Leaving the European Union

Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Newby

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I thank the Minister, but with some sadness—worse, alarm—at the Statement. It is not simply that it is Groundhog Day all over again. It is not even that it is a cut and paste job on earlier versions, with the faux descriptor of being a “new deal”—which I think would make Roosevelt gag. No, it is that this Government have lost the ability to govern. In truth, that was evident right from the start, from the 10 December cancellation of the meaningful vote—and then, more obviously, with the 230 defeat, followed by the embarrassing 149 defeat on a second try, and then by 58. One wonders what it takes for the Prime Minister to hear.

In truth, after that first 230 defeat, the worst for any Government in modern parliamentary history, the Prime Minister should have resigned or been visited by those apocryphal men in grey suits. When a leader loses their flagship policy by such a margin, and loses the support of the Commons, normal parliamentary custom requires a change at the top—particularly because that defeat was of the Prime Minister’s own making.

When she moved to No. 10, many of us imagined that she would try to implement the referendum by crafting a departure deal that was as good as it could be for the country and had the approval of the Commons. Just in case that did not happen, we ensured that any departure agreement would need Commons approval—good in itself, but vital with the country so divided on this issue. Perhaps innocently—especially when Keir Starmer was made a Privy Counsellor—I imagined that the Government would engage with the Opposition to shape the sort of deal that would be acceptable across the House.

After she lost her majority in 2017, I was even more sure that Mrs May would work on something to win over a divided House—and we were always clear about what that would take. Indeed, my right honourable friend Keir Starmer spent many hours in Brussels discussing the parameters of what might be acceptable to the EU 27, so that none of our demands would be unacceptable to them. In speeches and interviews, he offered up options to bring Parliament and the country together. They were all ignored, including in last night’s last-minute letter to my right honourable friend Jeremy Corbyn. They were ignored by a Government who cannot even hold their own party together, never mind the country or Parliament.

So we have this sorry sight today: a speech made first not to MPs but to PwC—whose strapline, by the way, is:

“To build trust in society and solve important problems”.


Perhaps it should have given some advice to the Prime Minister, for her speech yesterday was rejected within minutes by her own side before the Opposition had even seen the text—and now we hear that some of her own Ministers will not vote for it. Indeed, I gather that there are letters going in to try to oust her straight away, while the ConHome website is urging people not to vote Tory tomorrow if she is not on her way out by the end of today—the day before an election.

So my question to the Leader is: where do the Government go from here? Why do they not have the confidence to put their deal to the public if they believe it is so good? Will she confirm that the Government will heed the Commons vote of 13 March, categorically rejecting no deal in any circumstances, as referred to in the Statement? Will she take back to the Cabinet this House’s vote against any no-deal exit and remind her colleagues of the strength of that view? Will she personally undertake to respect the view of this House—the House that she leads—on that, and vote against any such no-deal proposal within Cabinet, whether it is one led by Mrs May or by anyone else?

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, this is now the 16th time that we have debated the Prime Minister’s deal and what to do with it. Each time we have done so, the Prime Minister has claimed that she has made some new, bold, improved offer for which she begs our support. But each time she does this—and this time is no exception—she is simply putting lipstick on a pig. It remains a pig and everybody can see it is a pig. That is why, as is clear from the comments of DUP and Tory MPs, this latest attempt is doomed to failure like the rest—almost certainly by a bigger margin than the third time that she failed to get it through the Commons. This is hardly surprising.

I will not weary the House by taking your Lordships through all 10 of the Prime Minister’s points; I will take just two. First, there is the legal duty to try to conclude alternative arrangements to replace the Irish backstop by December next year. This refers to technical means to ensure that there are no physical checks on the Irish border. But we know that no such technological solution exists—and certainly nothing that could even remotely be put in place within 18 months. So this promise cannot be fulfilled, as the Prime Minister herself must know. It is a straightforward deceit, and one of the many reasons why her proposals will be rejected by the Commons.

Secondly, there is the promise of a vote on a confirmatory referendum. I am obviously delighted that the Prime Minister now sees a referendum coming down the track. But the idea that she has made a new concession by saying that MPs will be allowed to put down an amendment on the issue, which presumably she will oppose, is neither new nor a concession. When we put down an amendment to the withdrawal Bill calling for such a referendum, we did not ask for the permission of the Leader of the House or the Government. We just did it, and the Commons has the ability to do it to the withdrawal agreement Bill, with or without government approval. So this alleged concession is a nothing, like all the rest.

Tomorrow, we are having a proxy poll on Brexit. We obviously do not know the results but we can be pretty confident that those parties which are clearly advocating leaving the EU, on either hard or soft terms, will not get a majority of the votes. I am sure that the Leader of the House will be grateful that it is a secret ballot. That way, we will never know how many Members on her own Benches vote for other parties. We know that it will be a considerable number.

This election will demonstrate the state of public opinion on Brexit, but it will also dispel the scare stories that having a national public debate on the issue would lead to civil unrest and possibly violence. A couple of milkshakes have indeed been thrown, but this campaign has been conducted like all campaigns in this country. It has been very largely civil, respectful and thoughtful. Yes, there are many people on both sides who are angry, and I have met a fair number of them in recent weeks. But they recognise that the way to deal with this issue and their anger is to vote and not to punch somebody on the nose. There is no evidence whatever that a further referendum would lead to any different method of proceeding. To suggest that it might is both irresponsible and desperate. I therefore invite the Leader of the House to disassociate herself from the Statement by the Prime Minister today about such a referendum unleashing “forces”—not specified, but clearly designed to make our flesh creep. They do not make my flesh creep, because they are simply another attempt to scare people into denying the electorate another say.

Just as the Prime Minister’s deal has not changed over months, neither have the options facing the country. There are only three. It could accept the deal and leave the EU on that basis; it could leave the EU without a deal; or it could decide to retain our membership, prosperity, security and influence by remaining in the EU, by asking the people to confirm that way forward.

It is now six months since the Prime Minister reached the current deal, and it is increasingly clear that failing to get a decision is a very costly exercise. It is not just the ridiculous £4 billion wasted on no-deal planning. Ask steelworkers in Scunthorpe today whether this delay, this inability to get an agreement in the Commons and this failure to give people a say are having an impact on people’s lives.

We can wait no longer—not for another improved, new, shiny, meaningless offer from the Prime Minister, not for a leadership election in the Tory party and not for a general election. Tomorrow’s vote will demonstrate that the country remains starkly divided on Brexit, but it will also demonstrate that there is no majority for Brexit on any terms and that the demand for a people’s vote to get us out of this Brexit nightmare cannot now be stopped.

Business of the House

Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Newby

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, we are actually dealing with the amendment on whether we should have a committee report. I draw the attention of the House to the speech Mr Steve Baker gave late last night in the Commons. I do not know why I should pick on him at this particular moment—

[Lord Newby]

He is here.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Oh! I had not noticed. Mr Baker was looking forward to the Bill coming to your Lordships’ House, in the,

“fervent hope that their Lordships will examine this Bill line by line”,—[Official Report, Commons, 3/4/19; col. 1217.]

and give it good attention. The hope was that we would get on and deal with the Bill, and that is what this Motion is about.

However, I speak now to only the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord True. He asked me why I did not take an intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. I was moving a Motion: normally, you move a Motion, then people stand up and ask questions and points of order, and at the end one comes back with the clarification. That seems to be the correct way to do it.

On the particular issue of whether we should have a committee, we have a committee report on this Bill. Even if we did not, the point of committees is to assist this House, not to stand in the way when something needs doing. Their members are also Members of this House, and can therefore give their very wise—and often learned, in the case of the Constitution Committee —advice directly to the House. We can do it then.

The important thing I want to raise, because I was not able to on the last amendment, is the idea of how awful it was that we were moving this, rather than the Government. As I said at the beginning, it should have been the Government who brought the Bill to the House, because that was what the House had passed before. We are doing it because that was not done. The noble Baroness the Leader of the House said that it is normally the Government who table Private Members’ Bills. Yes, but they failed to do so. We will do it when they do not. The Leader of the House is obviously in a difficult position—

European Council

Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Newby

Monday 25th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, as we are about to have a debate, I think it would be useful for me to keep my comments for when I speak in that debate.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the same applies to me.

Leaving the European Union

Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Newby

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement on Brexit, which is clearly high on everyone’s agenda. I have sat beside my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon on previous occasions when she has rightly described the Government as, “living in the moment ... managing to get through another week …providing less clarity rather than more … failing to give any confidence that the PM knows where this is going or, more worryingly, ploughing on towards the cliff edge”. Indeed, as my noble friend has said, it seems that each week MPs are told to expect a meaningful vote the following week, only for it to be delayed again and again. Today, 31 days until our planned departure, this is even more true.

In fact, the most significant of the Prime Minister’s words were those briefed to journalists on her plane to the summit; namely, that there would be no meaningful vote in the Commons tomorrow but that again it would be delayed until 12 March, 17 days before 29 March, and even then with no guarantee that her deal would pass muster there. So, on 27 February, more than a month after the 21 January date in the withdrawal Act by which the Government should respond in the event of a deal not being possible or not being ratified, Mrs May still has not allowed the Commons a meaningful say on the next steps. It is the Prime Minister’s new date, that of 12 March, which changes the dynamic of Parliament and Government. That is because the Government seem to have given up their ability to govern and, as we heard over the weekend and last night, there are Cabinet and other Ministers who are prepared to resign or defy the Whip to end this footsie with a no-deal threat. They are right to insist that Parliament has to put an end to this reckless nonsense of threatening our own economic future—a sudden departure from a massive trading bloc into the unknown territory of WTO terms of trade with new tariffs and formalities as well as costs to industry—simply so that the Prime Minister can try and pull her recalcitrant ERGers into the government Lobby.

It was perhaps the threat from these Ministers and the likely success of the Cooper-Boles-Letwin amendment that forced today’s undertaking to ensure a vote such that we could,

“only leave without a deal on 29 March if there is explicit”,

consent in the Commons. However, the undertaking is only to exclude departure on 29 March without a deal. It does not rule out the continued threat of a no-deal departure altogether. Indeed, the Prime Minister explicitly said that a subsequent Article 50 extension,

“cannot take no deal off the table”.

All she is promising is a temporary parliamentary block on no deal prior to reinstating it as a continuing threat during the months ahead. This will not do. Both this House and the other place have made it clear that this should never be our departure route. It is damaging and madness to contemplate otherwise, as many of her ministerial colleagues in this House and in the Commons know full well.

Moreover, businesses are clear: whatever the end outcome, they need time to plan and adjust. A no-deal outcome with no transition period simply does not allow for that. The cost to our citizens living in the EU could be enormous as their driving licences could be worthless in months, their health cover end, and their residency and employment status change. As the government analysis released at 5 pm this evening makes clear, a significant proportion of critical no-deal projects are not on track. It also says that despite the publication of no-deal guidance, a large proportion of businesses and citizens are not adequately prepared. In particular, food businesses are unprepared, with concerns that consumer panic will exacerbate any shortages. There will be a more severe impact in Northern Ireland than in Great Britain and potential gaps in data flows without an adequacy decision. The report’s conclusion is damning, saying that,

“the short time remaining before 29 March 2019 does not allow Government to unilaterally mitigate the effects of no deal.”

I have to say that the word “irresponsible” is too mild a term for the Prime Minister’s refusal to take no deal completely off the table.

Such is the stalemate—and worse, the crisis—in government over Brexit that tomorrow Labour will ask the Commons to vote on our alternative for a deal. We will remind the Government that of the 432 votes cast against the deal, only a minority were Conservative, focusing on the backstop. The Opposition’s 300 votes against the deal were about the political framework’s inadequacies. Yet the Prime Minister has sought only to buy off the Tory rebels, dismissing these other major concerns about our future relationship with the EU. So we will seek to do what the Government have failed to: win cross-party support for a closer relationship with the EU after Brexit. Should that fail, when the Government return to Parliament, be that on 12 March or next week, Labour will support a call for a public vote on Mrs May’s deal since in its unamended form it risks our country’s economic prosperity, internal security and global influence in a way that Parliament by itself must not be given the freedom to allow to happen.

Your Lordships will know that we preferred Parliament to oversee the Article 50 process and for the Government to craft a future relationship with the EU to maintain growth and prosperity which could command support in the Commons and the country. They have spectacularly failed to do so. And if the Government cannot command the confidence of Parliament on this issue, they should go back for a new public mandate.

We face testing times. Whatever the outcome in the Commons—to accept or to block no deal—legislation will, as has been said, be required with great speed, at the very least to change by SI the exit date to allow for an Article 50 extension. But more than that, other legislation is likely which, because of its importance, demands careful unhurried scrutiny. Will the Leader of the House therefore give her support to an extension of Article 50? We know that Cabinet responsibility seems to have broken down, so let her break free and give us that understanding. For the sake of business as well as for our own sake, will she allow that extension, and guarantee that there will be no attempt to fast-track vital Bills to make up for the shameful delay caused by the Government’s own failure in negotiation?

Will the noble Baroness also commit to allowing proper time for scrutiny and debate, and for consultation with relevant stakeholders on the detail of legislation? And will she take back to the Prime Minister our view that until no deal is ruled out, not just for 29 March but permanently, we will have little faith that she is putting our country ahead of her party.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Leader of the House for repeating the Statement. The first interesting thing about it is the insight it gives us into the state of the negotiations between the UK the EU. We are told that they are “focused”, and “making good progress”, that they are “constructive” and “positive”, and finally that they are “continuing”—which is all sort of mildly encouraging. But following the passage of the Brady amendment a couple of weeks ago, the Government went back to Brussels to try to get amendments to the provisions relating to the backstop in one of three ways. The first was a time limit, the second a right for the UK unilaterally to withdraw from it, and the third was the development of so-called “alternative arrangements”, which would render the backstop unnecessary.

Of these, the EU made it clear from the start that Nos. 1 and 2 were non-negotiable, which left only No. 3 —alternative arrangements. The Statement is very clear about where negotiations on alternative arrangements have got to. The Prime Minister says that we have,

“agreed to consider a joint work stream to develop alternative arrangements … This work will be done in parallel with the future relationship negotiations … Our aim is to ensure that, even if the full future relationship is not in place by the end of the implementation period, the backstop is not needed because we have a set of alternative arrangements ready to go”.

The Prime Minister has therefore accepted that no concrete progress whatever will have been made on defining any alternative arrangements before 29 March. This means that, of the three possible ways of dealing with the backstop in a manner that would be acceptable to the Conservative Party and the DUP, none will have been achieved when the next meaningful vote takes place in a couple of weeks’ time. The only logical conclusion, given this failure to achieve anything, is that the Government will again lose a vote on their deal. It is against this background that the remainder of the Prime Minister’s statement needs to be judged.

It is crystal clear that the Prime Minister’s hope was to get to mid-March and, despite having failed to make substantive changes to the backstop, attempt to scare MPs into voting for a deal they do not support, by threatening them with crashing out of the EU a mere fortnight later if they rejected it. Faced with the Cooper-Letwin proposal, which would in those circumstances defer the withdrawal date, and a rebellion of Cabinet and more junior Ministers, she has today bowed to the inevitable and said that if the Commons voted against her deal and against no deal, she would put a further Motion to the House of Commons providing for an extension to Article 50.

The Prime Minister has said that the key votes will be on the 12 and 13 March at the latest. Why “at the latest”? Does the Prime Minister think there is any chance whatever of having an agreement with the EU that she would be able to bring back to the Commons next week? Whatever the exact timing, and whatever our concerns about the somewhat convoluted approach being proposed by the Prime Minister, that is a welcome recognition by her that the Cooper-Letwin Bill would otherwise pass, and that there is a majority in the Commons to extend Article 50. The challenge with which our colleagues in another place have to grapple is whether they trust the Prime Minister’s word or whether they want the assurance that the Bill would have provided. I believe that Oliver Letwin is happy to accept the Prime Minister’s assurance, but I am a bit unclear as to where Yvette Cooper has got to on that. We will just have to see how events pan out.

In any event, the Prime Minister’s principal argument —indeed, her only argument—against such a Bill is that it would tie the Government’s hands and have far-reaching constitutional implications. By this she means that the Commons would take back some control of the way in which it organises its business. Will the Leader of the House accept that for many of us, this seems a positive development, not a constitutional outrage?

If there is no Cooper Bill, it is highly likely that the Prime Minister’s Motion to defer Article 50 will pass on 13 March, but this is only phase 1 of getting out of the mess we are in. As Sarah Wollaston put it earlier today in responding to the Statement, we are only talking about:

“a short gangplank added to the cliff edge”.

Phase 2, and the only way of breaking the deadlock, is to put the Government’s deal to the people for their final decision, with an option to remain in the EU if they believe that that would be better for our economy, security and influence. Today the Prime Minister did a U-turn on extending Article 50. We now wait with eager anticipation for her next U-turn: to give the people a vote.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Newby

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the House of Commons has done what we had hoped: they have considered and debated our meaningful vote amendment. They have not done what some of us hoped and agreed with it, but I think we should celebrate how far we have come on this issue since the Bill arrived in this House. At that stage, there was absolutely nothing in the Bill about a vote, meaningful or otherwise, on the withdrawal deal and there was no mention of no deal. All the Prime Minister had said was that there would be a vote in both Houses on a deal. There was no commitment to that in law and the result of such a vote would have had no legislative consequence. The vote would have simply been on a Motion, which could be ignored—I will not go into whether it would have been amendable. Any such vote in this Chamber would have been particularly meaningless, as either we would have felt obliged to vote the same way as the Commons, whatever our view, or we would have voted differently and then been ignored, both of those, of course, being meaningless for this House, because as my noble friend Lord Grocott rightly feared, if there were two votes, one in each House, it would raise the question of the primacy of the House of Commons.

So that was all we had: the promise of a Motion but untied to any legislation. What we now have in the Bill is that the withdrawal agreement, including the framework for the future relationship, can be ratified only if it has been approved by the Commons and debated here. That is a legislative requirement akin to the Article 50 requirement for a vote in the European Parliament. That is a major concession. It would not have been there without the hard work of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, without your Lordships’ commitment to ensuring that this matter was in the Bill, and without us sending the amendment back on Monday.

However, I have a query about what would happen if there was no deal, as to my mind the rather extraordinary last-minute Written Ministerial Statement, as a result of which Dominic Grieve seems to have felt that he could support the Government this afternoon, does not really clarify things. I am not sure what it means. Will the Motion be amendable? Liam Fox is already out and about, briefing that actually there is no change as a result of that. To me, it reads that it still leaves it to the Speaker to decide whether or not it is sufficiently neutral to be amendable. So it is not actually an undertaking that such a Motion will be amendable. Perhaps the Leader could shed a bit of light on the significance of what made such a difference to the right honourable Dominic Grieve.

In the meantime, with the catalogue of changes to the Bill outlined by my noble friend Lady Smith on Monday and the insertion of parliamentary approval of the withdrawal deal agreed today, I hope even the Government will recognise the vital role played by your Lordships’ House, and that our detractors, particularly in parts of the press, will realise that it is our role to ask the Government, and the Commons, to think again. We have done that, and to quite a large extent we have been heard.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, it seems rather hard to believe but this really will be the last time we debate the withdrawal Bill in your Lordships’ House.

As we did on Monday, we are focusing on only one issue—indeed, the significance of just two words in relation to a Motion that the Government would bring forward in the event of reaching no agreement with the EU on Brexit terms. The two words are “neutral terms”—a phrase, incidentally, which most of us have never heard before. The argument which won the day in the Lords was that “neutral terms” would preclude the Commons having the opportunity to express a view on the merits of the Government reaching no deal in the Brexit negotiations and on what should be done next. The Government argued that their formulation was necessary to preserve the constitutional role of Parliament and that the Grieve amendment would mandate the Government in completely unacceptable ways and they would not countenance it. Your Lordships’ House took a different view and that is why we are still here today.

Between the Bill leaving your Lordships’ House on Monday evening and this afternoon, the Government have clearly thought deeply about this matter and realised that their understanding of parliamentary procedure on Monday was flawed. They produced the Written Ministerial Statement—which, unless I missed it, the Leader did not refer to at all, yet that has been the crucial thing in the debates today—which, in lay man’s terms, says that it will be up to the Speaker to decide whether or not any government Motion in the event of no deal would be amendable, and that, in any event, there is nothing to stop the Commons debating any Motion that they want to on this issue, and that time would be found for them to do it.

There is now a battle of spin as to whether this represents a significant climbdown by the Government or whether winning the vote represents a victory. I wish that the right honourable Member for Beaconsfield had supported his own amendment this afternoon. But if I am disappointed, neither the Government nor Parliament can take any satisfaction from what has happened today. This week’s events demonstrate the contempt in which the Government hold Parliament. First, they try to muzzle it by putting “neutral terms” into the Bill. Then, fearing defeat, they publish a Written Ministerial Statement just minutes before the debate in the Commons which rips up their earlier justification for using the “neutral terms” ploy. At every turn they have demonstrated their only consistent characteristic: the determination to survive to another day. If there were a World Cup in kicking the can down the road, the Government would win it hands-down. But the can cannot be kicked down the road for ever.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Newby

Monday 18th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I am sorry that the Government did not feel able to accept the amendment that your Lordships’ House passed on this issue, but at least we now have a workable amendment.

I have just one question for the Leader. She said that she was confident that the committees would be able to respond “at pace” to the flow of statutory instruments coming before them. I am absolutely confident that they can respond at pace, but can the Government produce the statutory instruments at pace? Furthermore, if 1,000 statutory instruments will be required to implement this Bill when enacted, and given the probability of a transition phase, how many of those 1,000 statutory instruments have to be enacted before 29 March 2019?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I can be very brief, because the noble Lord, Lord Newby, has noted exactly the same words as I have—“at pace”. These words alarmed me, because although some of us feel that we worked very hard on this Bill, it is as nothing to what the people on those committees will be doing. I wish them luck.

My question is related to that: when are we expecting the first of these SIs? Now that we have this, we need to move fairly fast to set that up. I very much hope that the colleagues sitting on the other side of the Leader will accept the Motion that we passed today. In that case this would be our last meeting on this Bill. We have already thanked the Bill team again, but it would be wonderful if they did not have to come back. In the meantime, they have at least another day’s work. For the members of these committees, however, their work has just started.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Newby

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister—I fear that that will not necessarily be very common, so I am pleased to be able to do so now. I am sure he will agree with me that these amendments are sensible, appropriate and necessary.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I commend the Government for these amendments, which respond to and accept the arguments made in Committee. As I argued then, and there is a reason for me repeating this, the very way that we set up quangos—how they are appointed, funded and run, and particularly their reporting structures and independence from both government and any other organisation they happen to be regulating—is key to how they work, hence the need for primary legislation so that we can interrogate all these things. That is why I very much welcome what has been said.

I am afraid, however, that I am led to make one comment, which is aimed not at the Minister but at friends of his in another place. After the vote last week on the customs union, we read in the Sun that the Government were going to remove those Conservative Peers who had voted for a customs union from their various positions on public bodies. I am absolutely certain that those threats, although mere briefings, did not emanate from anyone in this House. That is simply not the way that I have seen those on the Government Benches here work. They recognise the role of the Lords and that it is our job, on occasion, to ask the Commons to think again, even if sometimes that is a bit inconvenient when it comes from their own side. However, it was rather disturbing to learn that there are certain people around No. 10 who could, even for a moment, think that it would be right to undermine the independence and arm’s-length nature of such bodies, as is often written into their statutes, simply because Members of the House of Lords voted in a certain way. Everything I know about Ministers in this House means I know that not only were they not involved in this but they were probably as shocked as I was. Perhaps the Minister would like to take the opportunity to distance himself from such threats and reaffirm what I know to be government policy: that any appointment to such bodies is done without fear or favour and nobody would be taken off them for a choice that they made in this House.

On the essence of the amendment, and particularly given the role of the Minister and his officials, we are happy to support the government amendments.