Health and Social Care Bill

Baroness Anelay of St Johns Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I return for the last time in 2011 to the issue of the risk register in the Health and Social Care Bill—a sort of Secret Santa for the Minister. During the course of the debate on the Motion to Regret on 7 December, several noble Lords referred to the start point of Report being timed so that the appeal on the Information Commissioner’s report would be complete and the House would know the result. The Minister himself—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, may I first ask Members to leave quietly so that we may hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. May we establish on what basis, on what Motion, the noble Baroness is making her point? She has not interrupted the House going into Committee. I believe that perhaps the most appropriate way forward would be for the first amendment to be called. The noble Baroness may then speak as part of her contribution to that amendment, but I believe she would be out of order to continue at this stage.

Clause 247 : Powers to publish information standards

Amendment 345 not moved.

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Moved by

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

That the House do now adjourn.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, it is my honour and pleasure to put the Motion that the House do now adjourn. It is an everyday matter when the House is in Session in this Chamber but, once a year, it takes on a very special significance. In moving the Motion, I join with the generously expressed remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I would like to pay tribute to the stamina of my noble friend Lord Howe, to all of those on the opposition Front Benches and to all of those around the House who have taken part in the Committee stage of the Health and Social Care Bill. I wish my noble friend the Minister and all others a wholly restful Christmas Recess, despite those letters that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, pointed out will be written. Of course, I have already offered an early Christmas present in the forthcoming business: the fact that the Report stage of the Bill will not start in at least the first two weeks when we return.

It is customary at this moment for the usual channels, in their broadest sense, to pay tribute on behalf of the whole House to our staff, who have facilitated all the work of this House during the course of the year. It is my privilege to be the first of the four of us who will pay such compliments. The difficulties of the spring of this year are now far behind us. Those difficulties put a burden on our staff, which we all, I know, acknowledge. They managed, as always, with professionalism and patience. This is not always an easy place in which to work: our hours can be long and unpredictable and even with goodwill that can happen. I thank all the staff for their continued flexibility and commitment, which I know is recognised and appreciated by all of us.

I know that my opposite numbers in the other groups will pay tribute to some individual members of staff who have completed or who are shortly about to complete their long service to this House. I would particularly like to pay tribute to Major Mike Charlesworth, who retired in July after 16 years as our staff superintendent. Major Charlesworth joined the House after a long career in the Army, where he served in the Falklands and Bosnia. He was responsible for the day-to-day management of the attendants and housekeepers, both key services, which I know Members of the House greatly appreciate.

One of Major Charlesworth’s first jobs on arriving in the House was to arrange for all Members to be decanted—we are now used to being decanted, are we not?—from the Principal Floor, West Front, in order to install computer cabling, in which we led the way in Parliament, in the disused chimney ducts. Yes, that is where they are hiding. The problem was that that was swiftly followed by a huge rain of soot along the corridor and so his next job was to arrange the clean-up. Major Charlesworth was a key figure in the arrangements for State Opening and state visits. He assisted with the lying in state of the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, in 2002, when about 200,000 members of the public came to pay their respects around the clock.

In his spare time, Major Charlesworth was a keen singer in the London Welsh Male Voice Choir, with whom he appeared on “Blue Peter”, earning a much-coveted Blue Peter badge. We hope that he will have time to pursue his interest in retirement. I am sure that all Members of the House will wish to join me in wishing him a long and happy retirement.

Briefly, I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Sir Stephen Laws, who retires next month as first parliamentary counsel. Although not personally known to many Members of this House, his and his colleagues’ work is very familiar to us all. In our scrutiny we often criticise legislation as being badly drafted, when, as ever, what we really mean is that it is badly formulated by the politicians. The error is rarely, if ever, that of the draftsman. Sir Stephen has provided a first-class service to a number of Governments over the years and we wish him the very best in his retirement—the Leader and I in particular because he is our Permanent Secretary.

All that remains is for me to invite my opposite numbers around the House to make their contributions, after which I will formally adjourn the House.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

My Lords, it is always difficult following the Government's Chief Whip, but I thank her for her courtesy and generosity of spirit on the closing day of our proceedings this year. I have a number of people to thank. I will start with the staff of the House of Lords in general, who all work incredibly hard to support us and make sure that our deliberations, however long or short, are painless in terms of what goes on behind the scenes. I also pay tribute to my opposite number, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for the way in which she and her office have worked tirelessly over the past year to ensure that our business is conducted in an orderly fashion and manner. Though we might not always agree, I am sure that we agree on one thing: namely, that this House is extraordinarily important, and that the way in which it works is extraordinarily important, too. The usual channels are working well and to an improved standard. That is cause for great congratulation.

I also thank Hansard staff who have tirelessly noted and commented on all our observations on government legislation and beyond. They are here at all hours and are sometimes much overlooked when we conduct our deliberations. The clerks, as ever, are tireless and are there to give us advice and good and wise counsel. They do their job splendidly. I also join the noble Baroness in thanking Sir Stephen Laws. When we were in government we were endlessly reliant on Sir Stephen for good advice and wise drafting. As the noble Baroness observed, it is not often that draftsmen are at fault; it is more often politicians. We would all agree on that.

There is one matter that I should clear up before I pay my tributes: namely, my footwear. There has been a lot of comment on it today. I got up under the mistaken impression that it was national festive footwear day. I apologise, but it is true that I am red from head to toe—and it is in celebration of the fact that we are in the festive season.

I am here as the representative of the Official Opposition to give thanks not just to all the staff of the House—the caterers, the cleaners, the housekeepers and everybody else—but in particular to some of those who are retiring. I pay particular tribute this afternoon to Senior Attendant Bob Jones. We made some inquiries about Mr Jones and found them rather difficult. I was often told that the things which people might like to say about Mr Jones were not repeatable in your Lordships’ Chamber. However, there are one or two salient facts. Bob joined the House in October 1994 after a full career in the Royal Navy. What is not known is whether he served under Admiral West; I am still inviting comment on that.

What is absolutely clear from my observations is that, wherever he has been, Bob Jones has come back with a story to tell—something like the Uncle Albert character in “Only Fools and Horses”. A number of years ago, Black Rod's department decided to have an awayday. I cannot understand why anybody would want a day away from this place, but they did. They chose HMS “Belfast”, apparently because of its age. It was taken out of service a very long time ago, but Bob Jones took great delight in pointing out things on the ship because it was the first ship on which he had served. Of course, now it is Bob who is being taken out of active service.

I am told by other attendants that they have one fear for Bob: namely, that his wife Carol, who is a paragon and incredibly supportive, will become a fishing widow. I am sure that the House would like to record its concern on this matter, and if it were available to me, I would be putting a Motion down because I think that is quite wrong. However, I think everybody will join me in wishing Bob well in his retirement. I certainly enjoyed my discussions with Mr Jones on the odd occasion on my way into the Chamber. He is a very entertaining fellow, and I recommend him to anybody who needs an after-dinner speaker.

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[Lord Laming]

My Lords, I think evidence of the effectiveness of the usual channels is that we have reached this point in the calendar at the same time as we have reached the completion of the long Committee stage of the Health and Social Care Bill. This Bill has received the kind of scrutiny for which this House should take great credit. It is in keeping with the function of this House that we scrutinise these Bills with great care. This Bill has certainly received great scrutiny in Committee. I certainly associate myself with the comments of congratulation that have been addressed to the Front Bench and to the others who have played such a big part in the Bill. There is of course much yet to be done.

Mention of one Bill does not exclude in any way the work that has been done on the other Bills that have come before your Lordships’ House. Each of the Bills that we have had, or still have, before us has an enormous importance to our fellow citizens. Potentially, they affect the lives of us all and all citizens of this country. Therefore, it is important that the House continues to fulfil its responsibilities with the care that I certainly admire greatly.

In that process, we are enormously assisted by some outstanding staff. The staff in this House not only help the work to be conducted in a most efficient manner, but they behave always with great commitment, courtesy and support for all that we do. This has been a difficult period because the Bills have been so demanding that it has meant a number of late nights, some of which have become early mornings. As has already been said so well, the House is remarkably well served by its staff. We find it difficult to convey words fully to express our gratitude to them and we are indeed fortunate.

A number of members of the staff of the House work behind the scenes and we never see them, but they are extremely important to all that we do. It falls to me to have the pleasure to refer to two members of staff, Esther Roake and Nelly Parker. Over the years they have been employed to clean the collection of books in the Library. They have done this with great commitment and enthusiasm. They begin their task in the Library, going from shelf to shelf, removing every book and dusting it, cleaning the shelf and then putting the books back, and when they have cleaned all the books in the Library, they move into the collections in the corridors and other byways of the building. Remarkably, at the end of the process they are ready to start again because by the time they reach the end, the books on the Library shelves need to be dusted again. They have done this task for many years with, as I have said, great commitment and enthusiasm and, amazingly, they both claim not once to have opened any of the books. They say the reason for that is that they do not have time to do so, unlike us. They have been very cheerful members of our staff, and Esther always had a generous supply of sweets in her pocket that she would share with those who stopped for a friendly chat along the way. We pay tribute to these two members of staff, who have now retired.

We also offer our warmest thanks to all the staff who work behind the scenes for everything they do. On behalf of the Cross-Bench group, I wish everyone a happy Christmas and offer all good wishes for 2012.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I wish all the staff and all Members of this House a very happy and peaceful Christmas.

Motion agreed.