Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Elystan-Morgan

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think that we stand a good chance this time of avoiding the dreadful experience of the wash-up which we have had when elections are called at short notice and the rushed election campaigns which follow.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

Will the Minister accept, putting the matter as neutrally as one can, that there must be some dubiety as to whether there was the slightest justification in constitutional law for the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in that since the Second World War there was no instance of a Government running to the country in the short term without justification—that was true in 1951, in 1966 and in 1974—but there were instances of Governments who went right up to the buffers —in 1997 and 2010? Is not the true reason for the Fixed-term Parliaments Act that the coalition Government were desperately anxious to give security of tenure to the Liberal Democrat party?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I do not accept any of the noble Lord’s premises.

Ukraine, Syria and Iran

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Elystan-Morgan

Monday 24th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a question that I have asked myself inside government. We are concerned about the movement of funds whose origins are not entirely clear. I am assured that the Government are monitoring these movements, but of course it is a matter of concern.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, it is utterly laudable and understandable that the United Kingdom and the other countries of the European Union should commit themselves to substantial economic aid for Ukraine. However, will the Government give an unreserved commitment to abjure every temptation to try to involve Ukraine in any militaristic alliance or allegiance with western European countries, bearing in mind that the chief port of Ukraine, Sevastopol, is the base of the Russian Black Sea fleet and that such a militaristic course, though tempting on the face of it, would be utter insanity?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have seen the base of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol with the Ukrainian Black Sea fleet, such as it is, not far away. I recall that someone for whom I used to work, Admiral Sir James Eberle, was invited in the early 1990s to advise the Russians and the Ukrainians on how the Black Sea fleet should be divided between the two. His recommendation was that the best thing was to scrap the entire fleet. Unfortunately, the advice was not taken.

Chilcot Inquiry

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Elystan-Morgan

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for that extremely constructive and helpful speech, which took a number of themes which I, too, wish to cover.

Perhaps I, like others, should admit that I am not entirely a neutral observer in this. I was my party’s defence spokesman at the time, and I was involved in the development of what was then Liberal Democrat opposition to the war. Part of my reason for being so was that I had been a relatively frequent visitor to Washington both before and after 9/11. I met there people whom I had known when I was a graduate student in the United States in the early 1960s and who had become some of the leading neo-conservatives within the Administration. It was because of what I knew of some of their underlying assumptions and of my participation in two National Intelligence Council-sponsored conferences in Washington, one in the autumn of 2001 and one in the summer of 2002, that I concluded that the Bush Administration were determined to go to war with Iraq against the advice of some of their own intelligence analysts who knew the Middle East well.

Having said that, I should say that this is a very different inquiry from the Franks inquiry. It starts with the examination of the Government’s Iraq policy papers in 2000, before 9/11, and concludes with the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq 10 years later. It therefore covers a much longer period than the short period of the Franks report and deals with a coalition war in which we were only a secondary contender. Franks was concluded in six months, but evidence was taken in private; the report covered only the period before the conflict; it did not publish many of the documents. I again declare an interest: I was one of those who reviewed it very critically on publication because it seemed to me that it had distorted the actual situation. The intelligence community had indeed got it right. The only mistake that it had made was in thinking that the Argentinians would not be unwise enough to try to invade the Falklands before the winter; it thought that it would do it six months later.

I also looked back at the Dardanelles inquiry, and reference has been made to the situation after Suez. What we now have with the Chilcot inquiry is a very much more thorough examination in which we are talking about several thousand documents—I must correct the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan: they have not been declassified by being released to the Chilcot inquiry. This is an inquiry by privy counsellors; they have access to everything that they wish to see, including intelligence documents et cetera. The question at stake is not access; it is publication.

I am informed that, when we see the eventual publication, a great deal will be published that it has not been the custom of British Governments to publish before. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, when you get into the question of how far you publish Cabinet minutes that appeared less than 20 or 30 years ago, clearly, whatever happens, you will be seen to have been setting a number of precedents. Another question is how far you publish documents which relate to conversations with some of our closest allies, whether or not you have their permission. There are here some very large issues of national policy and national interest which we all have to consider.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

I quote here from the Prime Minister’s letter of 5 November in reply to the letter of the day before from Sir John Chilcot. He states:

“I am aware of the scale of the task declassification has presented to a number of Government departments, and it is good to have the acknowledgement of the work that has been done by the Cabinet Office and other departments to deal with the disclosure requests, involving several thousand documents, including many hundreds since the summer”.

That seems to me to say—I may be wrong and I apologise if I am—that thousands of documents have been declassified, but I will be corrected.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I would distinguish between access and publication. The delay is very much about working through thousands of documents, many of them very lengthy, and deciding how much can safely be declassified for publication—how much therefore can be published, how much some documents should be redacted in part and whether there are documents which it would be safer not to publish at all. That has taken a good deal longer than was hoped, but it is now well under way and is what we are currently considering.

West Lothian Question

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Elystan-Morgan

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think that I took part in my first debate on the question of an English Parliament at a conference in Edinburgh in 1968. It is not a new question for any of us here. The problem is that while you can begin to carve up parts of northern England into recognisable regions, once you get down to the south-west and the south-east there is not easy agreement within England about the sort of devolution you would have.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

My Lords, while it is undoubtedly the case that the West Lothian question in its many guises deserves consideration, does the Minister not agree that many other constitutional conundrums cry out for resolution? In particular, under the Barnett formula, the Welsh people are unjustly deprived of about £300 million per annum. Looking at it in the wider context, is there not an overwhelming case for setting up a royal commission to look comprehensively into the relationship of this House to the Commons and the Commons to this House, and of Westminster to the devolved Parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord may be aware that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons has, indeed, recommended the idea of a constitutional convention in a recent report. As someone who used to study the British constitution, I have to say that, on the whole, we have preferred to patch it, make do and then put a bit more in rather than attempt a complete redesign.

Credit Unions

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Elystan-Morgan

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think that we are about to trespass on the next debate. The Cabinet Office nudges other departments; whether it can direct them is a question on which the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, will no doubt touch in a few minutes.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

The Minister will be well aware of the popularity of credit unions in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and particularly the Republic of Ireland, where I think the figure of support is of the order of 50%. Am I right in thinking that the equivalent figure for the United Kingdom is somewhere between 1% and 1.5%?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have 2% in my brief, but that is still a very small figure. Given the reduction in bank services in a number of areas in this country, this is an issue that we should all encourage. Noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, will remember the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury talking about the Church of England becoming more extensively involved in the credit union movement.

Government Communications Headquarters

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Elystan-Morgan

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not entirely sure that I understand the full transition to cloud computing. A very small number of people in this House understand it, and I run to them from time to time to ask for their advice. Certainly, we will find that the new global standards on attempts to regulate cloud computing will be thrashed out in negotiations between the United States and the European Union in the context of the transatlantic negotiations. So far we are a long way from discovering how those will turn out. I read in the New York Times the other day that one of the differences across the Atlantic is that in the United States most people distrust the state much more than they distrust companies, whereas in Europe more people trust the state and distrust companies. That raises implications for what sort of regulation people really want. Clearly there will be some extremely difficult negotiations, first on the EU data protection directive, and then within the transatlantic negotiations.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, in quoting the words of Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the chairman of the security committee, the Minister referred to a statement by him which said that normally only information which had been the subject of specific ministerial request would be used. The word “normally” suggests to me that there may be exceptional circumstances. Can the Minister, without embarrassment, suggest the sort of situation in which that might operate? It is a constructive and relevant question, which I am sure the House would wish to have an answer to, if possible.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord tempts me to go down a lane which I think that I would prefer not to go down. It is, of course, the case that, in moments of absolute crisis, a short cut may possibly be taken, but this country attempts in all circumstances to go through the correct procedures and hold to the legal framework.

EU: Reform

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Elystan-Morgan

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We have already had extensive discussions, particularly with the German Government but also with a number of others. There is the potential here for a like-minded group. Of course one has to work in shifting coalitions on many of these issues. On some issues, some member Governments agree strongly with the British Government’s proposals; on others, we have others to work with. On changing the culture of the EU institutions and perhaps changing the balance of portfolios in the next Commission, et cetera, discussions are already well under way.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask the Minister a question concerning Article 50 of the European treaty. As he will know, that is the provision that deals with the renegotiation of the treaty. Will he kindly tell the House whether any member state has invoked the provisions of that article, and, if so, with what result? Furthermore, will he tell the House that the Government will publish a list of the powers that they seek to have repatriated, so that the British people will be able, in the light of reason, to determine what the issues are rather than having to fumble about in a miasma of popular clichés?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I welcome the noble Lord’s support for a reasoned debate. The question is not about unilateral repatriation but about the multilateral reform of the EU.

Telephone Hacking

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Elystan-Morgan

Wednesday 6th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am happy to give the assurance that I will take the strength of feeling of this House back to senior Ministers. We are all aware of the complexities of this case. This is something with which the previous Government had to deal, as well as this Government. There are many aspects of concern to people in this House, the other place and more widely.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, can the Minister tell the House whether at any stage during this inquiry Assistant Commissioner Yates sought the advice of the Director of Public Prosecutions with regard to the interpretation of the criminal offence? If so, when, and what was the nature of the advice given?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think that it would be inappropriate to comment on issues that may indeed be subject to some concern of the courts.