National Security Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Report stage
Tuesday 7th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I have my name on a number of amendments in this group. I will start by saying, which I had not prepared to say, that when the Minister looks at the speech he has just made, I think he will find that there were some drafting errors—I hope there were—at the beginning. He said that FIRS would apply now only to a foreign Government. I think he said that twice and afterwards went on to talk about a foreign power. He knows very well why I pick up on the difference because one of my ongoing concerns is about the definition of a foreign power, which includes political parties. I hope that was just an oversight because I think that this captures political parties as well as foreign Governments.

There are two or three points I want to make very briefly but before I go on, I want to add my thanks for what the Minister has done, not only in the incredible change. The Minister has sent me the Keeling schedule that shows that we have ended up with a FIRS that is very different from what we started with. I should declare my interest, as I sit on the board of the ABI and it is very content with where we have got to. It did however make the point that this is no way to make a sausage—I have to say that they were not its words; it was far more polite. The way it started was not the best way to make legislation. The ABI and others are very content with where we have got to, and it is right to record that we have ended up with something very different, so I thank the Minister.

My name is on three amendments. I will not press Amendments 114 and 121 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. But on Amendment 115 I am second to the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and I think it is an indication of the approval of what he has done that one of the delete clause amendments is in his name—only because he got there first because I was about to do that. I think it is a symbol that we do it.

I have that one remaining query about a foreign political power that happens to be in government engaging with any of us or councillors or parliamentary candidates, even on internal, party-to-party issues, using an intermediary such as the conference arrangement. I have looked at the draft regulations again as the Minister helpfully said. There is no de minimis there, even if they pay £1,000 to a conference organiser to book the stall at a Labour Party conference or a Tory Party conference—I am sure they have stalls; I have been to their conference and they do in the same way as we do. There is no de minimis for a political party abroad seeking to engage with a political party or anyone else here using an intermediary which is simply a facilitator. Therefore, I wonder whether there is a possibility of looking at the guidelines or the forms. There will be a contract. It may be only for £1,000 but there are the implications of having all that to be declared. I am not saying that simply because we have stalls at our conference, it could happen to the Government as well. It captures things that I know the Minister never intended. I know that at the moment he will not give me an answer and a promise written in blood, but some acknowledgement that there is a small ongoing problem would be very helpful. For the moment, I think we have ended up in a much better place than we started.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 166A in my name. I also thank the Minister for the way in which the Bill has been discussed and amended between Second Reading, Committee and Report. It is a model of the way in which the Lords should operate, and we all appreciate the way in which the Minister and his team have responded to reasoned criticisms as we have moved forward.

Amendment 166A merely draws attention to some of the definition problems we have all struggled with, wanting to catch all the problems but not to overload the necessary and highly desirable international co-operation with other Governments and other countries, many of which are governed in ways we do not entirely approve of. As somebody who used to work for an international think tank, I am particularly concerned with the opacity of the funding of some of our political think tanks, which as charities do not have to declare their revenue.

In the United States there is much concern with the extent to which some foreign Governments, in particular the Gulf states, put enormous amounts of money into institutes operating as political think tanks, intending to influence and therefore reshape the American political debate. Although that is outside the scope of the current Bill, I and others are much concerned to insist that there should be much greater transparency about the funding of think tanks that set out to deliberately influence the way in which our politics take place.

That is an example, but we all know that there will be a substantial grey area between direction and influence, which we and the Minister have all grappled with. We are not entirely sure that we can draw the line clearly as we go. This amendment asks the Government actively to keep under review and to consult on where that line needs to be adjusted as we move forward in implementation. I hope the Minister will respond in that way.

National Security Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Committee stage
Monday 16th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

The Minister will understand that I cannot possibly answer this question because then we would have to record the conversation. To be serious, in fact, my letter to the Minister, which included a lot of questions, did ask that he circulate it to the Committee and not just to myself.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on several of these amendments. I should perhaps say that I welcome and support those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. Two amendments of mine are also concerned with ensuring that the interests of charitable bodies, commercial bodies, universities and policy researchers should be specifically catered for and excluded from some of the purposes of the Bill.

However, I want to talk more generally about Part 3 as a whole. I thank the noble Baroness for her back-handed compliment. There are, of course, parallels between the transparency of lobbying Bill in 2013 and this Bill. There were those who pushed me as the then Minister to exclude a substantial number of bodies and persons from that Bill; others were pushing for the inclusion of a lot more than we had. It was not easy to strike the appropriate balance between ensuring full transparency on what was going on and not pulling too many people into the net. The question of identifying who the lobbyists were was one of the more difficult elements with which we had to be concerned. On that occasion we agreed to pause the Bill.

I should also say that it was not simply the Labour Opposition; indeed, concern about that Bill was very much on the Cross Benches, led by Lord Ramsbotham, sadly no longer with us, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. We paused the Bill for three months, consulted more widely and came back with amendments. The Bill was then carried in an improved form. It was not perfect; it is impossible for a Bill of that sort, or this sort, to satisfy all accounts because we are trying to strike a balance between a range of different objectives. It would be wise for the Minister to manage the policy statement and the pause for greater consultation; they should take up rather more time than is currently considered.

The Minister will have seen the Politico report last Thursday that suggested widespread concern in commercial and business circles about this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has already said how many comments and criticisms we have had from a range of different circles. I came to the Bill entirely from the point of view of think tanks, universities and the policy research sector. I had not expected to get such immediate responses from the City, law firms and others. We are now all aware of the widespread concern that the Bill will catch more than it was originally intended to. But there is more than that. I shall quote from one of the letters I have had: the Bill

“is essentially the proposed bureaucratisation of lawful and useful non-hidden international engagements. Influence is not covert just because it is not public: all policy makers and organisations rely on private interactions.”

I was thinking, as I looked at my newspaper this morning, what those Brits who will be attending the Davos Forum will do about what they report back, as one has private conversations with a range of people. Perhaps we should make sure that Keir Starmer and whoever else is going do indeed fill in all the forms as they come back.

Before I go further, I should comment on the Minister’s insistence, in our last sitting, that the Daniel Houghton case justifies the inclusion of the Netherlands alongside North Korea, China, Iran, Russia and others in the primary tier of foreign powers. I see that the case was in 2010. I have said at previous sittings that the issue of dual nationals and diasporas, both in Britain and elsewhere, is one of the complications of the Bill that I hope the Minister will address in our consultations. I mark, in passing, that Daniel Houghton was a Dutch-British dual national. He was a computer engineer employed by the SIS. He downloaded some SIS files and tried to sell them to the Dutch intelligence authorities. They immediately informed the British and he was arrested, convicted, given a 12-month sentence and served six months in prison. I am not sure that this one case justifies the imposition of the full regime on the Netherlands, in the same way that it is imposed on other countries.

I pick the Netherlands because traffic between it and the United Kingdom is probably closer than any other county apart from Ireland, even more than the United States, because it is so near. I recall being told by some senior Dutch politicians that a great many members of the Dutch elite have second homes in the south-east of England and send their children to British universities. I remember being told by a chief constable from North Wales Police that he needed to have more than one police officer who spoke Dutch because, when camper-vans break down in the summer, they need to have someone who can interpret. The extent to which British companies depend on the Netherlands has been increased by our leaving the European Union. I was told at a meeting of donors to my party the other week that several of them have opened offices or warehouses in the Netherlands to be inside the EU. It is not a country with which we have limited interaction.

To say that we need to have all the interactions which may involve political influence recorded is almost to suggest that, to find the needle in the haystack, you need to examine each strand of hay separately and then in time you will find the needle. You would of course destroy the haystack and damage the hay, and detract immensely from the normal business of the farm. To that extent, it is grossly disproportionate, and our concern with the Bill is that aspects of it are grossly disproportionate.

I read again through the supplementary Explanatory Memorandum over the weekend and I remain confused about many aspects of the Bill. I am worried about the imprecision of some of the language—the “informal” arrangements, the indirect control and those other phrases which, not being a lawyer, I do not entirely understand. I seek some reassurance from our legal colleagues that it is possible to make sense of some of these provisions. There is a reference at one point to the “scheme management unit”. I wonder if the Minister could tell us how large the Home Office thinks the scheme management unit will need to be when all these reports flow in. I suggest that it will need to be extremely large.

I am not entirely clear on how the specified persons come into the expanded bit. Can the Minister give us any rough idea of how many of the 190-plus UN member states it is envisaged would be specified by the Secretary of State in this? Would it be 10? Would it be 100, 150 or 190? That would clearly make a great deal of difference to the sort of regime which we are likely to have imposed. These are real concerns for those who are looking at the Bill from the outside.

The examples did not reassure me in understanding the Bill. Funding for UK think tanks is mentioned, as are NGOs from abroad attending all-party parliamentary groups and some of the activities of foreign academic institutions. All apparently come into the net. This requires much further consultation. We all recognise that there are serious foreign threats to this country, that some of these threats are new because technology and communications have enabled new methods of subversion, and that we need to deal with them. But we also recognise that the United Kingdom is an open society and an open economy, and we need to preserve the best aspects of our openness to the rest of the world. That is the balance that we have to strike.

One category left out appears to be multinational companies not controlled by foreign states, along with foreign foundations and the super-wealthy. I argue again that these are also, potentially, sources of severe foreign interference in UK politics which may well be hostile to UK interests. If one is talking about British interests in the broadest sense, as the Bill does, I recall that major tobacco companies have funded institutes in Britain to lobby against tighter control of tobacco selling and health regulation. Oil companies have funded think tanks and others to lobby against measures on, or even to deny, climate change. Foundations with political agendas have supported the establishment of new right-wing societies in British universities. Those are also threats which we should not necessarily ignore.

I suggest strongly to the Minister that, in view of the concerns which have been so widely expressed across the commercial and non-commercial worlds, we should take the time now to ensure that the Bill strikes the right balance, that we get it right and that we do not get it through necessarily as fast as the Government would have liked.

EU Exit: End of Transition Period

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 24th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the opportunity to question the Statement, despite it dealing with only one, albeit a visible, part of the preparations needed for 1 January: the physical movement of goods. On finances, accounting, the mutual recognition of qualifications, equivalence, citizens’ rights, consumer protection and pet passports, there is nothing. I was asked recently about what would happen to a UK national working and living abroad who, for example, retires back to the UK in 10 years’ time, after the cut-off for the temporary measures, with his or her EU spouse and children. Will that family be able to return with the British national? The fact that these questions are still being asked is testimony to the amount of uncertainty remaining.

The Statement is very UK-focused, with no mention of the challenges to the Crown dependencies, nor indeed to Gibraltar, which has had to issue a technical notice warning that while EU goods will hopefully still be imported with the same processes, anything from Britain will have to be checked into the EU through a border post and checked back out again. While I welcome the chance to ask about the challenges our exporters, importers, ports and customs face, we should not pretend that this covers everything, nor that everything is done and dusted.

From the Statement, we have learned of the risk of 7,000 lorries in Kent. In order to help visualise this, my honourable friend Kevin Brennan helpfully pictured it as a single line from Dover to Westminster. Clearly, the Government do not want them all in Kent, so they are introducing a “Kent access permit”, which I guess is today’s equivalent of a “Passport to Pimlico”—presumably with Michael Gove as today’s Stanley Holloway. It is unclear how these access permits will be policed, because there can hardly be a “ring of steel” around the county. Can the Minister therefore tell the House how many roads go into Kent, how many police will be needed to carry out the checks and where he envisages finding the extra police, as I presume that others will not have the authority to halt or turn back an otherwise legal lorry? Can he also outline how these measures will prioritise perishable goods and key degradable items such as radioisotopes and medical products, and just-in-time supply chains?

Given that much of the documentation required will be electronic, it could easily continue within lorries en route, so it may not be complete when they enter Kent but would be finalised by Dover. How is that going to be policed? Once in Kent, the lorries may still have to go to the yet-to-be-built lorry parks the Government are planning in 29 local authority areas, without bothering to consult residents. What are the costs of the lorry parks and their staffing? Are those included in the costs noted for “the border” because they will be inland?

Mr Gove has said that

“we have invested in the sites in Ebbsfleet and North Weald, Ashford, Warrington and the west midlands … we are working with the Welsh Assembly Government to invest in a facility near Holyhead in Anglesey.”—[Official Report, Commons, 23/9/20; col. 969.]

When will these sites be ready and what are the costs?

It is no good telling business to act now without information or systems in place. They are pleading for the details to which they need to work. The Statement says:

“Every business trading with Europe will need to … familiarise itself with the new customs procedures”.


Quite so, but they do not know what those new procedures are. The food and drink industry would love to be ready for Brexit but there is no guidance about what labels businesses will need to use to sell their goods legally into the EU and Northern Ireland next year. As I mentioned in Grand Committee yesterday, this applies particularly to the organic sector.

The Government need to explain why on earth all the essential prerequisites for a smooth transition are not already here. The Statement talks of £700 million for infrastructure and new technology, 1,000 extra staff, £80 million to help businesses, plus a new information campaign; all on top of what has already been spent—more than £4 billion, according to the NAO—including on staff, external advice and advertising. In addition, we still have the cost of Mr Grayling’s non-existent ferries and other no-deal preparations. The Minister may not have the answer today but will he write to me with the full, total costs of government expenditure needed for the change to our trading arrangements?

The Government also acknowledge that there will be some £7 billion worth of additional bureaucracy for businesses. Can the Minister also write with the full cost to the Government and to business of all the changes that will be needed? It would also be interesting to see alongside those costs an estimate of how many years before those “great prizes” and export opportunities mentioned in the Statement pay off all the investment of the change before we are able to reap the real benefit.

I have a specific question for the Minister. The Statement says that our new trade deals will

“help developing nations to grow faster”

and provide “lower prices for consumers”. Can he explain how that will happen and why only now it becomes possible? We would love to see both outcomes—developing nations growing faster and lower prices for consumers—but I fear that it might simply mean less being done, lower standards and less protection for the environment. To reassure me that that is not the case, perhaps the Minister could explain how that is achievable in a less harmful way. If he has time, he might like to put on record the Government’s response to the latest LSE/UK in a Changing Europe view, published today, that the economic cost of no-deal could be two or three times as bad as the impact of Covid.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am not sure whether to sympathise with the Minister for having to defend a Statement with which he cannot entirely agree, to admire his loyalty in following each step the Government take towards a harder break with the EU than was ever hinted at by the Vote Leave campaign in the referendum, or to be appalled by his willingness to swallow the shifty rationalisations of the Johnson-Cummings-Gove cabal.

Yesterday in Grand Committee, the noble Lord, Lord True, attacked the European Union for challenging

“the United Kingdom’s well-established position on state aid”.—[Official Report, 23/9/20; col. GC 506.]

True or false? I asked two friends in the City if they knew what the Government’s established policy on state aid was and they burst out laughing at the idea that there is any clear policy. The interview that Lynton Crosby gave the Financial Times on Monday helped me to understand the Government’s current position. He said that

“in negotiations like this you need a little bit of crazy to keep your opponents guessing”.

I thought, “Ah, this is the art of the deal. The Donald Trump approach to negotiation—monster your opponents, talk tough, insist that they act reasonably, and either they will compromise further than they intended to or you can walk away and blame them for the failure. It is the Johnson-Trump playbook.” If the Statement is an attempt to bluff the EU into believing that we are well prepared for a no-deal outcome, it is clearly a failure. It shows that we are woefully unprepared and is an attempt to shift the blame onto business and potentially on to the French and Belgian Governments.

It has been clear to almost everyone concerned with the UK’s external trade since Theresa May’s Government decided to leave the single market that the channel ports would pose problems, except that Dominic Raab did not realise that and Boris Johnson did not bother to think about it. It was also clear that it would take well over a year to create the new infrastructure needed and to recruit and train the additional staff. Yet, here we are, 100 days short of 2021, and the Statement deplores a “lack of business preparedness”. The rest of us deplore the lack of government preparedness. The same mixture of incompetence, ideology and negligence that has marked the Government’s approach to Covid-19 marks their approach to the channel ports.

The same sweeping aside of inconvenient facts marks Ministers’ handling of the Irish border. The British Academy held its first seminar on the problem of the Irish border if the UK were to leave the EU in March 2016, attended by officials, among others. Yet the Prime Minister now claims that in October 2019, three years later, he still did not understand the complexity of the issue. The Statement refers to hundreds more Border Force staff “being recruited now”. Why were they not recruited months ago? How many of the additional Border Force and customs personnel required will be fully trained and in post by 1 January, and how many are still being recruited or trained?

The Statement refers to new technology being important. Is this now being fully tested and will it be in working order on 1 January? The Statement refers to “queues” and “associated disruption and delay” in Dover, at least for the first six months. What arrangements have been made to ensure that fresh food, vegetables and fish are not delayed beyond the point where they are spoiled, which would lead to shortages in British supermarkets? Can the Minister explain what is meant by the warning that

“if our neighbours decline to be pragmatic”

we will face the worst circumstances? Do we demand that the French and Belgians decline to enforce their own border checks because we are not ready to enforce our own? Is this the Trump-Johnson playbook again: “We are unreasonable but will pin the blame for chaos on you, unless you help get us out of the mess”?

The noble Lord, Lord True, will now defend Michael Gove’s extraordinary Statement with his weasel words about an “exit on Australian terms” and his fantasies about how a “truly sovereign state” may behave. I hope that there will come a point where the noble Lord will consider that his self-respect as a Conservative requires him not to follow Johnson and Cummings’s efforts further down the road to alternative reality and fake facts, be true to his best instincts instead and follow the principled example of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town [V]]

I thank all noble Lords who have supported the amendment. I will simply make two points. First, as my noble friend Lady Gale said, Scottish and Welsh 16 and 17 year-olds have, or will have, the vote, but do not appear in the numbers on which their constituency boundary is drawn. That does not make sense. We just want it examined. Secondly, I give a gentle warning to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and, indeed, her Government. After the summer we have just had, with the disruption to the education and futures of 16 and 17 year-olds, her staunch refusal to consider or even discuss the issue, indeed, not even to allow the Boundary Commission to look at any impact, will not go down well with the exact voters who will be 18 at the next election. They will have heard her words today, but I do not think they will be impressed.

I personally regret her response—it feels short-sighted and over dismissive of the ask. It would not undermine the independence of the Boundary Commission. It would enable it to report on an important issue of franchise. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire [V]]

My Lords, the Minister quoted the manifesto commitment not to lower the voting age. I have just checked the Conservative manifesto and it has the parallel commitment:

“We will make it easier for British expats to vote in Parliamentary elections, and get rid of the arbitrary 15-year limit on their voting rights.”


I want to press the Minister on whether the Government actually plan to implement that manifesto promise within the lifetime of the coming review. If they propose to carry this manifesto commitment through, they should at least allow for this, given that they do not actually know how many of the 5 million British expats might now register. It could blow the entire exercise well out of the water.

Public Services: Update

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 29th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating yesterday’s Statement. He will know that we share the Government’s aim to save lives and rebuild our economy and well-being. In this context, there is much in the Statement that we applaud, particularly its acknowledgment of the role of volunteers, the health service, food growers and retailers, pharmacists, care workers, educators, charities, the police and the military. I would also add the BBC and indeed Ministers and civil servants, who have had to respond to previously unimaginable demands.

Unlike anything we have ever seen, this crisis has literally involved every single one of us. It is a national challenge like no other. We therefore have a population who are part and parcel of the country’s response and, in return, we owe it to them to be honest and transparent about the risks, the difficult trade-offs, the certainties and uncertainties, the data, and what the Government are actually doing, and planning to do. The Prime Minister, on his return to Downing Street from Chequers, pledged to act with “maximum possible transparency”. We therefore hope that we will soon have reliable data on the rate of BAME infections and deaths—an issue of major concern to our Caribbean and Asian communities.

We very much welcome that, from today, the statistics will include deaths in care homes and in the community, as well as those in hospitals. This is right in itself, but it is particularly important because of the numbers involved—perhaps 19,000 Covid-related deaths; a near tripling of the number of deaths in care homes over three weeks—and because of the failure to ensure that these people in society’s care, and the staff who look after them, were properly protected with equipment and testing. This is no time to look backwards and consider why that was, but it is time to look forward and ensure that the situation is remedied. This is especially true as it looks as if the UK’s overall coronavirus death rate could outstrip that of Italy, France and Spain, and may even be the highest in Europe.

We need the Government to take all necessary steps, and that includes heeding the very wise words “to underpromise and overdeliver, rather than overpromise and underdeliver”—as we saw, I am afraid, with PPE and testing. The Cabinet Office has a key role in this, not just on procurement, as mentioned quite rightly by the Minister, but on cross-departmental working and liaison, ensuring that lessons are learned as speedily as they are in the medical world, where advances in treatment of the virus in one week are disseminated around the health service profession by the following Monday. The Cabinet Office has a similar role in ensuring that everyone knows the lessons being learned elsewhere.

The Cabinet Office also has a role to ensure that all our citizens are fully informed about what is happening and what is being discussed. In that context, could the Minister explain why, if the Welsh, Scottish and indeed other Governments can ensure that signers are available and on-screen in daily press conferences, somehow No. 10 cannot quite arrange this? It can easily be done at a distance and so not break social distancing rules. Our deaf communities feel very strongly that they are being excluded from daily updates.

Going forward, plans to test and trace will affect all sectors of society, including those with a disability, and we will need every agency to help inform, encourage, test, safeguard and trace. That is a real cross-government task, involving local government, devolved authorities, charities—especially those working with the vulnerable—service providers, civic society, businesses and trade unions.

Until now, there have been some forgotten groups in all this, such as those who receive care in their own homes and domiciliary care staff. All these people must get the PPE that they need, and social care must be properly funded to deal with the extra costs of the pandemic.

These are some of the “here and now” issues, but we also need a viable and sustainable national recovery plan, which I assume will be Cabinet Office-led. For these next decisions, involvement across the piece is needed, not simply to help craft those plans, but to ensure that businesses, schools and other organisations have time to prepare, such that the infection rates do not increase again. Transparency and consultation will be vital, so will the Government publish their next- steps framework?

We stand ready to help—it is in the national interest—to ensure that the NHS, public services, businesses, workers, families and communities recover and become more resilient. But we need to understand, and contribute to, the Government’s thinking, so we ask that there is that involvement. Will the Government agree to hold talks with teachers, trade unions, businesses, charities and local authorities on how their forward strategy can be developed and implemented to rebuild the economy and jobs?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I, too, welcome this Statement and the remarkable change of tone it contains about public sector workers used by Conservative Ministers and advisers until a few weeks ago. Last December’s Conservative manifesto, and even more the writings of Conservative advisers such as Dominic Cummings and Rachel Wolf, condemned the Civil Service as “incompetent” and wasteful, as ignorant about science and looking after their own interests rather than the public as a whole.

Happily, Ministers have now realised that civil servants and others across the public sector believe in the concept of public service, which right-wing libertarians and public choice economists have rubbished for so long. Across our entire public service, from the NHS to the police and military to Whitehall and local authorities, we have seen people rising to the challenge, moving jobs to help others, and working all hours. Many of them, we should also recognise, are far more modestly paid than their equivalents in the private sector, but they have shown their commitment and their loyalty to the communities they serve.

I am glad to see the reference to local resilience forums, and the recognition that this is a series of local crises across the country as well as a national crisis. I hope that this will persuade the Government to reverse their marginalisation of local authorities and to recognise the vital contribution that effective local government makes to a thriving democracy. I was struck when I read the section on democracy and political reform in last December’s Conservative manifesto that it contained no reference at all to local democracy. I hope that the Minister will argue for its inclusion in the agenda for the constitution, democracy and human rights commission which the Government have promised to set up this year.

The Statement expresses gratitude to

“to colleagues from the devolved Administrations for their participation and their constructive contributions to all our discussions. Those discussions have helped us to understand how the virus has affected every part of our United Kingdom.”

Can the Minister tell the House how the Government have ensured that they have understood the impact on every part of the UK, given that the large majority of the UK’s population lives in England and that there appears to have been no visible mechanism for consultation with the English regions or even with the city mayors from outside London?

The Minister mentioned that the military has now been brought in to help out with logistics but also with expanding testing for the virus. The Statement does not explain why the initial programme of testing was contracted out to a large private consultancy firm: a contract which, the Daily Telegraph has reported, was awarded without the normal tendering process. Was that because of an instinctive Conservative assumption that the private sector is always better than the public sector? The underutilisation of the first testing centres, reported and repeated difficulties with the booking system, and the apparent assumption that all care and health workers had access to their own cars and had time to drive up to 50 miles to be tested all show this to have been one of the weakest aspects of the response to the epidemic. I am glad that the military have now been brought in to expand testing. Why were they not brought in at the outset? My own experience in government, dealing with the digitisation of Whitehall, suggested that outside consultancies often charge more and deliver less.

The Statement refers also to the redeployment of a large number of civil servants across Whitehall to cope with the crisis. What other tasks of government have had to be put on hold as a result? I understand, for example, that the Government’s promised White Paper on data strategy, for which the Minister is responsible to the Lords, is now several months behind schedule, since officials had been transferred; first, to help with preparation for Brexit and now to respond to the epidemic. I understand that officials working on the Brexit negotiations have also been redeployed in response to the epidemic. Will the Minister commit to informing the House in the near future whether the team negotiating Brexit is still sufficiently staffed to handle the complex negotiations that we are engaged in or whether the demands of this emergency will enforce a change of pace if we are to avoid confusion or failure?

Finally, I welcome very warmly the Government’s tribute to

“the stoicism and steadfastness, the hard work and heroism, the compassion and commitment of those working at the front line of public service.”

We all make that tribute, and long may the Government’s change of tone continue.

EU: Future Relationship

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 27th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I welcome the noble Lord, Lord True, to his role. He is the fourth Minister covering Brexit that I have faced. Two retired hurt—one fell out of a helicopter, and I think the other fell out with his political masters—although the last left the field having successfully delivered for his Prime Minister. While I wish the noble Lord well, I obviously hope we will be able to persuade him to listen to views other than just those emanating from No. 10.

Somewhat unusually, the lead negotiator—the Minister calls him a Sherpa—is a civil servant, David Frost. He is not a Minister; he is a civil servant, answerable neither to the Commons nor therefore, via a junior, to this House. We therefore welcome the Minister’s confirmation that he will be Mr Frost’s man in this House and report regularly as the negotiations proceed. Perhaps he will speak, or I can do so via him, to the Chief Whip to ensure we can have a proper debate on this document in the near future.

Today’s Statement is, needless to say, on a crucial and vital issue, but sadly I fear it does not bode well, since it leaves us with a query as to whether the PM really wants a deal, or at least whether he is willing to risk no deal simply to please his friends—whether Trump or the ERG—such that he prioritises a US deal over and above one with the EU. Without an EU deal, we would see tariffs, checks and barriers to trade implemented very fast, by January, in a way that would damage the whole economy. The price of a US deal, even if we got one, would be lower consumer standards, workers’ rights being jeopardised, and environmental concerns being downplayed. What would be the purpose of that?

The only reason seems to be the avoidance of the ECJ—a court—and, as we just heard, this reassertion of so-called “sovereignty”, which was mentioned 11 times in the Statement: a bit of a hang-up there. This is an interdependent world, where the value of currencies, confidence in economies, global interest rates, international tax and wage rates all impact on UK businesses every day. The idea that we live in this independent sovereign world unaffected by anything outside is a figment of the imagination. The best way to confront these global uncertainties is to work closely with our nearest partners and as part of a half-billion market to absorb the ups and downs in world trade and to secure a thriving market for UK goods.

Any idea that a deal suitable for a faraway country—3,500 miles in the case of Canada—would suit the sort of trade that we have with a continent 12 miles away at its nearest is surely pure fantasy. Do the Government understand that the imports and exports of meat, cheese, milk, nuclear medicines, flowers, fruit and vegetables depend on short distances, fast travel and a virtually identical time zone for that easy flow of trade? Or that our car manufacturers need rapid supplies of parts as well as exports of finished products which depend on easy access to the continent? Easy means quick and cheap. No wonder the Treasury predicted that a Canada-style free trade agreement would shrink the economy by up to 6.4%.

The Government seem to accept that there will be customs posts, tariffs and checks, and they even occasionally acknowledge that these will be between Northern Ireland and GB. But those cost money to businesses, to consumers, and to the taxpayer. I hope I have read it wrong, but this Statement seems to smack of a negotiating position which is seeking a very distant relationship with the EU, happy to establish barriers for those businesses trying to continue to trade with our largest economic partner. Despite the warm words which the Minister has just repeated, the Government’s commitments on rights, protections and standards, which were written into the political declaration that the Prime Minister signed, now appear to be at risk because the Minister seems to be saying that because some of ours are higher, we can junk all of the commonly agreed minima.

The political declaration promised that the Government would seek a free trade agreement that was underpinned by provisions that ensured a level playing field—the Prime Minister signed that—and safeguarded workers’ rights, consumer rights and environmental protections. Today’s Statement seems to back-track on both. That is not just bad for the people concerned, be they workers, consumers or those interested in the environment, but it is bad for business, with this new variable and reckless approach to negotiations taking business straight from one set of uncertainties to another. We know what businesses want from our deal with the EU: first, ambitious co-operation on regulation with regard to goods to reduce red tape for exporters; secondly, comprehensive coverage of services to maintain the competitive edge of UK providers—a vital part of our economy and, unfortunately, an element not mentioned in the Statement; and, thirdly meaningful customs facilitation to keep costs and complexities low.

It is no good the Prime Minister’s spinners attacking the CBI, as they did earlier this month, accusing it and others of neglecting their duty to prepare their members for the realities of a Canada-style free trade deal. Briefing from No. 10, referring to the CBI and others, said that they have a responsibility to their members that they are not fulfilling, and individual businesses might consider whether they are getting the best representation from the umbrella groups that they are funding. That sounds to me like Downing Street trying to encourage the CBI to mute its criticism of the Government’s strategy. That is not an open Government willing to listen to the views of others.

Without thriving businesses, we have no chance of levelling up or continuing to grow, so I urge the Minister to engage with representatives of consumers, of industry, of farmers and of the service sector so that real hard economic facts, rather than ideology and wishful thinking, will be the lodestar in the negotiations. Can the Minister confirm to the House that the Governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as of Gibraltar will be fully involved in all stages of the negotiations so that the interests of all parts of the UK are safeguarded?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the Minister to his new position and look forward to a series of robust exchanges in the months to come. As I was coming down to the House, I was interested to learn that there is now a revised version of the Statement. Perhaps it might be of interest to the House to point out what has been revised. The original text stated that

“as a sovereign, self-governing independent nation we will have the freedom to … lower all our taxes”.

The Minister correctly read out the revised version, which is

“to set all our taxes.”

That seems a wise revision by a Government who are about to produce a Budget which intends to increase spending very considerably. If they were to promise in a wonderfully populist way to lower all our taxes at the same time, it would be a little more Trumpian than even Johnsonian.

I would like to tackle the language and assumptions of the Government’s current approach. This is a very harsh, autonomous independence. As has been pointed out, sovereignty—independent sovereign equality—runs all the way through it, as does the notion of the people’s Government, the “servants” of the people. Saying that

“we follow the people’s priorities”

is the not the language of Churchill or Thatcher. It is the language of Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, or even President Erdoğan of Turkey. This is not constitutional parliamentary language. This is not Edmund Burke. The Conservative Party has to recognise that it is slipping into different territory.

In his speech last week, David Frost started and finished by quoting Edmund Burke, but he also rubbished the idea of shared sovereignty. I recall listening to Geoffrey Howe and Margaret Thatcher talking about shared sovereignty and how we benefit in constructing a multilateral international order by sharing our sovereignty through international treaties and agreements, international organisations and international law. Britain has done a great deal in that regard. The language of the Statement suggests that we reject most of that and that we think we are now dealing with a power—the sovereign European Union—which is threatening our sovereignty and independence.

I have not yet heard any Minister say that in dealing with the United States we will expect the United States to treat us as a sovereign equal. I hope the Minister can assure us that we expect the same from the United States because it would not be desirable to establish our independence from the European Union hostile force—as it clearly in many ways is—by reinforcing our dependence in security, intelligence and a range of other ways on the United States. We see it in current extradition procedures and in the presence of American intelligence operatives in this country, who are not fully covered by treaty arrangements and not fully reported to Parliament. That is a degree of dependence which is certainly an evasion of British sovereignty, if we are going to talk about our sovereign independence.

How are we going to establish our political and economic independence by January next year? If we are going to be economically independent, are we going to ensure, for example, that all our key telecommunications equipment is made inside this country? Are we going to ensure that we have an independently owned steel industry, or at least a steel industry of some sort, or is that not part of economic independence? Do we think that supporting offshore financial centres under British sovereignty is part of independence, given that integration into the offshore world which is the ultimate denial of sovereignty in taxation and other terms? If we are not, that is misleading, populist language. It is wonderful to suggest that we stand for the people, but actually, we do not.

Free trade limits sovereignty. Protectionism is what protects sovereignty. North Korea is in many ways one of the most sovereign countries in this world. Once you open yourself to foreign investment and trade, you limit your sovereignty, and that is what we have done. We are one of the most open countries to foreign takeovers and, as a result, we have limited sovereignty and we have to share it with others. If we are talking the language of sovereign equality, we should remember what that great realist Thucydides said: strong states do what they like, small states—and we are smaller than China or the United States—do what they must.

There is no understanding of Britain’s position in the world now we have left the European Union. We have no foreign policy at present. That is not part of this current populist dimension. How do we approach climate change and how do we deal with pandemics? We have to share sovereignty. I hope, when it comes to the climate change conference, the Government will sign up to new international obligations, which will also limit Britain’s sovereignty. Perhaps it is only signing up to shared obligations with the European Union that we object to and we do not, apparently, object quite so much to signing up with China or India.

Can the Minister also assure us that what I understood the Statement to mean on regulatory divergence is that we demand the principle of regulatory divergence but, in practice, we shall be fairly closely aligned? We are standing up for the ideological dimension that we choose but, when it comes to it, we will probably go along with them. Of course, the alternative, if we do not align with European regulations, will be to align more closely with American regulations, rather than, I suspect, to choose our own.

I hope the Minister recognises that the change of tone from the political declaration we signed last October is very worrying for anyone who cares about our position in the world. He will have read the Times editorial the day before yesterday, which said that if we now suggest that we are not bound by agreements that we signed up to last year on Northern Ireland and on the political direction, no one will be prepared to trust us and we will not be able to get a future agreement. When a not particularly left-wing newspaper, such as the Times, says that about the Government’s approach to their negotiations, we should all be very worried indeed.

Brexit: Preparations

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement which, despite what we hear from sources at No. 10, claims,

“the strong desire of this Government to leave the EU with a deal”.

It is now 76 days since Mr Johnson became Prime Minister and 23 days until 31 October, but he has failed to get a deal: a failure that he said, and for which he would share responsibility, would represent “a failure of statecraft”. So, we have no deal, but is that the fault of the Prime Minister and his incompetence? Oh no, it is the fault of those pesky Europeans; it is the fault of the unbending Irish; it is the fault of Mrs Merkel; it is the fault of those pesky parliamentarians; and it is probably the fault of your Lordships’ House. But the truth, as we now know from the ever-helpful Spectator, is that there is no desire for a deal. It is all a ruse.

The Government are spending taxpayers’ money on advertisements to promote the 31 October date and the notion that we will leave on that day even though it would be unlawful without the consent of the House of Commons. The ads and the endless repetition of the date are all to absolve this incompetent Prime Minister of his failure, and it is all about preparing for an election where he can blame everyone but himself for our continued membership. But at what cost? What would be the cost of that much-trailed no deal? The IFS says £150 billion a year for business in administration alone, while the Government themselves are spending £8 billion to soften the blow. Then there are the tariffs to be paid by exporters, consumers and some importers—although not on Argentinian wine or New Zealand honey, which are not very high on the ordinary person’s shopping list. We will see higher food prices for consumers and the ending of pet passports. I am not making this up. It is all in the misnamed document I have in my hand. This is called “readiness”, despite what we hear from Ireland, from farmers, manufacturers, exporters, road hauliers, expats, medics and small businesses—that we are woefully unready. Indeed, it makes Ethelred the Unready seem extraordinarily well prepared.

Tariffs would hit us three weeks on Friday with an immediate impact on availability and prices. UK citizens abroad would lose some of their rights, while traffic congestion near Dover would make Parliament Square look like an open space. Moreover, with no adequacy agreement, any firm without an appropriate contract would lose data flow rights while the European arrest warrant would end. I say again: three weeks on Friday. Small businesses, hit by customs declarations for the first time, will be stymied in their work, and it is clear that the Government, despite this Statement, simply do not want a deal and are playing with people’s livelihoods. As Mr Tusk writes,

“what’s at stake is not winning some stupid … game. At stake is the future of Europe and the UK as well as the security and interests of our people”.

Speaking to the Prime Minister, he says:

“You don’t want a deal … you don’t want an extension”.


That says it all. The Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland agrees with the Tusk statement, which she says,

“reflects the frustration across EU and the enormity of what’s at stake … We remain open to finalize a fair #Brexit deal but need a UK Govt willing to work with EU to get it done”.

We are pleased that the Government have published this document. However, let us be clear: we on this side of the House—I probably speak for the whole House, not just this side—will do everything in our power to ensure that the no-deal nightmare does not come to pass.

I have only two questions for the Minister. First, does he really think that his Government will be thanked for taking the UK out of the European Union in this way? Secondly, does he think that the EU will help us to find a way forward when Leave.EU tweets over a picture of Mrs Merkel today the words:

“We didn’t win two world wars to be pushed around by a kraut”?


Is the Minister as embarrassed by that as I am?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, it is very difficult to know how much of this Statement to believe. It says that the Government still think that there is a chance of no deal. The text from No. 10 from last night—which the Spectator has now published—suggests that people with influence inside No. 10 have clearly entirely given up on the idea of a deal and are moving towards an election, so we have to treat this as the beginning of a series of election statements.

The statement that we will leave with no deal if necessary is a statement that the Government will defy the law. That is also an interesting statement for the Government to make to Parliament at this point. I note that, among other things, last night’s text says:

“To marginalise the Brexit Party, we will have to fight the election on the basis of ‘no more delays, get Brexit done immediately’”.


If that is what the national interest has come down to, we are all in deep trouble. Dominic Cummings appears to text as madly and prolifically as Donald Trump tweets.

There are a number of other fantasies in the text. However, I would like to start by pressing the Minister a little more on the fantasy that he gave us yesterday in suggesting that one could have production with different standards for the domestic and export markets. I am not sure whether the Government have had any discussions with any industrial sectors about having separate production lines. Perhaps they could tell us. We know very well that cross-contamination makes that sort of thing very difficult indeed in the food industry. The pharmaceutical industry depends on global markets, global standards and global research efforts. It will cease production in Britain if we start doing things like that. Non-tariff barriers produced by the British at different standards might also get us into trouble with the World Trade Organization.

If and when we leave the European Union, we will become “an independent trading country” again—as the Statement says—but we will not become an entirely independent economy. We depend very heavily on multinational companies which produce and invest in this country. If they cease doing so, we will all be poorer.

The Statement congratulates the automotive industry on how well prepared it is. What preparations is it making? It is closing plants for periods and reducing plans to build new models in this country. I remember a representative of the automotive sector saying to me in a briefing some weeks ago that it is now impossible to justify new investment in this country. That is the sort of preparation that it is making. This will make us and our children poorer over a longer period.

Another fantasy is that the World Trade Organization will be a major gain for Britain because we will have our own seat; this does not accept the deep crisis within the WTO which the United States has itself created. There is a failure to recognise that between the referendum three years ago and now there has been a downturn in the world economy, a protectionist turn in US policy and a trade conflict between the US and China, which makes the international context in which we manage the British economy much more difficult.

No form of Brexit offers comparable benefits to staying in the EU. That is what, after three years of discussions, the Government have discovered. As a result, the Government are not saying, “Now that we have been through all this, we need to modify our position”. They are saying, “Now that we have been through all this, we need to mitigate the disaster we are committing the country to”. This is a betrayal of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy. She pushed through the European single market as a major exercise in globalisation and deregulation by having common standards in one of the biggest markets in the world. The Government are now retreating to the idea that we will have our own little standards in a much smaller and weaker economy.

There have been all these comments about “vast financial contributions” to the EU budget. As I recall—since we are one of the richer countries and a major contributor—these are said to be £9 billion per year. Well, so far, we have spent £8 billion on the additional costs of leaving, and we have not yet begun to calculate the costs that we will incur from having to replace the shared agencies and facilities to which we have contributed as part of the EU with separate, national facilities. I mentioned yesterday the Joint European Torus in Culham; this is to become a national facility for which, I assume, the British Government will in future pay all the costs rather than a contribution towards shared costs. That is the sort of new cost that we will be developing.

When it comes to Britain in the world, where is British foreign policy? There is no sense of where Britain goes. This is a Vote Leave Government, not a Conservative Government. So much in this Statement seems to be without any foundation whatever. Lastly, it says there will be “damage to democracy” from “dishonouring” the referendum result. After the referendum, our current Prime Minister published an article in the Telegraph saying that there was no question that we had to leave the single market. He has changed his mind. Is it not time the Government changed their mind?

Brexit Readiness and Operation Yellowhammer

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I will thank the Minister for repeating the Statement; but where are the plans for a deal? The Statement has got nothing on them. That is not because they are being kept confidential in order to aid negotiations, as the Minister claimed earlier. It is not even to stop Parliament scrutinising the potential deal. It is because there is nothing to scrutinise.

We need to consider the UK offer before it is consolidated into a deal. This Statement is all about a no-deal departure, despite the Act passed this month to ensure that we do not leave without a deal. So are the Government planning to flout the law again, because they do not appear to have an idea of what deal they and the EU could accept? The Government say that they want to remove the backstop, but to replace it with what? What else would guarantee no hard border within Ireland? The Statement does not explain where these various physical checks will take place. It admits that, with different tariffs, rules and standards across the EU, with a third-country border there simply have to be checks. That is what happens if you are not in the same customs regime. If our immigration rules are different, checks to ensure that people do not fly into Dublin and then arrive unchallenged here imply a hard border, as happens everywhere else between the EU single market and non-EU single market countries.

The Statement says:

“We will allow goods from the Republic of Ireland free circulation into NI”,


but says nothing about EU citizens there coming freely into the UK. Going forward, that would not be in accordance with our immigration policy, which would obviously be different from that of the EU. What plans do the Government have in that regard?

There are 36 days to go. We have not seen the plans for a deal. We have not even seen the complete plans for no deal—a prospect that continues to haunt the car industry, the pharmaceutical industry, transport, exporters, manufacturing and business. And not just business: consumers would pay the price, with WTO tariffs on cars and vans costing the EU and UK industry and consumers almost £6 billion a year. The BMA worries about the healthcare costs of EU citizens. We read that hospitals in Kent are booking hotel beds for staff because they fear that they will be unable to travel on blocked roads after a no-deal exit, and Northern Ireland police are planning to cancel annual leave in those circumstances. But still the Government throw taxpayers’ money at no-deal preparations despite an Act of Parliament which says that that cannot happen unless the Commons agrees it, and we know that the Commons will not agree it.

As the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, who is unfortunately not in his place, wrote after yesterday’s, as he called it, “car crash” for the Tories, the Government,

“may have to reconsider its plans for Britain to leave the EU on October 31”.

The only word of the noble Lord’s that I would challenge is “may”. Surely the Government must abandon this reckless date and start engaging now with all parties to ensure that we put the country’s future first. They must also understand that the Government, having been found not to have been trustworthy over Prorogation, must now earn Parliament’s trust and be clear that they will not undermine the law by failing to do everything possible to obtain an extension to Article 50.

Will the Minister tell the House: what proposals are being put to the EU; when he envisages any negotiated deal will be agreed by the European Parliament; how many clauses are in the requisite Bill to implement the deal that he envisages; when will it be tabled in Parliament; and when we will receive the full, not just the summary, of the Yellowhammer plans?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am very puzzled by a great deal in this Statement. The optimism on negotiations suggests that the European Union has moved and given way to us on a range of significant areas, and it does not suggest that we have moved at all. If that is the way that the negotiations are going, then pigs are flying the channel every day. Perhaps the Minister would like to suggest whether the British Government have moved their position at all as the negotiations move forward or whether we are expecting, as the European Research Group has suggested, that the EU will have to give way when it comes to the final point and we will not have to give way or change our position at all.

On Northern Ireland, the position has always been entirely clear that an open border without any checks or infrastructure between the EU and the UK after we leave would be open to smuggling, illegal border crossings and a whole set of issues which seem to have eluded those who wanted a hard Brexit when much of that was evident years ago. Here we are, with five weeks to go, and there is a lot of material here about last-minute discussions on issues that were evident after the referendum and indeed were entirely evident when the coalition Government consulted on this. I was one of the Ministers in the coalition Government who took part in a major consultation exercise with representatives from business, justice and others, which fed back detailed arrangements for the Government on what was regarded to be in Britain’s best interests, and which No. 10, by and large, ignored.

I am puzzled that discussions are mentioned here only about relations with France. We have borders and some significant trade with Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Can the Minister assure us that conversations with them about border controls have also taken place?

The Minister said that action will be taken,

“if appropriate mitigations are not put in place”,

but surely all appropriate mitigations should now be in place for something happening at the end of October. The “if” suggests that the Government are simply not ready. When I listened to representatives from major business organisations last week, they expressed considerable dissatisfaction with their relations with the Government, and in the Financial Times yesterday a story about business representatives being “bullied” by Ministers, as the paper put it, confirmed the suggestion that Ministers are resisting the calls that they are getting from business for detailed changes in what is going on. Would the Minister like to reassure us that these stories of Ministers bullying business organisations which do not tell them what they want to hear are untrue, or at least are exceptional and not normal?

I am puzzled by the reference to free movement of labour and the negotiations on the right to work in other countries, as well as visa-less travel. I assume that will be mutual, in which case there will be free movement for EU citizens from all other countries to visit and to work in Britain. That, as the Minister will know well, is of active concern to multinational businesses operating in this country. I can remember British Aerospace saying some time ago that it moves 8,000 workers in and out of Britain a week for meetings and to get equipment, or whatever, and that the complications of moving to any sort of detailed control would undermine its entire business model between Britain and its other facilities in Europe. Will that be mutual and has he yet told the noble Lord, Lord Green, and Migration Watch UK that free movement for work within Britain will be continued after we leave?

Lastly, I must object to the last but one paragraph here, which could have come straight from the Bruges Group rather than the Government. I cannot believe that any civil servant who looked at this accepted the reality that we would somehow be a strong voice for freer trade in the World Trade Organization. The Minister knows as well as I do that the World Trade Organization is in crisis and that the United States Administration is doing their best to undermine the WTO. The idea that we are about to enter a world of freer trade outside the EU, when the US and China are moving towards a trade war, is absolutely pie in the sky. The paragraph also refers to the opportunity to deal more effectively with cross-border crime. All the evidence we had in the balance of competences exercise was that there was no better way of dealing with cross-border crime than the arrangements we had within the European Union. That statement is frankly idiotic and ought to be withdrawn. A number of other statements in this paragraph:

“the opportunity to strengthen our democratic institutions … the opportunity to invest more flexibly … the opportunity to overhaul government procurement”,

are equally vacuous, if not wrong. On that basis, I give a very weak welcome to this Statement.

Brexit: Negotiations

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement but I wonder whether the Government actually own a calendar. After 18 months, and just 171 days before we are due to leave, we have more pages on no deal than on the deal, or indeed on the framework for our future relationship. Do the Government really want us to crash out despite the warm words we just heard in the Statement, or dare they not set out their plans given their fear of the Eurosceptics on their own party Benches?

The Government promised that the deal to be put to Parliament will include a “clear blueprint” for our future relationship with the EU. When will we see this blueprint? I had thought we would see a draft tomorrow but I gather it has now been delayed—perhaps because it is so vague that it is more a leap into the unknown than a blueprint for future policy. Or does the Minister think there is a third way—neither Chequers nor no deal—as David Davis set out today in his letter to MPs, albeit one he was not able to negotiate himself during two years as Secretary of State? Or perhaps the Minister thinks, along with Jacob Rees-Mogg, that we should have a “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Canada”—hardly a game for serious negotiators.

Given that the Government have effectively and finally retreated from their claim that a deal would be done by October, could the Minister be a little more specific than “autumn” as to when he anticipates it will be done and when the deal will be brought to this House, as required in legislation? What assurances can he give the House that the Government’s solemn commitment to a legally binding backstop in Northern Ireland “in all circumstances” will be honoured? Have the Government accepted the view of this House that the UK should be in a customs union with the EU to ensure frictionless trade? This is not only important in itself, but the only viable solution to the Irish border.

The Statement includes,

“the commitment that no new regulatory barriers should be created between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK unless the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly agree”,

which leaves the door open. This possibility is, of course, what would lead to a border in the sea despite the assurances just given in the Commons and repeated. Different rules in two areas mean checks between the two. That possibility—mentioning only the Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly—also raises questions about the role this Parliament would have in any such change, and it challenges earlier government undertakings of no diminution of standards or rights, since any regulatory boundaries between Belfast and London sounds like different standards between the two.

The Statement says:

“The UK’s White Paper proposals are the best way of ensuring there is continued frictionless trade in goods after Britain leaves the EU”.


It still sounds like “Chequers or no deal” despite, as we know, Chequers being acceptable to neither this Parliament nor our EU allies. The no-deal option is not acceptable to business, the public, our allies or, indeed, to Parliament, let alone to the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland, where there would have to be an immediate border.

The last time I asked the Minister whether he had been to the port of Dover, he said he had not. Has he now been, and has he discussed a no-deal option at the port? I was in Rotterdam yesterday, where thought, planning and preparation is in hand at its massive port to deal with a no-deal outcome—preparation to safeguard its economy and trade. Has the Minister any shame about how less prepared the UK—the country that filed for divorce—is for such an eventuality? Has he digested, as I have had to, these 77 technical notices, which alert us to green cards being reissued? Many in this House are old enough to remember those—down the other end, less so.

There is also the possibility of new driving licences being needed; the end of free movement of trade, with customs and tariff checks; the adoption of new classifications of goods, with a wonderful example given of how a grand piano would be classified if exported to the EU; the end of “goods on the market” rules; data exchange challenges; drastic changes to civil law enforcement; the end of mutual recognition of testing for safety of consumer goods; and uncertainty over travel to the EU. Are these all issues that the Minister feels it is reasonable to threaten at the end of March? As the CBI states, serious disruption will be caused to business and families. Is the Minister really serious that that is a realistic option for our country, and is it useful for the Government to threaten to refuse to pay the £39 billion divorce settlement if the EU fails to give Britain a precise future trade deal within weeks, when it is the UK that cannot get unity on its own Benches within its own Parliament on a future trade deal?

This House needs to know where the Government stand on the deal they want, and particularly on our future relationship. It needs to know whether they are with Steve Baker, who seems to prioritise a trade deal that leaves us independent over and above a trade deal that is good for the economy, or with Boris Johnson, who says that we should “chuck Chequers” and have a super-Canada FTA, spending money on,

“all the customs procedures … needed to ensure … frictionless trade, and to prepare … for a WTO deal”.

It seems he does not understand that frictionless trade comes from having the same regulations and rules rather than having a barrier of border agents checking for all the disparities in rules and regulations.

Regrettably, we are no clearer from this Statement than from what we have been reading in the press over the summer. Because I am a great optimist, I just hope that beneath everything that is going on there is serious negotiation taking place below the water level so that we can find a deal that is neither Chequers, as that is not acceptable, nor no deal, but a deal that is good for the whole economy across the whole country.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I start by remarking that I went to the Printed Paper Office to ask for a copy of the Written Ministerial Statement and technical notices that have been published today, but they were not available. I find that very regrettable, as we need to be informed about these things, and I hope that the Minister will ensure that on the next occasion the Written Statement is available.

I find this a profoundly worrying and in some ways surreal Statement. It talks about preparing the UK for Brexit, irrespective of the outcome of the negotiations—in other words, if necessary at the end of March to break all our relations with the European Union. Can the Minister assure us that the British Government are really prepared for that? As the noble Baroness has just said, Rotterdam is well in advance of the port of Dover in its preparations. We are beginning to train the extra customs officials that we would like and to reverse the cut in the number of Border Force officers that the Government have pushed through in the last three years, but there is no way that we can do that between now and March.

I find the confusion within the Government deeply worrying. For example, the Home Secretary has said that we will have the same visa regime for European exchanges as we have now for the rest of the world. In the last two weeks, I have been collecting a certain amount of evidence on how far universities are suffering from the refusal of the visa authorities to allow academic and scientific researchers from outside the EEA to attend conferences in Britain. If we start doing that to the EEA next April, we shall blow up half the networks for scientific research that we have in this country. I speak with particular passion because my son is involved in many of them.

There are elements here which one can really only be humorous about. I congratulate the Government on the element of irony in the Statement with the reference to their pragmatism and the suggestion that it is the European Union that is being rigid while the Conservative Party, which is so well represented on those Benches, is being entirely pragmatic.

On the Northern Ireland issue, I recognise that this is the Conservative and Unionist Party, which by its rigidity in dealing with the Irish problem over 100 years ago contributed to the division of Ireland. It seems to me that now its rigidity may well risk losing not only Northern Ireland but also potentially Scotland. I wonder whether the Government have considered taking more seriously Boris Johnson’s proposal to build a bridge across the Irish Sea. It would have a number of advantages. We could maintain the temporary customs arrangement until the bridge was completed and opened, which would certainly take us 20 or 30 years, and if one were to construct the bridge in such a way that there was room for customs arrangements to be conducted on the bridge, it could become a garden bridge in the event that those arrangements were not needed.

To move on, my wife has just been to a conference in Geneva to discuss as a model EU-Swiss relations, on which she has been an expert for some years, and the question of whether the Liechtenstein model should be taken more seriously. As some people will know, it has a customs union with both Switzerland and the European Union. That seems almost as attractive as the Jersey model, which has been talked about by various sources. The Government refer to their “ambition”, but ambition that would perhaps take us as far as being like Liechtenstein or Jersey is really beyond a joke.

On the question of how we get from here to April, I ask the Minister how far the Government will take the other parties into their confidence over the management of the business that is required. We do not know what has happened to the Trade Bill. When are we going to continue with its Committee stage? What other major pieces of legislation do we need to take through between now and March? The Institute for Government has just produced a report on the very large number of statutory instruments that we will need to consider between now and March. Can the Minister assure us that both Houses will be given time to consider these legislative instruments properly and that they will not be bulldozed through in a panic at the last minute?

I should like to move on to the subject of the future relationship. There was no reference to it in this Statement or to any sort of declaration about our future foreign policy and defence relationships. Again, the Government seem to be in great confusion on this. We have a new Foreign Secretary, who compares the European Union to the Soviet Union. Clearly, we would not wish to maintain foreign policy and defence relationships with an area that was naturally so hostile, yet for the last 40 years much of Britain’s foreign policy and security relationships externally have been conducted multilaterally in partnership with the European Union. When will the Government tell us a little more about what they consider to be important and what sort of pattern they intend the future relationship to have?

Perhaps most worrying is the reference in the Statement to a potential gap, in the case of a delay, between the end of the implementation period and the entry into force of the treaty on our future relationship. Do the Government consider that there may well be a hole whereby we have come to the end of the implementation period but have not yet negotiated a treaty on the future relationship and there is somehow a void, with no firm treaty foundation for the relationship between, say, 2021 and 2024 or 2025? If so, that is deeply worrying. I presume that that is the point at which we would go back to WTO terms, or perhaps that is another piece of loose wording in the Statement.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Committee: 10th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, one of the questions asked earlier was: what would happen if the European Parliament refused to give its consent? I have a note here from the European Parliament—it advises me that it is not legal advice and is not binding—which certainly says:

“if Parliament”—

that is, the European Parliament—

“refused to give its consent to a draft agreement negotiated by the European Commission, the Council would not be able to conclude the agreement with the withdrawing state”.

That is quite a serious thing to be reminded of.

Someone said earlier that there have been strong views across the Committee on this issue. As the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said, it would be a grave mistake to put the date in statute. However, I disagree with him that the purpose of the amendment—certainly from our point of view—is to halt or up-end everything that is going on. Its purpose is to help the Government to get a better deal. The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, put it very pragmatically: he said that we may not be ready for this yet. He also said that we might not yet have got through what I call the “Withdrawal (No. 2) Bill”. However, we have not yet had the immigration Bill, the fishing Bill, the agricultural Bill, the customs Bill or the trade Bill—and there may be a VAT Bill as well. We may find ourselves in a position where we are not ready as a Parliament by the date written into the Bill. That is not a sensible way forward.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said that we should not leave until a worthwhile arrangement has been agreed. This is all about giving us time to do that—and that is certainly what we have been looking to do.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I reinforce what the noble Baroness has said. We may well face a legislative logjam in both Houses in the autumn of this year. Given the number of Bills that are waiting to come into this House and the possible complexity of an implementation Bill, one of the problems we may face is a simple lack of parliamentary time. Perhaps the Leader of the House might, at some point in the near future, give a preliminary statement on how she thinks we will manage the number of Bills on which we still have to provide scrutiny.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I move Amendment 150, which also appears in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, Lord Hannay, and Lord Patten, and shall speak more broadly about the objective which, in the mix, these various amendments seek to achieve.

Amendment 150 is perhaps the most modest in the group. It would put into statute the Prime Minister’s promise that the withdrawal agreement would be voted on in both Houses, before a similar—albeit more serious—vote in the European Parliament. Why “more serious”? It is because the European Parliament has to agree the deal or it can go no further. MEPs have a veto, whereas a mere Motion in either or both Houses this side of the water would have no statutory force.

In theory—in law, if not in politics—either or both Houses could say “nay” and the Prime Minister could still say “yea” and sign up. Or the Prime Minister could even, for whatever reason, fail to table a Motion in either or both Houses. We should at the very least write this into law. But the truth is that we must go further than this, along the lines suggested in other amendments, such as that in the name of my noble friend Lord Liddle.

Our amendments cover three specific areas: first, approval by Parliament of the draft withdrawal Bill, prior to the European Parliament vote, plus a procedure for the Commons deciding what to do should our Parliament decline to approve; secondly, approval by Parliament of the final agreement, including the framework for our future relationship and the transition arrangements, plus a procedure for the Commons to decide what to do if Parliament declines approval; and finally, preventing the Government walking away from the talks with no deal without the consent of Parliament and enabling the Commons to decide what should happen if MPs disagree with the Government.

In case anyone thinks that the no-deal scenario has gone away, just last week the Foreign Secretary was still saying that leaving without a deal holds no terrors and that the UK would do very well on World Trade Organisation terms, despite everything we hear from manufacturers and exporters about duties and red tape, the possibility of border posts in Ireland, and of Calais facing 30-mile tailbacks with potential food shortages if we end up with mandatory customs and sanitary checks at the French ferry terminal. Parliament must keep the Government’s feet to the fire and ensure more sensible judgments than Mr Johnson’s guide to negotiations.

It is not just this side of the Committee, nor the various noble Lords who have put their names to the amendments in this group, who want the outcome of the Government’s negotiations to be put to Parliament for endorsement. John Major, who knows a thing or two about negotiating treaties as well as about Parliament, has said that there,

“must be a decisive vote, in which Parliament can accept or reject the final outcome or send the negotiators back to seek improvements, or order a referendum … That is what parliamentary sovereignty means ... No one can truly know what ‘the will of the people’ may then be. So, let parliament decide”.

I might not quite share his view about a referendum, but I do share his view that it is for Parliament, not the Government, to decide on the outcome of the negotiations. That is what the sovereignty of Parliament is all about and it is vital on this issue because of its long-term implications. We need to ensure that the Government, at every stage of the way, remain very aware that it is not just the divided views in the Cabinet that must be satisfied, but Parliament on behalf of the people.

During the Article 50 Bill, this House voted overwhelmingly for a “meaningful vote” for Parliament. We will ensure that this demand is put into this Bill. I hope the Minister will give an undertaking that the Government will accept an amendment on Report to make that demand a reality. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, my name is to this amendment. I think most of us would agree that Clause 9 as it stands is simply not fit for purpose or constitutionally acceptable. It leaves it to Ministers to decide and implement whatever our divided and chaotic Government have by then asked for and managed to negotiate with the rest of the EU. I find it astonishing that the Government have failed to set out their negotiating preferences 18 months after the referendum and 12 months before the proposed exit day.

In six days in Committee we have had a process of discovery about the number of issues on which the Government do not have a coherent view. The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, has argued that the Government are protecting their negotiating position. It seems to me they are rather protecting their nakedness on much of it as they do not have a coherent position. In the speech he just made he said that they do not want to have their negotiating position constrained. The Government have themselves produced a number of red lines that constrain their negotiating position. Parliament must be allowed to constrain their negotiating position in other ways. Every day in Committee and on almost every subject we discover more issues that are important to Britain’s prosperity and security on which the Government remain confused and unclear about what their preferences are.

The Prime Minister’s speech the other week was a major step forward. She moved to recognise that we need to maintain in a number of areas that she specified—but only a few—close relations with the European Union. The Luxembourg Prime Minister’s comment on her speech was entirely appropriate: the United Kingdom now intends to move from a position where it is inside the EU with a number of opt-outs to one in which it is outside the EU with a large number of opt-ins. Parliament would wish to have a view on that. What we heard in the first debate this morning was: how many of these opt-ins do the Government wish to have? They must have a view on that and they ought to share it with Parliament. They need to share it with their European Union partners. It is not a negotiating position on which we wish to maintain flexibility.

Given all of that, it is all the more important for Parliament to have a meaningful and coherent vote on a package—or the absence of one—well before the prescribed exit date is reached. That is what Amendment 150 and the others in this group talk about, in one way or another. The Government seem to be more concerned about negotiations within the Conservative Party than with the long-term national interest of the country. We parliamentarians, in both Houses, therefore have to be the guardians of the national interest, and that requires substantial changes to Clause 9.

Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 14th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, we come to the Third Reading of the charities Bill. I will also speak effectively to Amendment 2, which is clearly related to Amendment 1. Amendment 1 stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Watson, and it deals with an issue which is as yet unresolved—namely, the appropriate way of regulating fundraising by charities from individual donors.

By way of background, although chugging and cold calling have long been issues of frequent complaint, it was the very sad case of the death of Olive Cooke, herself a lifelong donor and a volunteer poppy seller, which brought to light the unacceptable behaviour of a number of the big fundraising charities and the inadequacy of the current scheme of self-regulation. Although it was we who first raised the issue here, since then there has been widespread acceptance by the Government, the charities and even the so-called regulatory bodies—the code-setting institute and the Fundraising Standards Board—as well as by the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which is carrying out its own inquiry, that the self-regulatory system failed. It failed to maintain appropriate standards, it let down donors and let down the wider public—which brings us to today.

When similar, indeed identical, amendments were tabled on Report, following discussion in Committee, the Government accepted the need for change and tabled amendments of their own. However, at that time, they were not fully convinced of our two proposals—first, that membership of the current voluntary membership body, the FRSB, and adherence to the appropriate code should be mandatory; and, secondly, that the Charity Commission’s reserve powers on fundraising should be activated.

However, given that the Government accepted that we had not reached a final position on this and that further amendments might be required, the Government asked Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the NCVO, to chair a group, which includes the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. I believe that Salts Mills in Saltaire was the venue for some of the wonderful photography in the BBC’s “An Inspector Calls”, broadcast last night. The committee also comprises the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, and my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley, and was set up to consider whether further change might be needed and to report back to the Government. Regrettably, we find ourselves in the slightly odd position of having Third Reading this afternoon, just days before that committee is to report. This is, therefore, very much work in progress, and we will be sending the Bill to the other place a bit unfinished.

I know that the Minister is not behind this timetabling. I think, like me, that he would like to have this issue properly debated and decided upon here, because I know that he is genuine in wanting a robust system in place. If I was suspicious—and I never am—I would think that the Government were wanting to seize the initiative themselves, make a good announcement from the platform at the Tory party conference and take the credit. If so, I will cheer them on, given that we are not seeking change in order to get the credit but to make sure that we have the right solution.

However, it is clear that we do not yet know the best way forward, although I think that everyone accepts, including the big charities and the new chair of the Fundraising Standards Board, who appeared before Bernard Jenkin’s committee, that membership of the board must become compulsory and that the board, which should be independent of the charities it regulates, must in some way have more power than naming and shaming, which is open to it now. There is also general agreement that the weak and unsatisfactory fundraisers’ code must be beefed up. Furthermore, it seems obvious that such powers are bound to entail some role for the Charity Commission, either via a portal, whereby the standards board can report misbehaviour to the commission for subsequent investigation and statutory action, or via such a board being commissioned, licensed or authorised by the Charity Commission, such that there is a degree of statutory oversight to ensure independence and the board would have to satisfy the commission that the code and its procedures were robust and fit for purpose, and will work independently of its regulated community.

There is no doubt that the key players accept the thrust of this, although we regret that some of the charities and perhaps the Institute of Fundraising itself have not quite accepted the independence that a new system requires. Their letter to the Sunday Times was outwith any discussion with the Charity Commission or ourselves, which suggests that they want to hold on to a self-regulatory model, which has failed the public.

We are not wedded to any particular model, provided that it is independent and effective in order to enable complaints to be heard, and drives up standards. We are clear that such changes need to happen. We are happy to await the recommendation of the Etherington committee, albeit we wish that the timetable was different. The amendment therefore is to make it clear that the Bill as its stands, and as it will go to the Commons, is not yet adequate. The amendment is to allow the House also to hear from the Government how far their thinking has progressed over the summer. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I should admit that I spent the weekend in Yorkshire, where, to my surprise, my neighbours do not hate people outside Yorkshire and nor do they in fact hate each other. We had a very pleasant weekend. I should also admit that, some months ago, I enjoyed watching the filming of that part of “An Inspector Calls” in our very beautiful village.

We are concerned here with the future of charities. I have found it very constructive to be involved in the thorough Committee and Report stages that we have had on this important Bill. I think we all recognise that as government spending shrinks in the next three or four years, charities will have to play a more important part in looking after a range of good causes and disadvantaged people across our country. That means that the importance we attach to the regulation of charities—the subject of this amendment—is something that requires continuing attention. It also requires active support for philanthropy, and I trust that the Government will pay active attention to encouraging visible philanthropy. I was glad to see the Financial Times highlighting this last week.

Having been involved in the committee to which the noble Baroness referred, which will present its report to the Government shortly, I am slightly more sceptical about standards across the whole universe of charities than I was before. Clearly, there is need for tighter and more visible regulation. A number of charitable trustees have not understood how active and responsible their role should be, and these matters need to be addressed.

There is a continuing role for this House in providing oversight to the charitable sector. Perhaps we should consider, in future years, whether a sessional committee of this House might look at some aspects of the charitable sector. As we saw in Committee and on Report, there is some very valuable expertise in this House.

I think that all of us here accept that charities are not comparable to commercial enterprises, as I and others have heard it suggested on one or two occasions. Charities have a privileged status both in legal and taxation terms. The standards of behaviour that we rightly expect of them reflect that privileged status. These high standards should apply to the whole diverse field of charities: to the development charities, as well as to private schools; to libertarian think tanks, as well as to medical charities. We are entitled to expect that their trustees enforce that.

As a backstop, we need to consider what level of regulation is enforced and implemented and how that regulation is organised. We will indeed be reporting on that. I have some sympathy with the noble Baroness when she says that the role of the Charity Commission also needs to be re-examined as a backstop to whatever formal regulation the sector itself provides.

Having said that, I trust that when our report is presented there will be an opportunity to debate it, and certainly, when the Bill comes back from the Commons, there will be another opportunity to make sure that we have moved matters forward. I merely emphasise again that the charity sector is extremely important to our society and to aspects of our economy. It deserves, therefore, to be fully regulated and as transparent as possible.

Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and I both have amendments down for Monday’s Committee sitting which relate to the issue of public benefit and public schools, and specifically the provision of their facilities for use by others. We all know that this is a delicate and sometimes politically controversial issue. What I want to say on Monday—although I realise with horror that I am supposed to be speaking in a debate on Gaza at the same time—is that now that private schools in Britain with charitable status have some wonderful sports, music and drama facilities, the question of how far they make them available to their communities is one that we cannot entirely ignore.

It happens that a charity which I chair has benefited from very good partnerships with a small number of public schools which do this precisely because it demonstrates that there is a public benefit, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, will be saying much the same thing. We will return to this issue on Monday, but one has to be careful not to go on an all-out attack on schools with charitable status. Nevertheless one would wish to insist that public benefit does mean what it says in this and other areas. As I say, we will return to these matters on Monday.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I want to add little to what my noble friend Lord Lea has said, but it is a question that needs a serious answer. It does not take much imagination to see how such investment could be used by certain facilities to further enhance the advantages they already have, and therefore a serious response is needed. We look forward to hearing it.

Ministerial Visits: Travel Costs

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there are proprieties and the propriety and ethics team within the Cabinet Office monitors them. Labour Members of this House may be interested to know that there have been a number of complaints by Liberal Democrat MPs about Conservative Ministers visiting their constituencies without prior notice, and at least one from a Conservative MP about a Liberal Democrat Minister visiting her constituency. I am glad to see that some Conservatives are nervous about things like that.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to talk about proprieties because we understand that the Lib Dem part of the coalition is to give its own separate response to the Budget—presumably, in effect, its manifesto. Can the Minister confirm to the House that no Civil Service time, resources or modelling have been employed to produce this party-political statement? Can he clarify whether the effect of this separate statement means that the Lib Dems do or do not support today’s Budget?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Baroness will be well aware that, in the run-up to an election, officials are prepared to give advice, including to members of opposition parties and the Opposition Front Bench, on preparation. This is not, in any sense, out of the ordinary.

Lobbyists: Register

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 12th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made on the introduction of a statutory register of lobbyists.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, Alison White was appointed as the independent Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists last September. She has consulted, issued guidance and made good progress on practical arrangements for the register. On 26 February, the Government laid the Registration of Consultant Lobbyists Regulations 2015, which completes the statutory framework for the register. The Government are therefore on course to commence the provisions before the general election.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I tabled a Written Question asking what meetings the Treasury had had with the drinks industry prior to the forthcoming Budget. I was given no Answer but told to look on the website. The latest meeting recorded there was in March last year. We now hear from the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists that she expects to have only between 50 and 75 people on her register—because, of course, only consultant lobbyists, not in-house lobbyists, are covered—and that even then they will not be on the register by the election because the process is only starting. Does the Minister share my judgment that the register will be a complete failure because it does not include in-house lobbyists and does not provide transparency and will therefore need a radical overhaul?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I do not share that view. From the last four years of dealing with how one implements greater transparency in lobbying, I have learnt that it is impossible to satisfy everyone—indeed, it is very difficult to satisfy anyone. The various associations of professional consultants, lobbyists and others have all in some ways campaigned against it. People have said that MPs and Peers should all be on the register; last week we were told that the Australian system is infinitely inferior to the current British system; et cetera. We are taking a step forward. We have resisted the idea that everyone who lobbies should be on the register, because that would produce a vast register. We are starting by trying to make consultant lobbyists much more transparent about on whose behalf they are lobbying. That is the purpose of the measure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

But it would not be published for a year.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It would be published in a good deal less than a year.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, on Report I committed to giving further consideration to whether the Professional Standards Authority, the PSA, and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the HFEA, should be within the scope of the growth duty—that is, whether they should be required, in the exercise of their regulatory functions, to have regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth.

Since Report, officials from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills have met with the Department of Health and the PSA to explore whether the functions carried out by the PSA meet the definition of “regulatory function” at Clause 106 of the Deregulation Bill. Officials have also considered the nature of the PSA’s regulatory role as oversight body for the nine statutory regulators of health and social care professionals.

Following those discussions, the Government have concluded that, while the PSA exercises functions that fall within the definition of “regulatory function” as per the Deregulation Bill, its specific role means that the PSA’s regulatory functions are far removed from individual businesses. The PSA would have limited economic impact on business even if it were to apply the growth duty. In the course of taking this Bill through the House and on a number of other occasions, I have learnt to respect the immense diversity of regulatory functions and regulatory bodies, and that is one of the things that the very helpful and positive speech of the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, took us a little further into. Anything that attempts to apply an overview to the vast mass of regulatory bodies is likely to be wrong. The Government therefore do not currently propose to bring the PSA in scope of the duty but will review this decision in the future should the PSA’s regulatory role change.

Moving on to the HFEA, I start by saying that the Government understand that there are aspects of the HFEA’s role that are ethically sensitive and unique, as we have recently debated in this House. Therefore, perhaps I may offer a number of preliminary reassurances and commitments to noble Lords, which I hope will reassure the Opposition Front Bench. I should say that we had an extremely positive and constructive discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and others earlier in the week.

The growth duty is not a duty that would require the HFEA to drive the growth of one of the industries that it regulates—for example, the fertility sector—and it is not a duty to achieve or pursue economic growth at the expense of patient protections, such as those involved in the sensitive sectors regulated by the HFEA, as the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, has already set out.

I take this opportunity to repeat once again that the growth duty will not impede the independence of regulators and will give them discretion in how to apply the duty. It is certainly not the Government’s intention that the growth duty should weaken the HFEA’s regulatory role. I also assure noble Lords—especially the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, who is not here at the moment but has had helpful meetings with a number of Ministers to discuss this policy—that the duty is about reducing, for example, the regulatory burden of bureaucracy on business. It is not a duty that loosens or undermines important duties of protection. Statutory duties concerning the protection of vulnerable women and men in seeking help in this sector remain of fundamental importance.

The duty requires regulators to have a regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth among those they regulate when they carry out regulatory processes and make regulatory decisions—for example, writing guidance, planning or changing intervention strategies, designing or revising processes, and carrying out inspections of those who are regulated.

The Government commit to continuing to work with regulators, including the HFEA, to ensure that the statutory guidance is fit for purpose, robust and principles-based to assist them in avoiding the risks of challenge. We are all aware of the problem of judicial review and that the HFEA has already been subject to a number of challenges via judicial review. We will therefore make particular efforts to ensure that the guidance is as clear as possible. It will be clear that regulators can have regard to the growth duty, balance it against their other statutory duties and decide not to afford any weight to growth where it is not appropriate or relevant.

I can also give noble Lords the commitment to publish a revised version of the guidance on GOV.UK before or at the time the guidance is laid in draft before Parliament. I should point out that the Government commit also to lay the draft guidance and the draft order, listing the functions to which the duty will apply, before Parliament at the same time for informed debate. Both these, as noble Lords are aware, will be subject to the affirmative resolution in both Houses. There will be continuing engagement with stakeholders to help regulators consider how the duty can be applied, which we hope will help regulators to decide what weight, if any, they should apportion to the growth duty when considering it alongside their protection duties.

Since the Report stage debate, BIS officials have met with the HFEA and the Department of Health to discuss how the growth duty might apply to their specific regulatory role. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Howe for his commitment that the two departments should continue working together and with the HFEA to address any concerns on specific issues as we move forward. I know that some strong concerns were raised on Report about the HFEA’s role in regulating some of the extremely high fees being charged by some fertility clinics. The noble Lord, Lord Winston, talked of a lady, approaching her forties, who went to a clinic in London and was quoted the extremely large sum of £11,000 for three months of fertility treatment.

Having explored the powers that the HFEA has as a non-economic regulator, we found that it has no power to regulate the prices charged in IVF clinics. I understand that the HFEA does want to do more. It has recently decided to provide patients with a feedback mechanism on its website where patients can say whether the costs they actually paid were as originally advertised. I know from discussions with the HFEA that it recognises that costs are a key concern for many patients. However, at present it can only act within its powers. I want to assure the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Winston, and noble Lords here today, that the Government will work with the Department of Health to explore further the matters raised.

As I said, officials from BIS and the Department of Health have met with the HFEA to consider its statutory regulatory functions which are taken from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Acts 1990 and 2008, and other legislation. It is the Government’s view that the HFEA could have regard to growth when exercising these regulatory functions in a way that would not weaken its regulatory role. It could apply to the HFEA in its general course of operation, such as licensing, inspections or the information that centres are required to provide for them. For example, in the HFEA’s overall licensing and inspection of clinics, if it decided to implement a new licensing process, the growth duty requires a consideration of the importance of exercising such regulatory functions in a way which ensures that regulatory action is taken only when it is needed and that any action taken is proportionate. This would encourage the HFEA to consider the impact that this change may have on those it regulates.

The HFEA, as an expert in its respective and expanding field, will decide what weight, if any, to afford growth as part of its decision-making process in each case. In some circumstances it may be appropriate that the HFEA, in making a particular decision, has regard to growth, but makes a reasonable decision not to give it any weight in its decision-making. For example, while exercising its licensing and inspection functions the HFEA may find that a clinic’s ability to provide a safe service was in question. The clinic may have breached the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, its licence conditions or the HFEA’s code of practice to the extent that it is at risk of the suspension of its licence or even having its licence revoked. In this circumstance, where patient safety is clearly an issue, the HFEA may, in considering the facts before it and weighing up its various statutory duties, make a reasonable decision not to apportion any weight to growth in considering whether to continue to license or close the clinic.

It may also be helpful to draw on an example from the pharmaceutical sector to further illustrate the type of mischief that the growth duty seeks to resolve. A pharmaceutical business used an alcohol spray product in bottles which had certification to say it was safe to use for three months. However, the inspector told the business that once opened, it must throw out bottles after 24 hours. Despite the business pointing out the certificate and the three-month agreed safe lifespan, the inspector refused to read the material and imposed the requirement that the company throw out the spray every 24 hours. This clearly placed an unnecessary financial burden on the business, due to the cost of the product. It could no longer afford to use the product or manufacture a particular pharmaceutical product. The growth duty would have required the inspector to have regard to the economic impact of its decision on the business. It would also have ensured that regulatory action was taken only when needed and that the action taken was proportionate. In neither of those cases would the issue of safety have been jeopardised in any way.

The Government are committed to creating a positive business environment right across the economy and applying a growth duty to regulators across a broad range of sectors that will contribute to this. It is, thus, the Government’s view that the HFEA should continue to be included within the scope of the growth duty. I hope that I have clarified the scope and intent of the duty and provided the necessary reassurances on this front.

Finally, in addition to excluding the PSA and the HFEA from the scope of the growth duty, the amendment seeks to give the Secretary of State the power to list by order,

“any persons exercising a regulatory function with respect to health and care service”,

and in that order to exclude them from the scope of the growth duty.

The Department of Health feels that excluding health regulators from the growth duty would be at odds with other departments and inconsistent with the Government’s intent. I hope that I have provided the assurances that the Opposition and others were looking for in this complex area, and I hope that that will enable the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I thank the Minister for a very thoughtful response, and for all the work and meetings that have clearly taken place. I particularly welcome the fact, if I have his words right, that the Government do not propose to bring the PSA into scope.

Turning to the HFEA, funnily enough I agree with virtually everything that the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, says, except that I do not agree that it is against the amendment in front of us. I think that he is arguing for better regulation and for not putting unnecessary burdens on those being regulated, be they hospitals or laboratories. All the talk about better regulation, not having undue costs and not throwing away bottles after 24 hours is, to me, better regulation and not the same as the growth duty. I think that we are not very far away from that.

I welcome very much the recognition by the Minister that the HFEA is not an economic regulator, his words that it will not be required to drive or pursue economic growth, his willingness to continue this discussion and to use new guidance to try to help avoid the risk of challenge, and his words that the HFEA will decide for itself not to afford that duty in certain cases. We are probably fairly close on this, and the discussions and the new guidance will be helpful. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Bill do now pass.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I use this opportunity for a brief moment to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Stevenson, who, from our side, has guided and marshalled our many Front Bench colleagues, including my noble friends Lady Thornton, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord McKenzie, through what has been called a “Christmas tree Bill”. Of course, we do not think it is quite such a Bill because it is not full of goodies, but I thank my noble friend Lord Stevenson and, I have to say, our brilliant legislative adviser, Muna Abbas; this was her first such Bill. We think that it has ended up a little better than it arrived.

I thank the Minister and his sometimes expanding, sometimes reducing ministerial team. I also thank the other members of the Bill team who have helped negotiate, redraft, debate and discuss throughout the process, including the setting up of a large number of bilateral meetings, some of which have dealt with some very complex issues. They now deserve a very good holiday, so I suggest that before too long we have a general election so that they may have one.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I thank my noble friend Lord Wallace for seeing us through this Bill. When we started, we thought that this would be a complete nightmare, but his skill, perseverance and patience have helped that not to be so. I thank also the opposition Benches for their part in seeing this legislation through, and our colleagues in our own office, Giles Derrington and Elizabeth Plummer, who supported us through the business of this Bill.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

The answer is yes. If the MP’s own colleagues—I do not want to use the word “peers”, as it is a bit confusing—believe that the issue is serious enough for a suspension of at least 10 days, they would do so, although I find it hard to believe that they would so for a mistake. That is what this Bill is all about. The trigger may be 10 days or my noble friend may be right and perhaps it should be 12 days or nine days—I do not know exactly because it is a judgment call—but this Bill is about saying that, where their fellow Members of Parliament consider that the issue is serious enough, that is the trigger for a recall.

It is also important that the figure is not so low that we undermine in any way either the sort of normal protest that could happen in the House of Commons or the mistake—although I doubt that it would apply for a mistake—or misdemeanour that so offends other MPs that they take the MP to the Standards Committee. The essence of the Bill is that a recall will be triggered when the suspension is for a certain length of time.

There is another, separate point. Whether the threshold is five, 10, 15 or indeed 40 days, there will always be the difficulty—as happens when magistrates hear cases—where the knowledge that the decision can trigger a by-election will add an extra dimension to the judgments that are taken. That applies both to magistrates in a court case, if it is about whether there should be a sentence of imprisonment rather than a fine, and to those dealing with these situations. That is tough. Decision-making is tough. I recognise that, but I do not think that the number of days minimises that effect.

We will deal later with a very helpful amendment from my noble friend about the Standards Committee, which I hope will address some of the challenges that will be before members of the Standards Committee. On this amendment, the decision has been taken by the other place and I think it is right. I hope that my noble friend will withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the commitment and care with which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has pursued this issue. The Government have of course therefore actively considered it over some period of time.

I have to say that I do not recognise what the noble Lord described as the widespread anger in the Commons over all this. I have just been checking with my noble friend Lord Gardiner and thinking that through. During the period when the Bill has been going through its Lords stages, I have met members of my own party in the Commons and my noble friend Lord Gardiner has met members of his own party there. We have met people from the Labour Party, our opposite numbers and the Bill managers within the Commons on a number of occasions. It is remarkable to me that what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has heard has not managed to reach our ears. It has been relatively public knowledge that we were indeed managing the Bill through this House.

The suggestion that the House of Commons voted on a substantial change to the Bill without understanding what it was doing seems to be stretching matters a little. It may be that this was a catastrophic mistake of the Labour Party in the Commons, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said. I recognise the strength of feeling among a number of Labour Peers within this House that it was a catastrophic mistake by their own party. All I can say is that this has not reached the Government’s ears. We have not had protests, or suggestions that we need to save the Commons from itself in the way proposed.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, talked about eroding the sovereignty of Parliament and how we have again to protect that dimension. However, all those of us who have been out campaigning in recent weeks know that what those of us who are attached to the traditions of the British constitution think of as the sovereignty of Parliament is thought by too many of those on whose doors we knock as the Westminster bubble. We have great difficulty in persuading them that it is worth voting at all. They think that all politicians are in here for themselves. This is part of why the recall Bill has gone through a series of consultations over the last three years and is now going, not hastily, through both Houses.

We have considered at length this question of the proper period of suspension which should trigger recall in this House and in other discussions outside the House. We do not see a strong case for reversing the decision which the House of Commons took on an amendment from the Labour Opposition and, having considered it, we are therefore not willing to accept the noble Lord’s amendment.

The decision of the other place was clearly based on the precedent of past suspensions for misconduct recommended by the Standards Committee. The Standards Committee has in the past recommended 10-day suspensions for receiving payment to ask questions in the House, misuse of access to the House and breaching the Code of Conduct—cases which should undoubtedly be considered as serious wrongdoing. We are not considering cases of innocence or unproven allegation.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate—and not simply because it is an easier one to respond to. As I said when we discussed this subject in Committee, or possibly on Report, we strongly support having more lay members on the Standards Committee. We believe that it is crucial for that body to have the confidence of the public, so opening up its work to people who are not MPs is an excellent step towards gaining that confidence. In other areas of life—in the medical profession, the legal profession and other professions—outside independent members are now the norm in any disciplinary process. That gives confidence to patients and clients that someone other than the cohort of those whose behaviour is being judged is involved in the decisions. Indeed, I think I am right in saying that in most of those other professions there is now a lay chair of the relevant disciplinary body.

As my honourable friend on the Front Bench in the other place said, we want to see a,

“radical overhaul of the Committee. That would include the removal of the Government’s majority and an increase in the role and authority of its lay members. We propose that at least half the Committee should be lay members and that the Chair of the Committee should not be a Member of Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/10/14; col. 69.]

It is encouraging that today there has been backing from all sides of the House on the need to move forward in this respect. The Government may say that the Bill is not the appropriate place to make such a change—although I note the astute amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and others—but whether that is the case or not, we are sending an important message that all the political parties are determined to see the Standards Committee work effectively, fairly and transparently, and in a way that gives voters confidence in its work.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for his references back to the historical developments. My brief says that there is a record of lay members serving on a Commons committee as far back as 1836, and that it was in 1876 that Erskine May laid down that while it was perfectly acceptable for lay members to serve on Commons committees it was not acceptable, within the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, for them to vote on such committees. I understand that that is the position that we still hold. There have been lay members of Commons committees in the past and there are now three on the Standards Committee, whose recent report suggests that the number should increase to seven.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, have taken us back to Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and a range of other things. I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that I am currently reading Professor David Carpenter’s very helpful, and massive, book on Magna Carta, and I am becoming a little more doubtful about the beauty of Magna Carta, fully put, than I was. Its treatment of women and Jews, for example, is not exactly in line with modern habits—just as, if one reads the Bill of Rights carefully, as I have also done, one learns that its assumptions about Roman Catholics are not ones that would meet with automatic approval in the 21st century.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, it is always fun to watch the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, having a go at his own side and at one of the Government Ministers. Apart from that, I think it has been an interesting and useful debate, particularly on Amendment 2 about widening the kind of behaviour which could trigger a by-election. As an old campaigner on drinking and driving, this warmed the cockles of my heart and I thought it would have a great impact on the leisure behaviour of MPs, but maybe that is looking at it slightly too narrowly.

I really do not think that having just any criminal conviction is what our manifestos, the coalition agreement, the Government or indeed the House of Commons intended when they brought forward the recall Bill. Nor do I think it is what the public expected—and I was a member of the public rather than in your Lordships’ House when the misdemeanours that we have talked about happened—of the promise that where MPs were found guilty of deliberately falsifying their expenses claims or were sentenced to imprisonment, they should no longer automatically return to work after their sentence. Rather, I think recall was seen as a chance for the MP to explain himself or herself, to apologise or to ask for forbearance, and for the chance for voters to decide whether, despite the sentence, the MP was fit to continue to represent them in Parliament. Lowering the bar so that it covers any conviction risks a rush of petitions, perhaps over quite minor issues, which would take MPs away from their duties in the House for months. It would involve large sums of money, and importantly it would devalue the serious nature of a recall petition.

Incidentally, given that it is JPs—magistrates—who deal with 90% of crime, it is likely to be them rather than judges who will be dealing with these sorts of offences. As my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport reminds us, the recall thus triggered could easily become a vote of confidence in the Government or a referendum on fracking rather than actually seeking the electorate’s opinion of their MP’s behaviour, which was the purpose of this Bill and the reason that we support it. There has to be a sensible balance as to what can constitute a trigger. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester suggests, being sentenced to prison, whether suspended or not, seems to be the right place to draw that line.

Amendment 3 would remove any role for Parliament via its Standards Committee and a subsequent vote in the Commons to trigger a recall petition. This seems very hard to support. It does two things. First, it would absolve MPs in the Commons from a role in self-regulation and from any responsibility for policing the behaviour of their own colleagues. That is something which I do not think is right either in principle or in practice. Secondly, it would leave only criminal convictions and not gross unparliamentary behaviour such as breaches of the Code of Conduct or a failure to undertake democratic duties as the trigger for potential recall. The other place may need to make changes to its Standards Committee in order to build public trust, but that is probably not a matter for the Recall of MPs Bill. I know that my Labour colleagues in the other place support a radical overhaul of the committee, in particular to remove the government majority and to increase the role and authority of its lay members. Indeed, Labour has proposed considering whether with at least half the members being lay, there should also be a chair who is no longer an MP.

However, improving the way this trigger would act is different from removing the trigger. It was clearly the will of the Commons to include this trigger, which gives the Commons a role in the Bill, and we should respect that decision for its willingness to accept some collective responsibility for the behaviour of its Members. Furthermore, we should remember that without the second trigger, a number of non-criminal offences could occur without MPs having to face a possible recall, such as cash for questions or the failure to declare serious conflicts of interest. It would be a very radical suggestion to delete an entire trigger from the clause at this stage in the Bill when it was overwhelmingly agreed at the other end, and it would possibly go beyond our normal role of scrutinising legislation. However, that is not my reason for opposing it. I do so because it must surely be right that Members of the Commons should take some responsibility for their own behaviour and that of their colleagues and they should not wash their hands of their role in this.

Amendment 6 has been tabled by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, and we happily support it. We have encouraged the inclusion of lay members on the committee. Indeed, as I have said, we floated the idea of one of them being the chair and of lay members being the majority. While the Government may not feel that this is a matter for the Bill, we hope they will join us in supporting the principle and commit themselves to further moves in the direction I have outlined.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this debate has ranged very widely. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for raising the Bill of Rights. I was thinking about it last week when looking at Magna Carta and how these various things pull together. The British constitution has parliamentary privilege as one of its core elements, and we recognise that in this Bill we are walking a delicate line between the maintenance of parliamentary privilege and the inclusion of a greater degree of popular sovereignty alongside parliamentary sovereignty. It is a delicate balance that we all wish to maintain.

Perhaps I may say what a pleasure it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, again. He told me in the corridor that he had been lying in his hospital bed at two o’clock in the morning watching Lords debates on his iPad. What he did not tell me was whether they kept him awake or provided him with a cure for insomnia.

As I understand the Standards Committee report, which I have not had a chance to read in full yet, it takes us rather closer towards the model which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, would like than we have been before. It is a progression to move from a lay minority to an equal proportion of lay members and MPs, which is probably what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, would regard as moving in the right direction. It is a progression but not a reversal; it is not a radical overhaul of the entire Bill.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I really do not think it is for me to tell the House of Commons how best to call its votes. What I do say is that if we are to trust the House of Commons then hearing that it agreed this by 203 votes to 124 on a one-line Whip is a fairly ringing endorsement of its decision. However, I am concerned about the discussion of this amendment rather than the wording of it. Some of the discussion has been more about the pressure on the decision-makers involved—be that the Standards Committee as it is or as it is going to be—than whether the number of days is correct and whether the electorate should be able to petition following the wrongdoing of a Member of the House of Commons. I do not think pressure on decision-makers ought to be higher in our minds than the rights of electors. I say this as someone who has been a magistrate, has had to send people to prison and has sat as a lay adjudicator on all sorts of disputes in other professions when they have lay members in, including removing people completely from their profession. I have been in those sorts of positions. Noble Lords, particularly those on the Cross Benches who have been judges, have taken even bigger decisions than I have. People have backbones and I do not believe that the worry of the pressures on these good people should be uppermost, over and above the rights of the electors to take an opinion on their MP where they have obviously done something serious enough to be suspended by their colleagues in the other place.

The Bill as it stands strikes the right balance on this issue. It strengthens the right of constituents to consider recall without jeopardising parliamentary democracy. I think the other place got it right and we should support it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, triggering the opening of a recall after a 10-day suspension rather than 20 or 21 days certainly means there is the potential for petitions to open in a wider range of circumstances. My calculation, which I hope I got correct, of what would have happened over the past 15 years during all the rumbling expenses scandal is that on a 10-day suspension trigger some seven Members of the House of Commons in 15 years would have come under it and on a 20-day suspension only two.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, as my noble friends have spelt out, the Bill raises the interesting question not just of the interplay between this process and that of the election court but also of what I think is the Government's slap-dash drafting of the Bill, with their cut-and-paste from other legislation, without actually thinking through the best way of dealing with allegations of wrongdoing. As I have said, and as the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, has echoed, we do not want ever to see this Bill used. We hope that MPs will never find themselves in the position of triggering a recall petition. However, if it happens, we need to be sure that the most appropriate mechanisms and penalties are available to suit the particular misconduct. We may have it in this Bill, but we may not; it may not be right. Indeed, on the reverse side, it might be much better for other misconduct to trigger a recall petition rather than straight expulsion, as my noble friend Lord Dubs suggested. The proposal of a report to consider this in the round and come forward with proposals on that basis seems eminently sensible. I hope that the Government will support this amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, behind this issue are some large questions about the role of election courts and the seriousness of electoral offences such as electoral fraud. The role of election courts is to assess whether electoral fraud has taken place and to determine whether it has had a material impact on the outcome of an election. I know that what happened to Phil Woolas preoccupies a number of noble Lords on the Labour Benches. I went back and looked at that sad history and I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, suggested in Committee that he be acquitted on appeal. He was indeed acquitted of one of the three offences but the other two were affirmed.

Electoral fraud is a serious business. I can think of other potential occasions where we could find ourselves with contested results of elections. We had a contested issue in east London in local elections where the severity of what is pled or what might perhaps have happened is not—as I think is being suggested here—something less serious than other potential misconduct. I understand the noble Lord’s intentions in tabling his amendment but I am not persuaded that, after two years, a particular fact will have come to light which would necessarily cause the Government of the day to reappraise the role of election courts, which is what this is really about.

I am also concerned that granting election courts the discretion to initiate a recall petition risks sending a confused message about the seriousness of electoral fraud as such. At present, there is a public expectation that those who commit offences that breach electoral law should face the appropriate penalty and that the appropriate penalty is set. Those offences are particularly relevant to the MP’s democratic mandate, and they are intended to affect the MP’s democratic mandate because, thankfully in this country, we have a very low level of electoral misconduct during campaigns and of electoral fraud; but we are conscious that the potential is always there. In the event that fraud has been committed by a sitting MP, his or her constituents might be confused if they were asked to sign a recall petition, knowing that an election court had already identified proven wrongdoing on the MP’s part.

The Government do not consider that this Bill should be a vehicle for the election court’s functions to be adapted, or for the consequences of established electoral offences to be altered; that is a different and other serious set of issues. There is also a risk that an MP, having been subjected to a recall petition by the election court, could then be prosecuted and sentenced in the criminal courts for an offence of which the election court had found him or her guilty. If the MP had held on to his or her seat following the first recall petition and were then sentenced to a period of imprisonment of 12 months or less, this could trigger another recall petition under the first recall condition.

There are some complicated issues here, but I end where I started. Election fraud or an election offence during a campaign that materially affects the outcome of that election are serious offences. That is the role of election courts. However, the Government are not persuaded that we should now downgrade the severity of that offence.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I understand that. It is a one-horse race, of course. The other does not have a horse at all, so to speak. The Government are not prepared to designate a single lead campaigner on either side. We are not persuaded that an overall limit is practical or measurable, but that is one of the things we will come to in Amendment 24. There are several issues in this, as I well understand, including the question of foreign non-permissible donations, which we will come to in Amendment 24.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, it is interesting that it was the Minister himself who mentioned the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. Not everyone was here for that, but once charities go into a single campaign they have to take responsibility for the expenditure of others; they have to nominate a lead, and the expenditure of a small charity goes against the upper limit on what a big charity can spend. The Government were very happy to do that but somehow this is different.

This is really a nonsense. It is not about the MP having lots of people on their side. If it was a Labour person who had been kept out of the House for 10 days, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems, UKIP and the Greens would all be voting for a by-election. Each could spend £10,000 and the Minister is clearly content with that.

I am even more unhappy about the Minister’s complete acceptance that foreign money up to £500 can come in, not controlled in the way that we control donations —very sensibly and rightly—to the political process from those who have no skin in the game as far as our elections are concerned. We will have non-doms, tax evaders, anyone—all giving up to £500, and the Government are quite content with that. It is for that reason that I ask the Government to go through the Lobbies and vote for the continuation of this Bill, which will allow foreign money up to £500 to be given. I beg to test the opinion of the House so that people outside can see that that is what the Government are content with.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 5th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendments 34 to 40 are tabled to help the Government, the Legal Services Board and the CLC out of a tiny hole, which is why I anticipate that they will shortly be accepted in principle.

Under the Legal Services Act 2007, the Council for Licensed Conveyancers is an approved regulator for reserved activities, probate and administration of oaths. It was designated a licensing authority for alternative business structures in 2011. However, it has recently been realised that the Administration of Justice Act 1985, which created the CLC and set out its powers, restricts the CLC from achieving its full regulatory ambitions and those of the 2007 Act. In particular, the CLC can regulate only licensed conveyancers. Therefore, potential probate lawyers would first have to qualify as conveyancers for the CLC to be able to regulate them. We know that that was never the intention, so the Ministry of Justice prepared the necessary draft secondary legislation to amend the CLC framework under the Legal Services Act. However, the MoJ then realised that the Legal Services Act did not provide the power to amend the 1985 Act. The change therefore needed primary legislation, hence these amendments.

The first piece of tidying-up would enable the CLC to regulate conveyancing bodies for all reserved legal activities for which it is designated, including enabling it to continue to regulate probate services, which it currently does under the transitional period in the Legal Services Act. The second would allow the CLC to regulate individuals and entities for the provision of legal services without them first having to be regulated for conveyancing. At the moment, the only reserved legal activity other than conveyancing is probate. It would seem a nonsense for someone who wants to do probate first to have to qualify as a licensed conveyancer if they had no intention of ever doing that work.

There are two further changes to simplify the appeals process against determinations by the CLC’s discipline and appeals committee. The first would allow appeals to the First-tier Tribunal instead of the High Court; the second would allow the CLC to appeal against its discipline and appeals committee’s determinations. In these amendments there is also a measure to allow the CLC automatically to suspend—not to revoke—the licences of practitioners, to protect clients and the public while the outcome of investigations and disciplinary action is awaited.

Finally, on the governing council of the CLC, there is presently a requirement that the number of lay members must exceed professional members by exactly one. To avoid any problems that may arise—for example, by the loss of one of the professional members for any reason—it would seem sensible for the lay majority to be expressed as “at least one”, so that the council’s work could continue with a larger lay majority should one of the professional members be unavailable.

The CLC undertook public consultation on all these changes last year. No objections to this were raised by anyone. I know that the changes have the support of the Legal Services Board and the Ministry of Justice. However, they cannot be achieved via Section 69 of the 2007 Act, hence these amendments, which I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness. On this Bill, she wins first prize for length, technical detail and complexity of amendments, with a gold star for achieving this on two groups of amendments on entirely differently topics. I wondered, as I read through both of them and did my best to understand their complexity and technicality, whether the two groups were pushing in different directions: resisting a loosening of regulations on insolvency practitioners, but promoting a loosening of regulations on conveyancers.

The Government welcome the principles behind the amendment and are in full agreement with the noble Baroness that these restrictions should be removed. The Government also agree that the other measures are sensible and proportionate. However, we have some reservations about the exact terms of the amendment and would very much like to take it away and tweak it in various ways, returning with a government amendment at Third Reading. I therefore commit to coming forward with our own amendments at Third Reading to achieve the aims of the noble Baroness’s amendments. I hope that, with that assurance, she will feel able to withdraw her amendment at this stage.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, it is perhaps fair to say that four years ago this amendment would have been tabled by the Government, as David Cameron was at that point in favour of minimum unit pricing, not necessarily at 50p but perhaps at 60p or some other figure. Given the Government’s change of heart on that, we have instead the amendments tabled by some of the country’s greatest experts on the damage caused by alcohol: two eminent doctors, a bishop who sees the problems caused to families as well as to the health of heavy drinkers themselves, and my noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, who has campaigned for so many years on this issue.

We debate this on the day that Professor Neil Greenberg, the lead on military health at the Royal College of Psychiatrists has said that the Government’s strategy for combating alcohol abuse in the Armed Forces is ineffective. As he says,

“we know that alcohol education doesn’t really work at all, and the evidence from the civilian population is that it’s a terribly ineffective way of stopping people from drinking”.

His words echo those of the Commons Defence Select Committee that the Government’s strategy has not made any noticeable impact on the high levels of excessive drinking in the Armed Forces. Critics argue that the problem is made worse by prices of less than £2 a pint in some military bars. That is, of course, £1 per unit for regular beer, but this amendment seeks a minimum of only half that amount.

Price by itself is, of course, not the answer, as my noble friend Lord Brooke said, and Labour has a wider vision for reducing alcohol-related harm. We want communities to be able to stop their high streets being overrun with new bars and a licensing system which enhances the voice of local communities in licensing decisions. We should look at whether councils should have more power to strengthen conditions on licensed premises and, importantly, we want to make public health a mandatory factor to be taken into account in all licensing. However, this was rejected by the Government when we proposed making public health a licensing condition in 2011.

Although at present local authorities can take account of the prevention of crime or nuisance, public safety and child protection in deciding on licence applications, they cannot consider public health consequences. Labour would make public health a licensing objective and include the director of public health as a key consultee in the creation of a licensing statement. We want public health engrained throughout the licensing system so that measures promoting health, which could include action against high-strength, low-cost products, are included in the licensing statement, and we want to tackle the public health problems associated with drinking by children, some of whom will be at the very functions at which the clause allows alcohol to be sold.

I look forward, as ever, to hearing the Minister trying to wriggle his way out of David Cameron’s decision to drop his commitment to minimum unit pricing. While he is on his feet, perhaps he could also explain why the Chief Medical Officer’s review of safe drinking levels, which was promised in the summer, has yet to appear. Perhaps that is another ducking of the issue. Most of all, I would welcome his assurance that, with hindsight, the Government accept the case for public health being a licensing consideration and his support for that objective.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as I was having my supper, with my glass of water, it occurred to me that when I first joined the House of Lords, we often had the phenomenon of the after-dinner speech in which someone, very often from the Conservative side of the House, would deliver an extremely florid speech with high rhetorical flourishes. This Chamber has improved quite considerably over the past 15 years in its attitude to alcohol.

I am sorry to have to tell the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, that my noble friend Lord Gardiner tells me that President Putin has just announced that he is lowering the duty on alcohol in Russia, presumably for the reason that alcohol is what people wish to take refuge in when they are miserable for all sorts of reasons, and there are a lot of reasons why people in Russia are miserable at present.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Or perhaps elections are coming, as they are in this country.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I was not aware that the Government were thinking about lowering the duty.

The Government recognise that the whole issue of alcohol abuse is a very serious one for this country and that it feeds into public order, public health and a whole range of other issues. I travel into Leeds on Saturday nights, and there are many other cities in Yorkshire where, of a Saturday evening, I often wonder whether the younger generation will die of alcohol abuse or hypothermia first, since they wear almost nothing when they go out on to the streets. I do not know how on earth they manage to get drunk and not break their ankles when their shoes are so impractical. That is the sort of problem we face. I recognise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, remarked, that we have a growing middle-age—or even over-middle-age—problem, but that binge-drinking among the young is one of the problems we have, and it feeds directly into A&E late on Saturday evening. I spent an afternoon with Leeds city police during which all that was made very firmly clear to me.

On the question of selling liquor below cost price, I think we are all aware that supermarkets are the biggest single part of the problem, as they sell loss leaders and cheap alcohol, be that cheap wine or cider below cost price. My answer on this set of amendments to this Bill is that, while I recognise the argument which we all need to have about how best to pursue further the Government’s alcohol strategy, and how we move towards minimum unit pricing, this is not the place to do it. Here, we propose relaxation in two specific small areas. The first is that of small hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation, where we are talking about a nightcap in the evening, which would probably be included in the overall bill—so at that point the question of the price is hard to get at. Then there are events of the sort which I occasionally go to in village barns or community centres, which usually have licences that allow them to sell alcohol only 12 to 15 times a year, when there is a community event. Therefore we are dealing specifically with ancillary sellers and community groups. That is not where alcohol problems come from.

In the part of Yorkshire in which I spend my weekends, there is a great revival of brewing, but of good-quality beer, which is not the sort of thing people get wildly drunk on. On a very cold Saturday last weekend, I asked whether the pub I had gone into had any “winter warmer”—which has a rather higher level of alcohol one can get at this time of year. However, they said, “No, we don’t brew that any longer”, but then offered me a great variety of extremely tasty local 3.5% beers, of which my wife and I consumed a certain amount. That is light years away from the problems that we have with large-scale alcohol abuse. Of course, the third element of alcohol abuse is abuse by those who are mentally disturbed or depressed, which is the Buckie or cheap cider end of the market.

I stress that the Government have not abandoned their alcohol strategy; minimum unit price was only ever part of that strategy. The noble Lord is right to say that the Government are watching the appeal in Scotland and waiting until that has been settled before we move further on minimum unit pricing within England. The Scots Government are themselves awaiting the outcome of the ECJ appeal. As an interim measure, the Government have introduced a ban on selling alcohol again in supermarkets—the biggest single part of the problem—below the cost of duty and VAT combined. Some were selling it as a loss leader below that level. The University of Sheffield has estimated that, in the first year of the ban on sales below duty plus VAT, there will be 100 fewer alcohol-related hospital admissions per year—and, as it got under way, 500 fewer per year, 14 fewer alcohol-related deaths per year, and so on. That is small beer—if noble Lords will excuse me—and a small achievement compared with what minimum alcohol pricing may offer, but it is a small step in what I hope noble Lords will recognise is the right direction.

Alcohol abuse is a real problem for this country. The question of alcohol pricing—in particular of loss-leader pricing—is one which we are much concerned about. This is not a matter for bed and breakfast and community events. It is a matter for city centre clubs at the weekend. It is a very serious matter for supermarkets. That is the direction in which the Government are looking. Therefore, on this particular issue, I cannot give the noble Lord much comfort, because we are dealing here with social drinking of a moderate level. The case where we need to look at minimum unit pricing and alcohol abuse is in a much broader context and in a different context from the average bed and breakfast in Upper Airedale or Upper Wharfedale, which is what we are talking about here—let alone the village barn in Cotterstock, or wherever it may be. For that reason, I am unable to satisfy the noble Lord on this issue.

Nevertheless, I recognise the deep concerns the noble Lord has about the alcohol issue as a whole. I would love to talk further with him about the development of alcoholic sorbets—which, I have to say, I have never yet seen, let alone tasted—and how those are being promoted. As we know, there are also some very serious concerns about the combination of sugar and alcohol in pop drinks for young people, which combines alcohol abuse and the making people obese at the same time. Let us continue to discuss those issues further. Those are the areas on which an alcohol abuse strategy needs to focus—not, I suggest, bed and breakfasts or community barns.

Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord demonstrates that his conservatism on constitutional matters is as deep as that of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. It was in the Labour Party’s manifesto for the last election that it would legislate on a fixed-term Parliament—as indeed in others. This transfer of, what was after all, executive power to Parliament was, one would have thought, an extension of our democratic system and a limit on prime ministerial power.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said that it is too soon to decide whether this is a good thing. The sad thing is that the other place seems to be working part-time, so why are the Government not using their planning for better use of Parliament during the extended period?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is something that we need to learn about five-year Parliaments. There are some very good proposals from the Institute for Government and from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee about how best to use the fifth year of a Parliament to discuss some of the issues that any Government will have to deal with—for example, Green Papers on the future of the National Health Service, et cetera. That is something which, in a future five-year Parliament, perhaps with another stable coalition Government, we might do. We have delivered stable government through difficult economic times for five years, unlike the Labour Governments of 1974 to 1979, and others. That is a very major advantage.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the recall process takes place in a number of other democratic countries. It is an established part of democratic institutions in a number of other established democracies.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, asked whether we were putting the cart before the horse. At least now I understand the Bill that we gave a First Reading to earlier, which was about the control of horses, which I had failed to understand thus far.

It is interesting that everyone who has spoken in this very interesting and geographically spread debate has supported the amendment tabled by me and my noble friend Lord Kennedy. We now hope that we will enjoy the same degree of support for our other amendments and will look forward to it as we proceed.

My noble friend Lord Howarth pointed out, as I was about to do, that if the best evidence that the Minister could have was from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee report in the other House, it was on the basis that this measure should not proceed at all, so the case for four days really has to be better than that. However, I shall not labour that point because the Minister has agreed to take it away and look at whether the provision should state “minimum” or whether we simply leave it to the petition officer, as the Electoral Commission says. We would be content with either as long as there was that increased flexibility.

I am not a former Member of the other place, so I do not come with any of that, but it seems to me that the provisions relating to how you develop the petition, how you set up signing places and the training of the staff will be crucial. As someone who has been a teller at polling stations, I will want to know whether I will be allowed in, how many feet away I will be able to be from someone going to the polling station and whether I will be able to ask where they live—which effectively gives me knowledge of who they are and therefore who they are voting for. These are big issues, and we will need the staff at the signing places to have absolute clarity on that when they are challenged about how close I might be able to go wearing my rosette or my “Vote No to Wallace” badge. Would we be treated as we are at general elections? I can find none of that, even in the draft regulations. Therefore, the training, its length and the type of staff are absolutely key, which is why we wanted it spelt out more.

I thank all those who have given their support to the amendment. I hope that we can look forward to the Government tabling their own amendment on Report. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

There are two different issues here: making up your mind on the matter and the procedures involved. The questions I am asking the Minister are: why did the Government decide on this measure, and what is the appropriate period? Two weeks seems too short to get the whole thing set up and the registers ready. Indeed, we are talking about 12 weeks with a couple in between, given the eight weeks that have been mentioned, added on to a possible by-election lasting another four weeks.

I think that the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, now appreciates what my noble friend Lord Grocott said. The best thing would be to resign straightaway and call the by-election yourself, as the MP concerned, and go straight into a by-election, saying, “Yes, it is true that I have been kept out of the House of Commons for 10 days”—or whatever it is—“but that was because I felt very strongly about a matter; there was a Bill going through that I did not like”, or whatever the issue was. In that case, you are on the front foot. That is the point that my noble friend Lord Grocott was making. That would be a much more attractive proposition and might be the right way to tackle the matter—that is, by putting the MP in the control seat. Sadly, we have not discussed these issues fully and I do not think that the Government thought about adding the time for a by-election when they chose the eight-week period. They have some explaining to do about the choice of this period, particularly with regard to the discussions they have had with the electoral officers and the Electoral Commission on the eight-week period. We look forward to clarification on that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

This debate has ranged a great deal wider than the two amendments before us. I again remind the Committee that a commitment to bring forward a recall Bill was in the manifestos of all three parties in 2010. The draft Bill was published for pre-legislative scrutiny in 2011. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee considered the proposed architecture and did not recommend changes, and it has also been approved by the other place.

I hear noble Lords around the Committee saying, “This is appalling. We have not thought of this before. This must be a last-minute proposal. Why has it not been thought through?”. This is not the case. We have consulted throughout, not with the Local Government Association, but with the society of chief executive officers and the Association of Electoral Administrators, the representative bodies for returning officers. They have not raised particularly difficult issues on this. I stress that the rationale for this measure was that the petition period would be parallel to, and part of, the process of discussion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Does the Minister accept that we on the Front Bench have endorsed the Bill and are trying to make it work?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I entirely accept that the Front-Benchers are committed to that and I wish that noble Lords elsewhere were. We have already, in effect, extended the process of elections. The fact that postal voting starts at a much earlier stage is a problem that we now all face in elections. Indeed, we have extended the period, in regulations that I have taken through the House over the past two years, rightly, between sending out postal votes and the election, in order to provide more time for people overseas, people who are going abroad on holiday, or whatever. So the process of elections has now been extended and we have the severe problem, as I felt working at the last election, that by the last week of the election a substantial number of the electorate have already voted. The conversation takes place early. The intention stated in putting the Bill forward for pre-legislative scrutiny was that the dialogue would take place as the petition was opened.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is my understanding that that is the case, but I will make sure that I can confirm by Report exactly what the position is intended to be.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I thank the Minister. I accept that three working days before the petition opens would be a better date for the number to be published. However, I am slightly uneasy that he is going to leave it to regulations which will not appear before the next Parliament to make it clear that the number should be published well before the count takes place. There is a real concern that, if the result is very close, we should not have a debate about what the correct number is at that point, given that there are bound to be difficulties about the signatures. For example, some people will have signed in the wrong place and there will be difficulties around verification. We have all been there. That is not the right time to argue also about whether the relevant figure is 7,300 or 7,400.

In a moment I shall ask leave to withdraw the amendment, but I ask the Minister to think about whether, at Report, the Government will either suggest making it clearer that it would be published, say, within three working days, or at least writing it into the record that the Government’s intention is that the regulations are likely to specify that the number could be given well in advance. I shall leave that thought with the Minister. I think that he concurs. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Amendment 61 stands in the names of my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark and myself. We tabled it partly because of the matters covered in the discussion that we have just been having: its intent is to limit the number of accredited campaigners to two. We believe that that would bring greater fairness to the recall petition. I shall also speak to Amendment 65.

As I said on Second Reading, and have just said again, the problem is that the Bill contains no restrictions on the number of pro-recall accredited campaign groups, all of which can spend up to £10,000. The groups could therefore include the three political parties that were defeated at the last election, and each of those could spend £10,000. So the other political parties could spend £30,000, whereas the MP or their party—if they were still supported by their party—would be capped at £10,000.

The Electoral Commission, in its response on this, said that it did not think it should be given responsibility for what was essentially going to be a local matter. As I said on the previous amendment, a recall will not be a local matter: Michael Crick will be there; it will be on prime-time television; there will be a lot of publicity; there will probably be a few stunts, and campaigners will certainly be bussed in from other constituencies, particularly if the Government have a slender majority or the seat is very marginal.

The Committee will know that we support a recall petition where an MP has been involved in serious wrongdoing, as has been agreed in the other place. Once this provision starts, however, it will not be about behaviour. Our worry, as my noble friends said earlier, is that it will turn into a debate over the MP’s voting record or beliefs. The current expenditure guidelines do not appear to recognise that logic. They are not sufficiently clear to ensure that the debate is not on those issues. If there was something going on in the big political world at the same time, the ballot could almost become a vote of confidence in the Government on that issue. Well funded vested interests could—they should not, but they will—play a part in the recall ballot. We therefore need rules governing the financing of the recall campaign to ensure that it is not hijacked by politically motivated groups out to deselect sitting MPs for something that is unrelated to their behaviour. In fact, it could be motivated simply by the desire to get a by-election, which might suit UKIP, for example, at the time. Will the Minister—who I think shares some of these objectives—outline the safeguards to prevent that?

Amendment 61 would prevent multiple organisations from campaigning on the same side, whether that is the “for” side or the “against” side. It would therefore limit the number of accredited campaigners to two: they would be either the MP or the anti-recall campaign and one organisation or group seeking to deselect the MP—the pro-recall campaign. In so doing, it would ensure an equality of arms between the two sides. There will be those who believe that, whatever wrongdoing the MP has been found guilty of, he or she should nevertheless stay and represent the constituency. There will be many cases where the constituents would want that to happen. There will also be those who feel that the MP has simply lost the confidence of the constituency and a by-election should be held. It seems to me that there are two options and that there should be two campaigns.

Amendment 65 would ensure that the campaign literature of all those involved is subject to scrutiny in order to deter campaigners from focusing on issues that are unrelated to the misdemeanour or criminal activity proven against the MP. This would not be a complete ban, as was mentioned earlier, but it at least ought to be sent in to the petition officer to be checked.

We want the recall debate to focus on the conduct of the MP and their consequent ability to represent the constituency, rather than the causes that he or she supports or their voting record on contentious issues. While we welcome the commitment by the Government in their memorandum on the draft regulation that it will be a requirement for campaign material published by both accredited and non-accredited campaigners to contain the name and address of the printer and promoter, we think there needs to be rather more guidance on this, particularly pertaining to the content of the material. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for the very useful and constructive way in which she has presented these amendments.

Amendment 61 draws inspiration from the approach taken to national referendums, where the Electoral Commission designates a lead campaigner. Each designated organisation then receives a grant from the Electoral Commission of up to £600,000 to spend on referendum expenses across the UK. The amendment is not supported by any further amendments to provide grants to the lead campaigners in the event of a recall petition. We are, of course, concerned about the impact of big money and outside money on recall events.

I repeat: a recall petition will not be launched until one of the triggers has been pulled. That provides the defence against the idea that recall can be bought by wealthy campaigners, as it was argued would have been the case under the proposals tabled in the other place by the Member for Richmond Park, which are no longer in the Bill. Under the Government’s proposals, the only person responsible for a recall petition being triggered is an MP himself or herself for committing a defined offence. Wealthy campaigners cannot cause a recall petition to be initiated—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there is a precedent in electoral law for limiting the number of people who can be involved. Even at a referendum, where a lead campaigner is appointed, multiple campaigners can also separately campaign for one side or other, subject to the spending limits. So even in a referendum, others can come alongside for the game. We are not persuaded that the tighter limits and much tighter controls proposed are desirable or necessary on this occasion.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

As the Minister said, in a referendum, they are subject to spending limits, which they will not be here.

I do not know whether I disagree most with the Electoral Commission or the Minister. The Electoral Commission keeps saying that these will be essentially local electoral events. If this happens, there will come a time when it will discover that that is not the case. The idea that it does not want to choose and set up one campaign on either side seems to me to be not facing up to its responsibilities.

The major issue is that of the Government, as my noble friend has just been saying. I am not sure that there will even be local campaign groups. I do not know whether in Kentish Town tenants’ groups or local businesses—the groups that we know more—would campaign on this issue. What I do know is that the other political parties would. Unlike some of the noble Lords who spoke earlier, I think the party will sometimes rally round its MP because it will not want a by-election. I hope that it is not as the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said earlier—that it is going to be a minority Tory Government—but if it is I can imagine that we would be very keen to have a by-election from the Opposition, if we could make that choice. Even with an MP who had been out of the House for 10 days, we might well campaign for him and the other political parties would want to vote against. We on one side would be able to spend £10,000 and the four other parties could all spend £10,000 the other way, and the debate would be about whether there should be a by-election. It will not be about what the MP has done. It will be about whether there should be a by-election. There could be £40,000 spent on one side and £10,000 on the other side. The answer to my noble friend Lord Grocott’s question is that the Government are content with that. I think it is clear that we have our doubts about this, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I was not involved in that election; perhaps the noble Lord was. However, I have to admit to the House that early one morning, when I was half awake, my mind turned to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I had an image of a debate in this Chamber in about 1831, in which an Earl Grocott denounced the proposals for major constitutional change as being unnecessary and disturbing the established traditions of party patronage. Perhaps the noble Lord and I might discuss off the Floor which proposals for constitutional reform over the past 150 years he might have supported at the time.

All three parties committed to a recall system in their manifestos, and this was included in the coalition’s programme for government. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, had some fun talking about parties that do not carry out all the pledges in their manifestos. All three parties were committed to this in principle in their last manifestos, which provides a certain basis for it. I remind her of something that I have said previously to other members of her party—namely, when one examines the 1997 Labour Party manifesto, the clearest pledge was to bring forward proposals for electoral reform. However, the Labour Party then entirely abandoned that pledge, as it did with a number of other things as well.

This Bill will introduce a system where MPs will be subject to a recall petition where they are found guilty of wrongdoing under a specific set of triggers, as set out in the Bill. Regulations have been mentioned. I assure noble Lords at the outset that before Committee we will put in the Libraries of both Houses an early draft of the regulations which will need to be made under the Bill, which will set out the areas that will need to be covered. The regulations will build upon the principles and precedents in electoral legislation. Noble Lords will have recognised already the extent to which the drafting of the Bill has followed as closely as possible the language in a number of previous Bills about electoral and political regulation.

Some large and detailed issues have been raised. Most of those who have spoken have said that they supported the principle of the Bill. I think I counted at least three, perhaps up to five, speakers who explicitly or implicitly opposed the principle of the Bill. Let me start with the detailed scrutiny issues that have been raised. I particularly welcome the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, who raised a number of specific questions that we must address in Committee and on Report. There is the question of whether this is a secret and open process, and how far the process is in the hands of the constituents themselves or outside, wealthy groups. There are also questions on how many signing points there may be within the constituency and who will check on permissible campaigners and permissible donors. Those are very much the sort of point on which we, as a revising House, would wish to focus in our further consideration.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Can I take it from that that the Government still have not decided whether they want an open or secret vote?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, unavoidably, as the noble Baroness has said, this has to be partly a public process. One goes to vote. Incidentally, the fact that this is a more public process does not mean the end of the secret ballot because the ballots when one is electing someone remain entirely secret. Access to the register of people who take part by post is a matter that we need to explore further. There are perhaps mechanisms to write into the regulations that will restrict access to the register for those who do not want their names to be entirely public. However, that is something that we need to explore because there are important principles here. Some noble Lords might wish to argue that signing a petition should be a public declaration because that is part of the transparency of objecting to one’s current representative. We will explore that further.

The question of the number of facilities in a constituency has also been raised—the Brecon and Radnor question, as we will have to refer to it. Again, we will come to that as we go through Committee and Report. The Government have consulted electoral administrators and returning officers, and their representative bodies—the Association of Electoral Administrators and SOLACE—throughout the Bill’s development, and we welcome their responses. They agree with the policy intention of the campaign regulation provisions in the Bill that petitions should be events with a local feel, without a need for a statutory register of campaigners. The question of how we deal with separate campaigns, and how, in particular, we interpret the existing rules on those who are acting in concert, is a matter that we will want to test and make sure that we get right in Committee and on Report. We appreciate that there are important questions at stake and we are all concerned to limit the influence of money in this process, as in others. Much of the debate so far has brought back the painful memory of the transparency of lobbying Bill, in which some of us took part this time last year.

The question of who is responsible for regulating the campaign has also been raised. We will, again, explore that further. Enforcement of the rules will be the responsibility of the police and the courts. Transparency is intended to be the basis of the campaign. Responsibility for the administration and conduct of the recall petition falls to the petition officer, whose role in the recall petition process will be analogous to that of a returning officer in an election in ensuring that relevant information is open to public scrutiny. The Electoral Commission will be responsible for oversight of the rules in the way in which it already takes that part.

The question that the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, raised about the numbers of groups spending £10,000 is a matter that, as I say, we will need to look at to make sure that the regulations cover that. The noble Baroness raised the question of whether those spending less than £500 would remain entirely unregulated. Non-accredited campaigners spending small sums will of course have to include their imprint in everything that they publish. That comes within the normal rules. Those who spend less than £500 will also be subject to the “acting in concert” provisions that cover existing elections.

On double signing, the intention is to ensure that the maximum number of people have the opportunity to sign, but the normal checks will be in place to ensure that each person signs only once and that the petition clerk at the signing place will mark the register to check whether the person is eligible to be issued with the signing sheet.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, also raised the question of whether the petition process places a heavy burden on local authorities. I stress that the Government see this process as a reserve power. This also partly responds to the suggestion that there should be a sunset clause; the noble Lord, Lord Soley, suggested a period of five years. We see this not as a mechanism that would need to be used often—five years is, therefore, far too short—but as a necessary reserve power for the public and Parliament to have, because it has become a necessary element in re-establishing a degree of confidence in our parliamentary democracy.

We all accept that the vast majority of people involved in politics are entirely honourable. Indeed, I think that many of us who have read about British politics in the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s would accept that the degree of misconduct is much less now than took place then. I can think of several Prime Ministers who would not have survived current scrutiny of their personal or financial affairs but who nevertheless had good careers in the first half of the century. Nevertheless, we recognise that there are always some bad apples in every single basket and that some measures to make sure that where misconduct takes place there is a degree of comeback. That is what this Bill is about.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked about the wording of the petition signing sheet. It has been developed in consultation with the Electoral Commission to ensure that it is balanced and fits in with the commission’s guidance for referendum questions. We are confident that the wording we have devised through discussions with the commission gives petitioners the information they need, including making the important addition that if an MP loses their seat as a result of a petition there is nothing to stop them standing as a candidate in the subsequent by-election.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 30th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this clause and the government amendments are here because of the uncertainty and concern caused to landlords and tenants across the private rented sector by the Court of Appeal decision in the case of Superstrike Ltd v Marino Rodrigues. The noble Baroness’s amendment also touches on some of the implications of that case. The decision effectively interpreted the legislation differently from its original intention and contrary to the advice given by successive Governments. It left a large number of landlords at risk of court action and open to a financial penalty, because the tenancy deposit protection requirements must be complied with within a set period. That leaves landlords in an impossible position with no means of complying. The situation is made more complicated by the increase in the number of landlords resident outside the United Kingdom, which means that they are dependent on letting agents to deal with their tenants. Similarly, it has left tenants unclear about the status of their deposits.

The aim of Clause 31 is not to completely reverse the decision made by the Court of Appeal, as it is important that the protection offered to these tenants as a result of the ruling is retained. It gives landlords a grace period to protect those deposits and give the necessary information to the tenant. That applies to landlords who still hold deposits which were taken before the introduction of the tenancy deposit protection legislation for tenancies which rolled over into statutory periodic tenancies after the introduction of the legislation.

The clause will make it clear that where a deposit has been protected, the prescribed information is given to the tenant and the tenancy is subsequently renewed, there is no need for the landlord to keep providing the same information every time the tenancy is renewed. It will also be clear that this has always been the position and will continue to be from now on.

Where legal proceedings are under way at the time the provisions come into force, tenants will be protected from paying their landlords’ relevant legal costs where the court subsequently decides against the tenant in the light of these provisions. We see the provisions as striking the right balance between ensuring that tenants do not suffer financially as a result of the retrospective legislation and ensuring that landlords are not penalised where they have followed government advice. I hope that these changes are accepted as uncontroversial.

Finally, government Amendments 25 to 35 are technical drafting amendments.

The Government agree with the intention behind the noble Baroness’s amendment but are not sure that it is necessary. We understand that the law as it stands provides that, where the agent holds the deposit, it is sufficient for just the agent’s details to be included in the prescribed information. Article 2(1)(g)(iii) of the Housing (Tenancy Deposits) (Prescribed Information) Order 2007—I am sure that she knows it by heart—indeed states that,

“the name, address, telephone number, and any e-mail address or fax number of the landlord”,

should be provided. However, Section 212(9)(a) of the Housing Act 2004 explains that any reference in Chapter 4 of Part 6 of the Act—and hence in the 2007 order—to “landlord” in relation to any shorthold tenancy includes a reference to a person acting on his behalf in relation to the tenancy. Clearly, an agent managing the deposit on behalf of the landlord falls within that definition. Paragraph 40 of the regulatory impact assessment that supported the 2007 order covered this point, stating that:

“The person who receives the deposit will need to be the person who is registered with the authorised tenancy deposit scheme. Thus, in instances where the deposit is taken by a letting agent, the landlord’s details will not need to be included in this information”.

This is an issue with the deposit schemes that letting agent bodies have previously raised with the department, and I understand that they still consider the language of the Act and the supporting statutory instrument to be ambiguous. As I have set out above, we do not share that view. Of course, if they are able to provide evidence to the contrary we will consider whether a change to the order could be made to clarify the point, but we do not believe that any change to the primary legislation is required. I have asked officials from the Department for Communities and Local Government to contact the tenancy deposit schemes and letting agent bodies to discuss this further.

I hope with that assurance that the noble Baroness will be willing to withdraw her amendment. I thank her for the discussions we had before Committee and, if necessary, I am very happy to have further discussions. I commend Amendments 25 to 35 to the Committee.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that. Clearly this would not have been brought up and supported by the groups I mentioned if there were not real concerns. They have counsel opinion that differs from that of the Government. Of course, if the Government would like to assure them that should it go to the High Court they will then cover all their costs and those of all landlords, maybe we could accept that. Would he like to make the offer now? Offer came there none.

The groups are doing this day to day—their lawyers have worries and counsel opinion continues to say there is a difficulty that the words “or their agent” do not apply to the instrument. That seems the problem. I also cannot see why this change cannot be made. It would be very easy and would make sure we did not have to go to the High Court to get a ruling. I urge that that meeting takes place before we come to Report, so that I can then consult these good organisations and, if necessary, table an amendment for Report if they are not reassured by the meeting. If it is possible to set that up before Report then I would be happy to withdraw this amendment at this stage. I think the nod means that the meeting will take place before Report. On that basis I beg leave to withdraw.

Cabinet Office: Efficiency and Reform Programme

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Of course, as with taxation, there are a range of different objectives in what you are attempting to save. However, much of what the Efficiency and Reform Group has been doing is to apply the sort of careful consideration of how best to ensure that you make the best use of centralised and long-term contracts, as supermarkets do in their relationship with their suppliers. The creation of the Crown Commercial Service earlier this year and of the Major Projects Authority in April 2011 are very important factors in making Whitehall officials more competent and efficient in dealing with the commercial world.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

We support any work that is done to cut costs, but is the Minister not slightly ashamed when he asks civil servants almost to count the paperclips when the Government then waste £1 billion on selling Royal Mail too cheaply?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Baroness knows that floating companies and making IPOs are always very difficult matters to estimate. We can go on arguing about that particular transaction for a long time, but I am very proud of what the Efficiency and Reform Group has included. I have not yet touched on the digital transformation in which, as we all know, the move from using paper to using digital in transactions with government offers enormous potential savings.

Internet: Copycat Websites

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 21st November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government Digital Service, by whom I was fully briefed for this Question, is actively working with other departments of government to see how far it can control this. Of course, not all of these sites are hosted within the UK. We are familiar with many overseas agencies that get into the ether and do this.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, in the dash to digital by default, will the Government remember that in addition to some people not even being connected to the internet, others are very unfamiliar with using it for business? They are vulnerable to these people taking advantage of them. Will the Government, therefore, in addition to monitoring this, ensure that there are easy routes to redress and compensation when such a service has been mis-sold?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, these scams are concentrated on the sort of services that people access only occasionally—to renew driving licences, passports, the European Health Insurance Card and those sorts of things. There are also phishing efforts in which sites that claim to be HMRC say that you are offered a refund—I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has fallen for that; he looks as though he might have done—and ask for your bank details. They then manage to gain access to your account.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 11th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I shall start by welcoming the at least partial support expressed by the Labour Front Bench for Part 1 of the Bill, and indeed the commendable sentiment that has been expressed for strengthening Part 1 further. I am sure that as we proceed, the same sort of constructive spirit for the Bill’s aims will be provided by the Labour Front Bench. The revolving door is an issue all the way across politics, which no Government have yet entirely managed to resolve. We recognise that people moving in and out of different private and public forms of life create some problems, and a number of things are now in place to cope with those who move from private industry into government and back again. It is not a new problem with this Government.

For Amendment 95 to cover all three parties, one would need to add,

“those who are employed in voluntary capacities”,

because my party would love to employ a number of these people but could not conceivably afford to pay them. Indeed, I am aware of a number of people associated with consultant lobbyist companies who have advised my party in the past. Perhaps that is an area that might also be considered.

I am conscious that this is very much about Lynton Crosby and Crosby Textor. In listening to the beginning of the speech of the noble Baroness, I felt that in some ways this was an amendment with a very long text but very little content, if I may slightly adapt what she said when starting out.

I note her comment on guests at Chequers and I will take that back. However, I googled Crosby Textor this morning and I can assure the noble Baroness that it would be caught by the new register, since it has offices in both Sydney and London, and would be forced to register and declare its clients under the new Part 1. That is part of what the Bill is about and Crosby Textor would therefore be entirely covered by it. The question of what happens when a member of a consulting company is employed under a contract part-time—as he is—by one of the political parties in government takes us close to the difficult area of how far political parties in government should be covered by this scheme. I have checked and I can assure the noble Baroness that he has not discussed the tobacco question with the Government. I realise that the tobacco question—I was not so aware of the alcohol question—is very sensitive in government. I merely say that Part 1 of the Bill would catch Crosby Textor. We would then know exactly who its clients were; that is part of the justification of Part 1.

Professional lobbyists taking up employment in government is a rather broader issue. We would of course need to know what sort of a committee would look at this. It would be easier to absorb it into the current arrangements for checking on people who move into government from the outside and, indeed, those who then leave government and go back into these sorts of activities, for which Whitehall already has arrangements. However, I think in some ways these two amendments are in order to make sure that Crosby Textor gets on to the agenda, and possibly into tomorrow’s “Today” programme. Having said that, I say: well played. I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, the amendment was not short on content and certainly not on intent. However, before I make one comment to the Minister, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, that my passing reference at the beginning was exactly the point that he raised. I did not reiterate what we did last week. It was about the leader of the Opposition in the run-up to an election possibly making the same declarations as we are now asking for from Ministers. I do not have full backing yet from the powers that be in the party, but we came as close as we could to a nod in that direction last week in a way that I think the Minister understands.

The Minister slightly misunderstood the point of the amendment. We know that Crosby Textor would be caught, which is why we were trying to get the information before the Bill became law because it was taking such a long time. The interest was, of course, that the Prime Minister would feel that he did not have to declare that because the person he is meeting at the moment is not a Permanent Secretary and therefore would not be covered in that way. The two really do need to dovetail together.

This is something that we will want to come back to on Report, maybe not exactly in this form. However, it will be important for the aim of the Government, which is to make sure that those who have the ear of the most senior people in government declare theirs. We will need to make sure that we have captured that in a suitable amendment. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are more persuaded from other countries that have the light-touch system we are proposing that it is more effective at addressing the problem than the large, expensive and comprehensive system the Canadians have gone in for.

There are a large number of amendments in this group. I will try to address as many of the issues as I can.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, before the Minister goes on to the detail of those, I think he has not answered the point—it was made more at Second Reading—of why the existing publication could not simply deal with this. If any Minister meets a consultant lobbyist they name the organisation on behalf of which they have met that consultant and the purpose of it. I still do not understand why that would not meet the objectives there seem to be for the register.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there was considerable concern while the previous Government were in office that consultant lobbyists were a powerful element in our political system, that we did not know who they represented and that it would be better if the public were informed who their clients were. The noble Baroness has, on a number of occasions, stressed the point that perhaps one should also add what subjects they are discussing with the Government. I am very happy to take that away and perhaps on a belt-and-braces principle that should be tied in. However, I do not think it takes away the issue that for transparency of the democratic process it is desirable to know who consultant lobbyists are representing and who therefore is paying them.

Perhaps I may move on to answer some of the questions. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, asks what our assessment is of the number of lobbying organisations that will be required to register. Our current estimate is that it will be somewhere in the order of 350. We have held a number of constructive meetings with representatives of the industry at which we discussed the voluntary register and the code of conduct, and we have talked with the three main industry bodies concerned. They were able to give a reassurance that many of the concerns regarding the application are being met by that.

I turn now to the details. As I said to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, if the tobacco industry lobbies on behalf of its own industry, we know what is going on. If it is a consultant lobbyist lobbying on behalf of the industry, that is a great deal less clear. That is the underlying distinction between a consultant lobbyist and a professional lobbyist. Because I am concerned with the EU balance of competences exercise, over the past nine months I have read a great deal of evidence produced by the Scotch Whisky Association. I know exactly where the association is coming from and what it is lobbying about. If it were a consultant lobbyist, that would be a different situation. That is the distinction we are making.

On the question of whether we extend this to professional lobbyists, I cannot see the justification for excluding charities from it. As a Minister, I have met a number of charity representatives who have lobbied us on policy issues. That is quite properly a part of what charities themselves do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Opposition’s proposed amendment would prohibit lobbying unless the person had signed up to the registrar’s code of conduct. Their new clause would require the registrar, after consultation with relevant stakeholders, to produce a code of conduct which would include a provision that any inappropriate relations between lobbyists and parliamentarians were strictly forbidden. Amendment 108, which has been grouped elsewhere, would enable the registrar to impose civil penalties for breaches of the code of conduct. The Government are not persuaded that a statutory code of conduct is appropriate, and I suggest that the proposed amendments are based on a miscomprehension of the role of codes, either statutory or voluntary, in the regulation of lobbying. The Opposition appear to suggest that such codes are in existence and are operating successfully in other jurisdictions. Perhaps I may draw their attention to international examples of statutory codes of conduct, of which there are very few.

The Australian statutory code of conduct establishes a statutory register of consultant lobbyists and prohibits the lobbying of government on behalf of a third party without registration. That is exactly what this Bill provides for and, if that is what the Opposition are seeking to achieve, the amendments are not needed. In Canada, the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct promotes three principles—integrity and honesty, openness and professionalism—and requires that lobbyists act transparently, that they respect confidentiality, and that they avoid conflicts of interest. That code is not a statutory instrument and there is no sanction for non-compliance other than a report from the registrar outlining the lobbyist’s misdemeanour. That is appropriate, because determining non-compliance with these very broad principles is a challenging, uncertain and subjective process.

We have not been able to identify any international precedent for the type of code the Opposition propose. Indeed, even the overwhelmingly high-regulation system in the USA, which requires a 900-plus page handbook to aid compliance, does not incorporate a statutory code of conduct of this sort. Perhaps the fact that the Opposition have been able to propose just one provision for their code of conduct illustrates why such an approach has not been adopted elsewhere.

The Government recognise the industry’s efforts to improve lobbying practice by introducing its own codes of conduct and are confident that that will continue. Those codes promote the ethical behaviour that is essential to the integrity and reputation of the lobbying industry. The codes contain laudable principles and good practice guidance, but their translation into statute does not seem sensible or feasible.

Amendment 78, in the name of my noble friend Lord Tyler, would instead amend Clause 5(4) so that regulations could be made to enable lobbyists to include details in their information returns of the voluntary codes of conduct that they had subscribed to; but no other additional types of information unrelated to voluntary codes of conduct could be so specified. My noble friend appears to agree with the Government that a statutory code of conduct is not necessary and that the existing voluntary codes should be endorsed and promoted. I am happy to tell my noble friend that the Government are committed to ensuring that the statutory register complements the existing self-regulatory regime.

A specific reference on the statutory register to the voluntary code to which a lobbyist has subscribed is an interesting proposal that the Government are willing to consider further. However, we are not persuaded that the power under Clause 5(4) should be restricted so that it could be used to make regulations only in relation to voluntary codes, which is the—perhaps unintended—effect of my noble friend’s amendment. We will consider this further. Meanwhile, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment and my noble friend not to press his.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I fear that that reply was written before I made my speech. I made it very clear that I do not want a statutory code of conduct. The reply that the Minister gave was about why we should not have a statutory code of conduct: I agree, and we did not ask for it. What we are asking is for the registrar to endorse a code of conduct. I assume that it would be based either on the format of five principles that other professions use or maybe on the existing voluntary code. That would be a matter for the registrar, but I very clearly said that we did not want a statutory register.

I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, is in her seat as she will remember very well discussing whether the regulation of letting agents should be statutory or—as it is now—voluntary. The letting agents had a very good voluntary code but if you did not obey it and were taken to the ombudsman, you could simply say, “I will leave the code, walk off and not remain signed up to the voluntary code”. All the good boys were signed up to the code but—guess what—the cowboys were not. If anyone was caught breaking the code they just resigned. The noble Baroness did at one point ask me to stop thanking her for this but I will never stop doing so because, through her work, we agreed the amendment that makes it compulsory for letting agents to belong to an ombudsman scheme. As part of that, there will be a code, overseen by the ombudsman, by which will be judged any misbehaviour by letting agents.

Effectively, that is what we are asking for here. Once you have a register of consultants, they should have to sign up to some code of good practice or ethical principles against which it will be judged whether they should be taken off the register. I am not asking for a statutory code, although it was very nice to hear the Minister make a speech against it. What we want is, if you like, a blessing to the voluntary code that says more than simply, “Please read it”. If you are on a register, I imagine it would become quite a kitemark. People would say, “I am a registered consultant lobbyist” —or, if our amendment were passed, a proper lobbyist, not just a consultant. It would be a kitemark to be on the register. However, if it implies no requirement to keep to an ethical code or a code of good behaviour, the kitemark could itself be quite misleading.

We will definitely return to this and I hope that the Minister has heard what we are really asking for: not a statutory code but a requirement that the registrar should have a code that anyone on the register would have to sign up to. I will leave that until Report for the moment—whenever that will be—and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not going to give that commitment now because there are larger questions about how many public appointments should be overseen by Commons committees. That is a much broader issue than this appointment alone. I will take that back and consult with others but, as I said earlier, the Government are not currently persuaded of these amendments.

I return to the central database issue, which raises some large issues about the role of the registrar and whether or not ministerial appointments should be handed over, so to speak, for collation by an independent body associated with the Government. We have listened to those who have asked that the reports be available from one central location and have responded by migrating all meeting reports to gov.uk, where they can be readily accessed as both PDF and open-format CSV files. We have responded to those that suggested that the timeliness of reporting could be improved by committing to publishing all meeting information in the quarter immediately after that in which the meeting took place. I note the pressure to go further. The Government are committed to the principles of open government and we continue to investigate how we can further improve the value of the information that we make available to the public. However, we are not at present persuaded that we should be going as far as the noble Lord suggests.

Opposition Amendment 74 would require the registrar to submit an annual report to the PCRC on the operation of the register. Again, this is not a provision that I understand that the committee itself has sought—perhaps because it recognises that the registrar is already required by the drafting to submit their annual accounts to Parliament and that the committee will be perfectly entitled and able to call the registrar to provide evidence at any time. I would have thought that that would be enough to hold them to account.

The new clause of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, is by far the most ambitious amendment. It would require the Government to publish alongside any statement on a matter of policy, legislation or a contract or grant, records of any oral or written communication directed to a Minister, the Minister’s parliamentary private secretary or special adviser, and any departmental civil servants relating to that matter. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, provides exemptions from the requirement to publish for commercial or security-sensitive material. This is certainly an intriguing proposal but, I suggest, neither a feasible nor proportionate one. At a time when our focus should be on ensuring more efficient and effective government, a statutory requirement that every oral or written communication received by every civil servant, special adviser, PPS or Minister be recorded, collated and published in parallel with any relevant statement would appear ill advised. It would of course be an absolute goldmine for an academic researcher.

Not only would such a system impose an unwelcome bureaucratic burden on the public sector, it would likely impose information overload on the members of the public—perhaps even academic researchers. The volume of information that the Government would likely be required to publish in relation to a Budget Statement or a Queen’s Speech would be so overwhelming that any transparency value would be entirely undermined by the inaccessibility and quantity of the information. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who talked about “hiding in plain sight”. When there is too much information provided, it is sometimes hard to weed out what is crucial.

The Government’s objective is to provide the public with valuable information which they can utilise to scrutinise our actions and hold us to account. The focus should be on the value of information and the insight it can provide, not on the volume. The Government already publish unprecedented amounts of information about decision-making, and the register is intended to extend that transparency to those who seek to influence decision-makers. It is already standard practice that responses to government consultations are published in full and in summary, and if the public require further information about certain policies or decisions then they have a right to request that information using the Freedom of Information Act.

I recognise that the noble Lord is urging the Government to extend our information publication regime a good deal further. We will continue to consider how enhanced transparency can best be achieved. I suggest, however, that a statutory requirement of this nature is not the most appropriate manner in which to do so. I therefore resist that amendment, and urge the noble Baroness to withdraw it.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, this has turned into a more interesting and wide-ranging debate than we had anticipated. There are two parts to it. One is about this database. On the idea that there is too much for us and therefore the Government do not want to put it out there—they should try harder than that. The House knows I have a certain thing about alcohol misuse. I just want to know how many drinks companies lobbied the Government about tax before the Budget. It ought to be possible to know that. I do not want all the other submissions. Someone who is interested in the environment or any other issue will just be focused and want to drill down to one thing. If it is a good system, an awful lot of noise out there will not matter.

When I am not spending my time here at 7.30 pm I am quite often at the National Theatre. You can go there with a tiny card and you have ordered perhaps four different lots of tickets for different nights and different theatres. You put in your little card and you get them all back. Its computer system can do it very easily. I cannot believe that it is beyond the wit of man—even men—to produce a similar system for this database, which is currently completely unsearchable. It is not, in the words of the Minister readily available. I have tried to search it, although I did not try for quite as long as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—in future I will come to his office when I am trying to find this out. However, it is not searchable or rapid, and is therefore almost irrelevant, so late is it. I cannot see why it cannot be available the next day. If there was a will, there would certainly be a way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

From time to time Parliament does change the structure and the nomenclature of its committees. I think the Government would be a little hesitant to write the current structure of committees into legislation.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

The words “relevant select committee” could be used.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that seems unlikely, on the face of it, but I am very glad to go away and consult officials to make sure that there is not a lacuna here. I appreciate where the noble and learned Lord is coming from, with a genuine concern on this issue. If one were to accept some of his other amendments, the case for writing into the Bill the appeal to the tribunal would be stronger. If a person were to object, under our scheme, to the registrar’s decision they could advise him or her accordingly and reregister without difficulty. We do not therefore consider that appeals to the tribunal should be necessary in those circumstances.

The Opposition’s proposed amendments, Amendments 101, 105 and 106, appear designed to ensure that the provision of misleading information is captured by the offence outlined in Clause 12 and, as a consequence, by the civil penalty power provided for in Clause 14. I am advised that “incomplete or inaccurate register” also covers the question of “misleading”. I can therefore confirm that the provision of misleading information in any of these instances would be captured by the concept of,

“information which is inaccurate or incomplete in a material particular”,

as provided in subsections (2)(b), (3)(b) and (4)(b) of Clause 12.

The offence outlined in Clause 12 is designed to be applicable in both the civil and criminal systems. We anticipate that the provision of inaccurate or incomplete information due to administrative oversight will be sanctioned by the imposition of a civil penalty. If, however, inaccurate or incomplete information had been provided in an attempt to deliberately mislead, we could expect such non-compliance to be prosecuted in a criminal court.

The Opposition’s Amendment 108 would enable the registrar to impose civil penalties for breaches of the code of conduct. The establishment of sanctions, whether civil or criminal, requires detailed and measured consideration. The Opposition have been able to identify only one of the provisions to be included in the statutory register. I suggest that the provisions with which lobbyists would be required to comply should surely be identified before it was determined whether they should be liable to a civil penalty in the event of a breach.

Amendment 103, tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, would impose an offence on those who failed to submit lobbying activity reports as and when required. We recognise that this amendment is consequential to his other proposals so I will not address it further. His Amendment 109 would amend Clause 16(3) so that the maximum amount for a penalty notice would be reduced from £7,500 to £5,000. I note that his point of comparison is the Scottish civil penalty. In setting the maximum amount for a penalty notice at £7,500, the Government were mindful of comparable regulatory regimes, such as the fines imposed by the Companies Act in relation to the late filing of accounts, and we took that as our comparator. The Government are confident that the proposed limit of the civil penalty is thus an appropriate one and are not persuaded that it should be reduced, although of course the registrar is able to issue civil penalties of any amount up to £7,500, so not in every case would it be the amount.

The noble and learned Lord’s Amendment 110 would prevent the registrar from issuing a civil penalty to a person if that person had been acquitted of an offence under this part in relation to their conduct. We then get into interesting questions; as a non-lawyer, I am not entirely an expert on the difference between the evidence required to prove a criminal case and that which is required to produce a civil one. Perhaps we might consult on that off the Floor to resolve that very delicate distinction. Having answered some of those extremely interesting and detailed probing amendments, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Before that happens, may I just be assured that I have understood that even if someone is convicted under the Bribery Act in a criminal case, they could still stay on the register?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The register is not intended to have sanctions on it, but let me take that away and come back. I appreciate that we are in an area here where the question is how much the register is intended to be one which you go on to if you are engaged in this activity, or whether the register should begin to develop a disciplinary dimension, which raises some of the questions that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, in particular has pursued.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a vigorous debate with a wide range of opinions forcefully expressed around the House. First, the Government are listening and consulting, and we will continue to do so. We will take this carefully through Committee, and we are concerned to make sure that the Bill as it emerges from this House reassures the very evident concerns, particularly from the charity sector. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, rightly said that the charity sector perceives this as an attack. That is, by and large, a mistaken perception. However, of course we have to reassure people and make sure, as we take this Bill through the various stages, that we have a Bill that we are all happy with as it emerges from this House.

Let me take the three parts in order. First, on the lobbying issue, as a number of noble Lords said, lobbying is a legitimate activity. Indeed, it is central to any thriving democracy and is an almost universal activity. Almost every working day Parliament is being lobbied. Those who had offices on the West Front particularly enjoyed the London Gay Men’s Chorus lobbying us several nights in a row. We wished that they would come back more often. It was one of the most enjoyable bits of lobbying that we have had so far.

Part 1 is intended to focus on professional lobbyists, the skilled and the well paid, those who provide their services for hire. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, talked about lobbying companies which do not even declare their clients. That is precisely what Part 1 addresses to make sure that lobbying companies declare their clients. That is where we started out in our consultation in 2010-11. I regret to say that the various respondents to that consultation came back with a whole range of discordant and dissentious responses. The Government have decided to take the Australian approach to a lobbying register, which is to have a register of professional and consultant lobbyists, not a universal register.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Will the Minister accept that if a Minister meets lobbyists of that sort, although there may well be a list on a website with their 40 clients, it will not tell anybody which client that Minister was meeting? All it will say is that those are their 40 clients. Anyone will still be in the dark about which client had set up that meeting with the Minister.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I take the point that the noble Baroness makes. She has said to me off the Floor of the House that this ought to be reinforced by making sure that in the notes of the meeting there is a reference to the subject of the meeting so that those in the press and outside who want to understand what happened are informed which of the clients the meeting was about. This is therefore a step towards transparency. It does not claim to provide complete transparency on all contacts between outside proponents of particular policies and Ministers or officials. If we were to do that, we would find ourselves with a huge amount of information of the sort that the NSA loves to collect for the United States, but might not be beneficial to British politics. If we were to include all lobbyists, as some of the answers to the consultation wished, and included all charity lobbyists, I think that the answer from the charities sector would also be very negative. However, charities do have lobbyists. For example, Oxfam has people who actively lobby the public and the Government. Therefore, we have to be a little careful over how universal one needs to be. That is the importance of starting—perhaps others will want to go further—with a register of consultant lobbyists and of their major contact with the Government.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton, suggested that we should start at the other end by asking all officials and Ministers to register whom they have met. I see no reason why, in a sense, as transparency develops, the two should not come together. I have just filled in my quarterly return of whom I have met, including a number of people who could be described as lobbyists. Indeed, Saferworld was one of those that I reported on for obvious reasons: as I represent the Foreign Office, I talk to Saferworld and other such charities. That is part of what we already do.

The question of how far down the list one should go and whether it should include special advisers has also been raised. That clearly is a question to which we will return in Committee, and I look forward to that debate. However, I am conscious that the major concerns are on Part 2, to which I now turn.

I assure the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, that a Keeling schedule will be available well before Committee for everyone who wishes to look at it. I say with due confidence that, since he first asked me that question, I have discovered what a Keeling schedule is.

European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2013

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome these regulations and particularly like the Minister’s optimism about planning for queues at European elections. Let us hope that that problem arises and we can show that this new robust system actually works. Somehow I suspect that it might not be the case but let us hope so. I should perhaps declare an interest in that I am a director of a company that, as a minor part of its business, prints ballot papers, including, probably, for the European elections.

I welcome all the regulations but just wanted to check something around equal treatment. I am particularly pleased that it is now easier for non-nationals of the UK and Ireland to put forward their candidacy, and that there are fewer barriers to that happening. However, I would like to understand whether and how Irish and Gibraltarian—and even UK—citizens are checked for potential disqualification. I can see that we are moving towards national authority where European states other than the UK and Republic of Ireland are concerned, but do we check disqualification for people from Gibraltar, the United Kingdom and Ireland?

The other matter on which I wanted to catch up is the date for the European elections, where a range of dates is set. Have the Government considered moving to a Sunday, like most of the rest of the European Union? That could be an experiment to see whether we could increase voting by holding the election at the weekend. Can the Minister also tell me whether next year’s local elections will go back to June, or the date for the European elections?

Finally, a much more strategic question: when do the Government intend to introduce open lists—as opposed to closed lists—for these elections, so that citizens can make real choices, rather than ones thrust upon them by a clique of political parties—of which, of course, we are all members and should therefore declare an interest.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, on this side of the House, we welcome the regulations, including the provision for telling those whose postal votes are rejected the reasons for such a rejection so that they can correct the mistake next time. We welcome the checks on postal votes. Along with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, we also welcome making it easier for people to stand for election in countries other than those where they are citizens.

Before going on to questions about the actual regulations, I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact—which has already been alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and by the Minister—that this election also covers the people of Gibraltar. With this in mind, we were concerned by the quite false suggestion made by the Minister’s colleague in the House on 10 October—whether on behalf of the Government or the Conservative candidates in the European elections we do not know. The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi said that,

“we are incredibly clear about the sovereignty and the sovereign position of the Gibraltarian people. It is nice to hear that the Opposition now share this view”.

My noble friend Lady Royall of Blaisdon remonstrated with this quite outrageous implication, saying,

“the Minister said that the Opposition now support the people of Gibraltar. I would like to make it clear, and have it on the record, that my party has always supported the citizens of Gibraltar and their self-determination”.

One might have thought that sufficient for the former chair of the Conservative Party, but she added insult to injury by saying:

“It is incredibly heartening to hear that. It therefore puts my mind at rest, certainly in relation to the potential sovereignty crisis”.—[Official Report, 10/10/13; cols. 177-78.]

I therefore ask the Minister, as he oversees all the rules and regulations, including these ones governing the European elections in Gibraltar, to ensure that the administration of the vote is carefully overseen by the Electoral Commission, so that it is fair to all candidates in the South West England constituency.

I turn to the question of the close of poll. Contrary to what the Minister’s then colleague, Miss Chloe Smith, said in introducing the regulations in the other House—words repeated today by the Minister—the Government did not listen to what Parliament said about the queue at 10 pm and being able to vote, and had to be forced to do so by a vote in this House. Sadly, the Government continue to fail to listen, including to the Electoral Commission, which has a certain professional expertise in these matters. They did not listen over that issue and they are not listening now over the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, where they failed to consult the Electoral Commission before dreaming up Part 2. They are still resisting a large number of concerns that the Electoral Commission has about it, in particular the demands on the commission to make new sorts of judgments and to register a swathe of new organisations and, in particular, its worry that it will not have the resources to do so satisfactorily.

However, this concerns the current regulations which, again, will require the Electoral Commission to produce guidance, particularly on the matter of the time when postal votes can be handed in. As the Minister knows, the commission continues to raise some important questions over that wording. Can he give us a reassurance that the commission will be able to manage all the new expectations being laid on it by the lobbying Bill, together with its work on these European elections, which are to run concurrently with the local elections?

I have two further minor points to raise. In the debate in the Commons, Mr Graham Stringer MP asked:

“Are the European regulations on personation the same as those that apply in our general elections? Is a record kept of ballot papers, as it is in general elections, if personation occurs?”.—[Official Report, Commons, Sixth Delegated Legislation Committee, 12/9/13; col 6.]

The Minister in another place promised him a written response. Unfortunately, I have not managed to locate it, but perhaps the noble Lord will be able to read the answer into the record today.

Finally, in earlier exchanges on other statutory instruments, I thought that every opportunity was going to be used to forewarn people about the forthcoming move to individual electoral registration. I was therefore very disappointed that in my own area, Camden, absolutely no mention of the move to IER is made on the latest registration form, which has been done in time for the European elections; nor, I am assured, do the forms for Harrow or Lambeth. Does the Minister know what action is being taken more generally to prepare for this somewhat hurried change? As he knows, the commencement order to bring IER into force is due to be made on 8 November. Can he confirm that that is still the date, especially as we have yet to see the details of the outcome of the live data-matching trials using DWP records, which took place over the summer? In some instances, they matched fewer than half of the records. We have not seen a list of the particular areas, but it may be that he has that information to hand. Perhaps he could also clarify how much work is due to be undertaken by electoral registration officers on IER at the same time as they are running the combined European and local elections. Most importantly, is he satisfied that they have the resources for both of these challenging tasks?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for that fighting speech which has enlivened our afternoon. I shall try to answer her questions as well as I can. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked me about open lists versus closed lists. It is probably fair to say that there is no common view within the coalition on this, nor is there between the Government and the Opposition, so it is a matter on which we hope there will continue to be some form of debate. It is certainly the case that next year the local elections will be held on the same day as the European elections, on 22 May, but will then return to their otherwise normal date the following year.

He also asked about moving polling to a Sunday. All sorts of suggestions have been made for encouraging people to vote and making it easier for them to do so, including possibly having two days of voting over a Saturday and a Sunday. The problem with many of them is that the additional costs in staffing terms would be quite considerable, and thus these suggestions have not yet gained the degree of traction that I suspect the noble Lord might like.

On the question of how far we are checking the qualifications of voters in Ireland and Gibraltar, I had better write to the noble Lord to make sure that I get the answer entirely right. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, proclaimed the depth of the Labour Party’s commitment to the sovereignty of Gibraltar. Perhaps I might be allowed to repeat something that I said some years ago when this question came up. Under the 30-year rule, papers were released on discussions within the then Conservative Government in 1971-72, when a spat with the Spanish over Gibraltar was in full spate. The Foreign Secretary scribbled on one paper that perhaps one ought to consider possible alternatives. One alternative came up from a relatively junior member of the Foreign Office, who suggested that one might perhaps think of assigning the governance of Gibraltar to the Knights of St John on Malta. A senior official scribbled: “Have you ever met the Knights of Malta? You might as well give the sovereignty of Gibraltar to the Young Liberals”. The reason I use this example is that I once intervened on a Question under the Labour Government and the Minister responsible for negotiating with the Spanish Government had been the national president of the Young Liberals in 1971-72. I pass that on as an anecdote for a pub quiz, if the noble Baroness wishes to take part in one. I was very disappointed that the noble Baroness did not ask me how many postal voters there were on Gibraltar for the most recent European elections. I could have assured her that it was probably fewer than 100. The entire electoral roll is about 20,000.

I take her point about the demands on the Electoral Commission. We will come back to that in the transparency of lobbying Bill, which I am sure we will all enjoy discussing from Second Reading on 22 or 23 October.

On the question of personation, I am assured that the rules for personation in European elections are the same as those that apply to UK parliamentary and other elections. The intention of the regulations is precisely to reconcile as far as possible the regulations for national parliamentary, local and European elections.

I take the noble Baroness’s point that there is no mention on the papers going out at the moment of the move towards individual electoral registration. Perhaps I may take that back and be in touch with her again, because I entirely agree that we need to make people think about the change as soon as possible, and must consider how best to alert people about our move to it. I admit that, as usual, the effective head of my household filled in our Wandsworth and Saltaire election forms again this year, and that I did not check what she did. Therefore, I cannot tell the noble Baroness whether either the Bradford or the Wandsworth electoral forms alerted us to individual electoral registration.

I hope that I have answered all the questions that were raised in the debate, and I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Civil Society

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 18th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I would prefer to write to the noble Baroness rather than give her a half-informed answer now, if she will permit me. There are a number of social investment schemes under way but I do not have them entirely in order in my head at the moment.

We all share a commitment to a stronger civil society. I hope we all share a commitment to a stronger local civil society. I am very struck by the problems of large communities in some of our cities who feel themselves powerless but do not know what to do about it. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, that is part of what the big society initiative is really concerned with. It will take a long time. For example, in Harehills and Gipton in Leeds the local Methodist, Catholic and Anglican churches used to do an awful lot but almost no one goes to church any longer. Creating alternative social networks and a sense of local empowerment and local confidence is a huge challenge for all of us and the state, society and others have to work together on it.

I hope we are all committed to this. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and I recognise that this is a challenge that will face every Government in Britain for the next 20 years and more.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

There were some more questions about the commissioning of services. It would be really useful if the Minister would undertake to ask other departments, beyond the Cabinet Office, to look at the commissioning process to see whether it can be made better. I do not know what his dialogue with the other departments is but it would be really useful if he was able to play a co-ordinating role.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

There is now a commissioning academy. We are working with other departments. We are learning from experience how to work more effectively with local organisations where we can. The social value Act also helps us in that regard. I must not overrun my time; I give way to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser.

Extension of Franchise (House of Lords) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Friday 5th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Having sat through several two-day debates, I think the House has made its opinion relatively clear. I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Richard, who laboured extremely conscientiously and at considerable length to produce a package which this House would like. Certainly, the sense of the House was, I think, not particularly favourable towards the Government’s proposals. I will leave it at that.

Again, I am sorry to have to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. We will of course be returning to this issue. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that as she was speaking I thought of the noble Baroness, Lady Symons. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, has on many occasions used the doctrine of mandate against me: that once a party has in its manifesto a clear commitment, it has the right and duty to carry it through. I think the Labour Party’s manifestos over the past three or four elections have called for an elected second Chamber. I was disappointed that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, went a little behind that.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I was actually quoting the Minister’s noble friend from a very recent debate in your Lordships’ House. I made no mention of Labour Party policy.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, will come back but, unfortunately, the Government resist this small, partial proposal for reform of the Lords.

Lobbyists: Register

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, one of the reasons why it has taken much longer than we intended to produce a statutory register of lobbyists is because the definition of who is a lobbyist is extremely difficult. The Labour Government before this Government also struggled with that. As all who have studied this area will know, the issue is whether one simply limits the register to third-party lobbyists—those who are professional lobbyists working on behalf of someone else—extends it to the category of lobbyists for for-profit companies such as the entire public affairs sector of a major company or beyond there to those who lobby for non-profit organisations such as Oxfam, Christian Aid or the RSPCA. That takes one into an extremely wide area which is difficult to define.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Given that it has been over a year since the consultation concluded, we welcome the announcement today that there will be a Bill before the Summer Recess. However, will the Minister now ensure that his department replies to the letter from my honourable friend in the other place, Jon Trickett, asking for immediate cross-party talks on this issue? There is agreement about the need for a register and for a code of conduct. Cross-party talks on those issues in the immediate future would be welcome. Can the Minister confirm that he will do that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I take the point. Of course, as in all delicate legislation of this kind, the wider the consensus we can get the better. The lobbying area is immensely more complex than I understood before I began to go into it. This is one of the many areas where we need to work together as widely as we can.

Elections (Fresh Signatures for Absent Voters) Regulations 2013

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 4th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask the indulgence of the Committee in order to congratulate the Minister not only on having sung at the Queen’s Coronation 60 years ago, but on his role in the Abbey today to commemorate that occasion. I am sorry that we are not seeing him in all his glory this afternoon. When I was a student, we used to move that the minister “do now sing”; maybe I should not do that.

On the two statutory instruments, including the one for Wales, one of the questions is quite similar to one raised by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves: how many absent votes does the Minister estimate are covered by each of these two SIs? In other words, how many that would normally be written out in Wales and England are covered by this?

Related to that, what is the Government’s assessment of the number of likely renewals, particularly given that these are going out in the August holiday period? That has been a worry for the Electoral Commission, and is a worry as, not only is your Lordships’ House on holiday during the first two weeks of August, but so are many other people.

Although the word “stakeholders” was used by the Minister, what is the view of the political parties of this proposal? As I mentioned before in Committee, they are rather expert on all of this, as has been evidenced by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, this afternoon.

In the form that will go out on the mere matter of the refreshment of the signatures, will there be any advance notice about the move to individual electoral registration? In other words, is it part of the preparation that is being made? I know that the Electoral Commission still has some concerns over the October 2013 annual canvass date and what impact it might have on absent voters. We would be interested to know what the Government’s response to the issue raised by the Electoral Commission has been. In general, however, we support the regulations and the order.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her compliment, although the compliment I have really liked over the past two or three weeks has been from those who have said that they find it difficult to believe that I could have sung at the coronation because I look far too young. I am sorry that she missed that one.

These regulations are important because we are all concerned to get the transition to individual electoral registration right. We will in time bring some further regulations back to the Committee. While many of them seem incredibly technical and complex, it is important that we manage to end up with a new register that is as complete and as accurate as possible. The integrity of the electoral register is also an important matter.

I remember many years ago my noble friend Lord Greaves raising in the House the question of postal vote fraud in open elections and getting a very dusty response from almost all Benches on the grounds that this was not considered a serious problem. It is now a good deal better understood that this has, in a number of highly localised areas, been quite a serious problem that was not fully picked up and has not attracted the level of prosecution that one really ought to have seen. However, it is one that these identifiers are intended to pick up.

I will try to answer some of these difficult questions. On dates, and when one does the write-around and the canvass, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, will recall that we had a discussion as to when it was most useful to do the house-to-house canvass, and I wrote to her in the spring to point out that I had in some ways misled the Committee by suggesting that March was a good time to go around house by house, because there was deep snow in Saltaire past Easter Day. Whatever we do, there is never a perfect answer, but we are trying to do our best on all of this.

I will try to answer some of my noble friend Lord Greaves’s questions, and then promise that I will write to him on others. He will of course know that many of these statistics are not collected centrally. Electoral registration officers are local appointees and the administration of voting is still a local authority matter.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I hope that it does. I will do my best to investigate and come back to the noble Lord on that.

I am told that approximately 150,000 postal votes have been rejected at each recent national poll across Great Britain—I hope that does mean across Great Britain—because one or more of the personal identifiers on the postal voting statement did not match those originally submitted or because one or more of the identifier fields had been left blank. Statistics on rejection rates are recorded by returning officers and are submitted, perhaps on Form K, to the Electoral Commission for collation. Although figures for the May 2013 local elections are not yet available, I understand that the Electoral Commission plans to publish information on turnout once all these data have been received and collated.

On the question of getting fresh signatures after five years, we do not hold this information centrally. I hope it will be considered helpful that, according to my team, one ERO spoken to has told us that in his or her area in 2012, out of nearly 22,000 electors sent a postal vote refresh notification, some 1,800 did not respond and 565 said that they no longer wanted one. That gives noble Lords a level of the turnover in 2012, for which there are many reasons. In 2013, of 21,000 electors sent a postal vote refresh notification, some 4,355 did not respond and 934 said that they no longer wanted one.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

That was very useful. However, the Minister said the first figure, 22,000, was from one ERO. He may not be able to tell us now, but is that from one whole constituency? I am trying to work out the percentage each January who would be likely to come up for signatures. The response rate is very useful but it would also be useful, if not now then later, to know what the 22,000 figure is as a proportion of the voters.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I understand that. The noble Baroness will know that the proportion of postal voters varies quite radically from one area to another. It is not a uniform pattern across the country. We will see what we can do to provide some more comparative statistics.

On the third of the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, it is for individual returning officers to judge whether a mismatched date of birth or signature gives them grounds to report the matter to the police. The Electoral Commission and the Association of Chief Police Officers produce joint guidance for electoral administrators on electoral integrity, which includes such matters. Electoral administrators and the Electoral Commission have noted in recent years that the majority of mismatches appear to arise from inadvertent errors such as a deteriorated signature or the accidental completion of the date of birth field with today’s date.

The Government intend introduce a system to inform electors if ballot papers have not been counted. We introduced a provision in the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, which will allow regulations to be made setting out the circumstances in which electoral registration officers must inform electors, after a poll, where their postal vote identifiers failed to match. EROs will have discretion not to write to individual electors where malpractice is suspected. This will not include situations where ballot paper numbers do not match those on the postal voting statement as electoral administrators already have the facility to unite ballot papers with the proper postal voting statements for them to be checked and counted where these are returned separately, for example where two people in a household inadvertently swap their ballot papers. We intend to introduce this provision for the polls in 2014.

Electoral Registration (Disclosure of Electoral Registers) Regulations 2013

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I have to say that if the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has really been worn down by all these debates on IER, he is showing no sign of it whatever.

I thank the Minister for introducing these measures. I turn first to the disclosure regulations. The Committee will recall that we welcomed all the efforts made to locate and contact eligible voters absent from the register, and to confirm those already on the household list. We therefore fully support this dry run, which will assist EROs to compare their data against datasets kept by DWP and to test the confirmation exercises.

Noble Lords will not be surprised that I have a number of questions. I had hoped that if the exercise had revealed the names and addresses of people not on the current list, the ERO would then be able to write and invite them to register. The Minister said that there would be no contact, but I do not know whether that means that even if an ERO finds from DWP material someone who is not on the register, the ERO will be unable to approach that person. Perhaps the Minister can clarify that.

We know that the Minister in another place confirmed the Government’s confidence that everything, including the resources, is sufficiently in place for this work to happen within the required timescale. Perhaps he can repeat that assurance for the benefit of the Committee, together with any comfort that he has received from the Electoral Commission.

The other issue that I had intended to raise was that mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—to ask Minister to confirm that the Electoral Commission will be required to evaluate these pilots and therefore to report back to the House.

Will the Minister also confirm that the regulations will give the necessary authority for all the relevant parties to release the data necessary for this work? Perhaps he can also assure the Committee that all the relevant parties involved will be clear about their duties and responsibilities under the Data Protection Act before any data-sharing begins. Perhaps he can set out what safeguards are in place to protect individuals’ data security. We noted in previous discussions on individual registration that some people, including those in your Lordships’ House, tend to register their vote at one address but use another address for correspondence. That will clearly be a major issue when using the DWP material. Perhaps the Minister can outline how this is to be dealt with in the pilots.

I turn to the second measure, on the postponement of the 2013 household canvass, which is now to be published in England in February 2014, and in March in Scotland and Wales. The Minister will recall my sadly unsuccessful attempt to remove from the then ERA Bill the ability of the Secretary of State to abolish the canvass. That is an indication of how important we see this tool in seeking out and registering all citizens with an entitlement to vote. Clearly, this will be even more important in the move to IER, which will fully replace the household register only in 2016. I ask the Minister to confirm that he is confident that the Government’s plans will ensure that by 2016 we will have a better register than we have at present, and that the Government remain clear that there will be no dropping of the household register before 2016.

We are very content that the Government push ahead with locating non-registered but eligible electors, so that by 2016 we have the maximum possible number of individually registered electors by a variety of means and no one is inadvertently denied their vote in 2016. But we seek assurance that any such work is not with the idea of bringing forward sole reliance on the individual rather than household-registered electorate. In the mean time, however, while we remain with household lists, as the Minister has said that registers decline in accuracy by about 1% a month, we are content with the canvass taking place slightly later—provided that the information is then made available to political parties as soon as possible thereafter, so that their work on the lists can begin, as he mentioned. This is key. The Committee knows that much of the business of alerting voters to the fact that they are or are not on the electoral roll is done by political parties, as the voting cards tend to go out only a short time before an election. It will be more and more important, with the gradual shift to IER, for parties to have early and easy access to the new registers so that they can undertake their canvass work and so that anyone left off can be identified in time to rectify that absence. We also need, as early as possible after the delayed canvass, publication, perhaps monthly, of a rolling register, showing IER flags.

We know that the ERA allows for transfer to IER to be completed by the end of December 2016, which is a sensible date. The Committee will understand that we remain a little nervous. The Act retains a power to hurry it through earlier than that, but we hope that the Government are not trying to do that, given the risk of losing eligible voters. We would also query—and this was another point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—whether there is a satisfactory way in which to judge whether the 2016 date is appropriate to complete the transition. We would like to know what criteria would be applied and what would be the role of the Electoral Commission in such a process. Under the Labour Government’s legislation on IER, the Electoral Commission had a pivotal role in deciding whether progress had been sufficient to create safe conditions for the final move to be made. This Government removed that role, but surely the commission must have a duty to press the “Go” button, if that decision is to clearly non-political and based on solid data.

Perhaps I could use this opportunity to ask the Minister two questions.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Two more?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Yes, but I once asked the noble Lord 16.

First, are the Government committed to the December 2016 timetable? Secondly, will they await a commission pronouncement on whether the conditions are right before making the final transition to IER? We assume that a core criterion for assessing those conditions is whether, as the Minister says, the electoral register is at least as accurate as the current register, but we need that to be judged by an independent body, which surely can only be the Electoral Commission.

Finally, we return to the point of which we were reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that the Electoral Commission remains concerned about an October rather than November start date. I noticed that, in introducing this, the Minister seemed to say that a later date might be more suitable. Perhaps he could clarify whether that reflects discussions with the Electoral Commission.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their contributions. I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that this may not be the last SI on this subject and it is important, since this is such a key element, that we make sure that we have all-party confidence in the process as we go through. We are dealing with data-sharing in some sensitive areas, so we need to make sure that everyone is carried along.

Representation of the People (Election Expenses Exclusion) Order 2013

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, in responding to points from the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, we hope that they are very successful in selecting their candidates. Noble Lords will not be surprised, however, if I do not necessarily wish them success in being elected. But it is a challenge to my party to make sure that we can similarly find some candidates. It will also come as no surprise to the Committee that we broadly and warmly welcome this draft order which, as the Minister says, will enable disabled candidates to apply for and use the fund specifically created to encourage them to be candidates by excluding those moneys from the schedule of election expenses. It is clearly a shame that it was not thought of when the fund was established, but we are pleased, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, that it will be done by 26 March, in time for this year’s election. Unsurprisingly, the charities representing people with disabilities, most notably Scope, are also supportive of the thrust of the measure.

The Minister will have read the discussions of the House of Commons committee on this. Perhaps it is a bit late to regret, along with it, that the fund does not cover parish council elections. Indeed, for many people, that is their first attempt at the ballot box, and it might have encouraged more disabled people to make that same first attempt. However, this is a pilot, and we hope that if it is successful it will be rolled out in a comprehensive way.

My questions, therefore, are not about what might have been but about this specific order, which allows the fund expenditure to be excluded. Will the Minister confirm that anything that the fund agrees to finance will then automatically be covered by the exclusion? In other words, there will be no additional formality to be gone through? We do not want the fund saying that it is covered and then being told afterwards that it is not. There needs to be just one lot of decision-takers, and I assume that it will be the fund decision-takers. It would be useful to have that confirmed.

What is being done to promote awareness of the fund? In preparation for today, I did the usual thing and tried to find out about it. I found it impossible to locate the fund through the Electoral Commission’s less-than-helpful website. Google was rather more helpful and got me on to the relevant site. Given that the Electoral Commission wants to be involved in this, I would have thought that it would do more to make knowledge of the fund better known, rather than simply being able to find out about this specific order, which is not of interest to disabled people once it is done.

Information on the fund itself was not brilliant. I could not get hold of the application form from the website although it has now been sent to me. It also was not clear how quickly a decision would be made, which I should have thought was also quite important for candidates to decide whether to go ahead. They need to know that before they start spending too much of their own money. Although we are keen for the Electoral Commission to be involved in encouraging and helping disabled people to be candidates, we hope that it will smarten up its own access via the web in time to do this.

We very much support the exclusion of fund expenditure but rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, we wonder whether this leaves a transparency gap. It would be useful to know what disclosure of such funds and their use will be made. Mention was made of a voluntary system, and I wonder whether that is sufficient or whether the fund should itself be transparent. It would be useful to know the Government’s thinking on that. Finally, can the Government assure us that if this pilot proves a success, it will be rolled out fully and with money following intent? As we know, the groups who will benefit from this are highly underrepresented at the moment. Indeed, I cannot believe that this Government would have so undermined the lives of so many disabled people as they have done both under the Welfare Reform Act and now the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill had we had more people as MPs, or indeed Peers, but especially MPs, from those particularly affected groups. We very much want this fund to be a success and we hope that its administrators, the Electoral Commission and the Government will play a very full part in helping disabled people to find out about the fund and then stand for and be elected to public office. I am sorry, but I hope that they will all be Labour if they get elected.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank those who have spoken for their general welcome for this order. I stress that this is a pilot and an experiment in some ways. I also stress that it is absolutely an all-party initiative. We very much hope, as the noble Baroness has suggested, that all parties will want to take this up and make use of it, and that part of the way in which information will spread out is that all parties will wish to inform their local associations to look more actively for potential candidates for whom this would make the crucial difference.

In the disability world, the communications strategy is already a good deal better known than in the general outside world. I had not heard of it until a few weeks ago but I am told that the Government have a comprehensive communications strategy in place. There have been a number of news stories in the press, and in tweets, blogs and the like, targeted very much at the disability community. This will continue as the pilot rolls on.

As for the question of what happens in August 2014, this is a pilot over which we will want to consult as we go along, as well as seeing how many people come forward. Once the SI ends, we will ensure that there is a smooth transition to the new regime, if by then a decision is made that the fund is seen as worthwhile and is to be extended. So far there have been about 30 applications for the fund, and the average per application is between £4,000 and £6,000. We are not talking about enormous amounts. Noble Lords will recall that there is a £20,000 maximum per application under the fund at the moment. However, we hope that this will be shown to make a crucial difference in making it easier for people with different disabilities to put themselves forward for election.

In the pilot we decided not to include parish councils. A great many parish councils do not have elections. At my party’s spring conference, I talked to a local activist from West Yorkshire. He told me how deeply unpopular he has made himself with a number of other politicians in his ward, because he keeps insisting that there should be elections for the parish council. Others think that elections are an unnecessary expense and that co-option is much to be preferred, this being a predominantly Conservative parish council. Perhaps one of the questions that we will investigate and discuss further, and come to a different decision on as we move forwards from the pilot, is whether we include parish council elections, in which many people first cut their electoral teeth, as the noble Baroness rightly says.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asks whether it will be retrospective. The answer is that it will not, but those who have already approached the fund for support for this coming May’s elections will be able to roll their applications in and it will not go back further than that.

Ministerial Code

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

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

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

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

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

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

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

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have come a long way in discussing this issue since the Bill was subjected to pre-legislative scrutiny, and the character of the Bill has changed quite a lot as it has gone through both Houses. We have also learnt as the various data matching and data mining exercises have been piloted, and that continues to be the case. We had an interesting and informative debate on this subject in Committee and, as I said then, the Government are sympathetic to the spirit of the amendment, which seeks to ensure that the best possible use is made of data matching to identify people not on the register who may be entitled to be. The outcome of the second round of data pilots showed that some 70% of voters could be confirmed through the DWP database. As the noble Baroness said, this varies from local authority to local authority, but it enables us to focus on the 30% who are not confirmed.

We are all aware that it is the frequent movers and young people—above all, young men—who are the hardest to identify. In the various pilots under way, we are experimenting with using other databases. I remind noble Lords that, in last year’s data matching pilots, data were matched with organisations such as the DWP, HMRC, the Royal Mail—which was particularly useful for people who had given their changes of address—the Department for Education, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Transport, the Student Loans Company, the Ministry of Defence and, for Scotland, the Improvement Service company. In early 2013, we are currently planning to undertake pilots of data mining using databases held by the DWP, the Department for Education, HEFCE, the Welsh Government, the Royal Mail, the Student Loans Company and a small number of county councils.

Some data sets are held locally and some centrally, some are public and, as far as the credit reference agencies are concerned, some are private. The Bill enables us to remove any barriers to the usage of private sector data, and we have not ruled out the possibility of working with credit reference agencies to see what value their data sets can add to data matching for individual electoral registration.

I repeat: this is an area in which the Government are already very actively engaged. The amendment is not necessary. This schedule gives us the power to remove barriers to data sharing. Working through regulations enables us to discover new, useful data sets as we move forward. The Government are continuing to test which data sets are the most useful and effective in identifying potential electors.

Pre-empting such careful consideration of which may be the most appropriate data sets to use by specifying them in primary legislation could limit flexibility by requiring the unnecessary use of data sets that add no value to the work of EROs. The amendment would mean that the Government could not bring forward a data-matching order that did not include one of these agencies. That could potentially mean ruling out the future use of as-yet-unknown data sets or carrying out multiple data-matching exercises. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, that we are in active discussion with the Department for Transport on the use of DVLA databases and others. It is likely that in 2013 we will be testing out other such databases.

The amendment is unnecessary and limits flexibility in an area where the Government are already engaged in intensive action to identify the best data sets to assist EROs in performance of their duties. I hope that I have said enough to reassure the noble Baroness and to enable her to withdraw the amendment. We all share the objective of coming out of this exercise with the maximum possible number of people on the register—and, as the noble Baroness has said, not just on the register first time around but staying on the register as they move.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I thank the Minister for that, and, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, for his support. I am sorry that we pinched his words, but they were rather good words.

I disagree with the Minister on only one thing: when he said that the wording would make it compulsory and it might be difficult. If that really was the Government’s only opposition to it, we have Third Reading later tonight and we could have made it accurate. That was perhaps a slightly churlish bit of the response.

The rest of the response we found very heartening. There seems to be an attempt to look at most databases. It is particularly important to look at transport and the DVLA. The Minister mentioned that young men were some of those hardest to find. The last time I looked at it, young men had some of the highest records for both ownership of either cars or driving licences—or, sadly, for endorsements on them—so that is a particularly good way of finding them.

The Minister will not be surprised that we will continue to keep a watchful eye on this, to make sure that as much is done as possible. We will keep an eye out for any regulations that help. For the moment, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The Electoral Commission has to provide a report assessing the extent to which the registration objectives have been met. That report has to be presented to Parliament, and the Minister has to respond. Both Houses of Parliament then vote on whether they accept the Minister’s approval. It is a fairly strong set of safeguards.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, they are not strong enough. We are coming, later on, to an amendment on the 10 pm closing, where the Electoral Commission has also given its advice and the Government are seeking to overrule it. I think that reflects the question just asked: it is about advice and not approval, and a report coming here and to the other place that the Government could then override. It will basically be a government decision. They always have a majority, as we know, in the other place, while in this place we have a custom and practice not to vote against regulations. That basically means it is in the hands of a Government, who do not have to take the advice—although they have to listen to it—of the Electoral Commission.

I am afraid that I am not sufficiently assured that this power, which allows an elected Government to abolish the annual canvass, is one that should remain in the Bill. The Minister talked about it being 10 years before online registration will really be there. That seems a long time to leave the power to abolish it in the hands of the Government. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Martin, for his support and want to test the opinion of the House.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government have brought forward this amendment to recognise this House’s support for a change to allow electors in a polling station or queuing outside at the time for close of poll who have not yet had the opportunity to receive a ballot paper and cast their vote, to do so. It takes the principle proposed in the amendment previously tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, on behalf of the Constitution Committee, and the further amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, on issues around exit polls.

The amendment addresses the inclusion of Northern Ireland in the scope of the change it will bring about. It isolates the change in relation to close of poll from impacting anyone who broadcasts an exit poll while people in the queue are still voting, thus removing the ambiguity on application of the criminal sanctions that they might have faced, and provides for proportionately tailored powers to make further changes to legislation to address other impacts that it has on provisions that also relate to the close of poll.

The amendment applies to the law governing UK parliamentary elections and does not as a matter of course apply to all other polls, elections or referendums. Depending on the relationship of the Representation of the People Act 1983 to other legislation and the effects of any combination provisions, the change may or may not also apply to other polls. The powers sought in the amendment are aimed at being able to address uncertainty and ambiguity about when and how it may apply to other provisions and for other elections or referendums.

The Government think that it would be better for electors if we were to make sure that any such changes were brought about in a co-ordinated manner and do not open up the possibility of electors in a queue being able to vote in a poll on one date but not on another. It helps us avoid, at least in part, the need to make legislation on a piecemeal basis for different polls, an issue which has been raised in relation to the complexity of that legislation. It also brings clarity for those administering elections and, more importantly, for those voting in them. I trust that noble Lords will accept this amendment in the spirit in which it has been brought so that the change sought can be introduced in a workable and effective fashion. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I wish to take this opportunity to say how much we welcome this measure. I think that we started to discuss the Bill in this House in July last year and noble Lords will be pleased to know that this is the last time they will hear me speak on it. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, who has been extraordinarily helpful to us throughout the discussions on the Bill. He was ably helped by the noble Lords, Lord Gardiner of Kimble and Lord Taylor of Holbeach.

This has been a tricky Bill in some ways and the Bill team has served us well, as I am sure it has the government side. We thank the members of the Bill team as well as the clerks, who we have perhaps stretched beyond their normal role, including at the last minute tonight when the relevant paperwork was turned round quickly to enable us to get to this stage of the Bill. In doing so, we have seen the House at its very best.

I also take the opportunity to thank my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer, who has guided us through the Bill. We have in our office the most marvellous Jessica Levy, who has made sure that we have been kept well up to date at all times. We very much support this amendment and thank the noble Lord for tabling it.

Lobbyists: Register

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The consultation document Introducing a Statutory Register of Lobbyists was published earlier this year to gather evidence from experts in the field and members of the public. It asked a number of specific questions, the multiple answers to which are informing policy developments in this area.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Well, my Lords, it does not sound like much action has been taken. Given that the coalition promised to regulate lobbying through a statutory register—in case the noble Lord needs reminding—can he tell us whether it is going to move on this or is it going to wait for the next big scandal before it does so?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are certainly intending to move on this but as the noble Baroness will appreciate if she has looked through the replies to the consultation document and the companion report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place, there is a quite remarkable dissensus among respondents. The Government’s summary of replies to the consultation document remarks at one point, in effect, that a lot of those consulted regard themselves as a legitimate part of the political process but regard everyone else as lobbyists. That is part of the problem. The paid lobbyists are a small part of those with whom we are talking, and they wish charities, think tanks, trade unionists and others also to be included on any register of lobbyists.

Electoral Registration Data Schemes (No. 2) Order 2012

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the order. It is very difficult to disagree with one word said either by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, or my noble friend Lord Maxton. I have no shame in using the expression “ID card”, and the Minister is no doubt ruing the day when the Government decided that they did not want to continue with that scheme.

We warmly welcome the measure in broad terms; it is necessary, whether or not the ERA finally goes through. We hope that the process will happen in any case, because it is about finding those who have a right to be on the electoral register but are not there at the moment. It may be that it should have started earlier, but we welcome it all the same.

We have just a few questions. First, as I asked on the previous occasion, has there been any discussion with the political parties about the pilots? As I have said before, and as the evidence we have heard today from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, shows, political parties understand these issues really well and it would have been good if they had been involved in discussions on the pilots to make them as good as possible.

Secondly, like the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, we have a slight lack of confidence in whether the methodology is sufficiently robust. It looks slightly hit-and-miss, with various areas choosing which bits they would like to do. I hope that it is a little more scientific than that, which it needs to be if the conclusions are to be robust. Perhaps the Minister could assure us that the methodology is sufficiently robust to enable lessons to be learnt and that a sufficient number of authorities are participating for any general conclusions to be drawn. I had not thought of the issue of computer-matching which the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, raised, but, even without that added dimension, we need to be sure that the range is broad enough for us to be able gain good evidence.

Thirdly—this is again related in part to what the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said—to whom will the Electoral Commission report on its evaluation? Is it only to be to Ministers or will it be to the House? What happens if the pilots prove either too expensive per new elector identified or if, as has been suggested, database problems seem insurmountable? What happens if unforeseen data-confidentiality issues arise, or if some other weakness is identified? Is there a plan B to locate unregistered voters?

Fourthly, it is essential, as the Government’s own Explanatory Notes suggest, that the 22 areas have sufficient expertise and staffing to make the pilots meaningful. What assurance can the Minister give us that they will be sufficiently resourced?

Fifthly, what lessons have the Government learnt from the pitiful turnout for the recent police and crime commissioner elections? Can the Minister assure us that these pilots are not displacement therapy for the embarrassment caused by those unnecessary elections? In case he needs reminding, the elections cost £100 million, which would have paid for 3,000 police officers. It would be interesting to hear whether he thinks that at least some good has come out of those elections in terms of lessons for systems of electoral registration.

The Minister might also like to take the opportunity to say a little more about the Electoral Commission’s report on continuous electoral registration in Northern Ireland—to which the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred—which was published today. According to the commission, the report,

“provides clear lessons for Great Britain as we move to individual electoral registration”.

Electors in Northern Ireland are now only registered once and only have to re-register if their personal details change.

This new report assesses the effectiveness of such continuous registration in Northern Ireland. It shows that the electoral register is now only 71% complete and 78% accurate, whereas the previous assessment in 2008 estimated the register to be 83% complete and 94% accurate. It appears that this significant and worrying decline is because the processes used to manage the register are unable to keep pace with people moving home or people becoming newly eligible to join the register.

We will obviously return to this in due course, with suitable amendments to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. Again, as has already been mentioned, the Minister will recall that we spoke of our deep concern about the provision in the ERA Bill for the annual canvass to be abolished. We trust the Government will reassess this provision in the light of the Northern Ireland example. Hitherto, the Minister has called Northern Ireland in aid as a defence for the Bill, but I think today’s findings are a little worrying—particularly about people moving, because within certain parts of Great Britain, our population mobility is even higher than in Northern Ireland. Therefore, this continuous updating would be particularly important. However, none of this undermines the general support for these plans to take place.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank noble Lords for their comments. We are a small group, but it is very good to have an expert and interested group in this extremely important and difficult transition from a very elderly system of household registration to a necessary, but not entirely easy, system of individual electoral registration.

I will try to answer some of the questions that have been raised. The government digital service is working actively on IT systems and the compatibility between one system and another. I was amused this morning to have a government digital service team arrive with a Mac presentation that they wanted to put on the House of Lords Microsoft-based video system. They are well aware of these problems; there will be full end-to-end testing of the IER digital service before the introduction of IER. This is not necessary for the purpose of the data pilots, but from the briefing that I have so far had from the government digital service, this is very much one of the things that they are actively working on and are confident that they are making progress in resolving. As I commented to the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, earlier, I was struck by the different cultures of the government digital service and the House of Lords; we had forced two members of the government digital service to put on ties and suits to come to the House of Lords this morning and they felt extremely uncomfortable in this unusual clothing. We intend to be able to integrate IT systems at the local level and a considerable amount of work is under way.

I have been asked by several noble Lords to provide more clarity on when the Bill will come back. I can, with great assurance, tell them that the answer is “soon” and that I look forward to a more precise explanation of when soon will be, since that will also assist my diary.

I was asked about the role of the Electoral Commission and whether its report would be published. The report will be made to the Secretary of State, but in the nature of the relationship between the independent body, Parliament and government, it will of course also be published.

On the question of the Department for Transport and the DVLA, the latter’s database was used for the original data-matching pilots but is not currently available to us. Discussions are vigorously under way between the Cabinet Office and the Department for Transport, and we hope that we will regain access to the database at a later date. I am well aware that the DVLA database, as the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, commented, is accessed by other agencies including private insurance companies. It is not an entirely closed system and we very much hope that we will be able to resolve the issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank my noble friend for that strongly worded intervention. I take that on board as one of the issues that we are edging towards. The civil liberties lobby may not have caught up yet with the point that he is making, but I expect that it will do so soon. There are some very broad issues here that we have to be concerned about. I point out, as he has done, that one of the principles of our system of electoral registration is that it is in the hands of local authorities. We do not have a central database, so what one local authority does with credit agencies may be rather different from other local authorities do.

On the question of why this particular collection of local authorities was chosen, the answer is that these are the ones that volunteered to take part. They seem to us to be relatively representative, but this is the nature of the system under our current legal arrangements. Happily, the selection of local authorities is sufficiently wide that we and the Electoral Commission are persuaded that they will provide us with sufficiently reliable information.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Is the Minister concerned that they are, in a sense, good local authorities? The fact is that if they volunteer to do this they are probably doing quite a lot in any event, and therefore probably not the ones that are of concern to us. I was very glad that they volunteered, by the way.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As I have discovered, the world of electoral registration officers and their staff is a wonderful subculture of its own. They interrelate across the board, and they know which are the good local authorities and which are not. I am less worried than I was when I started in this process after having discovered this wonderful population of people, for whom I have a great deal of respect, having been briefed by a number of them.

My noble friend Lord Rennard asked me for an assurance that the databases chosen are properly representative of the UK population. We are pursuing the greatest diversity possible in databases, which is why I take on board what has been said about the DVLA; the wider the collection of databases that we use, the more likely it is that we will catch students, attainers, rapid house-movers and others. That is precisely what we are trying to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, made an interesting comment that he might perhaps wish to pursue further: he would like an opt-out electoral registration system rather than an opt-in one. That is a point of some significance that would bear some consideration and further thinking. There are some large issues there on voluntary registration and the balance between voluntary and compulsory, which are not currently within our remit in the Bill.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are now navigating the delicate area between voluntary and compulsory registration. I think that we all recognise that, for a British state which is by tradition a limited-government state in which citizens have a right not to be too closely engaged with it, this raises a number of very delicate issues.

The purpose of the civil penalty is to encourage citizens to fulfil what we all regard as their civic duty and to make it clear that there are consequences for them failing to do so. It is not intended that it should be imposed on every single person who for whatever reason fails to go through to the complete process. Indeed, the evidence is that prominent inclusion on the registration form of the words, “This is your civic duty. You are subject to a fine if you do not fill in the form”, significantly increases the number of people who fill in that form. That is particularly valuable. But to move on from there to pursuing everyone who fails to fill in the form accurately, or who refuses point blank after many attempts to fill in the form, takes us a little further down the road from voluntary to compulsory voting than many of us wish to go.

I think that we all recognise that one of the important aspects of the transition, which again takes us outside the immediate focus of the Bill but draws on the Northern Irish experience, is that we need to pay more attention to citizenship education—getting into schools and telling young people between the ages of 16 and 18 about what citizenship really involves. We should get them to want to make sure that they are on the register, which too few of them now do, while also perhaps explaining to them that, if they want to obtain credit in future, being on the register is one of the prerequisites for getting a good credit rating. So we are negotiating our way around a range of different factors.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, that not understanding that you have to fill in the form as a defence for not applying is also a very delicate area. We know that there are not a insignificant number of voters who are functionally illiterate. We know also that there are a number of voters whose knowledge is English is not ideal. So there is a range of limiting factors. This part of the draft secondary legislation is aimed at those who generally have issues about understanding the requirement being placed on them, whether it is matter of literacy, learning difficulties or knowledge of English. We will look at the language very carefully between Committee and Report to take the noble Lord’s points into account.

In relation to the noble Lord’s Amendments 4 and 5, I emphasise that the civil penalty is intended above all to serve as an encouragement to apply. The Government’s preferred approach to reforms is to keep details of this sort out of the Bill, instead using secondary legislation and guidance to ensure flexibility. It will be for the Electoral Commission to design the forms and the envelopes used in individual electoral registration. Having collected a number of these forms from different electoral administrators over the summer, I am struck by the current diversity in the forms provided, some of which put the importance of civic duty and the potential threat of a civil penalty very prominently and others have it down in the bottom left-hand corner where people are much less likely to see it.

These proposed draft regulations set out a small number of requirements for the content of paper application forms and the invitations that are sent to voters. They include mention of the civil penalty in the invitation but it will be for the commission to decide how best to approach the prominence and wording. For example, it may be that testing shows that a gentle mention of the penalty in the initial invitation works best, increasing the prominence of the message with successive invitations. We are currently undertaking targeted consultation on this publication and we welcome views on the contents. A certain amount of testing is under way on how best to design the forms.

The Government are firmly resistant to Amendments 21 and 22, which seem ultimately to force registration officers to impose the civil penalty on any person who does not make an application to register. Their purpose is the same as that of my noble friend’s other amendments. They would reduce the capacity of registration officers to use their own discretion in judging whether to issue a requirement to register to a person who has failed to make an application to register after being issued with an invitation. Again, we feel that this would take us too far down the road towards compulsion. After careful consideration with key stakeholders, we do not think it appropriate to create a new civil penalty for individuals who, after being required to make an application, fail to do so. We therefore urge my noble friend to withdraw his amendments.

On Amendments 23 and 29, the noble Baroness will recognise the very firm reasons why, in an age where—happily at the moment—inflation is low we nevertheless do not wish to put details of this sort firmly into primary legislation. I am sure that the noble Baroness is too young to remember the old notice that one used to see in trains:

“Penalty for improper use £5”.

When that was first established in railway legislation, £5 was a great deal of money. By the time I was in secondary school, it was rather less money than before—although, when I went out to tea in the local manor house and was tipped £5, it seemed an awful lot of money at that time.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I hope the noble Lord can assure us that he never misused that facility.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Of course I did not. I would never have thought about it while the train was in the station. I am sure that noble Lords will be as familiar with the song around that as I am.

We intend that the civil penalty should be modest and reasonable. That is why the phrase used is that it should be in the same range as parking fines. The intention is that the amount of the fine should be set out in secondary legislation so that it is flexible. We do not intend and no Government would wish to have to introduce primary legislation on the electoral registration system every two or three years.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, for the little education he gave me in an earlier group about the precise wording of Amendment 24. I am very grateful for that. I also thank him for moving this amendment. I speak to very similar ones tabled by my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and me. All these amendments seek to achieve essentially one thing: that those who hold, for quite proper and official reasons, the names and addresses of our citizens should make them available to election officers who then must write to those citizens, encouraging them to register.

I say to my noble friend Lord Reid and the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, that we are in a position where the Government want to move very fast from one system of registration to another. I hope they will both remain for the next group of amendments, which are about another device to ensure a full register—an annual canvass. That is a different group of amendments. Without these sorts of activities, we risk after the general election of 2015 suddenly moving on to a half register. Unless we take these sorts of steps, we will not have contacted a large swathe of people who absolutely have the right to vote and, I would argue, therefore have the right to be told that they have the right to vote and what they should do about it. Whether it is, as suggested by the noble Lords, Lord Rennard and Lord Tyler, the Student Loans Company, DVLA and tenancy deposits schemes, or, as we suggest, pension benefits agencies, the Passport Office, education establishments and landlords, they should all provide quite willingly information to the relevant election officers, who would then be under an obligation to write to those not on the register encouraging them to sign up.

One of the reasons for this is that we know from research—I think done by the Electoral Commission—that many of those not on the register believe that they are. That may even be the Minister’s own research. Forgive me for not getting the source quite right. We know that a large number—I think it is 45%—of people not on the register think that they are. There will be many of us who have done the political work on polling day of taking people round only to find that they are not on the list. There may be a number of reasons for that. One is the assumption that it just happens. Maybe they have lots of other dealings with the state: they may have applied for and been issued with a passport or driving licence, get a pension or a benefit, pay their council tax or visit their local hospital or GP. That gives them the feeling that they are part of society and a community, and are a citizen. A number of them probably assume that, as part and parcel of that, they are also on lists held by the Government so do not need to separately sign up to register to vote. We are coming in with a new system—in quite a hurry—so it is important to make clear that these other lists also held by the Government or government-authorised agencies do not of themselves give them the right to vote.

It is also important that the Bill should require EROs to let all people know of the other important uses made of the register. The Minister mentioned credit checks earlier in Committee and there is certainly also mortgage eligibility. When those of us of a certain age want our freedom passes, the first thing our local authority will do is see whether we are on the electoral register. There are many advantages to being on it.

Until my noble friend Lord Reid and the noble Lord, Lord Baker, spoke, I thought that it would seem obvious to most people that EROs would look to the sources of data that exist elsewhere to find those missing from the existing registers—or the new ones as individual registration comes up—and write to them. It seems that we should not just leave it to EROs to take that initiative, but write in the Bill that such data should be shared, and shared in a timely manner so that those of our fellow citizens not already on the register will receive a personalised invitation to register for what is their right—the ability to vote.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, before I address the amendments directly, I take up some of the broader issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Reid, which were touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, in our first Committee session before dinner. They are extremely wide issues and I agree that they are important. It was for that precise reason that I went to be briefed by the head of the Government Digital Service last week.

As the noble Lord, Lord Reid, pointed out, as we move towards cloud computing, the questions of where data are stored, to what uses they are put and how far they are shared become a very delicate and important area. I also flag up that the question of what is a public database and what is a private one becomes a little more difficult than it is now. There is a whole set of issues there that we need to return to in other contexts because this has the potential to transform the way in which society, the economy and government work as a whole. I was assured that the protocols that now govern what is called identity verification—the very limited use of data sharing to ask, “Is this person real?”—are strong and, as used by the credit agencies and others, provide firewalls which prevent too much information being shared.

Some of us might differ on how far we would be happy for the DWP, HMRC and the National Health Service to share information on what people claim to be earning, claiming or whatever; those questions will also come into that debate. I strongly agree that this is an extremely important long-term issue. However, if I understand it correctly—and I am at the absolute outer limits of my knowledge of computers at this point—I am told that one does not need to amass new databases. That is the difference between what is now beginning to happen and the old ID debate. One can put different datasets in touch with each other for limited purposes to enable one to discover whether X is really X and whether there is a Y. I thank the noble Lord for his intervention; these are very important long-term issues.

The Government believe that maximising electoral registration and voting is not purely the function and responsibility of the Government. It is the function of political parties; it is the function of all sorts of voluntary organisations. We all know about Operation Black Vote and Bite the Ballot. Noble Lords may be interested that one person last week suggested to me that if Tesco was willing to offer a voucher to everyone who signed up to the electoral register at the age of 18, that would increase the number of 18 year-olds signing up. For myself, I would prefer the Co-op to do it. Perhaps we should consider the extent to which such incentives are, sadly, in our modern world, necessary.

The Government are sympathetic to the spirit of the amendments, but wish to stress that we are already working in this area. We want to retain a degree of flexibility, and a lot of pilots are under way. In last year’s pilots, we matched databases from not only DWP but HMRC, the Royal Mail, the address reallocation service, the Department for Education, HEFCE—the Higher Education Funding Council for England—the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Transport, the Student Loans Company, the Ministry of Defence for service voters and the Improvement Service company. The noble Lords, Lord Reid and Lord Martin, will understand about that company a little better than I do, because it holds data on behalf of local authorities in Scotland.

Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries: Review

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 9th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think that it would be a little brave of me to say what I thought was a useful use of the time of this Chamber or of the other Chamber and what I thought was not. I have sat through a number of debates over the last 15 years that I have felt were not useful uses of this Chamber’s time.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, is it not necessary that we have some certainty here? It is not just about money. There are candidates to be selected and party organisation to take place. The Prime Minister can bring certainty now by introducing primary legislation, or by making it absolutely clear that these boundary changes will not be going ahead, which will save money and enable people to get on with the existing boundaries.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I take that point and I simply reiterate that in all matters of political and constitutional reform and order, it is much the best if we can achieve consensus among all the parties. However, we have to remember that one of the reasons why we are not proceeding with House of Lords reform is because the Labour Opposition in the House of Commons voted down the programme Motion.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Tuesday 24th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I was just coming to the further detail. Perhaps I may issue a personal invitation. A number of parliamentarians have already seen a demonstration of the website that is to be used for registration. I am happy to offer a further demonstration of the prototype if any noble Lord, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, would like to see it. Progress is being made, but it is being tested as we move forward.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, and others suggested that the data-matching pilot had not yet been evaluated. The Electoral Commission and the Cabinet Office have evaluated the pilots undertaken so far. A further exercise is taking place this year, and that will be evaluated over the next few months. The first pilots were very valuable in testing the usefulness of data matching and what is required to share and match data effectively. The evidence suggests that we can simplify the transition for existing electors by using data matching to confirm their details as accurate. As I have already explained, it produces a floor of around two-thirds of people, which enables us to concentrate our efforts on the remaining third to make sure that we get them back on the register as well. Later this year we will run a second set of pilots to confirm the conclusions of the first round and to refine the process of matching data.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, suggested that we should use data mining on private databases as well. I have to say that we would begin to get into issues of privacy and access to data if we were to go too far in that direction. As I have been learning about this process—and in regard to the census—I can hear Liberty and some other groups at my back as they begin to worry about it, so there are questions of privacy. However, we are speaking to organisations that hold potentially useful data, including the credit reference agencies, to establish the most useful data for the purposes of finding people who are not registered.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, asked about the publicity campaign. That will be the responsibility of the Electoral Commission, which of course will play a major role in the entire process. I do not accept the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that there is an apparent downgrading of the role of the Electoral Commission. Perhaps we can discuss that further before the Committee stage, but if it is a concern then clearly we need to meet it. I anticipated the question about risk registers. The Government do not publish risk registers, and we can return to the point at a later stage.

I was asked why we are abolishing the annual canvass. I again suggest that we have no intention of abolishing it until we are sure that we are getting sufficiently good results by other means.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

The question I put to the noble Lord was why the Government had taken on the power to do so rather than it coming back to the other House.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It may be that the other House thinks that it needs an affirmative resolution. It is a very good point that we can of course discuss in Committee, but it certainly does not need primary legislation. As the noble Baroness knows, it has been carried through in Northern Ireland and it appears to have been successful there.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, asked about whether there would be a single level for the civil penalty. We intend to reach a single level within the spectrum, but we are consulting with various interested parties on what they think the appropriate level should be. Perhaps the noble Baroness would like to put down an amendment suggesting that we adopt the Finnish system, which is that the appropriate level should be a percentage of a person’s declared income for the year. That is how the Finns impose traffic and parking fines, but that is not our intention at the moment.

Georgia: Public Services

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 16th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, G4S is an international company but I have absolutely no idea whether it has yet been engaged in Georgia.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, we are about to have elections for police and crime commissioners, with material only on the web and no leaflets. Digital by Default, which the Minister has mentioned, will do for some, but there are a lot of people who need all sorts of things such as passports, licences and debt advice. Could the Minister go to Georgia himself or possibly send Francis Maude there to see what we could learn about people still needing face-to-face advice?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have been to Georgia three times in the last 15 years and would love to go there again. The speed at which our population is moving towards using digital services is quite remarkable and I find, as someone of the older generation—like everyone else here, if I may put it tactfully—the estimates of how many people will use digital services by preference in 10 years’ time very encouraging. However, as in Georgia and the Havant exercise, people who do not find digital access quite so easy will still need assistance to help them use facilities that are more easily available online.

Civil Service: Training and Development

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Monday 2nd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am very happy to put on the record yet again our deep commitment to a high-quality and impartial Civil Service. I remind everyone that the challenges to the Civil Service at the moment—the data revolution and a whole set of new ways of working—are such that we need to look on a regular basis at the balance of training provided and the way in which one may necessarily have to change to adjust to different circumstances.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I am tempted to ask whether the Government are now training civil servants to deal with ministerial U-turns, but I will not. I have a serious question. Last week, the Prime Minister set out a new programme of welfare reform: not for this Government, but for after the next general election. Will civil servants now be working on that policy agenda and preparing policy advice for the ideas set out by the Prime Minister?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that was a good joke. The Prime Minister’s speech set out proposals for what he thought the Conservative Party should do post-2015. That is rather beyond my brief.