Clerk of the Parliaments

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, on 8 November last year, I informed the House that Mr Michael Pownall had announced his intention of retiring from the office of Clerk of the Parliaments with effect from 15 April this year. I indicated at the time that in due course there would be an opportunity to pay tribute to Mr Pownall.

Some Members will know that, by convention, the retiring Clerk of the Parliaments makes sure to absent himself from the Chamber for this part of our proceedings. Those who were well acquainted with Mr Pownall will not be surprised to hear that it was his ardent wish to go one step further and to ensure that he had left the estate for good by the time the House dwelt on his achievements. In that respect and in many others, he led those who serve us in this House by example. In the self-effacing manner in which he performed his duties, he helped to sustain the fiction, carefully crafted by successor generations of servants of this House, that we, the Members of this House, are solely responsible for its actions and achievements. Such a wonderful and convincing tale they have woven that I, for one, have never had occasion to doubt it.

Michael also led by example in the unfailing courtesy that he displayed towards Members of the House. Imposing as we are in our collective guise, one might concede that there are some formidable individuals among our number, yet if ever the Clerk of the Parliaments shared this perception, he did not let it show. His advice was invariably delivered patiently and with good grace. There is no Member for whom he would not make time and no predicament he would have dismissed as unworthy of his assistance.

Mr Pownall’s tenure as Clerk of the Parliaments marked the culmination of 40 years of service to this House. In that time, he held every important post, including that of private secretary to the Leader of the House and the Government Chief Whip when those positions were occupied by Lord Soames, Baroness Young and the noble Lord, Lord Denham. As well as serving the first woman Leader of this House, Mr Pownall is known to have distinguished himself during that period by bravely drawing our minimum intervals to the attention of the then Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher.

In recent years, Michael served as Reading Clerk and Clerk Assistant before being appointed Clerk of the Parliaments in 2007. When assuming that august office, he could not have anticipated the twists and turns that events would take. His term coincided with the removal of the similarly venerable appellate jurisdiction of this House, with allegations of paid advocacy that prompted the House to revive its powers of suspension, and with a press campaign that exposed serious abuses of the financial support available to Members of both Houses, some of which have since led to prosecutions and criminal convictions. These have been testing times for the House—times which placed unprecedented demand on the Clerk of the Parliaments’ judgment, integrity and resilience. I am confident that I speak for the whole House when I say that in more dispiriting moments it was a great solace to know with absolute and distinctive certainty that Mr Pownall would not be found wanting on any of these counts.

Michael leaves behind a more resilient institution—one equipped with a new Code of Conduct for Members, an independent Commissioner for Standards and a simpler and more transparent system of financial support for Members. He leaves behind a legacy that I am sure will stand the test of time. That legacy alone would have been sufficient to earn Mr Pownall a place among the most accomplished of his predecessors. But there is no rest for the wig-wearing, and more upheaval was in store for the Clerk of the Parliaments. The general election only a year ago, in 2010, saw the first change of Government for 13 years and the first coalition Government since the Second World War. The speed and dexterity with which the needs of coalition Government were anticipated and catered for is of immense credit to Mr Pownall and his staff. Their planning, pragmatism and good grace allowed the strange and unaccustomed to be overcome and innovation of one day to become the tradition of the next.

There are, of course, more achievements that I could list and I trust that some of them will be mentioned by others, but the pinnacle of them all, perhaps, is that Mr Pownall succeeded in notching up his manifold achievements while holding together the unruly flock that is the House. He is not only respected and admired but held in sincere and lasting affection around the House and at all levels of the administration. That is why I very much hope that, although he may be intending to while away his retirement in Italy, the lure of the deep red carpet, the Pugin interiors and our collective good sense will prove too strong and we will see him in the House again from time to time.

It remains for me only to wish Michael and his wife Deborah many enjoyable years ahead. We are greatly indebted to him for the exemplary service which he has rendered to this House and to Parliament. I beg to move.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, it gives me enormous pleasure on behalf of the Opposition to second the Motion moved by the Leader of the House. I associate myself and my Benches with all that the noble Lord has said about the recently retired Clerk of the Parliaments, Michael Pownall.

Michael’s long service to your Lordships’ House, his diligence and commitment to his work and, at the same time, his reticence and modesty are all qualities from which the House has enormously benefited. It is characteristic of Michael’s modesty that he somehow managed to contrive to retire during the recess while the House was not sitting, but we will not let him get away without paying tribute in the Chamber to all that he has done for the House and for the Members of this House. It is characteristic too, though, that even after leaving the job Michael Pownall will still be doing it because he has to return to give further evidence in court proceedings being brought against Members of this House, and it is on these issues that I wish to focus. In paying an overall tribute to the former Clerk, the Leader mentioned that he could only touch on Michael’s role in dealing with the difficult issues with which this House has had to deal in the past few years. For most of that time I was in the noble Lord’s place as Leader of the House, which gave me a particular perspective on Michael, and it is from that perspective that I shall address the substance of my remarks today.

Parliament has had a bad time of it over this period: we have seen a scandal erupt; we have seen a media frenzy; we have seen the standing of Parliament lowered; we have seen trust eroded; we have seen Parliament fail the British people. In all this, your Lordships' House has not been impacted on to the same degree and extent as the House of Commons, but it has none the less been seriously affected. As the noble Lord the Leader said, we have as a result reformed our procedures radically. In all this, at every point, was Michael Pownall. I tell your Lordships this quite plainly: whatever difficulties this House has been in, they would have been worse, so very much worse, if Michael Pownall had not been in his job. At every moment, in every aspect of the issues involved, Michael was centrally involved not only in dealing with them but with stretching himself and his team to find ways of resolving them.