Liaison Committee

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, the report was most unsatisfactory. It has been much criticised across the House over the past few days, since it was published. It is not in the spirit of Jellicoe, who initiated this whole arrangement. To illustrate my point, I want to show what happened in the case of the application I made for an ID card inquiry. My application was widely supported across the House by Members on all Benches, apart from the Liberal Democrats. It was supported by seven former Cabinet Ministers, including a former Attorney-General, a former chief constable of the Metropolitan police, two former Ministers of State, including a former Security Minister, a former chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and a leading Member at the heart of the Brexit debate. It met all the criteria in the sense that it would make the best use of Members. Many more Members wanted to submit their names in support and I said no because numbers do not matter to the committee; it will not take a decision on the basis of numbers, but on the basis of the experience of Members in the House available to carry out an inquiry. All the Members I referred to had an interest in this inquiry.

I want to set out the areas the inquiry would have dealt with: the use of entitlement cards in accessing public services, combating fraud, which is why a policeman was asked to sign up, and providing identity on request, which is why I sought the support of a human rights specialist; the benefit of the cards, post Brexit, which I why I asked a specialist in Brexit matters—if I may use the term—to sign up; the experience of European states in their use, which is why I asked a former Security Minister to sign up; the use of biometrics; and the benefits to the taxpayer arising from their use, which is why I sought the support of seven former Cabinet Ministers.

So why was it blocked? It was blocked by a coalition of three former Conservative and Liberal Democrat Ministers, all of whom had formed part of the coalition Government that had earlier reversed the Labour Government’s ID card programme and all of whom now serve on the Liaison Committee. We never had a chance. The committee was loaded with people who were opposed to the very idea of what we were after and had a record of opposing the matter.

It gets worse. Who led the pack? I understand that the meeting was quite ugly. It was not a full committee member who led the pack. In fact, if noble Lords look at the report and the committee member list, they will find that that person was not even on the committee. It was a surrogate member—the Chief Whip—who blocked the ID card inquiry and then pushed for non-controversial subjects, which were trouble-free for the Government. I understand that his interventions during the debate were described by some as “aggressive”. If anyone wants to understand what I mean by “aggressive”, they need do no more than consider what happened last week in the debate on the passport fee regulations, recorded in col. 421 of Hansard, when the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, the Chief Whip, demanded that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean sit down, in an intervention unprecedented in this House. Indeed, even in the Commons I never saw a Chief Whip insist that a Member sit down in the way that happened during the course of that debate. Furthermore, a very important inquiry on an application made by the noble Lord, Lord Horam, on housing and planning—an issue where we are in crisis in the United Kingdom—was blocked.

The issue for me is: should Ministers sit on Select Committees? I compare the position to that of other Select Committees in this House. They pick their own subjects. There are no Whips on Select Committees in this House, apart from the domestic committees, which is perfectly acceptable. There are two committees in the Commons that we should consider: the Liaison Committee, which is manned by the chairmen of all the other committees, with a slightly different remit, again with no Whips; and the Business Committee, which deals with Back-Bench applications for debate. It has a critical role in the operation of the House of Commons. Again, there are no Whips on it. As an eminent Member of the House said to me the other day, when you put the Chief Whip on a committee, the Chief Whip is the committee. There is no committee, just the Chief Whip. That is the way I see it on the basis of my experience.

The House might wish to consider the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, in his report to the House in 1992. It was a very interesting debate, which I read just last night. He said on the powers of the Whips, when he was Lord Privy Seal and chair of the first Liaison Committee:

“I should like to state that I am not trying to bludgeon anything through your Lordships’ House. My whole political life has been one of gentle persuasion. Bludgeoning is totally alien to my nature”.—[Official Report, 7/12/1992; col. 31.]


The Government Chief Whip should have these very wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, in mind when these matters are dealt with by the Liaison Committee and when I make my next application—my fourth—on ID cards next year.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord opposite has expressed the dissatisfaction felt by many Members who put in proposals—and maybe others, too—at the result of this committee. The chosen subjects seem anodyne, to put it mildly—motherhood and apple pie. We need to know why they are chosen. I have an interest; I hope it will not be categorised as sour grapes, although I suppose in part it is. Reading the list, one wonders exactly why some other proposals with real meat and real substance to them, which could produce recommendations that would make a real difference in the short term to the lives of people and which might be reflected in legislation, were not chosen, yet others that amount to no more than a talking shop or debating issue came forward. Is there some feeling that the House is already overburdened with Brexit and should not have to take on anything more controversial? I would not have thought so.

In brief, we need transparency. What is the strategy? Why are certain subjects chosen according to that strategy? It needs to be explained. We need more transparency and wider House buy-in. After all, Members of this House will have to volunteer to sit on those committees. A suggestion made to me was that if the Liaison Committee, as it did, whittled the number of proposals down to 10, the whole House should be able to vote on them. Certainly, the situation as it stands has not produced a very satisfactory result. I am pleased to know that there is a wider review of all the committees of this House, which I hope will come up with a more popular and acceptable way of choosing these committees.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I supported the noble Lord in his application, both this year and last, for a committee to look at the issue of—I never like the phrase “identity cards”—entitlement cards or something that would use the new technology. We have just had Liberal Question Time for the past half hour, where many of these issues came up, so it is important.

The reason I get up to speak is to hope that perhaps the noble Lord’s application next year will be successful but also to defend against his somewhat robust attack on my noble friend the Chief Whip. It is true that the Chief Whip told me to sit down last Thursday, but in his defence he has apologised to me and also I had not appreciated that at noon there was a memorial service for the policeman who gave his life for our security. I am sure that what was in the Chief Whip’s mind was that the business was going to run out of control and that he would not be able to attend. So it was not an attempt to muzzle me: the Chief Whip has never attempted to muzzle me, as Members of this House must be fully aware.

I hope that the arguments in principle for discussing this matter will be taken on board and there will be an opportunity for us to take it forward. It seems to me that having some form of identification, for access to services such as the health service or to get into the country or to show when you have left the country, will be an important component of the post-Brexit world, which I look forward to with great enthusiasm.