Coalition Government: Constitution Committee Report

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I cannot help but start by thanking our chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, for the service that she has given to the House in chairing the Constitution Committee. Her seniority, her experience and, above all, her effortless charm in keeping us to the disciplines—there are quite strong personalities around the committee—were in play in almost every meeting. We will miss her. It will be very different to serve on the committee without the noble Baroness.

In 2010, I had the honour of being the first Liberal to speak from the government Benches in a new Parliament in the post-war period. The last time the Liberal Party had come into government was in the 1930s. Therefore, it has not been entirely surprising to me that Britain’s constitutional conventions over the past 80 years or so have been formed on the basis of single-party government. We had much material to work on in this inquiry but, as our report points out, the pluralism of party politics that the public have now embraced is a trend that may well continue for some time. Our inquiry therefore had not just to look carefully at the events of the past four years but to anticipate other permutations and formulations that might be thrown up in future.

In my coverage of the report, I want to highlight just a few points. The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, gave a comprehensive view of most of our findings but, particularly in the light of the peroration of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, it is important for me to illustrate and highlight some of the more dramatic moments in our deliberations on this report.

I was a member of the Constitution Committee at the time of its report on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. While I heard all the arguments, I continue to be slightly surprised that the idea of a fixed term continues to frustrate constitutionalists in some quarters. If it affects government formation negotiations by making parties look at alternatives to minority government, surely that is a good thing. Minority government is the antithesis of the stability in decision-making that is needed for the economy, business and policy planning; in my own area of work, it is seen as extremely damaging to the conduct of foreign affairs. That is not the reason why the public are opposed to it, but we also know that the public are opposed to repeat elections. I therefore agree with two of our witnesses, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and Oliver Letwin, who told us that having fixed-term Parliaments allowed Governments to plan for five years, thereby enabling them to think long term.

I also emphasise the importance that the committee placed on the right versus the duty of an incumbent Prime Minister to remain in office until a successor is identified, particularly as we come up to the 2015 general election. The one observation that I would make in that regard is that, given the language deployed in the media in referring to an incumbent Prime Minister—the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, gave us some of the colourful highlights relating to the previous Prime Minister—it would be extremely helpful if the Cabinet Office undertook to advise the media on the desirability of this expectation and its place in our constitutional framework.

Let me turn to the convention of collective ministerial responsibility. We had a lively discussion with experts, witnesses and among ourselves about this during the inquiry. The report mentions the departures from collective ministerial responsibility as seen in 2013 when the two parties of the coalition voted in opposite Lobbies on an amendment to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. That decision was announced by the Deputy Prime Minister some six or seven months earlier as a response to the collapse of the House of Lords Reform Bill, so it did not come entirely as a surprise. I would have thought that, given the self-interest of the Conservative Party in those proposed boundary changes, seven months of reflection on what might happen might have led to the Conservatives reappraising their position on House of Lords reform, but it was not to be and we had a good debate about it.

The committee felt strongly that collective responsibility has served our constitution well and therefore emphasised that breaches of it should be rare and only ever a last resort. Moreover, it went on to recommend that a proper process should be put in place to govern any setting aside of the responsibility, stating:

“Such setting aside should be agreed by the Cabinet as a whole and be in respect of a specific issue”.

While I entirely agree with the recommendations of the committee as set out in paragraphs 77 to 79 where there is single-party government—particularly as collective responsibility was breached in recent memory in quite significant terms by the Labour Government—I do not think that we have been entirely realistic in these recommendations where they apply to coalitions. For example, the duty of the Cabinet as a whole to resolve differences is somewhat difficult when five members of the Cabinet are from one party and nearly 20 are drawn from the other. It is self-evident that the majority can always outvote the minority. My preference would be for the pragmatism of David Laws MP, to whom the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, referred, who felt that when agreements are made and subsequently diverted from there are naturally consequences for other agreements.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has contested this version of history, so let me put to him that in my view the more fundamental breakdown of collective responsibility was witnessed in the House of Commons debate on the Queen’s Speech in 2013 when one side of the Government—the Conservatives—tabled an amendment on their own Government’s programme. The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, referred to this in her speech. The PM went on to give those Conservative rebels a free vote, although it was evidently not an issue of conscience, and we had the spectacle of junior Ministers voting against their own Government without any consequences. Our report states:

“Dr Stephen Barber … said, that ‘the acquiescence by the Prime Minister to allow ministers to vote “against” provisions in the Queen’s Speech ... is constitutionally more serious’ than the division between coalition partners over the boundary review amendment to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. This is because of the role of the Queen’s Speech as a vote of confidence in the Government … previously any minister who declined to support the government on the Queen’s Speech would have been expected to resign”.

In the instance of the Conservative rebellion on the Queen’s Speech, I took the opportunity to ask the Deputy Prime Minister, when on 9 April he came to have his annual evidence session with the committee, how that had transpired. If I recall correctly—I have not seen the transcript yet—the Deputy Prime Minister told the committee that the issue had not been raised in a Cabinet committee and was not even discussed in the quad. Therefore, in terms of a rebellion where the Prime Minister gave the Conservative rebels a free vote, the committee’s recommendation that these sorts of things must be discussed and a resolution must be sought within Cabinet clearly could not have applied, because the issue was not raised in Cabinet.

The last point that I will make about collective responsibility again relates to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for whom I have the profoundest respect, as he well knows from my interactions with him. The anecdote that he just told on how, but for his intervention, there were not meant to be any Liberal Democrat Ministers in the House of Lords was an example of a little breach of collective responsibility. If that sort of evidence were to come out, I would have expected it to be in the noble Lord’s memoirs, which we would be rushing off to Waterstones to buy. Saying it first in giving evidence to our committee and repeating it in the Chamber of the House stretches collective responsibility, because that discussion clearly took place in Cabinet. I fear that the noble Lord wishes to come back on that.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I shall say two things in my defence. First, I had not been appointed, so there was no collective responsibility issue. Secondly, and perhaps more important—this is something that I did not say but should have said—this was born out of a misunderstanding by the Deputy Prime Minister about how Ministers are appointed in the House of Lords. Given that the Liberal Democrats are so deeply federalised, he assumed that it was an issue that would be solved in the House of Lords, which is perhaps rather a different slant from the one that I gave in the first place.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

I am sure that we all appreciate that clarification. Nevertheless, I am not sure that any of us will not use it to give Mr Clegg a hard ride next time, if there is a next time.

Let me conclude by coming to the role of the Civil Service. I will touch on this issue merely to say that both we and the Institute for Government, in its more extensive study, heard about the difficulties encountered by a junior partner in government, represented by a junior Minister, when commissioning policy advice. I wholeheartedly agree with the committee’s recommendation that Ministers should be able to commission confidential briefings from officials within their departments for the purpose of developing policy for the next Parliament without those briefings being disclosed to Ministers from their coalition partners. If this practice were not formalised, we would be in the invidious position whereby, although the Opposition would have access to Civil Service advice, as would the party that hosted the Secretary of State in the department, the Lib Dems, where they had only a junior Minister, would not have access to policy advice. That cannot be right. I look forward to the Government’s response on that matter and join the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, in expressing disappointment that the Government have not been able to provide a response before the debate today. I can only assume that the Government have failed to come to a collective view on this.

To conclude, it was a fascinating inquiry. Our witnesses were extremely knowledgeable and, particularly the political ones, often passionately engaged with the issues. I hope that the Cabinet Office will take the opportunity to act on the recommendations of this report. In so doing, it will lend clarity in future scenarios, when the public may yet again choose coalition government. The report’s recommendations on collective responsibility stand for single-party government as well, so the report contributes overall to good and accountable government.