Business of the House

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Lord Adonis]

Leave out from “Commons” to the end, and insert “Standing Order 46 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with to allow the Bill to be taken through all its stages today.”

Amendment to the Motion not moved.

Moved by

[Lord Adonis]

At end insert “but that this House regrets the gross abuse of the Parliamentary process and lack of any opportunity for effective scrutiny that has been necessitated by the failure of Her Majesty’s Government (1) to enable Parliament to meet in a more timely manner, and (2) to make other provisions for the rights of Parliament to be upheld.”

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I say first, I think on behalf of the whole House, how grateful we are to the staff of the House for the exemplary arrangements that they have made for our meeting today in the most exceptional circumstances. I also thank the Chief Whip for the courtesy that he has shown to me and to the House, as always. I pay tribute to those in the usual channels who have done the best that they can to make—let us be frank about it—the best of a bad job today. However, we should be aware of the enormity of the step that we are taking today, which is why I make no apology for moving this amendment.

What we are essentially doing is giving the Government power, in one of the most important matters that will face us in this generation, to legislate by decree. There will be no Committee on this Bill, no Report and no ability to move amendments on Third Reading. We will have just one debate, then a guillotine, then a vote, and then all 80 pages, 40 clauses and five schedules of this Bill, which is of enormous importance to the whole future of the United Kingdom, will become law immediately, with Royal Assent signified before the end of the Sitting. If this were an act of God, or some emergency for which we had to provide immediately—such as, for example, the pandemic—one might understand the need for legislative arrangements of this kind, although I note that when we passed the Coronavirus Act, which gave huge sweeping powers to Her Majesty’s Government, we gave it significantly more scrutiny in the most difficult of circumstances, including the need for Members to participate in unusual ways, than we are giving this Bill today.

It is not only that this is an act of the Government, not an act of God. Even given the fact that they reached an agreement only on Christmas Eve, it was still possible for there to be significantly more scrutiny of this Bill than we are giving it today. The Government could have called Parliament back on Monday. We could have had three days of debate on the Bill, which would have enabled normal Committee and Report stages to take place. Recognising, after discussions with noble Lords, that, given the constraints we are under—as I say, they are imposed on us by the Government, but we are under them none the less—we cannot have a normal Committee, I am not moving my first amendment, but I think that it is important for your Lordships to put on record that we deplore these arrangements and we do not regard them as in any way acceptable.

I note that the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, said that this Motion and our arrangements today should not be regarded as a precedent, but they will be regarded as a precedent. Let us be clear: precedents are things that have happened before—that is the meaning of the word “precedent”. We cannot do something and then argue that it is not a precedent for the future; it is a precedent. I can tell the noble Lord, because I have sat on that Bench too, that Ministers in future will be salivating at the powers that your Lordships will give the Government today over the most important piece of legislation that this Parliament will enact. They will cite it as a precedent for similar arrangements, which are without precedent before today.

There is no precedent at all—I have consulted the clerks, who are learned in these matters—in, so far as we can tell, the 800-year history of the House of Lords, and certainly not its modern history, for both suspending the need to have gaps between consideration of Bills in Committee and on Report and suspending Committee and Report entirely, which removes the power to move amendments. There is no precedent for this on a piece of major contested legislation. Your Lordships have done that historically only ever for emergency legislation that has the agreement of the opposition parties—notably terrorism legislation, where there is an obvious and sometimes compellingly urgent need to do so. In the history of this House, a piece of legislation like this has never been considered in the way that we are considering it today.

The issues that we are talking about are not small. Those of your Lordships who listened to the opening speeches in the House of Commons today will have seen the gravity of the issues that are being considered. If I may put in a plug for my leader, my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition made a forensic speech, which went through in detail all the big issues in this agreement which must be debated and tested and which are at the moment unclear—the Erasmus programme, workers’ rights, the ability of artists and professionals to travel across the continent, what will happen to financial services, which are outside this treaty, business services and the nature of the security partnership. Noble Lords need only read the headings of each of the 40 clauses in the Bill, which relate to matters as big as any that your Lordships have ever debated and legislated for, to see the importance of the issues at stake. What is happening today is not just, as the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, said, not in keeping with our usual practices—I must say that that is the understatement of the parliamentary year; it is the noble Lord’s job to try to keep our proceedings as low key as possible—but something that the House should regard as totally unacceptable.

We are where we are. Today is the 30th and the Bill must become law, so I do not propose that we reimpose Committee stage, but it is important that we put on record that these arrangements are unacceptable. They will be regarded as a precedent in future. They treat the general public, who are looking at our proceedings and expecting us to legislate with scrutiny, with contempt. That is why it is right that we put on record that we deplore these arrangements. With that in mind, I beg to move as an addition to the Chief Whip’s Motion that

“this House regrets the gross abuse of the Parliamentary process and lack of any opportunity for effective scrutiny that has been necessitated by the failure of Her Majesty’s Government … to enable Parliament to meet in a more timely manner, and … to make other provisions for the rights of Parliament to be upheld.”

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, the original Question was that the first Motion in the name of the Lord Privy Seal be agreed to, since when a second amendment has been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, as set out on the Order Paper. The Question before the House is that the second amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, be agreed to. I have received no notification, but I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, would like to speak.

--- Later in debate ---

I understand the views of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, on the usual procedures of the House but, in these exceptional circumstances, I respectfully ask him to withdraw his amendment, bearing in mind, as he says, that we are where we are.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

I congratulate the noble Lord on his sense of humour. However, I add that if his idea of fun is meeting here on 30 December, I am the Fat Controller.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Stoneham, and my noble friend Lady Hayter for their contributions. I defer to no one more than my noble friend Lady Hayter on the importance of scrutiny. She has probably contributed more hours to the scrutiny of European legislation than almost all other parliamentarians put together, except for one or two Ministers. However, it is right to observe and it is important for people to understand that what is at stake in the Bill is not simply the taking of a treaty and the putting of it into law, as she said, but all the follow-on requirements, including the requirements for parliamentary scrutiny.

The Bill was published only yesterday afternoon so I have had only one opportunity to read it, but I have counted eight separate Henry VIII provisions in it which give the Government sweeping powers to legislate by decree over and above the Bill itself. For example, Clause 29 says:

“Existing domestic law has effect on and after the relevant day with such modifications as are required for the purposes of implementing in that law the Trade and Cooperation Agreement or the Security of Classified Information Agreement”.


When you read the schedules, it is clear that the Government have a hugely exceptional power to modify legislation in order to bring it—in their own judgment, with no parliamentary procedure at all—into conformity with their own view of the treaty. I am absolutely sure that if we had had a Committee stage we would have been after those provisions with a vengeance, and my noble friend Lady Hayter would have led the charge.

I am not moving the first amendment so a large number of the remarks that were made do not apply. We will not have Committee and I am not proposing that. On the precedent, it is true that other Bills have been enacted in one day. I was careful to say “a Bill of this contested magnitude”, and no Bill has conferred on Her Majesty’s Government and on the state powers and changes of policy of this magnitude which we have agreed in this accelerated way. Therefore, I wish to turn the Chief Whip’s argument on him. He said to us that this is not a precedent. It is literally a precedent, because it will precede anything that comes hereafter. But if it is not a precedent, I can see no reason why my second amendment, which deplores the process but allows it to continue, should not be agreed to. On the contrary, I suggest to your Lordships that it is all the more important that we enact this amendment, which deplores the absence of parliamentary scrutiny and our usual practices in considering the Bill, for the very reason that if we are on the record deploring it, it is all the less likely thereafter that it will be regarded as a precedent.

These issues are hugely important for the whole way in which we conduct our parliamentary affairs and it is right that noble Lords should be on the record as to whether or not they think these arrangements are satisfactory. I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.