Brexit: Stability of the Union

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, I should like to add my voice to those of others to congratulate and thank the noble lord, Lord Lisvane, for giving the House the opportunity to debate this Motion. The subject is an important one. In all the discussions and debates about Brexit, we have perhaps not sufficiently addressed the consequences of Brexit for the integrity of the United Kingdom.

The problem of retaining an open border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic when that becomes the only land border between the United Kingdom and the European Union has of course received a great deal of attention. The Prime Minister has been resolute in the pursuit of arrangements to ensure that the status of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom should be preserved and ensured. But the arrangements are complex and to some extent artificial, as well as controversial, and of course they are part of an agreement which has now been overwhelmingly rejected by the House of Commons.

I follow the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, in reminding the House that Northern Ireland is different from the rest of the country in that the Good Friday agreement, like the Anglo-Irish agreement of November 1985, in which I played a part, guarantees that there will be no change in the status of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom unless and until a majority of the people of Northern Ireland want it and decide to vote for it. Whether that time will ever come, none of us can say, but it seems that it is likely to come sooner than it otherwise might when the United Kingdom is going to leave or has left the European Union.

Then it has to be remembered that in Scotland there was a majority for remaining in the European Union in the referendum of June 2016. That was not just an echo of the “auld alliance” between Scotland and France. It could become a significant factor in any future referendum on Scottish independence, although like other speakers I should be a little surprised if that took the number of supporters for independence over the threshold of 50%. Scotland would find it a cold place to be outside the UK and the European Union.

I am not at all sure that I wish to enshrine these matters in a written constitution, which is like a great statute. Such a statute would become like a large building which cannot be changed when the conditions outside it or the requirements being made of it change. We need to go rather carefully when trying to freeze or fossilise the existing constitutional arrangement because it then becomes in a sense a dead thing and unable to adapt to changes in life, changes in requirements and changes in circumstances outside. I approach that with a certain amount of scepticism.

The union that is the United Kingdom was created and developed by successive changes made over centuries. It was not set out in advance in a written constitution, but has developed in response to the needs of the day. The United Kingdom has been a source of strength and benefit to all its constituent parts, as one can see from the number of Scottish people who have made such a large contribution to our public and political life. It has achieved a strength, standing and an influence in our relations with other countries which none of the constituent countries would have had on their own. It has also remained a steady beacon of freedom and democracy and of political stability and maturity—living together, as it were—to which other countries have looked with respect and envy. We take it for granted because it has always been there for us. However, there are times, and the present is one of them, when while looking at our constitutional arrangements, we should be counting our blessings and actively seeking to protect and preserve them.

Brexit: Civil Service Impartiality

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to my noble friend. Like him, I worked with Sir Jeremy. I sat round the Cabinet table for a number of years with him and worked with him when I was Chief Whip and Leader of the House. One of his successes was building on the work of his predecessors and creating a more open, diverse, plural Civil Service that was also more professional but never lost sight of the basic principles of the Civil Service: honesty, openness, impartiality and integrity.

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, speaking for all his predecessors as Cabinet Secretary, I share and express our regret that Sir Jeremy Heywood has felt obliged to retire on health grounds. Sir Jeremy served many Prime Ministers and, as we have just heard, many Chancellors of the Exchequer. He served with great skill, unremitting hard work, distinction, impartiality and integrity. He has given the state some service and is well deserving of the gratitude and approval of the Government, Ministers, his colleagues in the Civil Service and both Houses of Parliament.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree with the noble Lord’s every word and gently suggest that there will now be so many former Cabinet Secretaries in this House that perhaps they should form their own group.

Historical Allegations:Operation Conifer

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the replies by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 11 October (HL Deb, cols 177–9), what steps they are taking to ensure that investigations into historical allegations do not damage the reputations of the people against whom the allegations are made in cases where such investigations are not resolved conclusively.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, decisions on how to conduct investigations are the responsibility of the force concerned following guidance issued by the College of Policing. The college’s recently updated guidance makes it clear that the names of suspects, including those who are deceased, should be released only where there is a legitimate policing purpose. Operational advice to senior officers investigating allegations of more recent child sexual abuse involving institutions or people of public prominence is also being updated.

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, as the Government persist in refusing to commission an independent review of Operation Conifer, perhaps they will muster the courage to express a considered view themselves. Operation Conifer produced not a single shred of credible evidence that Sir Edward Heath might have been guilty of child abuse, and a lot of credible evidence to show that he was not. Of the 42 allegations investigated by Wiltshire Police, 35 were dismissed. Of the remaining seven unresolved allegations, four can be shown to be without foundation. The other three are probably equally baseless, the product of a conspiracy to create and disseminate false allegations of child abuse by national figures such as Lord Bramall, Lord Brittan and Sir Edward Heath. Does the Minister agree that Operation Conifer’s report falls far short of the standards of probability required to justify the institution of a criminal prosecution, if Sir Edward Heath had still been alive to be prosecuted? Does justice not require us to accept that Sir Edward Heath was not a child abuser and to consign Operation Conifer to the dustbin of history?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

No one could have done more to safeguard and defend the integrity and reputation of Sir Edward Heath than the noble Lord. On the Government’s role, the noble Lord, together with my noble friends Lord Hunt and Lord MacGregor, went to see the Home Secretary on 10 September. Their meeting lasted 40 minutes and they deployed, with all the force and eloquence at their disposal, their concerns and proposals for the Government to intervene. The Home Secretary said that he would reflect on it; he has previously overturned the decisions of his predecessors where he felt that the case was made. In this case, a month after that meeting and having taken advice, he wrote to the noble Lord on 10 October. He said: “I do not think there are grounds to justify review or intervention by Government”. He then set out his reasons. Unless something has happened in the past month, I do not believe that the Home Secretary will change his decision.

On the broader issues, I find it compelling that those who knew Sir Edward personally do not believe that there is one scintilla of truth in the accusations that were made. The noble Lord asked me to state from the Dispatch Box that in my view, had Sir Edward lived, the case would not have reached the level at which the CPS would institute a case. I hope that he, as a former Cabinet Secretary, will understand that it would not be right for a Minister to make such a pronouncement.