Business of the House
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(6 months ago)
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Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, as the House is aware, the noble Lord the Leader, when the words “Liberal Democrat” are mentioned, is normally at his most benevolent. I have found that, during the time in which he has been Leader of your Lordships’ House, that has indeed been the case in his relations with me. I have greatly appreciated that, whatever differences we may have on great issues of state, when it has come to how we manage your Lordships’ House, he has been a model of helpfulness. It is worth reflecting briefly that, in your Lordships’ House, leaders of the parties and the Chief Whips work closely together and try, to the best of our feeble abilities, to ensure that we manage your Lordships’ House in a way that is helpful to Members.
This has been an extraordinary Parliament; what we achieved during Covid was truly remarkable, but it was only because of the history of working together that it was possible in those circumstances. I echo the Leader’s thanks to all those with whom I have worked across parties to try to ensure that, even though differences on issues of state have been very deep indeed, as always, we have been able to manage the way we have dealt with them in a grown-up way and without personal relations suffering, even though we do not always agree. I equally thank my colleagues—my Chief Whip, and Front-Bench and Back-Bench colleagues, who have worked very hard to make the lives of the noble Lord, Lord True, and his colleagues such a misery—very much indeed.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, I rise on behalf of my colleagues on my Benches to say something very similar. The Leader has, of course, a double-hatted role, and has walked very well the line between being the leader of his party and the Leader of us as a House. I pay tribute to his good humour and hard work. Indeed, last Friday I found myself speaking to him. I had to admit that I was standing in the middle of a field in Perthshire; he was at his desk and said that he had a lot of papers before him. He works very hard, and has always been readily available from the smallest to the biggest of matters. It has been an enormous privilege to have worked with him. I think that the entire Cross Bench feels that he has acted as Leader of the House in a quite exemplary manner; we pay tribute to that.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I will be brief, having spoken already, but want to add my thanks. It is an honour and a privilege to be a Member of this House. When I first came in, someone said to me, “Oh, you’re going to the House of Lords? They don’t do party politics up there, do they?” I think the difference is that we have learned to disagree agreeably, which is important in the debates we have.
I thank the Leader. He is the third Leader of this House that I have worked with, and I have enjoyed working with him. His customary courtesy to this House has been highly regarded; as the Convenor says, he is the Leader of the House as well as leader of his party, and that can be a challenge at times, as we know. I think he has met that challenge.
On behalf of my party, the current Official Opposition, I also thank all the staff of the House for all the work they do—the cleaners, the caterers, the doorkeepers; I hesitate to leave anybody out. Without their support for the work we do, we could not do it as well as we want to do it.
I also thank all my colleagues, particularly my Chief Whip and Front Bench, but also my Back-Bench colleagues on this side of the House and across the House. We have a job of work to do, and I think we do it as diligently and as well as we can. We may not always get it right, but we always have the interests of the nation at heart. I thank the Leader for his courtesy in his current role.
Death of a Member: Lord Judge
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, like other Members of your Lordships’ House, it was with great shock and sadness that I heard of Lord Judge’s death. I know that he was a devoted father and grandfather; he once told me with great pride that his role when the family went sea-bathing was to hold all the towels—he never dreamed of getting in the sea himself. Our thoughts today are primarily with his family as they mourn his loss.
I had my first long conversation with Lord Judge while sitting next to him at the first Queen’s Speech he attended as Convenor. He told me that he had been a great collector of 15th century manuscripts. We then spoke about the history of the period and the start of the Tudor dynasty. It was this great love and knowledge of the period that had alerted him to Henry VIII’s role in taking from Parliament some of its traditional legislative power. From this understanding sprang his deep antipathy for the current use of such powers, on which he spoke with such passion and persistence.
His speeches exhibited the hallmarks of a fine legal mind. He was crystal clear. He could explain the most complex arguments in language that everyone could readily understand. He was succinct: Igor rarely, if ever, made a long speech. He got straight to the point and when he had made it, he sat down. And he was ruthless: he was the master of asking Ministers the unanswerable question. As they floundered in response, he would pin them with a quizzical frown.
But he was much more than a great legal brain. He was witty. He saw the ridiculous side of some of the things we do in your Lordships’ House with a clear eye, a despairing shake of the head and an often hilarious response. He was a great reader of people. He had the measure of us all and would sometimes, in an unguarded moment, let a privileged few know what he really thought of some of his colleagues. It was not always totally complimentary, but it was usually correct.
He was wise. His reading and understanding of history, coupled with his long and distinguished career at the Bar, gave him a broad perspective from which to make judgments and give opinions—not just on the great issues of state, but also on the many arcane issues on which he was expected to express an opinion on the innumerable internal committees of your Lordships’ House on which he sat.
Finally, he was kind. There was a warmth about him, which was expressed with a sympathetic smile, a slightly cocked listening ear and a kind word.
I fear that he did not completely succeed in his campaign to expunge Henry VIII powers from new pieces of legislation. It now falls on the rest of us to pick up this baton. In doing so, we will not just be doing it for the good governance of the country: we will be doing it for Igor.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, there is no such thing as a speech too short; a maxim I first heard from Igor before I entered the House. I thank the three speakers so far on behalf of our Benches—I need the advice as well—for the contributions, which have been so measured and have brought a lot of pleasure in listening to them.
Igor, of course, was born in Malta in 1941 during the siege that lasted 18 months. Malta was the most bombed place in Europe and was devastated. He told me he ascribed his humility and, I think, his kindness to the fact he lived in this wasteland for the first few years of his life. I always wondered how someone could go through his career and be so successful and yet have that humility and kindness. Of course, we know that Igor’s father, Raymond, was called Judge, but what most people do not know is that his remarkable mother, Rosa, had a maiden name of Micaleff, which is the Maltese word for judge. Igor observed to me that he had, therefore, very little choice in his chosen profession.
At 13, he came to school in England at the Oratory, where a fellow pupil was the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, who reminded me last night of Igor’s prowess at cricket, and said he had a reputation from that early age for sagacity and integrity. From there he went to Magdalene, Cambridge, and he was called to the Bar in 1963. He met Judith shortly after this; many people have already said what a strong marriage that was and how founded in love. I have been in touch with Judith; I hope she is watching today, and I know that some of her family are. Igor described her as his better half, which was a lovely way of doing so. He took enormous pride in his three children and that great clutch of grandchildren. In my many discussions with him over the past few months as he was mentoring me, the conversation—just like the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, was saying—immediately wandered across to his grandchildren and the great pride that he had in their careers.
His legal career meant that he spent 32 years sitting on various Benches. I know that many will want to speak today to talk about appearing before him at the various levels. Everyone always felt that not only was he utterly competent but that he was prepared to listen to whatever the barrister concerned had to say. Anyway, to achieve presidency of the Queen’s Bench Division and go on to Lord Chief Justice was something amazing. To then come here and be such a great parliamentarian and colleague, who was always patient and always there, is something we should all aspire to, and I suspect we will not see it again in our lives.
When he arrived here, he did not shirk the challenge: he concentrated his political energies on the great balance between Parliament and the Executive. His weapons of choice were wit and that lethal logic. He briefly held the record for the size of a government defeat on one of the amendments in the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, but he took no pleasure in that. He took pleasure only when, eventually, the point that he wanted to have included was conceded by the Government. I recently spent some time discussing Cross-Bench voting patterns with Igor—something that has come up in speeches over the last couple of days. He was of the view that a vote against the Government was motivated either by opposition to that Government or by a desire to improve law; he voted only using this latter principle.
Igor had many great passions and interests. He loved cricket, having captained the Oratory, and was naturally considering whether to challenge the Government to a match given the recent addition of the noble Lord, Lord Botham, to our ranks. He discussed this in some detail with his private personal physician and equal cricket fan, the noble Lord, Lord Patel. He loved poetry, especially TS Elliot, and used to come bouncing into the Cross-Bench office reciting Elliot’s poems, which are incredibly complicated, but he never had a problem with that.
He loved Leicester City. Among his fellow fans are the noble Baronesses, Lady Henig and Lady Fraser, and the noble Lord, Lord Bourne. I know he was hopeful of trying to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, to renounce and give up Millwall and come over to the blues.
Northern Ireland Protocol
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
Many matters between the UK and the EU remain in cold storage: Horizon, as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said; the agreement to have co-operation in financial services regulation; and, indeed, the 24 committees that exist under the trade and co-operation agreement, which today are operational but are not truly operating to the benefit of all 500 million people concerned. Could the Minister say what has been agreed with the European Union about the speed of the thaw—the speed with which these things can be started up—now that we are set on a new track of a relationship?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I have only just served out breakfast to your Lordships’ House, so I am not going to describe when we might reach dinnertime. I think that the intent and aim is there that we should proceed constructively. Indeed, the Windsor Framework envisages not consent mechanisms but mechanisms for consideration and discussion of some of the aspects of the agreement going forward. Nor am I going to speculate on specific instances or committees. I repeat that, in these difficult times, when we face peril and violence in eastern Europe among other things, we hope that the earnest and the spirit that the Prime Minister and the President of the European Commission both put on the table will be fruitful in many ways.
Ukraine
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
The noble Lord is right; that is certainly an area we are looking at. He will know that we have put a UK cyber sanctions regime into force to ensure that the consequences of malign cyber activity are felt. We have specialist teams of cyber experts and intelligence analysts working round the clock to detect, decipher and deter Russian threats. We are also investing £2.6 billion in cyber and IT capabilities over the next three years.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, I must say, it was good to hear of the strong co-operative approach with our European friends and neighbours; I very much welcome all that was announced today. Less good, however, was today’s news that one of the armoured columns started the morning in Belarus. The Belarusian leadership has been acting as cheerleaders from the side for Mr Putin on this. Can the Leader comment on that and confirm to us that the sanctions regime that will hit Belarus will be equally as tough and strong as the one that will hit Russia for this infamous act of brutality?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
Yes. In the Statement, it was quite clear that the sanctions will also be applied to Belarus for its role.
Covid-19
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (CB)
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will speak remotely and I invite her to speak now.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, the Leader of the House just said that there is no advice for people who were formerly shielding, the clinically extremely vulnerable, but there is; the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, confirmed this to me last night. It says that this group should still consider meeting people only 14 days after they have been fully vaccinated, social distancing, asking friends and family to have rapid lateral flow antigen tests, asking any visitors to their homes to wear face coverings and not going into enclosed crowded spaces. Putting this guidance on a website is not the same as telling this group of people, or the wider public, especially their employers, directly that this group still need to take care. Will the Leader take this back and ensure that communications go to this vulnerable group of just under 4 million people?
United Kingdom–European Union Parliamentary Partnership Assembly
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, it is open to my noble friend and indeed any Member of this House to table a Parliamentary Question or a debate on a related subject, so I hope that my noble friend will feel able to elicit information that she needs from Ministers in that way.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB) [V]
I know first-hand of the warmth that the European Parliament feels towards the parliamentary partnership assembly. In his capacity both as Deputy Leader of the House and deputy leader of his party, could the Minister return that warmth? Does he agree that there should be a strong interparliamentary dimension as part of a successful mix in our new relationship with the European Union?
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his work on behalf of the House in his capacity as chair of your Lordships’ European Affairs Select Committee. He makes a very good point, and one thinks of other parliamentary assemblies that are perhaps analogous in some respects, such as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and that of the OSCE, although their respective functions are of course different and distinct.
House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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The Earl of Kinnoull (CB) [V]
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the forthright noble Lord, Lord Lilley. I add my thanks to the staff of the House, who made virtual happen. I will speak only about virtual committees this evening, giving a little bit of quantitative analysis, some qualitative analysis and one or two conclusions. For the quantitative analysis, I am grateful to the Committee Office, which has supplied me with a considerable amount of statistics and chatted to me about them.
Attendance for regular committees in the 2017-19 Session was 9.67 Members per meeting. In the virtual world, this has risen to 11.57, an increase of 19.6%. The number of committee meetings has also risen. This is quite difficult to analyse because there were general elections et cetera, but we were agreed that a good way of expressing it was to say that they have risen by about 20%. The number of witnesses who have appeared before committees has risen as well, by about 25%, and the number of reports the committees have prepared for the House has risen commensurately with those numbers. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the committees of the House have been 20% more active in the virtual world.
I turn to some qualitative remarks, speaking as the chair of the European Affairs Committee and having been intimately involved with the many members of the family of European Union committees before. In private meetings, the increase in attendance that I have just referred to was immensely helpful to the quality of the debate. Committees have adapted to a new rhythm and I pay tribute to all Members who have contributed to that, because it is different from holding a conversation face to face. Meetings take longer; it is simply not as efficient to be on a telephone. Things are slower and conversations do not quite flow in the same way. I find that discussions of difficult areas take significantly longer and that has a significant impact on the effectiveness of committees, although I am not aware of any discussion that did not get there in the end, and with the right answer. Agreement of reports is, of course, a subset of this and that too has been significantly impacted and takes quite a lot longer.
Public evidence sessions have been greatly improved by the extent of witness availability. I was much taken by what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, said in his very good speech about being able to take evidence today from witnesses from Sydney and New York at the same time. This is tremendous. However, I think all would feel that the quality of ministerial sessions has gone down. It is simply not possible to put the Minister under the same scrutiny pressure remotely as when he is physically sitting in front of you. It is a less flexible format, and this too can make a difference.
That brings me to my conclusions, the first of which is how very hard the staff of the Committee Office have worked during this period and how they deserve our thanks. The numbers show it: the same number of people have produced 20% more work. Secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and others said, we must have regard as we open up to the interests of our staff. Many of our staff are sufficiently young; they have had no jabs so far, so there are also health interests for them. We must have regard to them in deciding how we open up for committees. Thirdly, I very much support the noble and learned Lords, Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, in saying that the virtual format is a very useful tool for any committee to have. I therefore feel that we must retain this option in the way that it is developed today. Fourthly, just for my part, I say that ministerial evidence sessions should be physical, as should those meetings where committee reports are agreed.
There is a general principle in life that an organisation that does not continuously change and adapt is a dinosaur and will become extinct. For that reason and those I have given about committees, I fear that I cannot support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. But I very much welcome the words at the start of this debate from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, which I thought showed great intention to bring the House back to some semblance of normality, albeit improved and adapted.
His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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The Earl of Kinnoull (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I join in adding my deepest condolences to Her Majesty the Queen and the Royal Family.
I knew the Duke in several capacities but speak today chiefly as a member of the Queen’s Body Guard for Scotland. I was privileged to escort the Duke on a good number of occasions at garden parties and, gosh, he was good fun. He always scored with every audience from whatever background, with an easy word, a warm smile and infectious good humour. Our role as a bodyguard was to be with him for an hour and escort or deliver him to the Queen’s tea tent.
A very particular memory is of his meeting a former crew member of a British cruiser sunk in the Mediterranean during the war at the very time that the Duke was serving in that theatre. We all stood back as a very long discussion ensued. The Duke, in his 80s, stood as the veteran sat in his wheelchair. In the hubbub of the garden party, they talked peacefully—comrades transported back. Eventually, and with warm firmness, they shook hands again. The Duke was now faced with a simple choice: continue to meet the line of other garden party guests already chosen from the crowd, or be on time for tea with the Queen. In a very rare example of departure from loyalty to his sovereign, he was very late for that tea.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, on behalf of myself and my noble friend Lady Bennett, I send our sincere condolences to Her Majesty the Queen and her family. It is very hard ever to get over the loss of a loved one, especially someone with such a big personality.
I met the Prince only once. I was in the line-up of assembly members at the opening of City Hall in 2002 when he inadvertently gave me some advice that made me a better politician. I say “inadvertently” because I think he was actually complaining to me, but I took it as a positive statement. When he heard that I was from the Green Party, he first gave me his own green credentials, as the founder of the World Wide Fund for Nature and so on. He then said, “You know the problem with you Greens?”—and I think he actually wagged his finger—“You never give anyone else any credit.” I said, “You’re absolutely right. Greens want such giant strides in policy and, of course, it is hard to accept baby steps.” Since then, I have tried to be kinder about such baby steps and kinder to the Government.
A big debt is owed to Prince Philip and that whole generation of environmentalists of which he was a part and which he promoted through his work. The conservation of nature was important in the 1960s and is obviously even more important today. In the past 60 years, our understanding of conservation has evolved. We have learned that, in order to conserve a species, you must conserve its habitat, including those habitats that are threatened both at home and abroad by manmade climate change and the powerful vested interests of greed and profit. Prince Philip was one of the pioneers who started to highlight the links between people and planet. Many have built on that understanding of our global environment; I am very happy to give him credit for it.
But I cannot speak about one death, however momentous, without speaking of the 127,087 other deaths over the past year due to coronavirus. Many of those deaths will have been premature, with people of all ages dying before their time and leaving many more people—hundreds of thousands of them—grieving. Sisters, brothers, children, mothers, fathers—it has been an incredibly hard year. We all hope that the worst is over.
The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)
I call the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh. We cannot reach the noble Lord, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering.
Lord Choudrey (Con) [V]
My Lords, I start by offering my sincere and humble condolences to Her Majesty the Queen and members of the Royal Family. I am moved by the heartfelt and touching contributions remembering the life of His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, a transformational human being.
His Royal Highness, like Her Majesty, embodied the Second World War generation’s values of duty, self-sacrifice, and loyalty to Queen and country. His Royal Highness was the linchpin of the monarchy. He served Her Majesty the Queen and our country selflessly for more than seven decades. He was Her Majesty’s constant companion, her closest and most trusted adviser. His broad portfolio of interests spanned scientific and technological research and development, the welfare of young people, education, conservation, the environment, and encouragement and support.
I had the honour of attending His Royal Highness’s 90th birthday celebrations. He shared his fond memories of visiting Pakistan through the years, his love for polo and his delight on receiving three pedigree polo ponies from the Government of Pakistan.
His Royal Highness was associated with close to 1,000 charities across the UK and the Commonwealth. Like many, I also had the good fortune of supporting His Royal Highness’s charitable endeavours. I have been working with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award for more than three decades, a charity that His Royal Highness founded for the betterment of the youth. The awards, under his patronage, have been able to transform the lives of over 7 million young individuals across the UK and overseas. He has left an indelible mark on many generations. May God bless him.
The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the connection of the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, has been restored, and I call the noble Lord.
Covid-19 Update
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I hope that she can assure Sam Parker that we are committed to doing everything possible to allow children to go back to school safely. In the next couple of weeks, we will be publishing the guidance to help schools plan successfully for a full return in September.
The noble Lord, Lord Newby, asked about choral singing. I am afraid I hear that the science shows that there is an additional risk of infection when you or others are singing or speaking loudly, and this applies even if others are at a distance from you. This is something—I am trying to speak softly—that we will continue to look into. I share the noble Lord’s wish for cricket to return and will continue to apply whatever pressure I can. Yes, it is the ball, I believe.
The noble Lord also asked about orchestras. Sector-wide guidance for the performing arts returning to rehearsal and performance is something we are working on with the sector. It is a priority because we entirely understand the difficulties that the sector is facing.
The noble Lord asked about statutory sick pay. People will be eligible for statutory sick pay on the basis of their shielding status until 31 July.
Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked about the preparedness plan. We are constantly working to make sure that we are prepared for whatever turn of events we face. Obviously, we have learned a lot from where we have got to now. We continue to hope that we will continue to beat this virus, but we all need to abide by the guidelines and to play our part. We are absolutely committed to continuing to move in the right direction, and we believe we can do that.
The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)
We now come to the 30 minutes allocated to Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers are short so that I can call the maximum number of questioners.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
The noble Lord obviously knows a lot about this area. He is right that a series of strategies will need to be used for us to continue to make progress in combating this virus. The Department of Health is looking at an array of issues with SAGE and the medical advisers, so work is ongoing in the area that he suggested, as well as in developing track and trace, because we are going to need all these different strands to come together to beat this virus and make sure that all areas are able to clamp down if we start to see a sudden resurgence in any area. I am sure we all want to avoid going into a national lockdown again if the virus were to start to reappear.
Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I put it to the Leader of the House that public confidence is not of a high order as regards the Government’s handling. The Minister has said on a number of occasions that discussions are ongoing. What specific plans are available in the event of a second wave on a local level? What would the Government do, as opposed to having ongoing discussions with local authorities? It is all too vague. We need a clear statement of policy about what will trigger local action, which the Government have said they want to support.