Mesothelioma Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Howarth of Newport

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I, too, support these amendments and endorse everything that has been said. On Amendment 4, as my noble friend on the Front Bench has said, little credence should be attached to arguments that insurers could not reasonably have expected in February 2010 that a scheme such as this could not have been brought forward in the foreseeable future. Indeed, it is highly likely that the only reason for the selection of that date is that it reduces costs. That is not a negligible consideration, but, as we have heard, those costs are likely to be relatively small. We have heard that they represent a considerable percentage increase, but with all respect that is not the concern here. The issue is the absolute sums that are involved, which are relatively small. They ought to be easily affordable by insurers, particularly in light of the long period in which insurers have got away without paying sums that they should have been paying. In my view, those costs are unlikely to have to be passed on to employers.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend was making the point that for many years insurers got away with not paying compensation. I believe that the figure is that some 6,000 mesothelioma sufferers died uncompensated in the years since 1968. That would have saved the employer’s liability insurers £1 billion. They are very well able to do a little more for mesothelioma sufferers now.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Howarth of Newport

Monday 31st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I want to make a couple of brief points in support of this proposed new clause. I think there is general agreement in the Committee that the engagement of the public in this process is desirable. There has been a great deal of discussion about what format that could take, but that principle is generally accepted by everybody and this proposed new clause goes to the heart of that agreement.

When the previous Government looked at a whole range of methods of engaging the public in policy formation—of which this would be a part—we came to the very clear view that fundamental to all forms of consultation was the need for the public to know what had happened to their contributions to the debate. That was crucial for the credibility of the process and it avoided cynicism creeping in about what had happened. I think that this new clause is entirely consistent with that principle. I understand that it might be thought unnecessary to put such a provision into the Bill, but it might also be thought to be a sound principle that could be relied upon and about which the Boundary Commission could be relied upon to make a judgment. Putting it into the Bill in the way that my noble friend proposes with this new clause would signify the importance of such feedback, and I very much hope that the Minister will look favourably on it. I do not think that it fundamentally compromises the Government’s objectives in the Bill and it could play an important part in building public support for the process.

Finally, I notice that my noble friend has used the generic term “published”. I do not think that any amendment to the clause is needed but, if the Minister is prepared to look at the proposal favourably, as I hope he will, I should be grateful if he could make it clear that all forms of publication should be used. Obviously, the web should be deployed but we should also bear it in mind that, even today and despite the best efforts of the previous Government, large sections of the population are excluded from the web. Therefore, I should be grateful if the Minister could make it clear that he would expect the Boundary Commission to use all forms of publication.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

It seems to me that what is proposed in this amendment is the more important if one takes the view, as I do—but contrary, I think, to the view of the noble Lord, Lord Baker—that there will be extensive public interest in, at any rate, certain proposals for boundary changes. In recent days and weeks, the people of Cornwall and the Isle of Wight have given us to understand in no uncertain terms that they have very strong views about how constituencies should be drawn in their parts of the world. Given the radical and wholesale changes that the provisions of the legislation will entail, I think that we should be prepared for considerable strength of feeling and for vigorously expressed representations not just on the part of the political parties but, certainly in controversial cases, on the part of many members of the public. It is, as my noble friend Lord Wills suggested, important that people have feedback and that they should know that their representations have been listened to, gathered up and presented for careful consideration by the boundary commissioners through the activity of assistant commissioners, as my noble friend Lord Lipsey has proposed.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Howarth of Newport

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

I am very sorry that the noble Lord should make such a personal and slightly vindictive comment. I am trying to help the House understand these matters. These are subjects that, as my noble friend rightly said, have not been made public before. The experience of any Minister in a Government is relevant to the passing of legislation, and this legislation is important. I am sorry that the noble Lord thinks that it is irrelevant that 3.5 million people are not registered but I think that it is profoundly important, and it is very important to this amendment.

I was actually concluding my remarks. I have given way to everyone, following the Minister’s generous example. I will give way again, subject no doubt to further spiteful comments from the noble Lord opposite.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

It would be helpful and interesting for the House if my noble friend could make a few remarks about the census.

[Lord Wills]

That is how I was going to come to the conclusion of my remarks. I was responding to an intervention about that, and I was not talking about my ministerial career; this is about the process of legislation, which is directly relevant to this clause. All parties in the House of Commons agreed, parties that have now changed their minds about it, including the party of the noble Lord opposite. His spokesman in the House of Commons agreed with what we proposed, which has now been jettisoned. When I have sat down, I would like to hear him explain exactly why his party has changed its mind about the importance of people being on the register. That is relevant to this debate.

The reason why we were able to persuade the spokespersons from both the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat parties about the importance of a timescale—in other words, to 2015, not the new precipitate timescale—was, above all else, the importance of the 2011 census data. Only when those are available can we be sure that we have a comprehensive and accurate register. This was not a political decision; we were assured by officials, and I am sure that the Minister is getting exactly the same advice, that the full benefit of those data will not be available until 2014. So we come back to the central point about the timescale.

I understand all the arguments that the Minister has made in resisting the amendment. They are important, they are not negligible and I do not resist them all. There is a greater argument, though, about the central importance of having a comprehensive and accurate register, and, at the earliest, that cannot be available before 2015. I am not necessarily opposed to what the Minister is proposing overall in the legislation, only to the process and unforgivable rush. If he sticks to this timetable, he is putting forward profoundly flawed legislation, and I urge him once more to think again.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Howarth of Newport

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

I agree with the powerful case that my noble friend is making, but does he agree that another factor militating against the equalisation of constituencies that the Government want to see—I think most of us want to see it—is the fact that this boundary review will be taken on the basis of a flawed register? Many constituencies will have nearly 100 per cent registration of all those who are eligible to vote, but others will have barely half that. How can constituencies possibly be equalised on that statistical basis?

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend developed his argument compellingly in his speech just now. Just as differential turnout matters very much, so do differential levels of registration. These are all factors tending, unfortunately, to produce votes of unequal value. Moreover, within the alternative vote system, we know that the votes of the supporters of the minority parties that continue to be totted up and distributed will themselves carry more power in the ultimate decision than other votes will.

One is left puzzled about what the Government’s motivation can be in rushing this through, unless it is to secure political advantage for the Conservative Party as part of the deal between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats do not even get the reformed electoral system that they really want, but the Tories get their opportunity to reduce the number of seats by 50, which, it has been calculated, if not by them—although I think they might be aware of the calculation—will advantage them and disadvantage the Labour Party.

The truth is that, while pursuing this pretty cynical policy, the Government risk causing the redistribution of constituencies to be botched. If it is botched and there is widespread public dissatisfaction with it, that can serve only to alienate sentiment and to alienate our citizens further from our democratic processes in this country. If there is a case for reform, and I believe that there is a case for significant reform in a number of aspects of our constitutional arrangements, then the benefits of reform will be dissipated and lost if the public feel angry that their legitimate entitlement to make their contribution to this process through public inquiries has been stamped upon by a Government who are in a hurry to effect change to suit their own political interest.

My noble friend Lord Dixon made a speech of profound importance, and I hope that Ministers and noble Lords opposite will think very carefully about what he said. He spoke with passion about the community of which he has been a member all his life. The Government’s formula of insisting on rigid numerical equality between constituencies risks violating community, ignoring history and causing profound offence to the people of this country. If indeed there is to be a rigid numerical formula, with a difference of no more than plus or minus 5 per cent from the norm of 76,000 voters, it is all the more important that the Boundary Commission should be allowed to have the time to take care to be sensitive to these other very important factors. If the Government rush in seeking to create numerically equal constituencies and do not pay attention to what people have to say about community, history, geography and the importance of the alignment of parliamentary constituencies with local government, they will make the process even more offensive than I fear it will inevitably be in any case.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Howarth of Newport

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, in tabling her amendment, my noble friend Lady Hayter has done two useful things. First, she has reminded us that in legislating, particularly on constitutional matters, we should be sensitive to sentiment in the different nations of the United Kingdom. We needed to be sensitive to that sentiment 10 years ago, which is why we brought in devolution; and, in the context of devolution, and after 10 years’ experience of it, it is all the more important that we should be so. However, the legislation proposed by the Government fails to be sensitive in that important regard. Under their model, a majority in the United Kingdom as a whole would trump a no vote within one of its constituent countries. In that way we risk alienating national opinion and national sentiment in whatever part of the country it was—it might be Wales or Scotland—that found its wishes thus crudely overruled.

The second important thing that my noble friend’s amendment does is to underline that whatever the result of the referendum and however the procedures might be amended in this legislation, if we then went on to have a referendum under whatever set of rules, the result is liable to be divisive. It would be divisive in the case of a particular country of the United Kingdom having its wishes on the electoral system overruled; and, equally, under my noble friend’s amendment, it would be divisive because what she proposes would mean that where there was a no vote in any individual part of the United Kingdom, that would trump the yes vote across the wider United Kingdom and invalidate yes votes in other parts of the United Kingdom. That cannot be a happy outcome either.

A third way in which it would be possible to go, although it is not proposed in the amendment, is for each of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom to determine its own electoral system. In those parts of the kingdom that voted for AV, general elections would in future be conducted on the basis of AV; in those parts which preferred first past the post, they would continue to elect their Members of Parliament on the basis of first past the post. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, smiles at the evident fatuity of such a scheme, yet I do not know whether he entirely rules out the possibility of two classes of Member coming to this House of Parliament, some elected, some appointed, because he very wisely does not show his hand and delays doing so for as long as he can.

The only circumstance in which a referendum on the voting system would not be divisive and set parts of the United Kingdom at odds with each other would be the eventuality of every part of the United Kingdom voting the same way, either for AV or first past the post. It is reasonable to think that that is rather an unlikely outcome.

[Lord Wills]

I am very interested in the case that my noble friend is making, but is he not worried that his third-way proposal might undermine the integrity of the Parliament of the United Kingdom?

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am worried precisely about that. That is why I set it up as an Aunt Sally, because it would be an alternative. It would have at least the virtue of being respectful of political sentiment, public opinion and the way people had voted in the individual parts of the United Kingdom. But it would be an absurd arrangement for us to alight upon.