House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill
Debate between Dan Byles and Jacob Rees-Mogg(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
The Bill simply states that the notice must
“specify a date from which the resignation is to take effect”.
That could be any date in the future. There is no requirement that it be no more than a month or six months from the date of the notice being issued. That leaves a period in which it is perfectly reasonable to think that circumstances could change such that the notice might be withdrawn.
Dan Byles
I now understand my hon. Friend’s concern better, but I still disagree. For the reasons that he has given, I believe it is a serious step for a Member to take the decision to leave. One change that we made in Committee was to say that a Member who decides to retire or resign may not subsequently be reappointed to the House of Lords. We did that for the very reasons that he has given. Sitting in the House of Lords is a lifetime commitment and it should not be the norm to leave. One should not leave with the expectation that one may simply waltz back in later. When a Member decides to submit a notice stating that they wish to leave, it would not be helpful if they could think, “I can always change my mind before it comes into effect.” Perhaps my hon. Friend and I must agree to disagree on that issue.
Amendment 7 would exempt unelected hereditary peers from disqualification under the Bill. The two peers who would be exempted from disqualification, the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Marshal, undertake various ceremonial duties in the House of Lords. I do not believe that either officer should retain their seat in the House of Lords if they wish to resign or if they are convicted of a criminal offence. I am of the view that it would not be possible for those officers to undertake their duties in the House and elsewhere if they were in custody for more than a year. I am confident that if that situation arose, the Government, in conjunction with the Palace, would put in place appropriate and effective measures to ensure that the functions of the officer were executed properly while they were in custody. I do not believe that Members of the House of Lords should be able to retain their seats if they are safely convicted of a serious criminal offence. I certainly do not believe that peers should enjoy the privilege of being exempt from that. I therefore do not support amendment 7, although I understand why my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset felt the need to raise and discuss the issue.
Amendments 8 and 9 would allow the heir of a retiring hereditary peer to take part in the by-election caused by their parent’s retirement and elevate the retiring peer to the status of viscount. It would be entirely wrong for this Bill to change the current position whereby heirs are not given an automatic right to enter the House of Lords. I would not want to support such a controversial amendment, because the Bill seeks to make straightforward and sensible changes to the membership of the House of Lords. However, this is a fascinating debate that might take place in other circumstances. Under the Bill, departing peers will retain their peerage. I therefore do not agree that those who retire should be elevated automatically to viscount status, nor that they should be entitled to any additional honour simply because they have been a Member of the House of Lords, so I do not support amendments 8 and 9.
Dan Byles
Let me clarify this. That was a flaw in the original drafting of the Bill, but in Committee we introduced a provision whereby the House of Lords has the right to vote to disregard the clause removing peers through being absent in certain circumstances, to deal with exactly the issue that the hon. Gentleman raises.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Indeed, on Second Reading we discussed what would happen to a prisoner of war and whether they would automatically be disqualified—the answer is, obviously, no. It would almost certainly be possible for somebody held in a prison of a vaguely civilised nation to apply to take leave of absence. So, on both counts—either in the special circumstances or on the leave of absence issue—the peer would not be forced to resign.
We should protect our own constitutional rights zealously. We should not allow other places to interfere in how we run our business. The right way to go about it is set out in amendment 23, which achieves what I was aiming to achieve and is pithier. It does not give any special status to the Commonwealth realms, which I was giving not particularly out of a sentimental attachment to them, but more because of the ability to appeal to the Privy Council and the safeguards that builds in. It ought to be the right of the House of Lords to expel people—this House has that right and it is unfortunate that the House of Lords does not. It would be a good power for it to have as part of regulating its own affairs. It has the power to imprison peers but it does not have the power to expel them. However, it should use that expulsion power only if it wants to do so; it should not be forced to do it because a foreign court has told it that it has to.
I was discussing the systems in America and Italy, great nations with which we have the friendliest relations. However, we do not understand—we are not party to—their legal systems. A British person accused in a foreign country is often at a disadvantage to a national accused in that country because they are not in sympathy with the systems that will be used against them. Therefore, having this protection whereby it must be an active decision of the Lords to expel somebody convicted in a foreign country will protect the peer arrested in Kiribati for waving a flag or in Uganda for being homosexual or in Singapore for using the internet unlawfully. It is absolutely right that a judgment can be made as to whether in our terms, under our law and under our rules a peer has done something so serious and manifestly wrong that that right of peerage to sit in the House of Lords should be removed or curtailed. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire has introduced amendment 23, which has saved me from speaking at much greater length on this important subject.
House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill
Debate between Dan Byles and Jacob Rees-Mogg(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Dan Byles
I thank the right hon. Gentleman. I will certainly take great interest in that scheme at Committee stage and I will be happy to look closely at it, but I have been assured by those who have far greater knowledge of these matters than I do that whatever the scheme is that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) is referring to, it is not a permanent method of retiring or leaving the House of Lords, because no such system exists. It may be a form of extended leave of absence; I am not sure. The Minister might receive some inspiration before he speaks.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
My hon. Friend mentions Committee stage. Have the Government stated that they will make time for a Committee of the whole House to sit to discuss this constitutional Bill?
Dan Byles
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning that. I know that he is concerned about that issue, which he and I have discussed. It is my understanding that there is no intention from the Government—indeed, it is not my intention—that the Bill should be debated in a Committee of the whole House.
We have touched on a matter that will undoubtedly come up later in the debate, so I shall discuss it now. It seems to me that the principle of constitutional Bills going before a Committee of the whole House is absolutely a convention used by the Government for clear first-class constitutional Bills. It is not, in my opinion, an absolute inviolate principle that any Bill that has, or could be argued to have, a slight hint of constitutionality automatically goes before a Committee of the whole House. Clearly a degree of judgment must be applied, according to the degree of constitutional change, if any, that a Bill brings in. For example, it is my understanding that my hon. Friend did not call for a Committee of the whole House for the European Union (Referendum) Bill, which was considered only a few weeks ago and which arguably has greater constitutional implications for the country than this Bill.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I fundamentally disagree. The referendum Bill provides for an advisory referendum that has no constitutional effect. It would require a second piece of legislation to give it any effect. Therefore, of itself, it was not constitutional.
Dan Byles
That is an interesting point for debate, but I would argue that the Bill before us today could well be argued to be far more of an HR Bill—a human resources or housekeeping Bill to tidy things up by introducing relatively modest methods to allow those who wish to leave the other place to do so, and to allow the removal of criminals, bringing the House of Lords into line with this House.
Dan Byles
This Bill does not remove the peerage; it simply removes the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords.
Clause 3 provides that a Member of the House of Lords who is convicted of a serious offence will cease to be a Member. The provision will again apply only if the Lord Speaker certifies that the Member has been convicted of an offence and sentenced to imprisonment or detention for more than one year. If that person successfully appeals their conviction, the Lord Speaker may revoke the first certificate by issuing another. It has long been the practice of this House that those convicted of offences that carry a sentence of more than one year are expelled, and it is appropriate that the procedures of the House of Lords in that regard be brought into line with the procedures of this House.
Clause 4 outlines the effect of ceasing to be a Member—specifically, that the person will be disqualified from attending proceedings of the House of Lords, and that they shall no longer receive a writ to attend the House. Further, it provides that a peer who ceases to be a Member is no longer disqualified from voting at elections, or being elected to the House of Commons.
Clause 5 makes provision in relation to the certification by the Lord Speaker, and clause 6 makes provision in relation to the short title, commencement and extent of the Bill.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
On the issue of former peers being allowed to stand for this House, will there be any period between their leaving the upper House and being eligible to stand? It would concern me if it were possible for somebody to lose an election to this House, go to the Lords and then leave it prior to the next election in order to come back in here. I do not think that ping-pong would be suitable.
Dan Byles
That is a very interesting point. As things stand, the Bill would not prevent that. That is the sort of detail that I would be more than happy to discuss with my hon. Friend, and we could consider whether some small amendment might be made in Committee. I am very keen, though, that the Bill should be kept as simple as possible.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
May I join everybody in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) for bringing forward the Bill? I add particular thanks for his great courtesy in discussing it with me before today, and informing me of some of the intentions behind it; I am enormously grateful for that. Madam Deputy Speaker, may I thank you for allowing me to catch your eye? I sat in my seat for the whole of the two days of discussion on the House of Lords Reform Bill, but Mr Speaker and the Deputy Speakers were like the deaf adder who stopped up her ear and charmed I ever so wisely, so I was unable to be called in that debate. But there is a great joy about Fridays, when there is less in the habit of deaf adders and more ability to speak about these great issues.
I begin by speaking on and complaining, criticising and carping about the process that is being used for a constitutional Bill. As I understand it, the Government have no intention of allowing time for this Bill to go into a Committee of the whole House and I will, therefore, if Second Reading goes through, move in accordance with Standing Order No. 63 for it to be so committed. The question of whether a Bill is of constitutional importance of the first order, which is how “Erskine May” refers to those Bills that should go into a Committee of the whole House, seems to me to be extremely clear: something that affects the membership of either House must, by definition, be a constitutional issue of the first importance.
This Bill may be accused of being a tidying-up measure. It may be said to be a matter of HR, but the question of who has the right to determine legislation is at the heart of our constitution and to put the Bill through using a process that does not give it the scrutiny of the whole House—the ability of every Member to attend the Committee—seems to be wrong. It might be being done just to save the blushes of the Lord President of the Council, who was not enormously successful with his previous effort, but it is disappointing that the Government are supporting the Bill but not allowing it sufficient time and the proper scrutiny that it needs.
As we have discovered in the course of this debate, there are some issues that need clarifying. They may, to some extent, be pedantic points, but the history of constitutional change is that it is often the technicalities—the pedantic points—that leave the greatest problems for the future; they are the unintended consequences or the change in the constitutional arrangements that was not intended.
The Bill tries to deal with problems that are not exactly new. I managed to find a reference in 1298 to the difficulty of getting Members to attend this House, rather than the other place. In those days a surety was required to ensure that Members turned up. The sheriff of Sussex required that the two deputies of Chichester should have surety and they simply ignored him. Some deputies from Bedfordshire were bound over in eight oxen and four draught horses. Now, some hundreds of years later, instead of demanding oxen and horses as surety for peers to turn up, we are going to say that they should be excluded.
On the face of it, that does not sound unreasonable. Surely, if someone is a member of a legislature, they should want to be actively involved, but can we not think of circumstances where that may not apply—where there may be good reason for non-attendance? What if a peer—if we go back to the second world war; this did happen—were to be a prisoner of war and were absent from the House for the whole period of that war? Think of peers who were captured at Dunkirk and were not able to come back until 1945. There is no exception under the Bill that would have allowed them to resume their peerage. There is for criminals, but there is none, as far as I can see, for those who are absent.
Dan Byles
My hon. Friend is aware that the Lord Speaker can certify leave of absence. The Bill does not state that that peer must turn up in person to request it. I would trust the Lord Speaker that should Lord Cormack be captured and interned overseas in a prisoner of war camp, he would probably be issued with leave of absence.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
That makes the whole process arbitrary. If there is no requirement to apply for the leave of absence, that is tantamount to saying that if the Lord Speaker’s chum is absent, the Lord Speaker will give her chum a certificate, but if it is somebody that the Lord Speaker does not like, such a certificate will not be given. So we are saying that the Lord Speaker will determine who sits in the House of Lords. That cannot be right.
Dan Byles
To be clear, the Lord Speaker can issue leave of absence only in accordance with the Standing Orders of the House. Perhaps my hon. Friend’s beef should be with whether being interned overseas by the enemy of Her Majesty is currently in the Standing Orders of the House of Lords and whether it might be put there, rather than with the Bill. If there is a legitimate reason for a peer to be absent, that should be reflected in the Standing Orders of the other place. That would enable a certificate to be issued.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
But the Bill does not say that. If it is a matter for the Standing Orders of the House, that is a completely different kettle of fish.
The Bill is clear that peers must attend the House unless they have leave of absence, and it has to be assumed that leave of absence must be applied for and is not arbitrary, but there might be circumstances in which peers cannot apply for leave of absence. It is possible to envisage circumstances in which they might not wish to apply for leave of absence but, for sensible political motives, do not want to attend the House. For example, if a Government obtained a majority in this House on a very small minority of votes in a general election, which is not impossible, and then used the Parliament Act aggressively to overrule the House of Lords, a peer or group of peers might say that democracy had been abused and that they would not attend until after another general election. Would they then be excluded for making what might be a perfectly valid political point?
In this House we have the Sinn Fein Members, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) mentioned earlier. It is hard to see them accepting peerages in the first place, but let us imagine that as a result of the peace process a member of Sinn Fein accepted a peerage. If they then decided that the peace process were not going the way they wanted and that they had gone too far and had to withdraw from the House, would we then take the constitutional step of expelling them, or would we say that it would be better for them to remain? The difficulty with that, and the reason I am not in favour of the clause, goes back to the point my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire made about that being done through the Standing Orders of the House. Attendance or non-attendance is a matter for each House to decide for itself; it should not be determined in legislation.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I will come later to the Titles Deprivation Act 1917, which is how those enemies of the King were expelled—I believe that they were a couple of royal dukes and one other rather more obscure peer who had got caught up with the Austrian army.
The House of Lords does not have the right to expel its Members, unlike the House of Commons, and for good reason. The House of Commons has that power, and always used to use it in relation to those who went to prison, but Members who are expelled can immediately stand for re-election, so the expulsion can be tested by the electorate. That seems to me to be an important safeguard.
The relatively modern Representation of the People Act 1981, which allows for the automatic expulsion of MPs imprisoned for more than a year, was intended to deal with an immediate political problem relating to the hunger strikers. As Members will remember, Bobby Sands was elected while on hunger strike in prison. It was enormously politically awkward for the Government that Members of Parliament were dying on hunger strike, so a law was rushed through to debar automatically people from standing for election to this House if they were in prison. That undermined the right of this House to regulate its own business. It was a bad emergency Act carried out for a political purpose, rather than a high constitutional one.
The House of Lords has never been able to expel Members, although it can suspend them and still retains a vestigial right to imprison them during the course of a Session. The reason is that it was always thought that it would enhance the powers of the Crown too greatly if it, by using a majority that it could cobble together through its patronage in the House, could remove obstreperous Members. The only way to remove peers was by a specific Act of attainder—as Members will recall, such Acts were used against people such as Stafford, who was expelled from the House and his titles struck down—or by bringing an action against a Member for treason. His titles would technically cease just before his execution; they would go with the Act of Parliament or the impeachment for treason. So there is a process to expel peers, but the reason it is very long and difficult is the fear that the prerogative power and the patronage of the Crown would be used to determine the membership of an upper House.
That is the historical context on why peers can only be suspended and not expelled. The Lords does have that power to suspend, in accordance with its Standing Orders. Much preferable to the clause on removal for non-attendance would be entirely to delegate that to the Standing Orders of the House of Lords, whereby a peer who was absent for a certain period would have to make a submission to return, would have to explain the reason for the absence, and would be suspended for the rest of the Parliament if those explanations were not satisfactory to the Lords. That would allow for the flexibility that would be needed in the case of a prisoner of war, somebody who was kidnapped, or somebody who was imprisoned in a foreign country. One can envisage that, say, in the case of a peer who had been involved with the Greenpeace demonstration in Russia, found guilty of piracy and sentenced to 15 years in prison, the House of Lords might want to waive proceedings on the absence ground even if it had already done so on the criminality ground.
Dan Byles
My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. I have been pondering whether, if a noble Lord were convicted and sentenced to more than 12 months imprisonment overseas and the Lords decided that that was an exceptional circumstance and not to remove them, the absence clause would accidentally catch them. That might need to be discussed further in Committee.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. It is conceivable that the peer in prison would be able to apply for leave of absence, but it is also possible that such facilities would not be made available. It would depend on the country in which he was imprisoned. The absence and attendance point is really a matter for the House of Lords under its Standing Orders. The Lords can deal with it perfectly adequately, and there are disadvantages to legislation.
The main disadvantage to legislation on the internal workings of either House is that it brings in the courts, contrary to the Bill of Rights, which is absolutely clear that no court is allowed to second-guess any decision or activity of the proceedings of either House. What is not clear is what counts as a proceeding. That has been discussed in the courts, leading to the Act of Parliament in the middle of the 19th century that allowed parliamentary publications to be covered by the exemption because there was a doubt as to whether privilege extended to what was in Hansard and therefore whether we might be free to say things in this Chamber but nobody was then free to report what we had said. That was clarified by an Act of Parliament to make it clear that even if Hansard is not a proceeding in this House, it is still covered by privilege. The courts are entitled to investigate areas that may not be proceedings or to determine whether something is a proceeding.
The courts intervening in the legislature involves a fundamental constitutional principle. We have always tried to avoid it, because it delegates ultimate control of the political nation to an unelected judiciary away from the democratic arms of the state that are here in Parliament assembled. I accept that the House of Lords is not democratically elected, but it comes with the certificate, in effect, of the House of Commons and is controlled through the Parliament Acts, whereas the judges are not. It also used to be the case that if either Chamber were interfered with by the courts, the ultimate arbiter of the proceedings in either House would be the House of Lords, which was the highest court.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am all in favour of people turning up, but I made the point that there are valid reasons for not turning up as well as spurious ones. Of course there will be idle peers. It is even conceivable—although not in this current Parliament—that there have been idle Members of the House of Commons. You rightly look deeply shocked at that thought, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it must have happened on occasions. That does not mean that we should go around expelling Members of either House without knowing the full reasons for their actions, and it should be done under the auspices of the House. This House, through its Committees, has the ability to expel Members if it feels that is the suitable course of action. I cannot recall any example of a Member of this House being expelled for idleness. Some have been expelled for criminality, for treason or for libel, but I cannot think of one who has ever been expelled for idleness in the hundreds of years of the existence of the House. Penalties and fines have been introduced for non-attendance, but not expulsion, and it would be excessive to legislate for the House of Lords to expel for non-attendance when we are not willing to take it on ourselves.
Peers should of course obey their writ of summons and the Lords could introduce Standing Orders to cover that, but resignation would be improper. Having taken on a lifetime promise, people should not abrogate it willy-nilly. Retirement would be sad, because the Lords is the last representation in society of the elderly, and they are an increasingly important part of our society and deserve to be represented in the political nation. One of the great things about the Lords is that those of us who are little younger can wander over there and see some of the infirmities of age that are becoming such common issues across the nation. It helps bring those to the centre of the political debate and informs legislation on disability. The older people in the House of Lords have a deeper understanding of such issues than perhaps we do. That is valuable and I would strongly oppose any move to compulsory retirement. I would be cautious about clause 1 because it would open the way to that, and indeed that is what some of the promoters of earlier Bills probably wanted to see. Some people want a compulsory retirement age for peers.
Clause 3 is eminently sensible. It is a lacuna in our system that someone can serve a prison sentence and still be a Member of the House of Lords. They cannot invoke their privilege to attend the House of Lords when they are serving their prison sentences, but the day they are out they can come in.
One little point worth making is that I have checked two of, I believe, three peers in this situation, Lord Archer and Lord Black, neither of whom have participated in the House of Lords at any point since their convictions. There is, therefore, already a self-denying ordinance, which is attractive because our constitution works as much by convention as it does by statute law. We should not undermine the importance of that.
I have no objection to and indeed would be in favour of a more formalised rule. Having said that, the nub of the problem with a peer going to prison is as much to do with the title as with the ability to be in Parliament. I suggest that most people are not aware of the reasons why a knighthood can be removed and a peerage cannot be removed when somebody goes to prison. Equally, I would not like to make it easy to remove a peerage. It needs to be a difficult process because of a peer’s position as a legislator and the desire not to allow malign Governments, which do occur from time to time, to abuse a power that has been introduced for a very good reason. I would therefore like to see a different approach based on the Titles Deprivation Act 1917.
The 1917 Act—it is fascinating that we were three years into the war before we decided to do anything about this—set out the circumstances under which somebody could be reported to a Committee of the Privy Council for their peerage and title to be removed, which were that they had to be residing in an enemy country or fighting for the enemy in the current war. That had the advantage of essentially being a judicial process. I would argue that the deprivation of titles ought to be more a judicial than a directly internal matter. It is taking away not just something from a proceeding in Parliament; it is taking away an honour that it is used outside Parliament, is relevant outside Parliament and, in the case of an hereditary peerage, cascades down through the generations. This would allow, and I think the 1917 Act sets out a very good formula for doing it, the two members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council required to be on the Committee to consider whether somebody’s offence was serious enough that they should be deprived of their title, and therefore the rights and honours that go with it.
Dan Byles
I am listening with fascination to my hon. Friend, who is making some very interesting points. On his last point, is he not in danger of slightly contradicting his earlier point about allowing courts to interfere in this place? I understand the distinction he has made in saying that the removal of a peerage is about much more than just sitting in the legislature, but it does include sitting in the House of Lords. Under his proposed method, the courts would make a decision that would lead directly to a peer being removed from the House of Lords.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I would say it was analogous to an election court, where, if election fraud or misbehaviour during a general election was shown, a court would determine whether the seat had been won in a valid manner, because it is a second degree from the court’s action. The court’s action, or the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council’s action, would be to remove the title, and it would follow from that that there would a removal from the House of Lords. I feel it would also allow a proper flexibility to consider the circumstances and would not, as was brought up by another hon. Member, mean that a judge, in passing sentence, would know that a 365-day sentence disbarred and a 364-day sentence did not, and that this must add to the weight of sentence. What if the situation were that a judge, in handing down a sentence, said, “If you were Joe Bloggs, I would give you a year in prison, but because you are Lord Bloggs you will receive an additional punishment on top of a year in prison. Therefore, I am going to remit part of the sentence.” What then? How would the Act apply to that? It would have been a year, but it is discounted. There are issues relating to suspended sentences.
We ought to be careful about unintended consequences. I am particularly concerned about the ability of foreign courts’ judgments to be recognised and to disbar people from peerages. I assume this is done in relation to Lord Black of Crossharbour and that his conviction in the United States is viewed as having tainted him in such a way that his peerage should be removed. I have great doubts about the judicial process used against Lord Black of Crossharbour, whom it is not my intention to defend particularly. Somebody he worked with was threatened with judicial, criminal action that would, if he had been found guilty, have led to an exceptionally long sentence, but which, if he turned evidence against Lord Black, would give him three weeks in a country club; and he took the latter option, as we might all have done.
That is how American justice and plea bargaining works. Even if they think they are innocent, people are under such pressure to accept the low sentence they would get with a plea bargain and the consequences of protesting their innocence are so great, that they find there is an injustice against them automatically. Worse than that, the prosecutors use them effectively to bribe witnesses into saying that the other chap, who is not co-operating, did it. By protesting their innocence, the other chap—Lord Black, in this case—risks a very long sentence that we should not take any notice of in this country. Indeed, I think it is restrained of him not to use his vote in the House of Lords. I would not think it improper of him, because he has not been found guilty of any offence in this country.
Hon. Members might think that view is very little Englander, but I happen to believe that the standards of justice in the United Kingdom are higher than those in other countries. That does not mean to say that all other countries are unjust, but other countries’ systems have injustices within them, and this issue of plea bargaining in the United States is one that is particularly egregious. But it is not just the United States, which is a close ally and has a common-law system, a system that we understand; the system on the continent is not one that we understand or are used to as Britons. It has the Napoleonic code. As Geoffrey Boycott so memorably said when he was in front of a French court, it is all in French—of all the audacities! They have different sentencing processes as well, so a crime that in this country might be viewed as a relatively modest offence could be seen as a very serious one in a foreign country or could relate to things that in this country are entirely legal. For example, in some countries, homosexuality is still illegal and is persecuted strongly. Are we to say that a peer caught out in those circumstances should be disbarred from the House?
I accept that there is the exceptionalism, but that is the wrong way around. If somebody has been through a British court and had judgment against them, that is a perfectly rational basis for determining their membership of a British Parliament, but if some foreign court has found against them, it does not seem to me to raise the same issues. Some foreign courts are willing to try people in absentia; others—the Italian courts come to mind—are extraordinarily political in how they approach prosecutions and sentencing. In that respect, I have some sympathy with Mr Berlusconi, whom I think was persecuted by extremely left-wing judges who wanted to use a legal mechanism to get him out of office, which they succeeded in doing. I will not stand up for his moral conduct, however; that is a different matter entirely, and a direction in which we do not want to go.
Russia has arrested these Greenpeace protesters for piracy, and piracy is an extremely serious crime. I understand that it carries a 15-year prison sentence. It is highly unlikely that the UK would have treated those people in that way. Now, I cannot imagine that peers would go hurling themselves about in boats in that fashion; it is far too energetic and not a sufficiently noble activity, and the ermine might get in the way—not to mention that their coronets would be falling into the sea as they climbed up the oil rig—but it is not inconceivable that a peer might be caught out in such circumstances.
On a further point, we are seeing in the affair over European opt-ins and opt-outs the EU’s increasing efforts to create a body of criminal law across the EU. I must confess that I would oppose the Bill even more strongly if I thought that the EU would be able to determine the membership of either Chamber. Part of the expression of our nation’s liberty is our free ability to decide who rules us, and that free ability comes through these two Houses of Parliament, in which no foreign court should ever be given an automatic say. It would be different if someone were found guilty of an offence here but, as I have said, the Titles Deprivation Act 1917 provides a clearer, more suitable model that does not risk bringing the proceedings of the House under the eyes of the courts, because it would be the title of the peerage itself—the honour—that was in question, not the proceedings.
That leads me to my last point, which relates to clause 5. Subsection (2) states:
“A certificate may be issued on the Lord Speaker’s own initiative.”
We should be very careful about this, on two grounds. As I understand it—I am sure hon. Members will correct me if I am wrong—there are two instances in which the Speaker of the House of Commons may issue certificates. The first is under the terms of the Parliament Act 1911, to enable a Bill to be passed without the assent of the House of Lords. The second is under the terms of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, following the passing of a vote of no confidence in the Government to enable an election to be held.
Proposals to involve Speakers in tendentious political matters should always be a matter of concern to us. Speakers in the Commons have a long-established history of being independent arbiters of the businesses of this House. Actually, it is not that long. They have been independent for only about 150 years; before that, they were much more party political. The Lord Speaker is an innovation, a post created to replace that of the Lord Chancellor, and it is a very different role from that of the Speaker here. It does not involve keeping order or calling speakers. The Lord Speaker is a more ceremonial post, created to ensure that the House may legitimately sit. The Lord Speaker does not order the business. The House of Lords is self-regulating, rather than regulated by a Speaker.
When the post was introduced, the Lords were extremely concerned that the Lord Speaker might model him or herself—it has been “herself” so far—entirely on the Speaker of the House of Commons and might interfere in a way that is necessary only in a lower and less orderly Chamber. Of course, such interference is unnecessary when you are in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker, when we are all beautifully behaved, particularly on Fridays when everyone arrives with their shoes nicely polished. The better-behaved House of Lords resented the idea that it would need a Speaker of that kind, and I would be concerned about raising the profile of the Lord Speaker, contrary to what was promised when the lord speakership was introduced. I would also be concerned about the risk of bringing the Lord Speaker into the political arena and giving them a role that might not be purely administrative.
It is interesting to note that in the House of Lords Act 1999, the responsibility for issuing certificates was given to the Clerk of the Parliaments. That indicated that it was a purely administrative activity, but the power given to the Lord Speaker in this Bill would appear to involve judgment. Judgment begets politicisation, and it also begets challenge in the courts. I repeat what I said earlier about the risk of legislating in a way that would bring the right of the House to govern its own affairs into conflict with the courts. We do not want to get into that position, because the ability of either House to operate independently is essential to the free flowing of our democracy. Once the House of Lords’ procedures had been intervened on by the courts, it would not be long before the same happened to our procedures. A precedent would have been set. The more we use the ancient right of either House to regulate itself, and the less we legislate and involve the courts, the better it will be.
The Bill is genuinely good in parts, and I am very sympathetic to the idea of excluding criminals from Parliament. I am not unsympathetic to imposing some kind of sanction on people who do not turn up. I am, however, against the bits on retirement and resignation. One of the bits that I am in favour of ought to be achieved through the procedures of the House; the other bit ought to be done through a different form of legislation.
I shall conclude where I began by being strongly critical of the Government’s treatment of this first-class constitutional Bill.
Dan Byles
Absolutely. I believe that Lord Steel, on his fifth attempt, started using the term “cessation of membership.” Perhaps they have had these discussions as well and that might be what we do.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset suggested that no peer was ever removed for idleness—
Dan Byles
Sorry. He said that no Member of Parliament was ever removed for idleness, but an idle Member of Parliament must face the electorate, whereas there is no such sanction for an idle peer. My hon. Friend is in danger of being slightly inconsistent. On the one hand he upholds passionately the honour and privilege it is to receive the writ of summons and the need not to give it up lightly, yet on the other hand the idea that a peer can choose to turn up only once a Session seems to be acceptable to him.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I think that that particular aim of the Bill would be better achieved through the Standing Orders of the House, rather than through legislation.
Dan Byles
I am very sensitive to that view and understand it. We face an interesting dilemma. I would like the Lords to be able to regulate themselves much more in those ways, yet there are constraints on what they can do in that respect, and they have asked us for those measures previously by passing them in their own House and then sending them to us. Once again, we are between a rock and a hard place on the best way to proceed.
I am also very conscious of the concern my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) expressed about the possibility that we might end up seeing financial inducements and what they might look like. The Bill certainly makes no argument in favour of that.
I take issue with the suggestion from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made that the non-attendance issue is purely about presentation. He seemed to suggesting, “One can already have a leave of absence, and that does not cost anything, so what does it matter?” Actually, the status of a peer who is on leave of absence is a very grey area. They could be on leave of absence for 10 years and then come back, so can they be replaced? What if we ended up with half of all peers being on leave of absence? We could not replace them with new working peers because we would not know if any of them were ever going to come back. I understand his point, but I do not think that it is purely about presentation, because there are also practical implications. We need to know whether someone is a Member of the House of Lords or not and whether they are going to be taking part in business.
Dan Byles
I have a great deal of sympathy with that view. Again, so as not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I did not include something on that in the measure. We might get on to my hon. Friend’s Bill later today, when we can discuss that point.
I will mention the foreign courts issue briefly, because it has been raised a number of times. I have discussed it prior to today with a number of hon. Members. I am very sensitive to the question of whether a conviction in a foreign court should deprive a peer of the realm of their place in the House of Lords. I do not think that it is as clear cut as saying, “Let’s simply make it UK courts.” It would be very difficult if a peer was convicted of an offence in Australia and New Zealand, or somewhere that has a relatively unimpeachable judicial system that compares to our own, and sentenced to two years imprisonment, if that offence would warrant a two-year sentence here. There would be no way to remove them, whereas they would have been removed if they had been convicted and sentenced for the same offence in the UK. Again, I am open to discussing whether the wording in the Bill is exactly right and seeing whether there is a better way of doing that. I am sensitive to people’s concerns about the foreign courts issue and have heard them loud and clear.
I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and colleagues and sincerely hope that they will be able to support the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I wish to move, under Standing Order No. 63, that the Bill, having been given a Second Reading—I am clarifying that for my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope)—be committed to a Committee of the whole House.
Succession to the Crown Bill
Debate between Dan Byles and Jacob Rees-Mogg(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
Yes. The Catholic Emancipation Act 1829 makes it clear that the Prime Minister is entitled to be a Catholic. The last office to be specifically excluded was that of Lord Chancellor, but, as far as I am aware, the provision was amended in the late 1970s. The one thing that a Catholic Prime Minister cannot do is make or advise on appointments in the Church of England. That is specifically listed as a felony.
The point is that times have changed, and the Bill has come forward. If there were to be no change in our plans for the succession, I would not be the one charging the barricades and saying that we ought to be changing them, but the Government have proposed this change, which they wish to limit to a very narrow sphere. They wish to limit it to making primogeniture equal among males and females, and to allowing marriage to Catholics, without considering the grating unfairness that currently exists in our laws of succession in an age of much greater toleration, and in an age in which so many of the areas in which the Queen is sovereign do not have an established Church.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I always listen with great interest and enjoyment to my hon. Friend’s speeches on these matters, because he is so knowledgeable. Does he foresee a time when an heir to the throne could take his case to the European Court of Human Rights because he was not permitted to belong to the religion to which he wished to belong?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. I also think that the law should represent the reality. It is inconceivable that if a sovereign of Canada—including, obviously, Quebec—decided to convert to Roman Catholicism, that sovereign would be deposed, thrown out and replaced. I think that even in this country and even with an established Church, we cannot accept the idea that a sovereign on the throne who decided to convert to Rome would be suddenly chucked out of Buckingham palace. When the law has moved away from the reality, and we are amending the law in any event, perhaps it makes sense to carry out a comprehensive reform of the law to make the two match up.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Debate between Dan Byles and Jacob Rees-Mogg(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Dan Byles
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for correcting me. That was not my understanding, but I will bow to his superior knowledge. The French model has an interesting lesson to teach us about leaving the power to dissolve Parliament with the Executive, as opposed to the system that we are now considering. The President of France has the power to force Dissolution early, but that is not supposed to be the norm; it is supposed to be used only in an emergency. It has been used only twice in an emergency, in 1962 and 1968, but it has been used three times for political advantage—in 1981, 1988 and 1997—thus clearly demonstrating that if we leave such a power in the hands of the Executive, it will inevitably be used for party political advantage.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The Bill still seems to allow the Executive to do that, because they can force a vote of no confidence in themselves. Therefore, what we are achieving is simply changing the rules by which an early election can be called, not making any fundamental change to the constitution.
Dan Byles
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s typically pithy and interesting contribution. The point has been made by hon. Members on both sides of the House, and while my hon. Friend is technically correct, I find it hard to imagine that a Government who wished to call an early general election for their own political advantage would engineer a vote of no confidence that they would then lose on the Floor of the House, because that would be a disastrous start to a general election campaign.
Dan Byles
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman raises that question, because I would like to address that issue, which is one of the “straw man” arguments that opponents of the Bill regularly cite. Some who oppose the Bill argue against the whole principle of fixed-term Parliaments, while others claim to support that principle, but tackle the issue of whether the term should be five years or four.
What should we make of the term set out in the Bill? I think that I am safe in saying that the term length is a key sticking point for Labour Members who accept the principle of fixed-term Parliaments yet still cannot bring themselves to support the Bill. Many of them hang their hat on the fact that five-year, rather than four-year, terms are proposed.
If we are to consider that point in detail, it is important that we understand where we are and how we came to be here. At present the maximum length of a Parliament is five years—let us make no bones about that—and I do not recall any recent cries of anguish from Labour Members that the historical five-year Parliament is wrong. Indeed, that maximum limit was established under the Parliament Act 1911, so Labour Members have had a long time to express their opposition to five-year Parliaments. The 1911 Act reduced the maximum length of a Parliament to five years from seven years by amending the Septennial Act 1715.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
May I remind my hon. Friend that the reduction from seven to five years took place because the House of Lords was no longer able to block legislation, and it was therefore thought right that things should be referred to the electorate within a reasonable time? In 1911 Members thought that that period was five years, and what they thought in 1911 is a jolly good thing to think in 2011.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
It may interest the House to know that in the 1830s King William IV was going to come in person to prorogue Parliament, because that would bring all business to a stop and the Government did not like the business that was going on. I believe that, in the end, that turned out not to be necessary.