Liaison Committee Report

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, Members might recall that this time a year ago anxieties were aired in this House, not so much about the subjects chosen, which seemed interesting, but about too much government control over membership and a lack of input from Members of the House over the subjects chosen. Indeed, I believe reform of the method of selection of members and subjects was aired; I think I gave evidence. Could the Senior Deputy Speaker tell us whether any reforms have taken place?

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness’s comments. Indeed, I recall her intervention last year.

I need to place on record once again, on behalf of colleagues, our concern and regret that the decisions taken by the committee did not include an inquiry into national identity cards. This is certainly the third year, perhaps even the fourth, that this committee has refused to entertain the idea of such an inquiry. It has been blocked again by the usual coalition of Liberal Democrats, who historically have opposed the introduction of national identity cards, and Conservative members of the committee. When the coalition was running the country, the Conservatives were forced by the Liberal Democrats to back down and abolish Labour’s programme.

I am also told that members of the committee are advised—indeed, I think it is some members’ view—that it is not necessary for Members to indicate the scale of support in the House for inquiries that they are suggesting. I challenge that; I believe that is quite wrong. I believe it is for Members, when submitting subjects for inquiry, to be able to indicate the scale of support. In the case of national identity cards, support came from right across the political spectrum, from left to right. It came from those with more liberal views on social issues as against those of a more conservative disposition. It came from Brexiteers and remainers. Brexiteers were particularly interested as they see ID cards as important in conditions of restrictions on free movement and management of entitlements, which are at the heart of much of the Brexit debate. Equally, remainers call in aid experience of the benefits of the introduction of these cards in other European states. The stats are very interesting. Of a European population of 742 million across 28 states, only four states have resisted their introduction: Switzerland with 8.5 million, Denmark with 6 million, Liechtenstein with 37,000 and the United Kingdom with 66 million, a total resistance of just over 10% throughout Europe.

Next year, we will try again, but I do not live in hope any more. Persistence simply is not paying, and it is very hard to know how to proceed. Right across this House, people often ask me when we will get this inquiry. This political resistance within the committee—which is now obvious to everybody—requires the reforms suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Does the noble Lord the Deputy Speaker really believe that 11 people, some of whom are taking political positions—that is certainly the case with the Liberal Democrats and the government representatives on the committee, which I have always objected to—should take decisions on their own which command so much of the resource of this place? Why does the committee resist seeing lists of people in support of particular recommendations when it knows that those lists reflect views right across the House? Those views will surely influence decisions taken by the committee on the subjects that they pick.

[The Senior Deputy Speaker]

The noble Lord and I are at variance on this. He is, in fact, at variance with every other member of the committee too. I will go over the noble Lord’s case because it is an important aspect. The committee and I were very mindful of the proposal for national identity cards and we were careful in our consideration of it. As the noble Lord knows, his proposal did not make it on to the shortlist, but it was considered for post-legislative scrutiny as part of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013. I know that when that was conveyed to the noble Lord he was almost immediately not content with it and expressed his lack of support for it in subsequent discussions with officials.

The scoping note was prepared for the committee and therefore focused principally on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013. As an alternative, the noble Lord proposed post-legislative scrutiny of the Identity Cards Act 2006, which is no longer in force. The committee considered that alternative proposal and agreed not to recommend it, on the basis that the Act itself was no longer on the statute book and that, in this instance, scrutiny would be further hampered by the fact that some records had been destroyed shortly after the repeal of the Act.

The Identity Documents Act 2010 introduced a range of measures which provided for the repeal of the Identity Cards Act 2006, the cancellation of all existing ID cards and prohibition of issuing any further ones on or after the date on which the Act was passed, and the destruction of information contained within the national identity register within two months from the date on which the Act was passed. So a lot of that information was no longer available. The Act was repealed and the committee said it was not worth pursuing the matter. When I conveyed that decision to the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, asked me whether, in these circumstances, we would consider the identity card proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. We had 27 submissions and eliminated all but eight. However, the entire committee and I accepted the request from the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. So, rather than a short leet of eight, we had a short leet of nine. The submission from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, went to the final hurdle as one of the nine, but it failed at that point because the majority of the committee was not in favour of that inquiry.

I agree that we need to reform. The review of committees is there; I am happy to take things forward. With the will of the House, we can change this; we can have more submissions. That is for the longer term; I appreciate the constructive comments that have been made today and am willing to listen to more Members’ comments so that we have greater engagement.