Salisbury Incident Update

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I can most certainly confirm that. In fact, the first unexplained wealth orders have already been issued by the courts.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I would not like us to leave the subject without mentioning the more particular situation. I happen to have spent several hours in Salisbury this weekend, and the calm—perhaps slightly depressed, but nevertheless calm—-and normal way in which individuals and businesses carried out their work in Salisbury despite the dramatic news on the media was incredible. You would not really have known that there was anything worse than the bad weather to keep people away from the centre of the city. Does that not underline the need to ensure that any further statements about the possible danger to individuals who were in the city are handled with great care and are given in due time, not adding to the anxieties of the population?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord and echo his tribute to the people of Salisbury. We are all thinking of them; they are at the forefront of our minds, as is their safety.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that the House does not follow that advice. I cannot support this Bill as it stands and in the context in which it is being proposed. I could simply say that as chair of one of those EU sub-committees which the noble Baroness commended earlier for their work, I should maintain a degree of neutrality and abstain—but the reality is that I do not want my name recorded as supporting the removal of my country from a European Union which, for all its imperfections and its failings, is the best hope for peace, prosperity, security and justice on a continent that has been scarred by war and oppression through previous centuries.

However, I agree—who cannot?—that the people have spoken. Not for the first time, I do not agree with them, but I accept that the decision was valid and I do not join some remainers who say that the vote was less valid because of its correlation with age, lack of educational attainment or distance from the M25. It was a valid vote and a clear vote. Indeed, after the vote I counselled some of my colleagues that we should not seek to frustrate the triggering of Article 50, and that the key point would be when the final deal was presented—and it should be presented to Parliament.

I have somewhat modified that view since the Prime Minister’s speech of 17 January. That speech and the apology for a White Paper that followed have frustrated the aim to which I thought the Government were committed of getting the best possible Brexit option, or even of exploring the range of options open to us. I co-chaired the two sub-committees that produced the report Brexit: the Options for Trade. I will make a somewhat more technocratic speech on that report when it comes before the House on 2 March. Suffice it to say for now that the big print is that in the whole range of witnesses from industry, business, academia, the trade unions, consumer groups, lawyers and other professionals, the vast majority argued that the least disruptive and to them the most attractive option for Brexit was retaining, for most purposes, continuing membership of the single market, probably in some form of EEA/EFTA-type deal. Most also argued that to cushion the change for British industry over the period, we would need some continuing engagement, at least in the short term, in the customs union, which would also alleviate the situation in Ireland, which many noble Lords have spoken about.

The 17 January speech slammed the door on both those options, and the White Paper made it even more explicit. It is not this House, the Supreme Court or the remoaners who have forced the Government into a position where they have restricted their options. Of course, it is possible not entirely to blame the Government. Those who were arguing that we needed a plan are probably deceived by what they wished for. What we now have, with the plan in the White Paper, is a rejection of the two most favoured options for British industry and a reduction of the forward strategies to a binary strategy in which we either negotiate—it would be quite a long negotiation—a complex free trade agreement with the EU, with probably unachievable bespoke sectoral agreements within it, or, if we cannot get such a deal, we have no deal and revert to WTO terms. In practice, that means not only with the EU but with most of the rest of the world. That is a terrible option for the United Kingdom, and it was not what was talked about in the heady days of the referendum campaign. Nor was it clear on 24 June or during all those months when we were simply being told that Brexit means Brexit. In fact, none of it was clear until 17 January—but I am afraid that it is clear now.

If this Bill, or something like it, had been put to us last autumn, I would probably have supported it, although I would clearly have pressed for better parliamentary scrutiny of the negotiating process, which we still do not have. We have been told that in order to maintain the confidentiality of the Government’s negotiating position, we should not expect a ball-by-ball commentary. That is fair enough, but in the 17 January speech, the Government in effect announced their negotiating strategy, not to a trusted parliamentary committee but to the world at large. This is not a game of cricket; it is not even a game of chess. It is more akin to joining 27 professional poker players, and before you have even sat down you have thrown away your two best cards and displayed most of your hand to the rest of the world. That is the exact negation of effective negotiation, and I am surprised and shocked that the Government are finding themselves in this position and are asking us, in effect, to endorse it.

I recognise the importance of the migration issue and that migration trumps—if I can use that term—issues of access to the single market. But no attempt has been made to try to get a deal on migration: something between absolute freedom and absolute control. Such a deal could have been possible, but now no longer is.

This House should not ignore the will of the people, and nor should it lightly challenge the elected House—but we are entitled to ask the House of Commons and the Government to think again and to reflect back to them the view of the vast majority of British business that they should not close all options and that we should look at that again. We are entitled to ask them to think again on that, as we are to insist on more effective parliamentary scrutiny.

I probably will not vote for this Bill, but if the burden of opinion in the Lords is to amend it, then none of us should be afraid of so doing because of the threats to abolish or reform this House. None of that cuts much ice with me; for 20 years I have sought the abolition of this House in its present form. But I hope that, for the reputation of this House, those who are more wedded to its present form will not be frightened into bowing down before that threat and failing to amend this Bill effectively.

Outcome of the European Union Referendum

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I was very pleased to be following shortly the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, because like her, I wanted largely to focus on the state of the nation following this vote. We rightly will have all sorts of views about the constitution, international relations, Europe and the economics of the situation, but we also need to take account of what the vote reveals. Like many of my friends and colleagues on all sides of this House, I was devastated by the result. I speak as someone who, against the views of most of my party and movement, campaigned in 1975 to stay in. Even when I had some responsibility for general elections, I do not recall ever crying at the result, but I did after this one. It has been devastating for many of us.

I was devastated but not shocked; I was hardly even surprised. I do not think that any of them are in the Chamber now but there were Members of this House who, two or three weeks before the referendum, told me they had not met a single person advocating Brexit. That applied to others in the London-based elite outside this Parliament and it indicates, perhaps at the extreme end, the difficulties of us in Westminster relating to what was going on in the country. It was not an edifying campaign and the result was not because of the flamboyant leadership of the leavers nor of the ineffective leadership of the remainers. It was a campaign which seemed to be one of fear against prejudice, rather than offering two versions of hope for affirmation. The noble Baroness the Leader of the House said that it was a momentous demonstration of democratic process, and it was. She also said that it was due to enthusiasm, but I do not think so; in some places at least, it was closer to desperation and despair. The elite are not listening to what is going on in large parts of our country. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury had it right today. The issues that people were really moved by were their employment prospects, their lack of access to public services and inequality in our nation.

It was immigration that got blamed, primarily, and the EU got blamed for the immigration. Some of that is logical, but some of the reasons are also that successive leaders of Governments of all parties have not made clear to the British people the benefits of EU membership and have blamed it for decisions, and their effects, which were actually the responsibility of the Westminster Government. A positive side of that campaign never really came across; instead, we opted on the remain side for Project Fear. A lot of why people voted the other way was because of the lack of enforcement of labour standards, the lack of access to public services and so forth. Because of that vote, we have now had a seismic decision in the history of our nation and in our internal constitution and geopolitical position. Those changes have also, as others have said, let other demons out, as we have seen in terms of the racist attacks and other effects on the streets of our cities. It is time that we focused on the basic causes of this vote.

My noble friend Lord Radice said that in effect we have no Government in this country at the moment, and no Opposition, and he is right. To be slightly more facetious, on the Saturday after the referendum result, there was a point when the Prime Minister had resigned, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had gone AWOL, the leader of the Opposition was pronounced officially to be in bed and the then-assumed next Prime Minister was playing cricket, while sterling was already falling and the prospects for the markets were already appallingly facing us. The Government need to get their act together and so does this House. This House can help. As the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said, we have a key role in our scrutiny committees and the expertise and approach adopted there.

We have to decide which of the seven or eight options—or the three options—of how we in future relate to the EU are to be pursued. However, I fear that some of those options are not on the table. I need to apologise to some of my noble friends for appearing to echo the noble Lord, Lord Lawson of Blaby, but a single market requires single rules, and the single rules of this market include free movement. I hope that there can be some modification but I fear that there will not be much—because, as noble Lords have said, other EU Governments are under equally acute political pressures in respect of negotiating with the UK over the next few months. I chair the EU Sub-Committee on the Internal Market, so I will be at the brunt of this in some ways.

Another thing that appals me about the Government’s position is the lack of contingency planning. Thank God that the Bank of England at least had a contingency plan but, as I understand things around Whitehall, there is no contingency plan either of the immediate position in relation to policies within Europe during this negotiating limbo nor for the long-term position as to how EU-derived legislation on the UK statute book will ultimately be dealt with in future. The House of Lords scrutiny committees can help in that process, but we can only help.

Our political leaders in another place need to accept that they have been turned over in one way or another. I share some of the view of Nicola Sturgeon that the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, mentioned—but the fact remains that she was the only leader of a political party in these nations of the United Kingdom whose population and electorate actually followed its advice. The rest of us have been seriously disavowed. The House of Commons and the political parties need in very rapid order to get their act together to address our future relationship with the EU, but also to address the problems of a deeply divided and resentful country.

Postal Services Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, in my defence, although I continue to think that the Government do not have a very good track record in valuing companies that they put forward for sale, I did not think that the Floor of this House would be any more effective in coming to an appropriate valuation either. Therefore, I support the Government in this instance.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I support this amendment. The Government have to recognise that despite the hours which this House and another place have spent on this Bill and the very protracted proceedings, to which the noble Baroness replied in a very courteous and often very helpful way, the central fact of this piece of legislation, which deals with one of our national institutions and an essential part of our national infrastructure, is that nobody—not the Government, employees, customers, competitors or potential investors —knows what Royal Mail will look like once this legislation is passed. We do not know who the prospective buyers are. We do not know what mechanism the Government are intending to use for the sale, and therefore we do not know who will call the shots in Royal Mail’s future decisions once the privatisation is complete.

In those circumstances it is not entirely surprising that the basis for valuation causes concern. This is what lies behind my noble friend’s amendment. He is right that, historically, assets were sold off at a price that proved to be less than their value. However, in the 1980s, at least it was clear how we were going to sell them, which were going to IPOs and which were to be sold directly to particular bidders. This is not the case here. It is therefore even more important that this great national institution is not passed to an unknown process of sell-off, or to an unknown buyer, without Parliament and the public as a whole being confident about the basis on which that valuation is carried out.

As my noble friend has said, the amendment does not say that we should publish a valuation and therefore undermine the Government’s negotiating position, but it does say that we ought to know the criteria in the Government’s mind on which the valuation is based. This is a fairly minimal requirement. I hope that the Government, who are determined on this course, will at least have the self-confidence to make the public feel confident that this great asset will not be seriously undervalued. I hope that my noble friend’s modest proposal would go some way to achieving that objective if at this late stage the Government were to concede that such a measure should be included in the Bill.

[Lord Razzall]

My Lords, I have some sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, describes as a modest proposal. However, I completely endorse the remarks of my noble friend Lady Kramer. What worries me about the amendment, were it to be carried, is that the most likely outcome would be a sentence in the report simply saying, “It was the best price we were offered”.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, at one point I felt that I would give up on this debate and go home, but I am glad that I stayed. The last two speeches, by the noble Lords, Lord Plant and Lord Norton, bear serious assessment by the Government and by this House. It is regrettable that the Bill before us is very partisan, but it purports to address big issues: the nature of our democracy and the standing of Parliament. We all know that neither of those can be entirely resolved simply by fiddling with the system, but we also know that the system at present neither achieves a democratic result nor improves the standing of our elected representatives.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I do not have a firm view on what the correct size of the House of Commons should be, and I am a supporter of some form of electoral reform on the grounds that my noble friend Lady Kennedy outlined earlier. However, the Bill is not suitable to address either matter. For example, surely the size of the House of Commons must take account of what other elected representatives exist, both here—when we have reformed this House—and in the devolved Administrations, and the number of councillors that we have. If we look at international comparisons, it is clear that we have roughly the same number of MPs as France and Italy and rather more per head of population than Germany. However, if you take the total number of elected representatives, we have far fewer. Unless you take this big picture into account, there is no answer to the question of how many MPs there should be.

On voting systems, I said that I am in favour of reform, but AV is not my favourite form of reform and I do not believe that it will achieve the objectives that the Liberal Democrats have been pressing on us for many years. AV reinforces swings and, by and large, region by region, reinforces the position of the top two parties. The Liberal Democrats might gain a few seats in the south-west, but in most places they would not gain. If the Bill is being put forward to keep the coalition together or to provide some advantage to the Liberal Democrats, I am afraid that that party’s Members will be seriously disappointed.

One central flaw in the Bill on which I want to concentrate is the way in which its approach to deciding the boundaries and number of MPs will, in effect, sacrifice the concept of community and replace that with one of statistical mean. Ever since the late Earl of Leicester, otherwise known as Simon de Montfort, proposed the model for Parliament that we have followed for most of the past few centuries, Parliament’s representation—or that of its lower House—has been based on the boroughs and shires of this country. They were definable communities that knew where they were. The nation is an aggregation of those communities, and Parliament should be the aggregation of the representatives of those communities.

In one sense, this issue is irrespective of the nature of the voting system. You can have one, two and three-member constituencies—or even subregional constituencies—but the members must come from a definable area where people understand what that community is—as the noble Lord, Lord Martin, and others have underlined in the course of this debate. If we move away from that principle and provide as the overriding principle for setting constituency boundaries a given figure plus or minus 5 per cent, that will override not only the sense of community but other layers of government—in particular local government—and the way in which people approach the political process. Noble Lords have talked about the way in which people became involved in inquiries. That is true in some cases but not so true in others, but people become involved on the basis of the communities in which they operate, whether they belong to voluntary organisations, political parties or churches. All sorts of people turn up to those inquiries because they wish to know who their representative is and how well the community will be represented as a constituency.

Of course the total number of voters in a constituency is important and of course we should not depart dramatically from that except in a few exceptional circumstances, but allowing a variation of 5 per cent is far too tight a definition. A figure of 20 per cent would be closer. The number of voters is not the most important factor either, because the total population of constituencies can differ dramatically from those that are on the register, as other noble Lords have pointed out. Therefore, as well as the numbers on the electoral roll, the boundary commissions should take into account other considerations such as the total population, community identities, local authority boundaries, the views of local individuals and institutions and the whole question of sparsity and accessibility for constituents. Many such issues need to be balanced out. To present this House with a system that has one overriding concept does not serve democracy well and certainly does not serve representative democracy well.

I wish to make two points from a party point of view. First, if you base this issue simply on communities, you may get a distorted aggregate picture but you adjust that by having a proportionate element built in as well, as happens in Scotland and Wales and in the post-war’s most successful democracy in Germany. If we do not do that but base constituencies simply on electoral size, which can change significantly over five years, we will have a situation where—to end up on a slightly cynical note—all parties will have Members of Parliament looking over their shoulder at how their constituency may change. A chicken run will develop and colleagues will fight each other over the nature of boundaries and over seats. In those circumstances, good government will suffer and I suspect that good coalition government will suffer even more.

I plead with the Government to look at the provisions again, both in terms of the principles of democracy and localism that the Government have enunciated and from the point of view of good governance. This Bill matches none of those objectives. I am sure that the House of Lords will give it detailed consideration, but the Government should think again.