely modest Bills carrying on for several years, slowly and gently putting through little bits of Lords reform. I am not sure whether that would take more or less time than one comprehensive Bill but it is at least an interesting prospect.
The right reverend Prelate is a very brave man to raise the question of age limits and whether one’s relevant and current expertise and responsibilities should be taken into account when considering continuing membership of the House. I have sometimes wondered whether, if the possibility of retirement were put to a vote, the proposal that 95 should be the age limit would pass the House. No one has yet tried; perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Soley, will try it with a Private Member’s Bill in the next Session if it is needed at that stage.
I intend to take to heart the opening comment of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, that the less said about the other Bill in this context the better. We are discussing a Private Member’s Bill and this is an extremely modest proposal. I will simply answer a few of the questions that have been raised, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.
The Government’s response to the Joint Committee does indeed say in paragraph 53:
“The Government agrees with the Joint Committee that allowing individuals to maintain relevant professional expertise and attracting individuals who would not want to commit to a full-time role would strengthen the reformed House, as it does the present House. The Government therefore accepts that it is desirable that appointed members should not necessarily be expected to attend every sitting day of the reformed House”.
I do not have to hand the figures for how many Members of the House of Commons attend every day. Of course, Members of the House of Commons often argue that constituency work is more important than attendance at the House every day.
My Lords, the Government have also said that they do not expect elected Members of your Lordships’ House to dabble in constituency work. The whole purpose of these elected Members is to be here in Parliament. The calculations do not show 75% attendance by the 20% of appointed Members; they show 75% attendance by Members of the reformed House. It is quite remarkable that the expectation is that elected Members will attend your Lordships’ House 75% of the time when their sole purpose will be to be here to scrutinise legislation.
My Lords, that is precisely the point that the Government’s response deals with. We have a House that consists of a large number of Members who continue to have other aspects to their lives outside. The point has frequently been made on the Labour Benches that the last thing that we want is for Members of a second Chamber to spend a great deal of their time on constituency work. This response deals with that area. However, at present, I do not wish to be drawn further into discussion of a different Bill from the one before us. I merely draw attention to the excellent article by a Conservative—
I thank the Minister for giving way. In view of his recent comments, will he make it clear that it is the Government’s intention that people will be paid around £50,000 a year not only not to do constituency work but not to turn up here? Is it not clear from the logic of what he is saying that the public are being asked to accept that a part-time elected Member should be paid a salary of the order of £50,000?
My Lords, that is not the case. We do not need to get into a detailed discussion at this point. Members will be paid for the number of occasions on which they come to work in this House. Some, as now, will be here every single day; others will have a mixture of Lords and other responsibilities.
I think the Minister misses the point. Is he being quite clear in saying that, by his estimate, the amount of money that will be paid will be for someone who will come here not full-time but part time—75% of the time, or whatever? Therefore, the figures that have been put in the public domain are what the elected Senators—or people with no name, as we must now call them—will be paid for attending, on average, three-quarters of the time.
My Lords, I think it is entirely clear. As now, some will receive more than others. The question of how many will be here every day will evolve with the new Chamber.
My Lords, will the Minister clarify the point that he made? I understood him to say, “not a lot of constituency work”. I understand that the intention behind the Bill that was produced this week is that Members of this Chamber, whatever they are called, will not do constituency work. I have yet to meet anyone who, faced with a problem, does not go to the person who they think is most likely to take up their case and fight it. However, I understand that the Bill is predicated on Members not having constituency work.
That understanding is entirely correct. The common understanding is that many of us here do a number of activities outside the House that might be considered constituency work. It is not constituency casework, although since becoming a Member of this House I have often received letters and e-mails that would be regarded as constituency casework, to which I have, by and large, said, “Not me”. However, in Bradford, York and Leeds, I frequently see Labour Members of this House, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, at meetings to discuss regional issues. Many of us will rightly continue to discuss regional issues. I meet the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and others who come from my part of the world. I wish there were more Members of this House who, like the noble Baroness, come from outside the south-east of England and naturally spend their weekends going around areas other than the south-east of England, picking up what is going on and feeding back what they have learnt—as part of their relevant and continuing expertise—into the House. If that is regarded as constituency work, it is perhaps something that we will naturally continue to do. However, constituency casework does not seem to us to be a necessary part of this House.
I wonder whether the Minister would take the opportunity of answering the point by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, that whatever one’s view of reform, it is not helpful to the discussion for there to be disparagement of current Members of the House of Lords, not just by the Deputy Prime Minister but by Simon Hughes, Tim Farron and, I regret to say, also by a Member of this House, the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown. Can he give us an assurance that he will make his best effort to make sure that this kind of slurring of current Members of this House ceases forthwith?
My Lords, I am tempted to say that I would like to give the House an absolute assurance that I will speak severely to the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, immediately after the end of this debate. It would give me immense pleasure so to do. I will make sure that in his next speech he refers to the immense experience and expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes.
If I understand what the Minister said, under the Government’s proposals Members of this House will be paid according to attendance. He has also said that they will not have to do constituency work. Does not this fall into exactly the phrase that the Deputy Prime Minister used as a criticism—that people are being paid just for turning up?
My Lords, again, we do not wish to go too far into the other Bill. We are all conscious, if we are critical, that of those of us who turn up regularly, many of us work extremely hard but not all of us work as hard as the others. That will very likely be the same in an elected House, but we hope that the level of hard work will be even broader than now.
I apologise to my noble friend for intervening, but since I seem to have uncharacteristically ruffled the feathers of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I suppose that I ought to put matters on the record. I do not insult the work done by Members of this House. The work that noble Lords do is partial, since it is a revising Chamber, but noble Lords do it exceedingly well. I wish that noble Lords also had the power to hold the Executive to account more effectively, since the place at the other end does not do so. That we do not do so effectively—that is not noble Lords’ fault but the fault of the institution. I do not in any way cast any aspersions on the integrity or hard work of Members of this House. What I cast aspersions on is the way in which we get here.
I am very glad that I let the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, speak first, because I am very pleased to hear his admission that this is a revising Chamber and not one that makes the law, as the Deputy Prime Minister has tried to claim.
Will the Minister address the point again about constituency work? What is there to stop elected Members of this House choosing to do constituency work? The fact that the Government would rather they did not do it is neither here nor there. When they are elected, it will be up to them to decide whether or not they do that work. It is very unlikely that I would ever be one, but if I were ever to be an elected Member of this House, I would be tempted to cherry pick the constituency work to choose those high-profile cases that might have a real impact, thereby undermining the position of the constituency MP. The Minister looks puzzled, but I assure him that this subject was discussed over and over again on the Joint Committee of both Houses when we looked at the Bill. It is a matter of real worry to colleagues at the other end of this building, and I would be very grateful if he could answer. What is to stop elected Members of this House doing constituency work?
My Lords, there is nothing to stop Members of this existing House taking up individual cases, and they do so. I really do not see what the difference is. There will be no funds for those Members to take up constituency work, but it would be entirely appropriate for Members of a revising Chamber, whatever it may come to be called, to take up particular issues of civil liberties and people in prison, for example. My noble friend Lord Avebury might perhaps be accused of taking up many constituency cases across the country, as might the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. That is, perhaps, what we do already.
My Lords, I know that we have recently been exhorted not to intervene on Ministers’ speeches too often, so I apologise for transgressing that rule, but will the Minister look at what happened in the Scottish Parliament? There are two sets of elections—one direct and one top-up. When it was envisaged, it was said that the top-up Members would receive a lower salary than those directly elected because they would not do constituency work. That did not last long; as soon as they got their feet under the table, they changed the rules. As my noble friend just said, the list Members constantly interfered, cherry picked cases that got the headlines and undermined the directly elected Members. It follows as surely as day follows night.
My Lords, I look forward to many enjoyable days at the end of the year discussing this and other questions on another Bill than the one before us at present. At the present moment—
I have given way a great many times, and I think that I ought to draw what I hoped would be my brief remarks to a close. The Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, is an extremely modest and incremental proposal. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, has already given notice that he intends to table amendments in Committee, but I trust that the Bill will pass relatively quickly through this House and will be perhaps an indication that there are at least some ways in which this House is willing to move on reform. On that basis, I hand back the wind-up to the noble Lord, Lord Steel.
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all those who have taken part in this debate. I particularly liked the reference by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, at the beginning to not mentioning the war. It was inevitable, of course, that the two Front-Benchers, when winding up on my Bill, would talk of nothing else except the war. As for my noble friend Lord Fowler, he did not just mention the war—he positively conducted it single-handedly. I cannot possibly associate myself with his remarks of support. In the brief moment that he referred to my Bill, he made one point to which I would like to respond. He thought that I had been too generous in the drafting in saying that non-attendance should apply to a whole Session. I remind the House that I rather agree with that and, in the original Bill, the time of non-attendance was six months. But I was giving way to the feeling in the Committee stage on that Bill, which is why it ended up as a whole Session. So I do not think that we can keep going back and revisiting this issue; we discussed it at great length under the previous Bill, which is why we are where we are now. I hope that my noble friend accepts that.
In relation to the general war, let me say that this Bill is required even if the Bill as drafted by the Government were to sail through both Houses and come into full effect in 2025. We would still need this measure up till then. So regardless of any views that Members may have on the Government’s proposals, I think that this Bill should be proceeded with as soon as possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Wills, the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, all made reference to there being no appeal procedure for those expelled for reasons of criminal conviction. Initially the intention of my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth and me was to bring the rule in this House entirely into line with that in the House of Commons. If in the course of the redrafting we have somehow lost that, I will certainly look at it very carefully before Committee, in the light of the comments that noble Lords have made, and be in touch with them about it in the hope of trying to avoid amendments—but we may have to have amendments in Committee. It is a reasonable point. I assure Members that the intention was to make the rule in this House exactly the same as in the House of Commons.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, about retrospection, I assure noble Lords that I took very careful account of this, because I was concerned that it should not be retrospective. All the legal advice that I had was that it is not retrospective. In fact, no law is retrospective, unless it says so otherwise. So I was advised that it was not necessary to put a provision in saying that it was not retrospective because it manifestly is not. That is what I have been told and, therefore, Members can be assured that it is not retrospective in any shape or form.
My noble friend Lord Tyler was kind enough to refer to my excellent article in the Independent last week. That is not so much mentioning the war as, certainly, mentioning guerrilla tactics, so to speak. We certainly should not be trying to debate that now, but I disagree with his comments on my excellent article because the suggestions that I put forward for an elected House avoided a lot of the dangers which are present in the government legislation. However, that would be taking me away from the purpose of the Bill which, as my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire said, is a modest, effective measure. I hope that it will proceed.
(12 years, 2 months ago)
Grand Committee
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Electoral Registration Data Schemes Order 2012.
Relevant document: 2nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
My Lords, the order will provide the legal basis for a second electoral registration data-matching trial by enabling the sharing of specified data between the DWP and local authority electoral registration officers. An initial round of data-matching schemes took place in 2011 and, in the Government’s response to pre-legislative scrutiny and public consultation on individual electoral registration and amendment to electoral registration law under Command Paper 8245 of February 2012, the Government announced that they were minded to use data matching to simplify the transition to individual registration for the majority of electors, subject to further testing this year.
Before I set out what the order does, perhaps I may provide the Committee with some background, with which I think most noble Lords present will already be familiar. All sides of the House agree that we need to improve our electoral registration system. We need to make the register both more accurate and more complete than it is at the moment. We need to ensure that it is not vulnerable to fraud but that people find it as easy as possible to register and are encouraged to register.
The Committee will recall that an initial round of data-matching schemes took place last year. The initial trials involved comparing the electoral register against other public databases in order to identify people who were missing from the register, which would then give an electoral registration officer the chance to contact them and find out whether they wished to be added to the register. The 2011 data-matching schemes were also aimed at identifying potentially inaccurate and/or fraudulent entries on the register. The electoral registration officer would then be able to take the necessary steps to remove them.
The evaluation of these schemes told us that further piloting work was required, and I shall say more about that in a few minutes. An unexpected benefit of last year’s pilot schemes was the discovery that it might be possible for a significant majority of existing electors to be confirmed as accurate to an acceptable standard by matching the electoral register against data held by the DWP. We hope that this will address one of the criticisms of some of our individual registration proposals, but there may be a risk of a reduction in the number of registered eligible voters. In the transition to individual registration, those electors whose details were confirmed through data matching would therefore be automatically placed on the new individual electoral registration register without having to make a new application.
We want to test this proposition in the pilots run under the order, but with a larger sample so that we have good, robust evidence. The instrument before us now will enable us to test the capability of the data-matching process to confirm existing electors on the register. It will involve a range of areas in England, Wales and Scotland. The results of the trial will be evaluated by the Cabinet Office and the Electoral Commission and will enable us to confirm that this matching process will assist the transition to 2014 and enable us to find a process for carrying it out. I should add that the reason for not including Northern Ireland in this pilot scheme is that Northern Ireland already has moved to individual electoral registration.
My Lords, I am tempted to start by saying that I now have writer’s cramp from attempting to write down all those questions as they were thrown at me. I remind the Committee that we all share an interest in this and I hope that it is very much an all-party concern that we should have as accurate and complete a register as possible. I think that we also all share an awareness that our electoral register has been becoming less accurate and complete, for a number of reasons. Young people have been moving around more and, in particular, I fear that a number of them are not actively interested in getting themselves on to the register. It has also been rather more difficult, particularly in some inner-city areas where people are in multiple accommodation and moving relatively quickly, to keep up with people as they move.
I think that we also all share an awareness that the issues about which people hold what data are moving very fast. The Government now collect a great deal of data that were not available for collection before. Private sources, from Experian to Google to Tesco, also collect a great amount of data, and there are some very large issues that we will have to deal with over the next few years about how that is handled and what privacy guarantees are introduced to hold on to the individual’s rights against what I see from one of my notes is regarded as the data-collecting state. In revising the register, we have to take all these different issues into account.
The purpose of the pilots is to ensure that individual electoral registration is as complete as possible. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, the issue of the impact on business and credit checks is one that we are aware of, but it is not something that many young people are aware of. When the Bill comes before the House we will have to discuss that in detail, because a lot of young people do not understand that your credit registration and the way in which business can operate with you partly depend on whether you are on the register. That is part of what may need to be an information campaign on all this.
There certainly will be independent assessment of the effectiveness of these bilateral pilots. I liked the question about what happens if the Cabinet Office and the Electoral Commission come to different conclusions on this; if they did, clearly they would have to discuss and reconcile their evaluations of the schemes. Actually, it is highly desirable that there should be two different forms of evaluation. I remember going to talk, when I worked at a think tank, to the new research director of a major international company and him asking his predecessor, who was introducing me, why they needed advice from a think tank when the company had its own research department. The former head of the research department said, “Because you might want a second opinion”, and the same is true in this case. Involving both the Electoral Commission and the Cabinet Office is a good way of making sure that there is a second opinion and, if the second opinion is different, that will have to be reconciled.
I think that I understood the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, as saying that we might even think about putting people on the register automatically if they were found on the DWP database or, alternatively, only if they responded to follow-up letters or visits. Again, that is something that we will be discussing when the electoral registration Bill hits the Lords. It is an important and difficult issue, because it raises questions about citizen involvement and responsibility as opposed to individual privacy when it comes to this public database—indeed, one of the most important public databases that we have.
I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, that local authorities manage registers, and electoral registration officers work for local authorities. With these pilots, we are very much concerned to look at the completeness dimension. Last year’s pilots looked rather more at accuracy and I assure the noble Lord that it is very much a concern of ours that this should be as complete as possible. Combining my answer to him with at least one of the dozen or so questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that I wish to answer, I remind noble Lords that electoral registration officers already make use of a number of data sets that are available to local authorities. These include the register of births and deaths, council tax records, registers of households in multiple occupation, local land and property gazetteers, housing benefit applications, lists of persons in residential and care homes and, when allowed, details of attainers—those aged 16 or 17—held by education departments.
In Northern Ireland, the move to individual electoral registration has led to an improvement in the completeness of 18 year-olds coming on to the register because authorities have worked actively with Northern Irish schools to encourage 16 and 17 year-olds to come on to the register and to check names as they arrive. There are problems in some English local authorities where there are district and council authorities and the ERO belongs to one authority and the schools belong to another. That, again, is a question we might wish to discuss further when the Bill comes to the House. However, in looking at completeness, we hope that the use of secondary schools and 16 and 17 year-olds will help to ensure completeness in one of the precise areas where we are worried about the number of people who put themselves on the register.
Are we confident that the methodology in place this time is sufficiently robust to deliver successful pilot schemes? We are confident. We have adopted a more prescriptive approach to the pilot methodology than was possible last year. There is clear guidance for each of the pilot areas, on the basis of which we hope to draw robust conclusions from the evidence. We have developed the methodology in liaison with the Electoral Commission and we have asked all the pilots to agree to the methodology before they start work. That means that we have started work on developing a more sophisticated algorithm to reduce the resource intensiveness of the process for electoral registration officers.
As to the purposes of these orders, the impact is limited to the pilots and not beyond. Again, we will return to many of these issues when we are discussing the Bill. Are more pilots needed? This is an on-going process in consultation with the Electoral Commission and if more pilots are needed—and the area of young people is one that we are particularly concerned about—we will continue to a further pilot. Are we satisfied with the spread of authorities? We are satisfied that we have a sufficiently robust spread of authorities. One or two extra rural authorities might have been more appropriate—in the other place, the question of Scottish rural authorities was raised—but this is a fairly good spread across all three countries and across a range of different authorities. We are confident that this will give us a fairly strong result.
I am afraid that I am unable to say at the moment whether Peers will be able to vote in 2015 for the third of this House that will be elected. I was happy to hear the noble Baroness say “will be elected in 2015”. I promise to buy her a drink after she and I have been to vote on that occasion—if and when we have been allowed to do so.
Are there any other questions that I should have answered? Will further work be undertaken? We have said yes, it will. On the question of whether the new register will be ready for the Scottish referendum, we are determined that the same basis for the register will be in place throughout the country for each election. The impact of the pilots will not be used for a different foundation for the electoral register from one local authority to another. The purpose of these pilots, which have been worked on with the Electoral Commission and others, is to ensure, as far as possible, that everyone in the country and in different political parties has the maximum confidence that the new register is both as accurate and as complete as possible. We shall return to this issue if we need more pilots—it would require another order—and when we discuss the individual Electoral Registration Bill in the House.
(12 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, on what we are discussing today there is a lot of common ground across the Chamber and across all parties. I do not intend to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, in her slightly partisan wind-up because there is a great deal of common ground.
We are all volunteers. Volunteering, after all, has a long tradition in Britain. Long before the welfare state grew up there were churches and chapels; philanthropy and charitable activities by the well-off; friendly societies; co-operatives among the working classes; trade unions, of course; and, above all, women. My mother retired from her last voluntary post when she was older than a considerable number of the women in the old people’s home of which she was chair. She was one of that generation who would have had a career had she not married. As we know, one of the problems that we are facing in the voluntary sector is that there is no longer that great pool of capable women who are not able to work because they are married. We therefore have to rely on the fit retired much more than we did.
I suppose that in some ways I am one of the fit retired who is a volunteer, as are half the government Front Bench. I work but I am not paid, although that is partly because I have quite a generous academic pension—not, of course, half as generous as doctors’ pensions—which enables me to provide my contribution. Most of us in this House are actively engaged in one way or another in the third sector. Indeed, I remember some months ago the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and myself being taken by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, to the Bromley by Bow Centre, a remarkable generation of investment, started on the basis of a rather dilapidated congregational church and now involved in the regeneration of a large area in east London. So I welcome the focus on volunteers and recognise, as do the Government, that support for volunteers is very much part of what has to happen in this sector; you often need paid staff to train and support volunteers. At a reception for small charities the other evening, I met the leaders of a small charity in north Yorkshire which has two part-time paid staff who, in turn, support several hundred women in visiting elderly people living on their own in homes. That is a good example of the sort of thing that all of us wish to support and encourage, but which the state does not easily provide.
Several noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, have talked about the proper balance between state, society and market. That is what we are all really concerned about here. We need to make sure that, in that balance, there is a strong civil society as part of the mix, both in relationship to the market and in relationship to the state. The Prime Minister has labelled this “the big society”. I, as a Liberal Democrat, would prefer to call it “the responsible society”, or even “the liberal society”: empowered individuals working within strong communities, working with a decentralised state. I remind the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, that Ed Miliband said in a speech last year:
“I have been clear that we should recognise the shortcomings of the centralised state”.
Indeed, we need to go back, as far as is possible, to much more local engagement and local accountability. Of course, this is a process. Change takes time. The Localism Act 2011 is another part of this, and so is the provision of diverse funding streams—Big Society Capital—now getting under way and, as the noble Baroness rightly says, building on work of the previous Government with other support schemes providing matching funds—for instance, Community First, the Community Endowment Fund, community foundations and private bodies. They are all very valuable, giving grants to social enterprises when they are set up. I was very happy to visit the Community Foundation for Calderdale, which my noble friend Lord Shutt had a great deal to do with starting. Now there is also the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012.
Then there is the whole question of government contracting, on which we have had a number of contributions and, rightly, some criticisms. The noble Lord, Lord Prescott, raised the particular question of Close Protection UK. I understand that Close Protection UK has taken full responsibility for the very poor treatment that its staff suffered, and has offered an apology to all concerned. The Security Industry Authority has written to CPUK asking for further information to ensure that it is in compliance with the relevant legislation. We in no way wish to see volunteering as a mandatory requirement for individuals to claim benefits, but volunteering is part of the way in which you get people back into the idea of work, and should therefore be offered, as far as is possible, to people as they begin to get out of long-term unemployment and back on to the job market.
There is a changing culture in government contracting, and that also takes time to change. We have a new Crown representative for the civil society sector, who took up post on 18 June, so this is very much a new initiative. He will work closely with the Crown representative for mutuals and the Crown representative for small and medium-sized enterprises to achieve changes in how the Government do their business, and to ensure as far as possible that we catch the small social enterprises and local companies, which we all wish to do. Social impact bonds are another way of trying to help social enterprises cope with payment by results. A number of experiments are under way in that area.
On funding, all businesses, including mutuals and social enterprises, must consider the VAT question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, as part of their business planning. Our evidence from mutuals has not suggested that VAT is a major barrier to mutualisation, but I will be very happy to talk to the noble Lord further about some of the issues he raised.
The financing of social enterprises was raised by a number of people. We are concerned to encourage charitable donations, giving as much as we can. We recognise that the welfare state cannot meet all the demands that will be placed on society over the next 20 or 30 years, particularly in adult social care. As the noble Baroness will recall, the consultation on the Budget proposals on high taxpayers was intended to raise the issue for implementation in the 2012 Budget. Some extremely vigorous consultation has been under way, as we will all have noticed, and we have taken it into account.
The world of for-profit companies has been raised by a number of people, the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and my noble friend Lord Phillips in particular. This raises wider issues about the future of company law and what companies’ formal obligations are, which are rather beyond the limits of this debate. Corporate social responsibility does not save you from takeover when it comes. I lives in what was a company village, built by Salts of Saltaire with its very strong sense of local social responsibility, not far from where Rowntree’s did the same in York and left substantial endowments for regional social benefit. I am aware of Cadbury’s and others in that wonderful Quaker tradition. As such, I am conscious that we have gone a long way back in our corporate sector. That includes the Quaker bank, which educated me and of which I remain rather ambivalently a customer, which has lost a lot of its corporate sense of social responsibility. However, that is a wider question, which I encourage the noble Lord to put down for another debate.
We are learning and reviewing as we go. This summer, we will have a social economy review, which will look at how social enterprises operate. Also this summer, after five years of the Charities Act, there will be a Charities Act review, which my noble friend Lord Hodgson has well under way. I was very happy to be briefed extensively by him on the sheer complexity and diversity of the charity sector. I hope he will not mind my saying that I emerged from it confused at a far higher level than I was before.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked whether we were, none the less, cutting down on the public sector. The evidence that we have shows that we are moving towards mutuals where we can. We are also experimenting with mutuals and there will be a mutuals task force report this summer on the experiments in mutual pathfinders in public sector delivery. Some of the evidence that I have seen, which is still limited, suggests that improving job satisfaction and better workforce morale lead to both higher productivity and greater customer satisfaction, which supports experimenting further with the mutual model. That also raises the question of impact measurement, on which we are working in partnership with the voluntary sector. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, spoke about this, particularly the role of Triangle Consulting.
The government focus is on communities where social capital is low. This is very much part of the thrust. We will all have different labels for what the Prime Minister calls the big society. We have a vibrant civil society in many areas of Britain. Indeed, in my own village of Saltaire, we are almost embarrassed by the number of local bodies, such as the Saltaire Festival, the Saltaire Arts Trail, the Saltaire Village Society, the history society, the allotment society and so on. However, within five miles of Saltaire are large 1950s and 1960s estates, where social capital is very low. The Community Organisers scheme that the Government are running and the national citizen service are very much aimed at encouraging people who have lost the hope that they can control their own lives and manage their own communities to regain hope and faith in that.
Social enterprises play an important part in this because, as noble Lords have said, they employ people locally and reinvest locally. That is exactly what we need. Last year I was in a very large estate in Yorkshire—I had better not say which one—in which the largest single area of local economic activity appeared to be illegal cannabis growing in sub-tenancy council houses. I was going round with the local police support group. We need to get people back employed within their own communities as far as we can, with community associations and organisers and the encouragement of social enterprises, which feed into a revival of self-confidence and a strengthening of local community links.
I would call that building a liberal society. Conservatives would talk about strengthening the little platoons on which a strong society and state should rest. Labour would talk about local co-operation and self-government. I hope that we would all agree on the underlying objectives and admit that we had not got it right but have continued to work on getting it right—and also admit that there is a limit to what central government can do, because much of this has to come from the local level. We have learned that top-down government is not good for civil society. We have also learned that increasing government expenditure on welfare runs up against strong resistance to paying high levels of taxation. Let us hope that the enterprise on which we are embarked in rebuilding a very strong civil society based on voluntary contributions of all sorts in time, money and social enterprise helps to bridge the gap which we may otherwise face in providing support for a changing society, a much larger proportion of elderly people and all the other contributions that we need to make.
(12 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as a chartered surveyor, with a professional involvement in many aspects of regulation.
My Lords, the Government are meeting their aim of not increasing the cost to business from domestic regulation. Through the Red Tape Challenge we have begun to remove or simplify ineffective, unnecessary or obsolete regulation. We recognise that how regulation is delivered is as important as the regulations themselves, which is why we have established the Better Regulation Delivery Office in Birmingham, to improve regulatory delivery and to ensure that the business voice is heard.
I thank the Minister for that reply, and I applaud the Government’s intentions with regard to the reduction of red tape. However, does he agree that not a week goes by without some fresh example of regulatory excess occurring, of burdensome and thoughtless use of non-recourse powers by both government agencies and other bodies? Does he further agree, first, that there should be a national protocol or code that governs the way in which regulations are formulated and applied, and secondly, that some person or body should be vested with legal power to intervene in cases of excessive or inappropriate use of regulatory powers?
My Lords, we all understand that there is a constant tug-of-war between those who want more regulation and those who want less. For example, what I do should be entirely unregulated because I can be trusted, what you do should be carefully controlled, and what he does should be stopped.
Is my noble friend aware of pilot studies that have recently been carried out in Solihull and Leicester, where local regulators have sought to reduce burdens on small businesses by streamlining the amount of information they collect, co-ordinating inspection visits and sharing data? Can he say whether the evaluation has been carried out, and when we can expect to see the results?
I thank the noble Baroness for that question. Yes, that is exactly the sort of thing that the Better Regulation Delivery Office is concerned about. Eighty per cent of regulatory inspection and enforcement is carried out by local authorities, so that the experiment being conducted with these authorities is intended to feed very much into improving the quality of local regulation.
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the lack of regulation of certain businesses in relation to cooling towers in Edinburgh has resulted in a fatal outbreak of legionella, in which two people have died and many others have been seriously injured? Surely the Health and Safety Executive should be doing more to find out the cause of this, and to make sure that it does not happen again. Will the Minister undertake to raise this with the prosecuting authorities in Scotland, to ask why there is no fatal accident inquiry or other kind of inquiry into something that has killed two people and caused so much injury, and why we do not yet know what the cause of it is?
My Lords, I do not know how far that aspect of health and safety is devolved or not devolved. However, I will certainly feed that back and will write to the noble Lord if necessary.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, on the brilliant wording of his Question. He asked the Government whether they are making progress against the test of coherence, efficiently exercised regulations, and objective assessments of need, risk, proportionality and cost benefits. Will the Minister affirm that these are the criteria that the Government are using in the better regulation exercise? Will he further affirm that where removing regulations from consumers, customers and the general public is being considered, the same tests, particularly the objective assessment of need, risk, proportionality and cost benefit, will be considered before any protections are removed?
My Lords, I can confirm that. These are close to the five principles of good regulation as set out by Christopher Haskins in 1998 under the authority of the then Cabinet Office Minister, David Clark. We are continuing very much on a course set by previous Governments. There is a constant pull and push between demands for further regulation and the constant need to make clear whether the regulations are still needed. I was very pleased to see that one of the Red Tape Challenge repeals has included the trading with the enemy regulation, which is felt not to be so relevant today as it was perhaps 60 years ago.
(12 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat a Statement on the Civil Service.
“The British Civil Service plays a crucial role in modern British life. It is there to implement the policies of the Government of the day, whatever their political complexion, and its permanence and political impartiality enables exceptionally rapid transitions between Governments.
Most civil servants are dedicated and hard-working, with a deep-seated public service ethos, but like all organisations, the Civil Service needs continuous improvement. I want today to set out the first stage in a programme of practical actions for reform.
In 2010 we inherited one of the largest budget deficits in the developed world, and, despite success in improving Britain’s financial standing, we still face significant financial and economic challenges, as well as rapid and continuing social, technological and demographic changes. The Government have embarked upon a programme of radical reform of public services to improve quality and responsiveness for users and value for the taxpayer.
In order to succeed we need a Civil Service that is faster, more flexible, more innovative and more accountable. Our Civil Service is smaller today than at any time since the Second World War, and this has highlighted where there are weaknesses and strengthened the need to tackle them.
We need to build capabilities and skills where they are missing. We need to embrace new ways of delivering services. We need to be digital by default. We need to tie policy and implementation seamlessly together. We need greater accountability, and to require much better data and management information to drive decisions more closely. We need to transform performance management and career development.
Today Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the Civil Service, and I are publishing a Civil Service reform plan, which clearly sets out a series of specific, practical actions to address long-standing weaknesses and build on existing strengths. Taken together, and properly implemented, these actions will deliver real change. They should be seen as the first step on a programme of continuing reform for the Civil Service.
This is not an attack on the Civil Service, and nor have civil servants been rigidly resistant to change. The demand for change does not come just from the public and from Ministers but from civil servants themselves, many of whom are deeply frustrated by a culture that is overly bureaucratic, hierarchical and focused on process rather than outcomes. This was revealed in the responses to our ‘Tell us How’ website, which aims to get fresh ideas from staff about how they could do their jobs better. Civil servants bemoaned a risk-averse culture, rampant gradism and poor performance management.
This action plan is based heavily on feedback from civil servants, drawing on what frustrates and motivates them, while many of the most substantive ideas in this paper have come out of work led by Permanent Secretaries themselves. Reform of the Civil Service never works if it feels like it is being imposed on civil servants by Ministers, and neither would it succeed if the Civil Service was simply left to reform itself. Because we want this to be change that lasts, we have discussed these proposals widely, including with former Ministers in the last Government to draw on their experiences and ideas.
The Civil Service of the future will be smaller, pacier, flatter, more digital, more accountable for effective implementation, more capable, and more unified, consistent and corporate. It must also be more satisfying to work for. These actions, therefore, must help to achieve this.
Under published plans, the Civil Service will shrink from around 500,000 to around 380,000 by 2015. It is already the smallest since World War II. Sharing services between departments will become the norm. This has been discussed for years—it is now time to make it happen.
Productivity also needs to improve. For too long, public sector productivity was at best static, while in the private services sector it improved by nearly 30%. Consumer expectations are rising, and there is, as we have been told, no money. The public increasingly expect to be able to access services quickly and conveniently, at times and in ways that suit them.
We are conducting a review with departments to decide which transactional and operational services can be delivered through alternative models. Services that can be delivered online should be delivered only online. Digital by default will become a reality, not just a buzz phrase.
We should no longer be the prisoner of the old binary choice between monolithic in-house provision and full-scale privatisation. We are now pursuing new models: joint ventures, employee-owned mutuals, and new partnerships with the private sector. MyCSP, which manages the Civil Service Pension Scheme, became the first joint venture mutual to spin out of government recently, and provides a model for future reforms.
The Civil Service culture can be slow-moving, hierarchical and focused on process rather than outcomes. Changing this would be very hard in any organisation. We can make a start by cutting the number of management layers. There should only exceptionally be more than eight layers between the top and the front line, and frequently many fewer. This helps to speed up decisions and empower those at more junior levels. Better performance management needs to change the emphasis in appraisals emphatically towards delivery outcomes, and to reward sensible initiative and innovation. We also need to sharpen accountability, which is closely linked to more effective delivery.
Management information in government is poor, as the NAO and the PAC, the Institute for Government and departmental non-executive board members have all vigorously pointed out. By October this year, therefore, we will put in place a robust and consistent cross-governmental management information system that will enable departments to be held to account by their boards, Parliament, the public and the centre of government.
We will make clearer the responsibilities of accounting officers for delivering major projects and programmes, including the expectation that former accounting officers can be called back to give evidence to the Public Accounts Committee.
The current arrangements, whereby Ministers answer to Parliament for the performance of their departments and for the implementation of their policy priorities, will not change. However, given this direct accountability to Parliament, we believe that Ministers should have a stronger role in the recruitment of a Permanent Secretary.
We will therefore consult the Civil Service Commission on how the role of the Secretary of State can be strengthened in the recruitment process of Permanent Secretaries. The current system allows the selection panel to submit only a single name to the Secretary of State. At other levels, appointments will normally be made from within the permanent Civil Service or by open recruitment. However, as now, where the expertise does not exist in the department, and it is not practicable to run a full open competition, we are making it clear that Ministers can ask their Permanent Secretaries to appoint a very limited number of senior officials for specified and time-limited executive and management roles.
By common agreement both inside and outside the Civil Service, there are some serious deficiencies in capability. Staff consistently say in surveys that their managers are not strong enough in leading and managing change. In future many more civil servants will need commercial and contracting skills as services move further towards the commissioning model. While finance departments have significantly improved their capabilities, many more civil servants need a higher level of financial knowledge. As set out elsewhere in the plan, the Civil Service needs to improve its policy skills, and to fill the serious gaps in digital and project management capability.
By autumn we will have for the first time a cross-Civil Service capabilities plan that identifies what skills are missing and how gaps will be filled. For the first time, therefore, leadership and potential leadership talent will be developed and deployed corporately.
In 1968, the Fulton commission identified that policy skills were consistently rated more highly than skills in operational delivery. This is still the case today. We will establish the expectation that Permanent Secretaries appointed to the five main delivery departments will have had at least two years’ experience in a commercial or operational role. We will move over time towards a more equal balance between those departmental Permanent Secretaries who have had a career primarily in operational management and those whose career has been primarily in policy advice and development.
A frequent complaint of civil servants themselves concerns performance management. They feel that exceptional performance is too often ignored and poor performance is not rigorously addressed. In the future, performance management will be strengthened by a Senior Civil Service appraisal system that identifies the top 25% and the bottom 10%, who will need to show real improvement if they are to remain in the service. Departments are already introducing similar appraisal systems for grades below the Senior Civil Service.
The Government are committed to ensuring that the Civil Service will be a good, modern employer and continues to be among the best employers in the country. Departments will undertake a review of terms and conditions to identify those that go beyond what a good, modern employer would provide. We will also ensure that staff get the IT and security they have been asking for so that they can do their jobs properly.
Another key goal is to improve and open up policy-making so that there is a clear focus on designing policies that can be implemented in practice. Too often in the past, policy has come from a narrow range of views. Whitehall does not have a monopoly on policy-making expertise and in the future open policy-making will become the default. We will create a central fund to pilot policy development commissioned from outside Whitehall.
I repeat that this plan is just the first stage in a programme of reform and continuous improvement. It responds to concerns expressed by Parliament, Ministers and former Ministers but, most importantly, civil servants themselves. None of the actions in the plan is in itself dramatic and none will matter unless it is properly implemented. But together, when implemented, they will represent real change. I will oversee the implementation of this plan. As the paper sets out, Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the Civil Service, and Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, will be accountable for its delivery through the Civil Service Board.
Change is essential if the Civil Service is to meet the challenges of a fast-moving country in a fast-changing world. I commend the plan to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
I thank the noble Baroness very much for her cross-party welcome for these proposals. Indeed, much in them builds on and extends the experience of the previous Government. As she will know from watching the exchanges in the Commons, a number of former Ministers also welcome the proposals and regretted that in one or two respects they did not go further. I shall do my best to answer her questions. The search for an effective and efficient Civil Service is constant, and one has to return to it every few years. The demands on the Civil Service are rapidly changing. The digital revolution is an enormous challenge for the Civil Service and for all of us. Those changes are part of what is driving this whole process.
Perhaps I may say as a former academic and think-tanker that outside advice from academics and think tanks comes far cheaper than management consultants. I say that partly with bitter regret at how cheaply I sold myself on occasions to government. However, that is part of what is intended. As the plan sets out, there is a preliminary budget of £1 million for piloting this access for outside advice. I assure the noble Baroness that we are thinking not so much about going back to the consultants who provided their extremely expensive advice but about drawing on outside think tanks and the wealth of academic advice that we have in this country and elsewhere. Again, the previous Government did a certain amount of this; indeed, in the Cabinet Office only yesterday I met an academic whom I know very well and who I know was actively engaged in advising the previous Government.
In terms of ideas and implementation, we are already piloting some delivery models and this is very much a process that we will be pursuing. Those following this will know that the idea of mutuals is being tested. There is already some evidence that it improves the morale and therefore the effectiveness of those involved, and it will be taken further if it proves successful.
Something that we are also always looking at is whether we are sufficiently staffed in the right places. Sometimes you find that you have too many staff in one area and not enough in another. Those of us familiar with the BSE scandal will remember that part of the problem was that not enough staff were left in place for the contingencies that took place. It is a constant problem.
On consultations, I simply repeat that there were very wide consultations inside the Civil Service. Some of us were a little frustrated that more civil servants appeared to have seen earlier drafts of this paper than we had. The extent to which senior and relatively junior civil servants had their views taken into account was very wide. That has very positive implications for morale because, if you are carried along with proposals for change, you feel that you are part of it.
As far as the diversity of the Civil Service is concerned, I think that our predecessors, the Labour Government, did extremely well with this, particularly regarding the number of highly talented women in the Civil Service. The departments that I am aware of also have a much higher number of people from different ethnic minorities. I asked a rather senior ethnic minority civil servant what he would say to a young woman of Chinese origin in the Civil Service—a former student of mine—who asked me whether there were any barriers to getting to the top. He said he had not noticed any. I compliment our predecessors on how far they moved on that and assure them that we are continuing very much along that line.
In terms of the budget for implementation, this plan builds in the promise that there will be at least five days of training per year for officials. Civil Service Learning is setting out how this will be done using a range of different providers inside and outside the Civil Service.
We are constantly looking for metrics and measures of success. Management information systems are of course best for measuring the achievement of success, and improving management information systems is a vital part of this.
Finally, I turn to the independence of and challenge for senior civil servants. I can only quote what a senior civil servant who is a very good friend of mine said to me many years ago. He said that at a certain level a competent senior civil servant should always have at the back of his mind that he could move before telling Ministers his thoughts. That was under the previous Government. I think that a number of senior civil servants would say the same but we are always looking for robust and independently minded civil servants who will express their thoughts to Ministers. Of course, the other side of that is that Ministers need to accept that their relationship with officials has to be on that basis.
My Lords, it so happens that this evening the Public and Commercial Services Union is holding its annual parliamentary reception in the Strangers’ Dining Room, so I went along to talk to its members. I found that they were very concerned because they believe there is the possibility of hundreds of redundancies and they do not seem to have had very much consultation or negotiation. I promised them that I would faithfully represent them as far as consultation is concerned.
Criticism in certain areas of public work has indicated a lack of public acceptance, but members pointed out that, rather than fewer public servants, in many instances there is a case for having more. They pointed out, for example, that at airports there were very long queues because there simply were not enough staff. That is true in many areas of public service where the union believes there should be more public servants rather than fewer.
Public service is very necessary to ordinary people. If you are very rich, you do not rely on public services, but if you are not very rich you do. Therefore, an effective public service is something that we expect the Government to provide. From what the officials of this union told me—and one must remember that they represent 280,000 public servants—it is quite clear that they do not feel they have been consulted or had the opportunity to negotiate on what is a very substantial plan. Is the Minister making arrangements for this union and other unions in the sector to be properly consulted and properly involved before we proceed with what seems to be a very large upheaval within the provision of public services?
My Lords, I can promise the noble Baroness that there is a constant dialogue with all the unions. I am sorry that the PCS feels it has not been consulted sufficiently but I am well aware that the dialogue goes on. I am also well aware that people in all sectors of society have contact with the public service. If the noble Baroness has read the Times today she will know that there are some rich people who prefer not to hear from HMRC, but HMRC is indeed determined that they should hear from it.
My Lords, it is true that managing change and driving though radical policies can prove difficult. It is also true that there are areas where the private sector can and does deliver good-quality public services at competitive costs. We should not be opposed to moving the boundaries between public and private sector delivery of public services where it can be justified or in testing payment by results as a way of promoting greater efficiency and value for money for the taxpayer. However, for the past 140 years we have benefited from a public service selected on merit and political neutrality. As someone who stood down from government last month, I can say that I found civil servants civil, hard-working and helpful. Does the Minister agree that we should not approach public sector reform with a mindset of “public sector bad, private sector good”?
I do not think there is evidence that the public sector yet has in place the kind of legal, contractual and commissioning expertise to make sure that the taxpayer is going to be properly protected or the quality of service required guaranteed. Does the Minister agree that it is essential that the reforms have built into them full and proper systems of parliamentary accountability? We must ensure that, in commissioning externally sourced policy-making, we do not fall into the habit of commissioning external consultancy almost as an alternative to ministerial decision-making.
My Lords, as we all know, a number of processes are under way. This Government are also committed to decentralisation as far as possible, and one reason why the central Civil Service will shrink is that more decisions and areas of policy delivery are being put down to the local level. Some of this will be carried out through local authorities; some of it will be carried out through mutual and other agencies. The division between the public and private sectors is not entirely a binary one; there is also, as we all know, the third sector or voluntary sector. I think we all agree that, together with the decentralisation of the delivery of public services, some services are better delivered as a partnership between the public sector and the third or voluntary sector. All those processes are under way. Put together with the technological revolution that is pushing us towards a much greater dependence on digital services, this is part of the revolution we are facing.
On the question of parliamentary accountability, there is less in this plan on the details of accountability than there might otherwise be because there has been a deliberate decision to await the study of the House of Lords Constitution Committee on that very area. That will feed into further consultations on how we strengthen accountability to Parliament. However, noble Lords will be aware that the role of Commons parliamentary committees in particular in relation to the Civil Service has strengthened over the years. I was reading the Osmotherley Rules earlier today and began to look at how they may need to change further as part of this. That is the sort of thing that the Constitution Committee will be considering.
My Lords, the Statement paid lip service to the quality of the Civil Service but it sounded to me—as, I am afraid, it will sound to many civil servants—like a litany of criticisms. Will the Minister accept from me that, while proposals for improved performance by the Civil Service are always necessary and welcome, it is essential to their success that the Civil Service should be led and not just driven—as the Statement said—and should not be reviled and unattributably dumped on when Ministers’ policies run into difficulties?
My Lords, I strongly agree with that. I am very conscious—again, I make a non-partisan remark—that there have been occasions under successive Governments over the past 50 years or more when some Ministers have occasionally wished to blame their civil servants for things not happening. I would be extremely upset if the noble Lord interpreted this plan as being an attack on the Civil Service. We have emphasised very strongly that that is not the case and that it has come out of a partnership between Ministers and the senior Civil Service with extensive consultation. We value the quality of leadership within the Civil Service. I am one of the many within government who have serving and former civil servants as close members of their family. It matters very much for the quality of our society, our public services and our country as a whole that we have the best-quality Civil Service working for government and the state as a whole. We very much hope that this plan strengthens that.
My Lords, I very much support much of what the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said. Although it is perhaps not a series of attacks, the Statement rather dodges along a line that opens it to that sort of criticism. With the Government talking as they are, perhaps I may repeat the phrase, “There are no bad men, only bad officers”. The need for leadership in the Civil Service is absolutely critical, and I very much support many of the practical measures in the Statement. The devil will be in the detail, but the figure that hits very hard is that there will be a 25% reduction in Civil Service numbers over the next three years. This has happened before and, in some cases, it has been achieved simply by transferring people to independent agencies and moving them out of the Civil Service. Can my noble friend give some indication of how those figures are to be achieved and to what extent it will be a case of smoke and mirrors or of a genuine reduction in Civil Service numbers? If local government is to take up some of the strain in areas that have been covered by the central Civil Service, will that involve an increase in numbers in local government?
My Lords, I merely repeat that this is not intended in any sense as an attack on the Civil Service and we very much value its quality. A certain amount will be achieved by putting more on to the digital level, and this is well under way. Members of this House may remember our discussions about universal benefits and the extent to which that scheme will enable us to provide those sorts of payments and services more efficiently with fewer staff. That is the sort of reduction that we see coming through. We plan for more services to be provided in partnership with local authorities and through third-sector organisations. We are already experimenting with that sort of model.
My Lords, perhaps I should remind the House that in a former life, quite a long time ago, I was the general secretary of the First Division Association, which represents senior civil servants.
In the Statement, the Minister said, “We need a Civil Service that is faster, more flexible, more innovative and more accountable”. No one could argue with that as a general statement, but the whole issue is about how that is to be achieved. I do not think that the Minister properly answered the question of the noble Lord, Lord King, about how you achieve a reduction of 120,000 civil servants in less than three years—only two and a half years. Is there going to be a system of compulsory redundancy and, if so, has that been costed? To what extent will there be a charge on the public purse for compulsory redundancies? Those are crucial questions when we are arguing about something that ought to be costing less money.
The real point at issue in the Statement arises in relation to the future appointment of senior civil servants. It stresses the importance of political impartiality but we are told that the role of Secretaries of State will be strengthened in the recruitment of Permanent Secretaries. It is the duty of civil servants to maintain the confidence in their impartiality not only of Ministers but of those who may become Ministers after a general election. How does the noble Lord reconcile the appointment process, which includes politically appointed Ministers, whereby politically impartial civil servants can pass over to a new set of Ministers? Will there be a requirement for Permanent Secretaries appointed in that way to resign at the time of an election? It is an important point about the confidence of the Opposition.
It was also said in the Statement that it may not be practical to run “full and open” competitions. When will it not be practical to do so? How will the diversity of the Civil Service and the opportunity for women and people from ethnic minorities to break into the Civil Service ranks be maintained in those circumstances? At the moment, they come in through open competition.
Lastly, the Statement says that, “Ministers can ask their Permanent Secretaries to appoint a very limited number of senior officials, for specified and time-limited executive and management roles”. This is an important point. There was such a fuss in 1997 when two politically appointed people were, under Privy Council terms, given executive and management roles. I have to say that the Conservative Party going into opposition went ballistic about it. What will be done about this? Will it be done under Privy Council terms, and will those contracts be terminated on a change of Government? Those are very specific questions.
My Lords, as the plan states, the proposals on the role of Secretaries of State in very senior appointments are to be discussed with the Civil Service Commission. The proposals have been discussed with former Labour Ministers, and there have been criticisms from former Labour Ministers in the other place that these proposals do not go far enough. We have not committed ourselves fully on this, and there is therefore a dialogue to be had about the future relationship between the appointment of permanent secretaries and the role of Secretaries of State. Jack Straw said in the other place that he did not find our proposals terribly surprising because on three occasions he had insisted on having an active role in the appointment of permanent secretaries. So although we are not entirely moving from one world to another, we are discussing how much further we should move along a continuum.
On the scale of reduction under way, departments are already engaged in processes which will reduce numbers without compulsory redundancies. I will write to the noble Baroness if substantial compulsory redundancies are on the way. However, seven out of 10 civil servants are involved in the big five delivery departments: the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, HMRC, the Ministry of Defence and the UK Border Agency. Many of them turn over at a rate which I anticipate enables us to avoid very substantial compulsory redundancies, but if I am incorrectly briefed on this I will write to the noble Baroness afterwards.
I attended many courses at the National School of Government over the years, and I always reminded it that it was the best in the world. However, I recognise in the report today the need for change within the Civil Service, and I welcome it. Having had 15 years out of Government I returned last year to ministerial office, and I recognise some of the needs here, particularly in changing the culture. However, in making the changes that are needed, particularly in terms of management within the Civil Service and the skills needed by Ministers—because ultimately the buck stops at the Minister’s desk—it is very important to ensure that we do not confuse management systems that deliver competent management and those that lack the leadership skills that make the difference in culture. It is quite possible to be a competent manager at any level, but if you do not have the leadership skills you will get a culture as described in this document today—and again that applies as much to Ministers as it does to the Civil Service. I hope my noble friend will ensure that we do not miss out on what is a very important part of making these important changes.
My Lords, my noble friend is right to point out that a number of things fit together here. Extending the role of Parliament in holding the Government and the Civil Service to account, which is part of what the Constitutional Committee will be discussing, will be continuing with what has evolved over the last 20 years with the relevant Commons committees. The question of the management skills of Ministers is very much a cross-party thing that we all need to discuss a great deal more. We do not currently train Ministers. We also need to discuss the changing role of the Civil Service itself. One point I did not answer for the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, was the question of the impact of these proposals for ethnic minorities and women. I remind the noble Baroness that for the first time, some six months ago, we reached the point at which there were more women than men at the level of Permanent Secretary. That is a real breakthrough. We have also had our first ethnic minority Permanent Secretary. Having a close female relative rising up the Civil Service, I hope this is a trend which will go further.
I welcome parts of the Statement, and I welcome the conversion of the Minister who made the Statement in the other place. He was the man who was in charge of the Next Steps programme in the 1990s, which broke the Civil Service down into smaller pieces and split it up. He is now happily seeing the errors that were made, and bringing parts of it back together again.
I am concerned about the way in which we keep moving forward with changes in public service operations without actually speaking to the customers or the taxpayers. This is another example where the default position will be open policy making, where in fact the taxpayers and the citizens have not been involved one iota in this exercise. If they had been, we would have heard more complaints. I have a former connection with the Inland Revenue as I was the general secretary of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation. If you go online now, you do not necessarily get answers to internet inquiries; if you go on the telephone, as was recently published, you wait longer for a reply from the Revenue than you did two years ago; and if you come into the country, you queue longer at one and two o’clock in the morning. In so many areas of the departments the Minister has just mentioned the Civil Service is falling down. Now we are faced with a cut from 500,000 down to 380,000 civil servants within the space of three years, on top of the other changes already taking place. I think an awful lot of taxpayers are going to be very unhappy indeed with the services that they will get in the next few years, unless there can be a quite different approach to that which we have adopted so far.
I hope there will be a way in which we can look at how we measure efficiency. Take two building societies, A and B, and put them together. Get a new computer system, cut the number of staff employed, and you can say that you have increased the company’s efficiency. Invariably, in practice you find that the customer suffers and waits longer for services from that combined building society. We have tried to bring the same principles to bear within the Civil Service. I hope we can have a clearer definition of what efficiency means. I am not against changes, or reductions in numbers, provided that ultimately the service will be better. However, there is nothing in this statement to prove that it will be.
My Lords, I accept that challenge. The effectiveness of these proposals will indeed need to be challenged precisely in terms of how they impact on the quality, effectiveness and speed of delivery, and the satisfaction of the citizens who are receiving those services. Before we close, I remark that this is also part of a long process of change in the Civil Service. The proposals in the plan for bringing together some core services across Whitehall—the management of major projects, human resources, digitisation—are also part of trying to make a more economical and unified Civil Service. As I have observed in the five departments I have worked across since I joined the Government, there are real cultural differences between a number of departments across Whitehall, and we will benefit from bringing departments together, rather more into a single corps. We have also been looking at the estate of the Civil Service, and making a number of changes which make for more effective use of that estate. This will also provide a number of efficiencies and savings. However, I accept the challenge that a number of noble Lords around the House have made, which is that the impact of all of this will be seen in the quality of the services that are provided, we hope, with much greater productivity, efficiency and effectiveness in three to five years’ time.
(12 years, 2 months ago)
Lords Chamber(12 years, 2 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for securing this debate and for the way in which he has kept at this question since the merger of the Historical Manuscripts Commission and the National Archives nearly 10 years ago. It is quite right for noble Lords to remember with great sadness Lord Bingham, whose commitment and dedication as the chair of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts ensured that the nation’s archives and manuscripts were in safe hands.
It is now nearly 10 years since the merger. In the light of what has happened since, I think it is fair to say that we are in the safe hands of a larger organisation. The Historical Manuscripts Commission was funded on a very modest scale, but I recognise that it was said in the Chamber today that we all need to make sure that resources are still there, that private records are given at least as much attention as public records and—perhaps I may add this, although it was not in most of the speeches—that the shift in public and in particular private records from paper to digital form is a challenge that the Government and all their partners now have to face and meet.
My engagement in this area comes as a lapsed historian. I share the feelings of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who the other day described the sheer joy of rummaging in an archive, feeling the paper and seeing different handwriting and typefaces. That is part of what we will lose with digitisation. The question of who will look at the noble Lord’s e-mails in 20 years’ time to see what he was really saying when he talked to Ministers is one that future historians will find rather more difficult.
There are a number of private archives still to be rescued; we all recognise that. I thoroughly enjoyed reading through the religious archives survey that the National Archives has just done, and looking at how we capture the archives of churches that are now much less prominent than they were, and how we get at the records of the Jewish community and now the Muslim community to make sure that they will be available to future researchers. I note that here and elsewhere we are talking about a partnership between government and other keepers of archives. Southampton University has developed a very good relationship with the Jewish community, for example, in the keeping of Jewish archives. Manchester University has a similar specialisation in Nonconformist archives.
My own involvement has been with the London School of Economics, which has developed a very useful archive of political records. Some years ago I gave my father-in-law’s records of the Liberal Party in the 1940s and 1950s to the LSE, which sorted them out far better than I would have done. I added my own records of the party in the 1960s and 1970s—also not always an easy period—and I am extremely happy that the LSE is cataloguing them rather than me. I was also pleased, with my wife, to take my father-in-law’s Bletchley Park records, which he should not have had in the first place, and give them to the Imperial War Museum. In the past few weeks I have enjoyed talking with other Members of the House about a number of Bletchley Park records, in particular because a 96 year- old who worked with a number of people I know sent us several entirely improper photographs taken of people working at Bletchley Park during the war. They are now on record and digitised, and we will hand them on.
I am grateful for the opportunity afforded by the debate to discuss this question. Perhaps I may reassure noble Lords that matters are under way. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, referred to the advisory forum. It was established—before he talked to the noble Lord, Lord McNally—in May 2010, no doubt as a result of some of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Wills, had been engaged in.
We recognise that the problem of the budget squeeze is real in terms of staffing. There are now 4.5 full-time equivalent staff working in the private archives area, but a number of other people in the National Archives offer advice in different ways to people working in the private archives sector, in particular on the tremendous challenge of the shift from paper to digital that we are all beginning to face. Therefore it is not entirely true to say that staffing has shrunk. I cannot at this point give a definitive pledge that staffing levels will in future be raised, but I will take it back and discuss it with the various departments concerned and with the National Archives, and we will see what we can do.
On the question of a proper independent body, in December this year there will be the first of what it is intended should be an annual consultation with the owners of private archives. It will be held at Syon Park under the patronage of the Duke of Northumberland, and we very much hope that it will lead to a series of continuing dialogues with private archive holders, of the sort to which noble Lords referred.
The commitment on monographs is another difficult one. Perhaps I may move here to official histories. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, said. As a historian, I am not entirely sure that I want official histories to continue in their old way. Those that I have read with most interest, and sometimes discussed with the people who wrote them, were particularly in those areas where the archives had been kept closed for 50, 60 or more years, and where someone distinguished and trustworthy was authorised to look through them and publish as much as they were allowed to for the rest of us to read.
The Government are trying very hard to reduce the secrecy of public archives and the length of time they are kept secret. I like to think—it is certainly my advice to my colleagues, and my opinion rather than government policy—that where possible archives should be available to people who are not subject to state control and Cabinet Office guidelines to write the sort of histories that we have had on nuclear weapons, for example, or the Cold War, much more rapidly than before because the archives will have been declassified. That is more desirable than relying on the state—but I take the point about an official history of the Northern Ireland Office. Again, I will take that back.
To reassure the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Wills, I think that we are responding, and moving in the directions in which we have been asked to move. The advisory forum is there. Dialogue with owners of private archives is very much there. Those who look at the website will see—as I have on the last two occasions on which I accessed it—that the Historical Manuscripts Commission appears very quickly when one moves into that dimension of the register. There is also some interesting stuff not just on the religious archives survey but on business archives and private archives.
We now have the National Register of Archives. Despite everything else, more than £250,000 has been invested in this comprehensive spending review period to update and improve online access to these systems so that the processes of contributing information to the register and finding the information it contains are brought up to date and simplified.
The National Archives has also undertaken the revision and provision of online access to the Manorial Documents Register, in which 22 counties have been surveyed since 2003. This is a lengthy task since the register has not been systematically revised since the 1920s. More than £300,000 has so far been invested in this project. Those are not insignificant sums at a time when the National Archives’ funding has been cut by 25%.
I emphasise that private archives and public interest are a matter of partnership with county museums, local repositories and, increasingly now, with universities. The vision and scope of the work with repositories beyond the public records system has grown and developed. The work undertaken today reflects a broad constituency of civil society, serving both traditional record-holding establishments such as record offices, landed estates and universities and an increasingly diverse range of private and charitable institutions.
Advice and support offered to such institutions and individuals reflects the National Archives’ awareness of diversity in the provision and maintenance of private archives. In fundraising opportunities, commercial licensing, the digitisation of software and community engagement, a breadth of advice is available. However, a two-way learning process from the wider expertise is also available as part of a bigger, national organisation.
Looking to the future, the National Archives is soon to launch its refreshed action plan to support the Government’s overall policy on public and private archives. The plan’s central priorities are the sustainable preservation of archival records and their accessibility to all who need and use them. The archives accreditation scheme currently under development will provide further support to specialist record repositories across the public and private sectors.
We recognise that it is vital that records of both the public and private domain are cared for and accessible and that their significance continues to be recognised. I can assure noble Lords—and I have spoken to a great many people over the past week—that the National Archives is striving actively and successfully to sustain a future for our archival heritage wherever it is held and that it is recognised as such.
I assume that the Minister is about to conclude. Before he does, will he address my request for an annual review on progress in meeting the commitments already given? In doing so, will he recognise that for all the splendid work of the National Archives, and he has given a very good defence of it, there is nevertheless remaining unease about the commitments given in 2003 by people who are no longer in position? Although it does not mean that the Government should not honour those commitments, those commitments have not yet been fulfilled. Will he agree to an annual review meeting on that basis?
I recognise the question. My understanding is that the Syon Park meeting in December is intended to fulfil a great many of those commitments. If the noble Lord is not satisfied with that, I undertake to write to him on that score. I spoke to him before this debate, and I have also taken fully into account the concerns expressed by a number of people both outside this Chamber as well as inside it. Looking at the current situation I am relatively assured that most of the points made have been met, except for the question of funding. We would all like a great many more staff to assist.
I support very strongly what the noble Lord, Lord Wills, said. I suggest that the Minister and the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Wills, and I at least have a get-together soon to discuss these matters.
I am happy to accept that proposal. I look forward to that meeting, which will be after the Diamond Jubilee Recess.
We all recognise the importance of private archives as well as public archives. Several of us here hope, when we finish being quite so committed in the Lords, to spend more time digging around in private archives. That is one of the great joys of retired life as well as everything else. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for introducing the debate and wish everyone a very happy Diamond Jubilee.
(12 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, we have spent some considerable time on this debate with the agreement of all the usual channels, and I sometimes fear that the House of Lords loves nothing better than to talk about itself at considerable length. We have heard a full array of opinions, with the debate ranging very widely over constitutional theory and the principles of democracy, but that makes it impossible for me to answer all the points made, for which I must apologise. Some interesting and novel ideas were expressed. Among them I particularly noted the fascinating ideas of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, on reshaping the parliamentary oath, and I think that they deserve fuller consideration before any of us respond.
I start by referring, as have many noble Lords, to the wider context of political disillusionment and the coalition Government’s response to it. I know that it concerns a great many of us and it ought to concern us all. Reform of this place and the opening up of Westminster is part of the response but the Government are very clear that the localism agenda, bringing power back down again to local communities and local authorities, is a necessary part of re-establishing public trust in what to many of them seems remote government. Professor Sir John Baker, in his evidence to the Joint Committee, listed the balance between central and local government as one of the constitutional issues that ought to be dealt with by a special procedure.
Over the past 40 years the balance between central and local government has shifted quite radically under successive Governments, through the process of legislation and statutory instruments, without considering whether it was fully constitutional. This Government are now trying to shift that balance back.
A number of noble Lords—the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and others—held that the key to British democracy is the direct link between the local voter, their MP in the Commons and the ability of Members of Parliament to challenge the Prime Minister on that voter’s behalf. With respect, I suggest that the declining turnouts in general elections indicates that a rising number of voters do not feel that that single link carries the full weight of their confidence or trust. It is too distant and too remote, which is something that we all need to think about as we try to rebuild trust.
We also had a number of arguments from former Members of the other place about the threat of competition in democratic representation. There was a theory, which I understand, that there can be only one territorial representative. That is what I think of as an MP’s freehold, or at least an MP’s leasehold for five years, and is not unlike a parson's freehold. I am not sure how the public respond to that argument either. I should perhaps add that between 1997 and 2005 the then Labour MP for my constituency in Yorkshire, Shipley, delighted in putting on his website that the village of Saltaire included a whole raft of representatives: a Member of the European Parliament who lived there; a Member of the House of Lords—me—two local councillors and the MP himself. In fact, we campaigned together on local issues. Although we represented three different parties, we did not fall over each other. I doubt whether the greater empowerment of local councillors will threaten MPs.
The noble Lord, Lord Wills, and others raised the question of the individual electoral registration Bill, which has now been published and will shortly be introduced. We have put a number of extra safeguards into that Bill, such as using data matching to confirm the majority of existing electors and automatically retaining them on the register, which we are confident will ensure the completeness of the register during the transition. However, we look forward to detailed scrutiny of the Bill when it comes to the House.
As this is so important—I know that it is very late—I would be grateful if the Minister would say what gives him such confidence that the register will be so comprehensive. It is not comprehensive now. Every independent expert thinks that the way in which the Government are introducing individual registration will make it even more flawed. When I was the Minister and brought in most of the measures that the Government now think will make the register comprehensive, I was not confident that they would make it comprehensive. It was because I was not so confident that we tied the introduction of individual registration to the comprehensive nature of the register. Why is the Minister now so confident that there will be a comprehensive register in the next two years?
The Bill has just been published and we shall be discussing this in some detail. I am not entirely confident that any means can achieve a totally comprehensive, accurate and complete register. I spent two weekends working in the Bradford West by-election, going along roads where the houses had several names on the bell-pushes but no one on the register. That demonstrated to me that, in a number of places, the register is already quite inaccurate. The Friday that I spent with a community association in south Bradford, where I discovered a large number of people who positively do not wish to be on the register, also demonstrated the sort of problems that we are up against. We shall discuss this further, and the Government are very well aware of the concerns that we all have.
Let me just mention the issue of judicial diversity. On 28 May we shall have the Second Reading of the Crime and Courts Bill in this House, and judicial diversity is one of the issues that will come up then.
A number of Peers have mentioned the royal succession. I am glad that that has received a welcome. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, suggested that we should move on to primogeniture in hereditary titles. I have to say, individually, that I look forward enormously to the Private Member's Bill which I suggest she might like to introduce on that subject.
I move on to the question of Lords reform, which most Peers have been discussing in this constitutional affairs debate. It was suggested that the Government and Parliament were not capable of handling Lords reform and a range of other issues at the same time. Given that during the final three years of World War II we fought the war and introduced a number of radical social and educational reforms, that assertion seems a little strong.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, asked when we would see the Bill—to which I of course answer, with immense confidence: “Soon”. However, we are still considering the conclusions of the Richard committee and the alternative report that were published only recently. Those considerations and related discussions will feed into the final shape of the Bill.
Perhaps I may return to the statement of the Minister that of course it is possible for the Government to deal with House of Lords reform alongside all the other things that they wish to discuss. Why therefore are they proposing that perhaps five of the most important Bills outlined in the Queen’s Speech, on such matters as energy and banking, may well be carried over into the next Session? Why are they considering that?
My Lords, this will be a shorter Session than the last one, as I am sure all noble Lords have noted. We will see what progress we can make. The speed with which progress will be made on the Lords reform Bill and on other Bills will depend on the reasonableness with which they are met in each of the two Chambers.
I move on to the question that a number of Peers raised about the rationale for the Bill. There are three important points. The first is that we are a transitional House. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, said:
“The transitional House which will be created as a result of the Bill will be exactly that: transitional and not permanent”.—[Official Report, 11/5/99; col. 1092.]
The Labour Government promised on more than one occasion to take the next step. In this Chamber on 20 July 2007 the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, then a Minister, declared:
“We have the prospect of agreement between the parties on the way forward”.—[Official Report, 20/7/07; col. 535.]
He stated that this was for the House to be “substantially or wholly elected”. We are moving on to the next stage now because the previous Labour Government failed to do so—and we are closely following the model that they intended to put forward.
Since 1999, we had a royal commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham; a first White Paper from the then Labour Government; a Joint Committee; a Green Paper; a second White Paper; a cross-party working group; and, finally, a third White Paper and two reports that we have debated over the past 10 days. In May last year, the Government published a draft Bill—and now is the time to move forward.
The issue of composition arises because we are a patronage House, and the patronage that leads us all here is something that we think is not sustainable. The third is that we are talking about evolutionary reform: the next stage in a pattern of Lords reform.
As one who has heard every single speech in the debate, and who did not leave the Chamber on any occasion, might I ask my noble friend to be a little more receptive to the consensus that has emerged in this House during the debate—namely, in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that there would be a very large measure of agreement around a Steel-type reform, but that there is genuine, deep and bitter concern about the proposal to drive forward with elections for which certainly there is no consensus? Will he not at least report that to the Deputy Prime Minister before the Bill is finally drafted?
My Lords, I recognise the noble Lord’s concerns and I compliment him on the speed with which he has moved from being—as he described himself—a House of Commons man to being very clearly a House of Lords man. Of course I will report back to the Deputy Prime Minister, and the Cabinet Office Bill team had read Thursday’s debate when I discussed it with them this morning. We are listening, but we have not only the opinion of this House to take into account as we move forward.
I move on to the question of a constitutional convention, which appears in the alternative report as a strongly proposed idea and has met with a lot of sympathy around this House. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, went further and suggested that we should approach constitutional reform “from first principles”. The only time that I can recall that the English were tempted to rethink our constitution from first principles was between 1647 and 1650. It was a revolutionary period when the king was beheaded, the Putney debates discussed fundamental principles of authority and democracy and some of the parliamentary army mutinied. Since then, the British have prided ourselves on our unwritten constitution, which changes through evolution rather than revolution. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Norton, entitled the chapter in one of his books “Our Uncodified Constitution”.
The alternative report says that constitutional conventions are a well known process in other countries and cites France’s National Convention of 1792 and the American conventions of 1786 and 1787 as appropriate examples. But in France and in the USA these followed revolutions. They beheaded the king in France too.
Alfred Dicey stated in his introduction to Law of the Constitution that it rests on two pillars: parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, in his book, The Hidden Wiring, quotes the first Lord Esher summing up that the underlying principles,
“of our written constitution rest on precedent and reasonableness”.
Reasonableness or restraint expressed through conventions has, in our constitution, moderated the primacy of the Executive and their use of the doctrine of the primacy of the Commons.
Some of those who support the arguments of the alternative report are in effect highly radical, wanting to shift the United Kingdom towards a written constitution. The Americans, mistrustful by far of any Executive, produced from their convention a written constitution designed on the principle of mistrust and unreasonable behaviour. It was designed therefore to lead to deadlock on occasions between Congress and the President and between the two Houses of Congress, as we see now. None of us wants a constitution like that.
The question of costs has been raised. The Government have not yet been able to produce their estimates of costs partly because of the size of the House. The Government’s draft Bill proposed 300 Members and the Richard committee proposed 450. Of course, that makes a difference. If we have 450 part-time Members, it might cost little more than 300 full-time Members. The costs of a constitutional convention proposed by the alternative report would themselves be very considerable. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, asked about the Government’s thinking on severance payments for retiring Peers. I am not aware of any discussions within the Government or any proposals on that basis, but that raises questions of costs as well.
The question of how we search for consensus is rather like hunting for the Snark. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, reminded us all of the immensely constructive work of the Wakeham commission 10 years ago. I found the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, to this debate constructive and wise. He reminded us that his report was received with much hostility at the time. More than 10 years later, it seems more acceptable because it is less radical than the draft Bill, just as the Steel Bill which was so strongly opposed in this House when it was previously presented, has now become much more popular now that it appears to be the lesser evil.
The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, said that the Labour Party,
“has to think again about the idea that it can have 100% elected membership. It is quite simply unrealistic. A consensus outcome will not produce that”.—[Official Report, 10/5/12; col. 49.]
Perhaps I may quote one more remark made by the noble Lord, which I think all noble Lords would do well to consider. He said:
“I suggest that we use with some humility the position that we are somehow superior in public perceptions and in our judgment of the public good”.—[Official Report, 10/5/12; col. 50.]
We have to remember that the way this Chamber handles proposals for its further reform will reflect on its reputation outside. We have to understand the likelihood that at some point the sketch writers and tabloid columnists will look to see how they can make fun of this House as well. I would suggest to the noble Baroness, Lady Knight of Collingtree, that it is unwise to describe membership of the Lords, as I think I heard her say, as “peaceful retirement”. If the image of the Lords becomes that of a retirement home for former MPs, and that were to catch the attention of the popular press, the prestige of this Chamber would not be raised.
My Lords, one of the ways in which this House has gained a reputation is because there is proper debate about the issues. Many noble Lords have asked the Government to give their answer to the issue about the change in the powers and assertiveness of this House. From the Dispatch Box, the Minister has given absolutely no reply. He appears not to be willing to address what anyone who has been in this Chamber for the past two days would have regarded as the central issue. That is disappointing and it demeans the standard of the House.
My Lords, I was just coming to the issue of Commons primacy. The issue of primacy is partly a matter of whether one wishes to have a written constitution or one operates on the conventions of an unwritten constitution through restraint and reasonable behaviour. Of course we acknowledge the view of the committee that Clause 2 is not capable in itself of preserving the primacy of the House of Commons, which a number of noble Lords have cited, but we should listen to the committee in full when it said:
“A majority, while acknowledging that the balance of power would shift, consider that the remaining pillars on which Commons primacy rests would suffice to ensure its continuation”.
The primacy of the Commons rests on many pillars. These include the conventions governing the relationship between the two Houses, the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, and the fact that the Prime Minister and most of the Government of the day are drawn from the House of Commons. The whole of the House of Commons will be renewed at each election, and that will clearly be the election in which the Government are chosen. The second Chamber will have, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, termed it in her interesting speech, a “different sort of legitimacy” as the second Chamber. The relationship between the two Houses is not a zero-sum game.
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. How can the Parliament Acts possibly be a defence for the primacy of the House of Commons when all the legal advice that the House has heard on the subject makes it quite clear that the Parliament Acts would cease to apply if the House of Lords became an elected House?
My Lords, there is room for a discussion and a concordat between the two Houses. We have also seen in the evidence that there is some resistance to putting into statute a further codification of the relationship between the two Houses because, as I have heard many noble Lords say, the jurisdiction of the courts and litigation would not necessarily be desirable. The Government did notice and will consider the recommendations of the Joint Committee with regard to initiating preliminary work on a concordat between the two Houses, but such work ultimately would be the responsibility of the two Houses rather than of the Government, as it would be concerned with constitutional conventions.
I want to make one other brief point. I was puzzled to hear a number of noble Lords say that this Chamber is not part of the legislature. Erskine May has been quoted on several occasions. On the first page, chapter 1, page 1, paragraph 1 states:
“Parliament is composed of the Sovereign, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Collectively they form the legislature”.
I think that my noble friend is confusing a point. People are not saying that the House of Lords is not a part of the legislature; they are saying that it is not a legislature.
I will return to those speeches that I have read. I admit that I have never taken the MA in legislative studies at the University of Hull, but I referred back to my views. This House is clearly part of the legislature; this is a two-Chamber legislature.
Really, the Minister cannot get away with that. The issue is that we cannot legislate because the House of Commons can always overthrow what we do. The Minister spoke about the Queen in Parliament. He should remember that she, as part of it, also cannot legislate. The House of Commons overrides at the end of the day and decides what the law is. We can advise; we can recommend; we can revise; but we cannot legislate in a direct sense.
In which event, the primacy of the House of Commons is in very safe hands.
The reason that the House of Commons is in very safe hands is that there is no elective mandate in this House. Election, to coin a phrase from a popular song, changes everything. Fundamentally, if legitimacy changes, so does the balance of power. The Minister has to accept that, for some people, that is fine—a rethinking of the powers between the two Houses, a concordat of how you resolve differences or a written constitution are prices worth paying for electoral legitimacy—but to suggest that we can continue as we are with just election is simply not realistic.
My Lords, I do not want to keep the House too long or too late this evening, but the relationship between the two Houses is not a zero-sum game. A stronger legislature which is able to hold the Executive more clearly to account, between the two Houses and within both Houses, will provide more effective pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny. It will be a positive gain. If we do not wish to make the radical move to a written constitution, I am confident, and the Government are confident, that the conventions between the Houses will evolve. We are not an American Congress; we have not been created and an elected House would not be created to stand in opposition to the Commons. We would continue to be the second Chamber.
Is the Minister now able to answer my question that the Leader of the House was unable to answer on Thursday? It was about the commission chaired by Bill McKay, looking at the West Lothian question and whether Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Members should be permitted in the House of Commons to vote on matters that are designated as purely English. This issue relates directly to the legislation that might be brought forward, yet there is no indication as to whether any consideration has been given to whether the commission’s recommendations will be taken account of in it. The Minister had notice of this question when I raised it last Thursday. What is the answer?
My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord is referring to Sir William McKay—I noted that because my choirmaster when I was a small child was Sir William McKay, so the name sticks in my mind strongly. We are following the work of that commission and discussing what the implications of his recommendations might be.
With respect, if the Members of the House of Commons are to be divided into sheep and goats—those who can vote on some legislation and those who can vote on all legislation—what will happen to the elected Members of the House of Lords? Are they to be divided in the same sort of way?
My Lords, looking across at the noble Lord, I hesitate to say whether I regard him as a sheep or a goat. We are waiting for the McKay commission. When it reports, we will all consider that. We have to operate. We cannot stop all constitutional change to wait for the outcome of the Scottish referendum.
I cannot touch at the moment on the interesting, broader points raised by the noble Lords, Lord Elton, Lord Giddens and Lord Owen, which I suggest will be considered further in Thursday’s Queen’s Speech debate, when we move on to international events. I am happy to talk to the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and others about this important issue which of course overlaps on to the British constitution.
The composition of this House is not sustainable in the long run in its current form. The Government recognise that there is a widespread sentiment in this House that we like things as they are and that most Members resist change but this is a transitional House under an interim reform carefully crafted in 1999. Our numbers have risen since then and continue to grow. There has been a long series of studies, reports, debates and manifesto commitments since then. There has been a long period of careful deliberation, much of it neither quiet nor calm. The issues have been well set out by Wakeham, Straw and now by Richard. The time is ripe, not, as many noble Lords would wish to argue, still unripe. The Government will continue to work to build consensus but they will press forward with legislative proposals for further reform.
(12 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, my congratulations go to all those who have sat through most of this debate and who were here at a quarter to one this morning. I remind your Lordships that this has been a take note debate on the report of the Joint Committee. I therefore hope that the House will excuse me if I do not answer all of the points made in the more than 70 speeches. There has been remarkable passion across all the Benches. I suggest that as we continue to discuss this, we will need to be as dispassionate as possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, with whom we have debated these issues so often and will no doubt continue to do so, talked about the need to seek consensus, but made it clear that the Labour Party is unwilling to compromise on a 100 per cent elected House. I suggest that if we are to seek consensus, compromise is part of the way that may lead to a consensus. I answer just two of his specific questions. The Attorney-General has made his position clear to the Joint Committee in volume 3, page 8, and elsewhere. The Government will set out their legal reasoning on the application of the Parliament Acts if a Bill is included in the Queen’s Speech.
The Government have not produced an estimate of costs with the draft Bill because a final decision has to be made on issues such as how many Members the reformed House of Lords will have, how much they will be paid and what support they will receive.
Did I hear the noble Lord right? Did he say that the Attorney-General has made his position clear on the Parliament Act point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith? If so, it has passed me by. The Attorney-General was very specific in a letter to me and said that he would not do that for the Select Committee. Where has he done that so specifically?
My Lords, the reference in volume 3 is indeed not to whether the Parliament Acts would be used, it is merely to the relevance of the Parliament Acts, but if the Government produce a Bill, we will of course return to the issue.
There is a wider context here, and I want to start with that. Many Peers have referred to the constitution as a whole. We need to be conscious of the mood beyond Westminster and the attitudes of the public to our democratic institutions. One newspaper last week, I forget whether it was the Times or the Guardian, talked about a crisis of confidence in public elites—that is to say, in politicians, journalists, media proprietors, bankers, hedge funders and the like. The Audit of Political Engagement, which has just been published, talks about our public as disillusioned, disgruntled and disengaged. Less than one-quarter of those polled think that our current system of government works well. Disillusion and disengagement are strongest among the young. I have just read Peter Kellner’s long piece on a large YouGov survey held in January this year in which he says:
“What emerges is a picture of massive discontent that goes far beyond a dislike of particular politicians, parties and policies ... Unless action is taken to restore the reputation of our political system, its very legitimacy may be at risk”.
The survey asked respondents what they liked or disliked among a list of political groups and institutions. Dislike of the way that Peers are selected to be Members of the House of Lords comes second equal in terms of hostility with,
“the quality of our political parties”,
and behind only,
“the quality of our politicians”.
I thank the Minister for giving way. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said that the public, when polled, would prefer an elected House of Lords, but other polls show very clearly that the public admit that they do not understand how the House of Lords works. That is what we have to convince the public about. If we are going to rely on polls, at the moment they show that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats together rate lower than the Labour Party, in which case the Government should be out of government.
My Lords, I am talking about a wider and longer-term sense of public disillusionment with all political parties and all politicians, of which we need to be aware. The test for our House is how we handle ourselves on the question of further change in the unfriendly light of media attention and public cynicism. I respectfully suggest that we should not be too pleased with ourselves as we are. We have not entirely escaped popular disillusionment with the metropolitan elite. A run of hostile articles in the press would easily puncture our sense of how high our public standing is.
There is almost a consensus in the House on our self-image as a repository of wisdom and experience that stands above grubby party politics. There is even a hint that people like us would not stoop to stand for election—that, as the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, argued, an elected House would never attract candidates of comparable quality. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, stated sharply that an elected Chamber would bring in,
“a whole new gang of second-rate … politicians”.—[Official Report, 30/4/12; col. 1983.]
Not all elected politicians are second rate and, if I may suggest, not all appointed officeholders are first rate. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, declared that an elected House would consist of 450 superannuated politicians. As a superannuated politician, I am not sure that he should regard that as necessarily a bad thing. What does he think this House consists of now? Seventy per cent of us in this Chamber are political appointees—here by patronage—and half of us have held elected office within the Commons, the European Parliament, the devolved Assemblies and local authorities. Indeed, when I first entered this House, I observed that much of the detailed work of scrutiny was carried out by former chairs of city and county councils. They had the most relevant experience and expertise and the strongest commitment to holding the Government to account.
My reference to “superannuated” related to paying salaries and pensions in a reformed House—something which we do not have now. However, on the point about the standing of Parliament as seen by the public, how does the Minister think the public will feel about constitutional change which results from a deal between two political parties, where the Conservatives get extra Members in the House of Commons and the Liberal Democrats get to control the balance of power in the House of Lords? Does he really think—and some of his noble friends have made this point—that that kind of deal will enhance the reputation of Parliament?
Many of those who most admire the House as it is are among those who have been here for a relatively short time. In the 16 years that I have been in this House, I have been struck by how much it has changed. I remind those who were here that a deal was struck in 1999 by Lord Cranborne and the then Prime Minister against the strongly held views of the majority of Peers and against the consensus of those within the House. Then, however, it was still a courteous and polite House. It was extremely rare for any Peer to attempt to interrupt or intervene on another, and the overall tone of debate was far less partisan than it is now. Many Members have remarked on the increase in lobbying of us over the past 10 years and the increase in the volume of our mail and e-mails. I would also remark on the rougher, much more partisan and far more aggressive atmosphere. It is not at all obvious that an elected House would be more partisan than we have now become. On the other hand, we have become a more diligent House, meeting for longer hours and scrutinising more of the nooks and crannies of government.
The House as at present constituted was intended to be a temporary House. The 1999 Cranborne/Blair agreement was another way station on the long road towards—I quote from the preamble to the Parliament Act 1911—
“a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis”,
something to which the infant Labour Party within the then government coalition was committed.
My Lords, I think that the number of interventions on members of the Government is noticed more by those who are in government than by those who constitute other Members of your Lordships’ House. I can remember when, for example, my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland was intervened upon 10 times on one particular issue. I remember not always enjoying the interventions of the much missed Lord Onslow when I was in the noble Lord’s position. I think that if he checks back he will see that the behaviour in your Lordships’ House is not worse; it is just that he is more on the receiving end.
My Lords, we will agree to differ and I shall check back. I think that we have changed a great deal since 1999.
Our current position is not sustainable as numbers creep up and habits in the Chamber mutate. If noble Lords were to carry out some of the threats that have been uttered in this debate to wreck the rest of the Government’s legislative programme in order to sabotage proposed reform, then not just the sustainability but perhaps the reputation of this House would be weakened further. We cannot preserve the current House in aspic; it will continue to change and evolve. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said that very few of us believe we can remain as we are; the question is which direction we go in terms of reform.
The current proposals have not emerged from nowhere. Since the 1999 changes, Parliament has already devoted more than 140 hours to debating further reform. Shelves of reports—from Wakeham to Cunningham, Mackay of Clashfern and Hunt of Kings Heath—and a succession of Green Papers and White Papers have been produced. Very few arguments have been put forward in this debate which are not already familiar to most of us, and we will return to the topic again in 10 days’ time, when we will be discussing constitutional reform in one form or another in our debate on the Queen’s Speech.
Last week, in addition to reading the Richard report and the alternative report, I reread, for the first time in 40 years, the classic study of academic procrastination, Francis Cornford’s Microcosmographia Academica. This is the volume which first set out the principle of unripe time, the principles of the wedge and the dangerous precedent, and the determination of opponents to die in the last ditch. It was written of course to explain why the Cambridge University Senate so determinedly resisted all proposals for university reform. It says that the most effective means of obstruction is the alternative proposal. It continues:
“This is a form of Red Herring. As soon as three or more alternatives are in the field, there is pretty sure to be a majority against any one of them, and nothing will be done”.
The speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, was an excellent example of the principle of unripe time—that the proposal before us may be right but now is not the right time to accept it. She argued that an elected House is in principle at some point a good thing but only after the economy has recovered, the Scottish issue has been resolved, the relationship between the two Houses clarified and a constitutional convention held. The time was never ripe in the boom years of Labour’s third term in government either, although it might have been thought to be an appropriate time. As Francis Cornford remarked,
“Time, by the way, is like the medlar: it has a trick of going rotten before it is ripe”.
The principle of the wedge has also been used by many.
My Lords, the noble Lord is making an assumption when he says that we have to wait until all these problems are solved before we go ahead with Lords reform. That is not what we are saying. Goodness knows, we are not expecting the Government to solve these problems or we shall wait forever to get back to Lords reform. We are saying that it is very strange that, in the coming Session, so much time will be devoted to this when, at the moment, the Government should be focusing on problems which they probably will not be able to solve but on which they should at least be making an effort.
My Lords, the amount of time in the next Session to be spent on this subject will depend partly on how dispassionately both Houses approach the issue.
On the principle of the wedge, if we accept this, it will be impossible to stop short of further and disastrous consequences: a written constitution, a judicially arbitrated constitution or, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, suggested, a republic. Others want a written constitution before we reform the Lords or argue that further reforms will fundamentally alter the nature of Britain. In considering whether this House might introduce an elected Chamber, my noble friend Lord Cormack told us that we are talking about the future of this country.
Alternative proposals have been scattered across the Chamber: an indirectly elected House, the modest reform put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lord, Lord Steel, or a full constitutional convention. I was utterly surprised by the enthusiasm expressed around the Chamber for the Steel Bill, given the bitter opposition to so much of it in the Chamber over several years. I am still not sure whether the support has been expressed for the full Steel package or for the emasculated Bill that emerged from Third Reading.
We have had plenty of other arguments against change: constituency competition, the bug bear of former MPs. In one way or another, those of us who live outside the metropolitan south east already play some of those roles and we see them as part of our responsibility within an appointed House. I have been president of my party’s Yorkshire region; I spend time at weekends going to constituencies and conferences; and I run into Peers from other parties at various Yorkshire events. We already fulfil some of those constituency responsibilities.
The issue of costs has been raised. We must be very strict about costs, although if we have to have a referendum we will spend £100 million on it.
Primacy of the Commons is a wonderful obstacle against which one can kick. If necessary, we must do all that we can to defy the will of the Commons in order to preserve its primacy and its financial privilege. Conventions must be written in stone, although the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, remarked that conventions, of their nature, are not rules and that they must be allowed to evolve and that a concordat between the two Houses would therefore be an appropriate way forward.
I hear some people say that there is not much interest in Lords reform among the public but, nevertheless, there must be a referendum. I respectfully remind Members of this House that one of the most fundamental constitutional changes that we have witnessed since I joined the House is the separation of the judicial function from the legislative function through the establishment of the Supreme Court and that was carried through without a referendum.
Hybridity has been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, as completely unacceptable because it would make the House unworkable. This House has always been hybrid; it consists of Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal and, when I joined the House, it was partly hereditary and partly appointed. I recall a colleague in the Association of Conservative Peers saying that in the Conservative group the hereditaries referred to the Life Peers as “the day boys”. Only those who have been to boarding school know how dismissive that is; it refers to a subordinate body to the lifers. This would merely be a shift to another form of hybridity.
The argument has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, that a second Chamber elected on proportional representation might even claim greater legitimacy than the Commons because it would be more fully representative of the opinion of voters as a whole, which suggests that we all prefer a less legitimate voting system than the one that might be used for this House. Above all, we have to wait for a consensus in this House or in the Commons.
My Lords, I had hoped that the Minister would indicate that he has listened to what has been said and that the Government would reflect on what has been said in the debate on such issues as hybridity, referendum and primacy. My noble friend is coming suspiciously close to saying that he has a closed mind on these issues. I hope that he will draw back and indicate that what has been said in the official report, the alternative report and on the Floor of this House over the past 24 hours will be taken into account before the Government decide whether to proceed with a Bill and what sort of a Bill it will be.
My Lords, I have listened carefully to almost the entire debate and particularly to my noble friend’s contribution. Many within the Government will be reading the debate in Hansard. As I said at the beginning, I did not hear much with which I was not already familiar. I suspect that that may be true of many noble Lords. Of course we shall be reflecting on matters and, if proposals are brought forward in the Queen’s Speech, a great deal of what has been said will be reflected in those proposals.
My Lords, the Minister says that he has not heard anything new, but would he not accept that in both reports the argument particularly about powers and legitimacy have been developed in a way that we have not seen before? Can he assure the House that we will not simply get another version of the Bill showing marginal changes? He owes it to the House to say that the Government will consider the reports carefully.
My Lords, of course, this is a debate to take note of the Richard report. It has been read extensively within the Government as well as outside. I trust that all noble Lords have read all three volumes, including the splendid compliment made by my noble friend Lord Cormack to the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, in which he commented on her extreme youth. The conclusions will be considered within the Government, but the proposals on the table are those on which the Richard report commented.
I recognise that many noble Lords would like some entirely different proposals. Undoubtedly, if the proposals are brought forward, they will be modified by comments made in this House and elsewhere. That is the nature of the to and fro of democratic debate and those are the efforts that we all make in attempting to reach a consensus.
The question is, as the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, remarked: what is our central problem? Part of the central problem, which the Government aimed to address, was how to increase the legitimacy—
My Lords, the noble Lord does not seem to be addressing, in the appropriate slot, what many of us, including me, regard as the principal issue at stake, which was sharply focused on by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and by the noble Lord, Lord Ryder, in their recent interventions and which I rather cloudily tried to draw to the attention of noble Lords last night. How will they use this opportunity not to expand but to curb the power of government over Parliament? In reflecting on that, may I remind the noble Lord that he has been sufficiently long enough in government to be infected with the virus which makes people think that they will always see things from the Government’s point of view. However, the day—distant or near—when he will be sitting on the other side of this reconstituted House is of course drawing nearer.
I thank the noble Lord for his reminder that an issue that we need to take into account as we consider this is the balance not just between this House and the Commons but between government and Parliament, and that reform of this House should contribute to redressing the balance of power between the Executive and the legislature as a whole.
When we debate the Queen’s Speech, we will again discuss constitutional reform. If the Government produce a Bill on this, I hope that noble Lords will place this piece of the jigsaw of constitutional reform in the wider pattern of popular disengagement from politics and distrust of politicians. We need to look very carefully at the evidence. We need to consider the appropriate balance between representative democracy and direct, popular democracy before we slip perhaps a little too far down the road towards direct democracy. We need to have a concern to rebuild popular trust in our political institutions. Quiet, calm deliberation should be the way in which we seek to disentangle the knot of this highly tangled issue.
We heard some remarkably apocalyptic speeches in this debate, and even threats to wreck the rest of the Government’s legislative programme in order to prevent reform progressing. However, we serve in this House by appointment and by the privilege that that gives us—not by right. The way in which we discuss the future of the House will reflect, for good or ill, on our reputation. We will return to the subject—I hope a little more dispassionately—again and probably again.
The Minister quite rightly made trust a major theme of his speech. Does he not consider that part of the decline in public trust in Parliament has a great deal to do with the excessive regimentation in the other place, where in the past 15 years Members voted against a government resolution only six times, while here we did it nearly 600 times? Is that not a crucial difference that will be lost if this place is wholly elected?
My Lords, that point is for the Queen’s Speech debate on constitutional reform.