Preparing for Extreme Risks (RARPC Report)

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, on the excellent way in which he chaired our committee. I can tell the noble Lord that I certainly enjoyed it, and furthermore I learned a great deal; my compliments also to the staff. I think we never managed to meet in person, but did every session online, which posed some interesting challenges to do with curtains and lights and things like that. It was an extremely well chaired committee.

The noble Lord has set out extremely well the main highlights of our report, so I want to briefly pick on a couple of points. I support the overall conclusion that the culture and practice within government of risk assessment and management of resilience need to change. How we go about that should be through adopting a whole-of-society approach and looking to general resilience more than to individual threats.

Let me begin with box 1, which sets out the threat from climate change. It could have been argued that we did not really need to set out climate change because it was so obvious and over such a long period, but it is interesting to note that we are now a year from COP 26 and already it is slightly beginning to slip down the agenda. For me, it was important to see it in there because, first, the extreme risks that come from it are all going to appear with increasing severity and likelihood on the national risk register, and, secondly, it serves as a lesson of what happens when the enemy at the gate perhaps overtakes the enemy on the horizon. It is a very good example of that.

I would like to draw attention to paragraphs 136 to 141 in the report, where we talk about the devolved bodies. I can do no better than to quote paragraph 137 and Shirley Rogers, director of performance, delivery and resilience for the Scottish Government, who said:

“There is a variable degree of understanding about what devolution settlements look like and what devolved Administrations’ powers are … My observation is partly that there is a tendency to treat us as if we are a department and consult us on the things that people think we will need to know about, rather than the totality.”


Correcting that is central to the Government’s approach.

I would like to comment on how we look at resilience and go about risk management. Currently, risk is looked at as identifying a single threat, rather like on your company risk register, and looking at how it can be mitigated. The risk is seen as a barrier to achievement. However, what I learned in the process of our committee’s deliberations was that extreme risks are not like that; they are things that we cannot avoid, and therefore we have to look at them in a different way. As the noble Lord has already pointed out, this needs a change of culture.

The resilience that we need comes not from looking at the individual threat but at all of the things that cascade together and ensuring that there is resilience in depth. That requires an investment, and that comes back to the Treasury. This is not about a cash spend that is going to be made in-year; this is about identifying something that will be invested in, and resilience automatically implies redundancy. There will be some part of the spend that will never be used, and we have to accept that as being central to what we are trying to do. If we do not understand that, just look at the supply chain and the fact that all the chips were being made in countries that are having grave difficulty, and now we cannot make cars in anything like the way that we would want to.

In the first 22 years of this century, we have had three extreme events: first, a financial crisis which cost us hundreds of billions in support; secondly, a pandemic, which was number one on the risk register but we got wrong, and which cost hundreds of billions in support for the country; and, thirdly, since our report came out, a war in Ukraine which was not particularly anticipated. I am sure we will have three more events in the next 20 years and that they will not be the ones that are predicted, so we have to have resilience to be ready for whatever may come. In that regard, I think the most important thing the chairman of the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, said is about getting the Treasury to change the way it looks at these things. We have to try to get the Treasury away from its complacent, cash-book comfort zone and into looking at investment for the future.

Ultimately, in any organisation, risk is the responsibility of the chief executive or the accounting officer. We need to put responsibility for risk higher up. We need a chief risk officer, and for Secretaries of State and the Prime Minister to take the responsibility.

Capita

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

On the noble Baroness’s first point about it being too complex, I believe that the chief executive officer himself, Jon Lewis, said yesterday that it is too complex and he wants to streamline it, hence the asset disposal and the streamlining of the operation.

I know that more personnel have been recruited within the Cabinet Office to beef up the Government’s capacity to supervise these contracts. I take on board the point that the noble Baroness made about making sure the Government have the resources to monitor the contracts we have placed with private sector companies.

We are at one on her final point. We would like to reduce the concentration of these big contracts to a small number of companies. We would like to broaden the base and see more companies bidding for these contracts and winning them.

[The Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, further to the answer that the Minister has already given about SMEs, now that we know the risks of a small number of contracts with some very big companies, will he accept that it is the procurement process that drives people to tier 1 contractors? Will the Government look at improving the procurement process so that SMEs have a better chance to get contracts?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree entirely with the point that the noble Viscount has just made. If we are to hit our 30% target, we will indeed have to look at the procurement process in order to ensure that smaller companies are able to bid for and win these contracts.

Oral Answers to Questions

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order . There is far too much noise in the Chamber. Let us hear Mr John Thurso.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. My right hon. Friend will be aware of the excellent project to roll out fibre and broadband in Caithness, Sutherland and Ross-shire, with welcome funding from this Government. Is he as surprised as I am to learn that neither Openreach, nor the Highlands and Islands Enterprise is either capable or willing to say who will benefit? What can we do to get transparency into this process, so that these communities know what they are getting?

[Mr Carmichael]

I am indeed aware of the projects to which my right hon. Friend refers, and I share his disappointment that, apparently, information as fundamental as that has not been given to his constituents. It is difficult to see why people would want to keep it a secret.

Oral Answers to Questions

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Moore]

The hon. Gentleman always makes serious points on behalf of his constituents. I appreciate that what he has asked about is a consistent theme of the tourism sector, and the Chancellor will no doubt regard it as an early bid for next year’s Budget measures. However, the hon. Gentleman would be more convincing if he brought along a costed example of how an independent Scotland would do such a thing.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that a major contributor to the rural economy is the ability to send goods around the country. In the north highlands, sending packages by courier services comes at extreme cost; the companies charge more than for the rest of the mainland. My hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) will present his excellent private Member’s Bill on Friday. What more can the Secretary of State do to ensure that courier charges for remote areas are in line with those for the rest of the mainland?

[Michael Moore]

My hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) have been campaigning sensibly on the issue and raising important points. We certainly want to engage with my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine on his private Member’s Bill, which addresses a serious issue. We support the principles that underpin the Bill and want to see how we can use existing arrangements, through trading standards and other facilities, to make sure that nobody in remote or rural areas suffers from those excess delivery charges.

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

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is the heart of the problem. Let me quote what MHP itself has said:

“do we work for a ‘non-lobbying business’? In our case, MHP Communications is a full service communications consultancy. We operate a single bottom line approach, and so do not break out the work of our public affairs division. Employees are employees; there is no ‘MHP Public Affairs Ltd’. And the work of MHP is certainly not mainly concerned with lobbying. Even if we were to limit ourselves to our public affairs team, the definition talks about actively lobbying, in the sense of seeking to persuade…members of the Government as well as officials—and this is not ‘mainly’ what we do all day.”

That is the problem with the clause and the Government’s attempt to fix it. It all gets circular—even if we accept that MHP is a lobbying entity, lobbying is defined purely as communicating with a Minister of the Crown and a permanent secretary.

Let us take special advisers, who are not covered at all; we all know that they often have more influence than the Under-Secretary of State. Under the Government’s plan, the lobbyist will be perfectly entitled to have lengthy and detailed influential discussions with a special adviser, and that would not be covered by the Bill. However, the lobbyist could meet the Under-Secretary of State and that meeting would be. Which meeting would be the real problem? One needs look only at the debacle of News International and Fred Michel to see the kind of scandal that can happen.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I commend to the hon. Gentleman amendment 45 on that subject, which is in the group after next. Hopefully, we will get to it tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Smith]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

With that, I will finish speaking so that it is possible for another Back Bencher to speak.

[John Thurso]

Will the Minister give way?

[Miss Smith]

Yes.

[John Thurso]

As the Minister is in such a generous mood, would she like to look at my amendment 45?

[Miss Smith]

While we are discussing the topic of further amendments to support, I ought to add that the Opposition made no objection to the programme motion in July.

In concluding, I will turn briefly to amendment 137, which would require that details be provided about any communications between consultant lobbyists and Ministers or permanent secretaries, even if they were not in return for payment, not on behalf of a third party and did not concern Government policy or functions. That would mean that if a consultant lobbyist bumped into a Minister on the tube and spoke about the weather, not Government issues, that meeting would need to be recorded. Indeed, if a consultant lobbyist happened to be married to a permanent secretary, it would be necessary for the details of their communications to be disclosed on a quarterly basis, even if they never took work home, as it were.

I can see that hon. Members are attempting to ensure that inappropriate conversations about ministerial responsibilities do not take place in private, but this is another example of good intentions leading to unintended consequences through unclear drafting. The answer has to be a declaration by Ministers of any meetings that touch upon their ministerial responsibilities, the framework for which we have provided in government. That will form a central part of the transparency regime that we are introducing in part 1 of the Bill. I urge the hon. Member for Nottingham North not to press amendment 137.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

In 1970 I had the privilege of sitting on the steps of the throne in the other place to listen to my father’s maiden speech. In 1995, following what I thought was his untimely death, I had the opportunity to go there myself to make my own speech. In the intervening period I often sat on the steps of the throne, largely because doing so was free and, as a trainee in the Savoy company, I was able to spend afternoons on split shifts there. I listened, watched and learned a great deal about the House of Lords. I remember many great noble Lords making many great speeches, but I came to the view that, however wonderful it was, it was no way to run a legislature. When I arrived in this place, in my maiden speech I made it clear, as I had done in speeches in the other place, that I would seek to work for reform of the Lords and would not rest until it was an elected House.

Therefore, I rise to support my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister’s Bill. When I made my maiden speech in this House, what I said on Lords reform was said more in hope than expectation, but let me tell him now that the expectation is high, because this is the right reform, at the right time and in the right context. I believe that for two fundamental reasons. First, in my view the House of Lords is broke. It does not actually work. An hon. Friend referred earlier to the number of Government amendments that the Lords voted against in the last Parliament, but the crucial point is the number that survived scrutiny afterwards in this place. As we all know, when an amendment that is made in the other place arrives here we are told that the Lords have asked us to think again but, as they are not legitimate or elected, let us, the legitimate and elected House, strike it down. That is the critical fix that we need to make.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

If I understand the hon. Gentleman’s argument correctly, he is now saying that, because Members of the House of Lords are to be elected, when they turn something down and it comes to this House we will be more likely to give way to their views. If that is the case, surely he accepts that we are in fact giving up part of our powers?

[John Thurso]

Let me come to that point in a moment, because it is a critical part of the argument.

The second fundamental reason I believe that the House of Lords should be reformed is that for the past 50 years the Executive have gradually been pruning the powers of Parliament. For 50 years the ability in this House, and in Parliament as a whole, to hold the Government to account has been diminishing. For me, the Bill is primarily about the primacy of Parliament as a whole. It is not a zero-sum game. Increasing the legitimacy of the Lords will increase the legitimacy of Parliament as a whole.

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very interesting speech, but some people who support the Bill say that it will make the upper House stronger, some say that it will leave it the same, some say that the House of Lords is not broken, and the hon. Gentleman says that it is broken. Does he not agree that real constitutional reform requires a consistent vision of the problems—and of the objectives that one is trying to achieve?

[John Thurso]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. For my own part, I have been consistent in my views ever since I started to think through the matter seriously, and for me the key part is legitimacy, for so long as the other place—

[Alison Seabeck]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Thurso]

No, I have given way twice, and that is it, so for the avoidance of doubt I will do so no more.

The critical point is that the other place is not regarded as legitimate by us, by the media or by the public at large. If we had an appointed upper House that was regarded as legitimate, as indeed Canada does, that would be worth considering, but we do not. As long as there is no election, the upper House will not be considered legitimate, so we have to move towards election.

We need to observe four key principles. First, we need to look at the role of the other place. It does its job up until the point at which what it has done leaves the other place and comes here, so I want the other place to be a place that continues to scrutinise and to advise.

Secondly, we need to take the best of what exists. For example, the reason the House of Lords works well is that the Whip is lighter—some would even say, “consensual” —up to a certain point, because one cannot be thrown out. By seeking, therefore, to replicate that with long terms and no re-election, that same flavour will come through. Further to that point, and absolutely fundamentally, there should be no competing constituency interests. That is why PR and large constituencies are so important—so that those who are elected cannot claim to represent a county, a division or a town. That is absolutely vital.

Thirdly, reform should be gradual: it should be brought in over a period to allow the customs and mores of the other place to survive the transition. The fourth point, which is also of prime importance, is that the upper House should not compete with the House of Commons as the place to form the Government.

So I look to what is in the other place now, but the one thing that none of us should be able to support is the status quo. It clearly cannot be right in the 21st century to have half our legislature composed of the rump of the aristocracy, together with the great and the good who have benefited from whatever their parties might have chosen to prefer them with.

It is extremely important that we look to an upper House that has legitimacy, has elections and replicates the good parts, but that does not replicate, or seek to replicate, the bad parts. I happily left the other place in 1999 to take my retirement from it, but when I did so I made a prediction to the colleagues whom I left behind, saying that the next stage of reform would not be nearly so easy. I did not for a moment believe that those who had kicked, screamed and gouged their way to party preferment, and had arrived in the other place after all that hard work, would be as happy as I was to leave. That, indeed, seems to be exactly where we are.

I have friends in all parts of this House, not perhaps political friends but none the less friends, and I know how many of them would like to see the other place reformed, so I say to all reformers in this House: we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity; for God’s sake, let us take it.

House of Lords Reform

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

If I remember correctly, my hon. Friend voted for 100% election to the House of Lords when this subject was last up for discussion, which suggests that he might be more willing to entertain change than his question implies. Even the advocates of minimal change—even those in the other place, as was witnessed in last week’s debate—accept that some change is now unavoidable.

We have all promised change—every major party committed to Lords reform in their manifestos last year—so there is a legitimate expectation that we will now deliver it. Liberals and Liberal Democrats have long pursued Lords reform as part of a wider renewal of our political arrangements; the Labour party has advocated it as a blow to patronage and privilege; and the Conservative party has, especially in recent years, pushed for putting more direct power in the hands of voters.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

In that regard, was my right hon. Friend struck by the contributions in the other place of Lord Whitty and Baroness Quin, which made clear both the need for reform and how it should be taken through, and which represented fine examples of what their party so often stood for in the past? Will my right hon. Friend encourage Labour Members to return to their roots by taking that as their example now?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The contributions of Lord Whitty and Baroness Quin were, indeed, excellent, and I look forward to hearing support for the ideas that they set out last week from Labour Front Benchers today.

Turning to the second key reason for change, if we do not modernise the other place, a question mark will continue to hang over our second Chamber. We have passed the point of no reform, and to come this far and give up is to condemn our upper House to enduring doubt about its legitimacy. Yes, Lords reform has been debated for a century and, yes, our second Chamber has evolved over that time, but the other place cannot afford another 100 years in limbo. Reform is overdue, and it is time to bring this chapter to an end.

House of Lords Reform (Draft Bill)

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his modest progress. The plain fact is that an unelected Lords is an illegitimate Lords, and that weakens the Lords and weakens Parliament as a whole. An elected Lords is a strong Lords, and that strengthens Parliament as a whole. Does my right hon. Friend not find it faintly ridiculous that after 13 years of abject failure, the dinosaurs over there are only interested in feather-bedding the dinosaurs upstairs?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks, and I agree that the notion that somehow more democracy can weaken a legislature would strike most people outside this Chamber as an extraordinarily peculiar argument.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Laing]

Yes, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct: there is no democratic mandate for this referendum—none whatever. If the proportion of votes cast for the Liberal Democrats in the UK as a whole during the general election in May this year were mirrored in the referendum, there would be no problem defeating the yes vote. The referendum would fail and we would be able to continue with our good, historic, solid, decent first-past-the-post system, which has served us so well for centuries.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Laing]

No, I must not; I have already taken up too much of the House’s time and there is not much of it left this evening.

This Bill could have been better, but it goes some way to improving our democracy, so I encourage hon. Members to support it.

Superannuation Bill

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The Minister will know that I wrote to the Minister for the Cabinet Office on 21 July to set out the reasons why I cannot support this Bill. I have to say that I have not changed my mind in the intervening weeks or during the course of this debate. However, notwithstanding the fact that I will not be supporting the Bill, I appreciated the way in which the Minister presented it and the moderation of his tone in some remarks. Given that we are short of time, I shall cut straight to the chase and set out the reasons why I cannot support the Bill. The debate about private and public is the wrong debate. It is not even comparing apples and pears: it is more like trying to compare bananas with Brazil nuts. There is no comparison. I have been in the private sector all my life. I have never had a pension or redundancy terms, and I have always managed to earn a considerable amount of money. I knew what I was getting into. When I signed on for this place, I knew that I would experience a severe reduction in my pay, but that I would get a pension and redundancy terms, although of course the latter are not now so good—[Laughter.] Hey, we will keep working on that.

The point is that people take into account what they will receive in certain situations when they take a job. There may not be a legal contract, but I believe that there is a moral contract between the state and its employees. To put it in human terms, I have people in my constituency who work in the Forestry Commission, for the Department for Work and Pensions—although sadly that office was closed by the last Government despite being one of the most productive and absence-free in the country—and for HM Revenue and Customs in an office scheduled for closure in 2013. The one thing that all those people have been able to count on is that when the Gershon axe fell, they had a cushion between them and penury. In particular, I think of one employee who said to me, “Well, I took out my mortgage based on the fact that if I lost my job I could pay off the mortgage. If this Bill goes through the way it is written, I will have to sell my house.” That is the human reality of this.

Many of the people who have gone into the public sector have considerable qualities, had a vocational desire to be in the public service and have forgone the ability to earn more money in the private sector. Part of their consideration for doing that was the terms and conditions available.

Companies are different because they have a top line, and that can be driven to make more profit and expand further. The last thing that any of us wants to see is an ever-expanding public service. We would like to control it and keep it as cost efficient as possible while delivering the service. It is therefore a wholly different model to driving a top line and delivering a profit. It is right that the famous six times salary provisions—I suspect that those are few in number—and those at the higher-paid end should be reformed, but I am concerned that in fact the low paid in my constituency will bear the brunt, as will those who are coming to the end of their career and have no chance or ability to find another job. I want a scheme that will genuinely offer some help and succour to those at the bottom end of the scale.

I have a final suggestion for the Minister. He probably will not reply to it, but he can take it away for the negotiations to come. If the Government want a cap of £50,000, fine, but they should keep the current terms. That is a progressive way to do it, because the people at the bottom would be very generously looked after and the people at the top would pay most. Let us try that for a change.