Implications of Devolution for England

Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

Well, I do not recognise the description of our current situation that the noble Lord is giving. We know that lots of changes have happened. The particular issue that we feel is necessary for us to address has been around for a long time. A lot of thinking has been put into this over many years. We now have some simple options before us, but, as I keep saying, that does not rule out a constitutional convention on bigger issues, if that is what people feel is necessary.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

Does the Minister have any worries that this way of proceeding will add to the raggedness of our constitutional settlement and lead to asymmetric forms of devolution, and confuses devolution and delegation? This is an area where many of us fear to tread without great care. Surely, from the start, a constitutional convention, discussion, collaboration and cross-party agreement are all needed.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness and I know how distinguished she is in terms of her very thoughtful approach to matters of great importance. But I can only say to her what I have said to other noble Lords. We are not ruling out the possibility of the kind of approach that she is promoting, but we do not believe that doing that should delay us from addressing a fundamental issue of fairness that now exists which we feel that it is very important to address.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve

Monday 4th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

I have observer status; I am not a member of the working party.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her clarification, and I am sorry if I misrepresented her position on the steering group.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece referred to the membership of the steering group. I say clearly that its members have been selected because of their experience and knowledge around these issues, and it is not intended at all to be a politically representative body. The steering group represents the main delivery public sectors of policing, education, health, local and central government. It can use their expertise to shape the scope of the evidence-gathering and develop the final recommendations. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said, we have extended the timetable to June from the previous announced date of the end of April at the request of the chair and the steering group to help to ensure that the review and its recommendations are robust.

The evidence-gathering for the review began in January and includes a series of round tables, involving a wide variety of experts, to gather evidence on how the duty is operating. The first round table involved voluntary and community sector organisations such as the Equality and Diversity Forum, the Stephen Lawrence Trust and Age UK. The second involved lawyers from across the public sector. A further six round tables are planned, including with inspectorates, private sector contractors and senior decision-makers. The work will include site visits to public bodies, for example to a police force or a school, to examine the experiences of different individuals within an organisation. The work will also include the commissioning of qualitative research, which will be conducted independently—as is always the case in these matters—through a series of in-depth interviews with public bodies. We will be inviting evidence from organisations and individuals about the operation of the duty, which should provide insight about public bodies’ experiences of working with the duty. We are also analysing written evidence in the form of existing literature, case law and international comparisons. We are therefore approaching this review with an open mind and gathering evidence from numerous sources to get a comprehensive picture of how the duty operates in practice.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked how we would respond once the work is complete and the steering group produces its report. As I am sure she would expect me to say, it is far too early for me to speculate on how we will respond. However, given that we have set up the review and given it the remit to roam and consult as widely as it is doing, we will clearly take the report seriously and are looking forward to receiving it.

The equality duty and supporting regulations provide sufficient safeguards for holding public bodies to account, and introducing a further legal requirement for an equality impact assessment will not add anything material. Furthermore, the timing is not right when we are taking stock of how the current legislation is operating in practice. As I have said before and to make absolutely clear, this is a review of how that responsibility is operating, not whether public bodies should have due regard for equality. I hope that I have been able to give the noble Baroness more information about the review, and I am grateful for that opportunity.

Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, I do not think that I can add much to that, so I shall go off in a different direction. I think that we are now galloping towards the Becher’s Brook of constitutional reform, and matters are, unsurprisingly, pretty confused. Perhaps this is inevitable. The confusion and discomfort arise because many noble Lords and many others want an elected House of Lords because it will have greater legitimacy. However, they do not want it to have too much legitimacy because that might challenge the primacy of the Commons. This ambivalence, to which there is no very easy solution—perhaps no solution—has been with us for a century, and it is manifest in the fact that we have not one but two illuminating reports on the draft Bill, with a near even split of members of the scrutiny committee supporting each.

Of course, we are not alone in this confusion; I fear that the public are with us. I have often asked members of the public whether they would prefer an elected House of Lords. Typically—although a good deal less often recently—the answer has been, “Yes, it would be more democratic”. I then ask, “So more like the House of Commons?”, to which I get the answer, “Oh, no. Not like that!”.

A point that I do not think has received sufficient attention in the discussion of reform of your Lordships’ House is that, as party-political loyalties and affiliations have waned in the country, people have increasing ambivalence about the parliamentary results of democracy. I think we need to pay much more attention to the reality that the public may want more democracy in the abstract but they do not want more party politics—certainly not as they see it on television.

From that perspective, the fact that this House actually discusses legislation, with some courtesy and some care for the most part, is pretty important. Scrutiny is, after all, about reasoning, challenging, listening and keeping an open mind, and, whatever else we do, we need to make sure that a future House is genuinely designed to continue and to carry these tasks. However, the draft Bill concentrates on the process by which people arrive as Members of your Lordships’ House but not on the powers and functions for which they are responsible when they get here. It deals with the abstract question of the process of arrival but says little about how changing that process is likely to alter the membership.

It is less than clear that there would be as wide a range of experience and expertise on the party-political Benches of an elected House. Campaigning for election places great strains on any career, and I expect that a number of distinguished noble Lords on the political Benches might not have taken the electoral route to your Lordships’ House if it had been available. At this moment, I catch the eye of the noble Lord, Lord Winston. I think that he might be one of them, together with many other distinguished medical colleagues. If we come to debate the Bill, we must therefore try to gauge whether future elected Members will in fact still be eager to engage in scrutiny in the way that the process of this House demands, assuming that its role is unchanged.

It may be said that the draft Bill takes account of these demands in considering the retention of a proportion of appointed but non-party-political Peers, selected, it is often said, for their expertise—in effect, supposedly successors to the independent Cross-Bench Peers. No doubt like other noble Lords, current Cross Benchers bring such experience and expertise as we can muster to the task. However, our role depends fundamentally on something different—not on experience and expertise but on the fact that we are unwhipped. There is plenty of experience and expertise on the party-political Benches but they are in a different position because they are whipped, and although they do not always vote the party line, that is nevertheless the default position. While there are sufficient numbers of unwhipped Members Governments obviously have to attend to the reality that they might lose an amendment. They have genuinely to engage and to think, and scrutiny then is possible.

So I think that the unwhipped Members will remain important, if there are any. However, it will be said, “The problem is that they will not be elected”. Again, that is not obvious to me. It is not obvious to me that it is impossible to have independents who are elected. Would it not be possible—it is not considered by either report from the scrutiny committee, but I think that it has some parallels perhaps with suggestions made earlier today by the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston—for a statutory independent commission, and I do not say Appointments Commission for a reason, to nominate a list of potential independent Peers which was then presented to the electorate? Of course such Peers would not be elected for constituencies; and their election would be on a closed list basis, which the scrutiny committee—rightly, I think—rejected as a basis for constituency elections.

Election of independents would, however, have to meet two conditions. Those nominated would—this is the easy condition—have to be demonstrably free of party-political connections, and have been free for a considerable period, using the criteria currently used to distinguish independent Cross-Bench Peers—as noble Lords know, not all who sit on the Cross Benches are independent Cross-Bench Peers—or perhaps stronger versions of those criteria. Secondly, it would have to be open to the public to cast a vote for any political candidates who were candidates in their constituencies or for the independent list. The electorate would have to have a choice. This would have the effect that the proportion of independents elected could vary, and it would have the effect that the House could be wholly elected.

I hope that those noble Lords who are keen on an all-elected House might take up this thought, and that they will not let themselves be deterred by fears that the party-political proportion of the membership of the House might fall below 80 per cent if the electorate were so minded. That would surely be the proper test of commitment to democracy, rather than to party politicisation. A test of this proposition: would those noble Lords who are campaigning for a wholly elected second Chamber balk if it does not guarantee a party-politicised Chamber?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, for allowing me to intervene before he starts his speech. Noble Lords may find it helpful if I remind the House of the guidance time of seven minutes. If all noble Lords were able to stick to that time, we should be able to conclude the speakers list well before 1 o’clock this morning.