Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Lord Dubs Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, unfortunately I was unable to attend the Second Reading of the Bill due to the fact that domestic committees of the House were meeting and I was otherwise engaged. However, I have read the whole of the Second Reading debate.
It is quite clear that the Government have not really put a case for what they are doing in this very limited form. One speech that struck me from reading the debate was that of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who suggested that a very different approach to the Bill could well be taken. I just wondered whether Ministers had considered the contents of his contribution. His is a sort of halfway-house proposal: it would dilute the value of the register but would ensure that the kind of information that we really need was available. Today, he slightly alluded to his case, and I believe that the questions he raised at Second Reading should be answered during the deliberations on the Bill. I cannot understand for the life of me what is driving the Government down this route, apart from some huge PR effort to convince the public that they are doing something about lobbying in line with their coalition agreement. However, their proposal does not meet the terms of what I understand was agreed.
I have a number of questions that I should like to ask, and I have tabled amendments of my own, to which we will come later. What is the Government’s latest estimate of the number of organisations and individuals that will register? Some work on that must have been done. I have seen some figures published but, in the light of the speeches at Second Reading showing up the deficiencies in the Bill, and recognising that many will not be required to register because they will not meet the criteria for registration—information which, prior to Second Reading, the Government may well not have considered—what is now their estimate of the number that will finally register?
I should like to know more about the discussions that took place between departmental officials and Ministers and the professional associations. Since the early 1970s, in one form or another—I shall give more detail later in the debate on the work that was done in the 1970s and 1980s in this area—a system has been in operation which provides far more information than the Government are seeking the lobbyists and lobbying organisations to provide. It has been suggested in this House and in correspondence that we have received that their efforts may no longer be necessary. Some of them may be inclined simply to discard the work that they have been doing over the years and rely on the Government’s far more limited source of information. Surely that would be totally counterproductive. I wonder whether Ministers or civil servants have been told what the intentions are. I think that the House is entitled to know what the professional organisations intend to do in the event that this register is set in place.
Finally, on in-house lobbyists and their exclusion, it is simply not credible to call a Bill the name given to this Bill when it excludes the vast majority of lobbyists in the United Kingdom. It is not credible; it is a joke. Inevitably, there will be some scandal which will draw attention to the deficiencies in the registration system that has been set up by the Government. It may be for a future Government to find themselves defending the indefensible. I hope that the Minister can answer some of my questions prior to my moving my amendments.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
I had to go abroad on the day of Second Reading and I very much regret that I was unable to make a contribution. I do not intend to make a Second Reading speech. However, I should declare a couple of interests. Some years ago I wrote a book on lobbying. It is a very small interest because it is out of print and no one can buy it. It was a do-it-yourself book on how to lobby and was intended specifically for the voluntary sector. The other interest I want to declare is that I spent some years until coming into this House as chief executive of the Refugee Council. Indeed, one of the things that I did most was to lobby. The organisation did quite a lot of lobbying on refugee policy.
I cannot for the life of me understand why that activity should not be incorporated in the register. If we had had the money, we could have hired a firm of lobbyists, which might have had to be on the register. The fact is that we did not have the money and I simply carried out that activity myself. It took me to all three party conferences: going to the Lib-Dem and Tory party conferences, as well as the Labour Party conference, is a subject for another day. I lobbied quite blatantly and I had two members of staff who also did quite a lot of lobbying. I hope that the Minister can tell me why that activity should not be covered in the proposed register.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, let me start by stressing that lobbying is a normal, valuable, regular aspect of any healthy democratic political system. The question is one of transparency and certainly not one of trying to reduce the level of lobbying in this country. Part 1 was designed to address the problem of consultant lobbying firms entertaining and going to see Ministers without it being clear who they were representing. The Government have dealt with the question of employed lobbyists—members of charities and others—through their arrangements for transparency. Every three months, I and others have to declare who we have met and what organisations employ them, including anyone who happens to be an old friend, perhaps from student days: I have to list “the Information Commissioner” or whoever it may be because a meeting has taken place.
We have looked at other systems, in particular the Canadian one, which adopts the universal system of wishing to take on board every single lobbyist. It is a very large and expensive system and unlike what we propose—I should point out to the noble Lord, Lord Norton—it is funded by the public purse and costs the equivalent of £3 million a year.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I was a very junior Minister in Northern Ireland and, of course, was being lobbied all the time. Such activity would, of course, be covered by the Bill, except to say that most of the people doing the lobbying were not consultant lobbyists but from a range of organisations. Perhaps I may make a few brief points.
I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Rooker about shadow Ministers. It is clear that any lobbyist worth their salt will pinpoint those who will be of influence, should there be a change of Government after an election, and make a beeline for them. That is an important issue. I also agree with my noble friend about government agencies. There were a large number of government agencies in Northern Ireland, which were a bit closer to government than the ones in England. Nevertheless, the point my noble friend makes still applies—I am quite sure that a lot of lobbying of those government agencies went on, and goes on, which would not be covered by the definition of a Permanent Secretary.
However, I should like to make another general point about civil servants. As I said earlier, although I had lots of meetings and was being lobbied, that activity would be covered because I was there. But of course civil servants are lobbied to secure access to a Minister, and that is a crucial part of the process. They need not be very senior civil servants but be senior enough to say to whoever is doing the lobbying, “Yes, I will get you a meeting with the Minister”. The Minister has to agree to such a meeting but in the way things are that nearly always happens. Civil servants who are not that senior can therefore be quite influential. Indeed, in all my meetings with civil servants during that time and when people lobbied me, I do not think that the Permanent Secretary of one of the two departments I represented was there on more than a handful of occasions. It was all done at a less senior level. I am bound to say that I cannot work out where the cut-off point should be, although there clearly has to be one. One of the considerations should be to include those civil servants who are senior enough to assist in the process of gaining access to a Minister. That might be a helpful way of looking at this issue. Someone said that Permanent Secretaries are ultimately responsible. I would say, “if they know”, because, in the nature of things, so much is going on I do not believe that a Permanent Secretary could possibly know about all the contacts made by lobbyists with more junior civil servants. There is a bit of a problem there.
Lastly, I should like to comment on advisers. I was not senior enough to have an adviser, although the Secretary of State had one who helped all of us. I very much agree with noble Lords who said that political advisers are crucial in the process. They open doors, can be extremely influential and give advice to their Ministers, having been lobbied in turn. I am therefore puzzled. I understand that the Minister has said—we had meetings on this before Second Reading—that transparency is what he is after, but I am puzzled as to why the Government are taking such a narrow view of the way in which the lobbying process works. We are talking about a process that seeks to influence legislation and public policy, and the scope of the Bill should be a bit wider to cover people who lobby in that manner.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I take that. I was about to say that the issue of proportionality—how far we go—is a really difficult one here. However, if one is talking about who gives you access to a Minister perhaps we need to include diary secretaries for example. Who we include and who we do not is itself a matter of some difficulty.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Perhaps we need to discuss between Committee and Report which definition of senior civil servants Ministers and various Members of the House wish to adopt. I was adopting my own understanding of the senior Civil Service, which is the 5,000 I mentioned.
I will be interested to hear from the Opposition whether they also need to be included in this. Again, that is something that perhaps the Opposition Front Bench and the Government should usefully discuss between Committee and Report. I come back to say that the best can be the enemy of the good in requiring too many people to be brought within the context of this Bill. I take the very powerful speech from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, about non-ministerial departments to mind. I also take some of his other points about particular senior civil servants. We will consider all these points and, in that light, I trust that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment.
Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons
Lord Dubs Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Dubs
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, and I think that I agree with every word that he said. Having listened to this debate, it seems that there are really no good options. Every one has its downside. Despite the horror of 100,000 killed, 1 million refugees and the victims of terrible chemical warfare, the right course of action is still not clear—except that the case for armed force, for bombing, has not been made. Certainly, we would need more evidence. We have to wait for the weapons inspectors. We need more intelligence information that is in the possession of our Government and others than we have seen so far. Above all, we need evidence of Assad’s responsibility for the use of chemical weapons. It has already been suggested that the decision to use them may have been made at a lower level in the Assad military. It will be hard to prove—it will be difficult to get the evidence for that—but if that is the case, certainly if there is a hint of it, we cannot take action against the regime quite as has been envisaged.
My question is this: what is the hurry? For heaven’s sake, why are we in such a desperate hurry? Until a day ago, the view was that both Houses were being recalled today in order that there could be an attack at the weekend. That has been allayed a bit, thanks to many voices including that of the Official Opposition in the Commons. I cannot understand what the hurry has been. Why do we have to rush into something so difficult and so sensitive?
Another question has not been answered despite having been put. What are our aims in this? Yes, we can shell, bomb and attack various installations in Syria, but what are our aims? Having destroyed some of the assets there, if we go down that path, what happens then? Suppose we destroy one or two command-and-control centres? Surely they could be replaced, and then where would we be? What progress would we have made? I am not clear how we can contemplate doing anything unless we know clearly what our aims and objectives are. Frankly, I think the Government do not have those and we are not going to get very far.
In any case, any decision that we make surely has to take account of the interests of the Syrian people. I am not convinced that military intervention would bring benefits to the Syrian people, however one looks at it. It is widely accepted that military force cannot make things better in Syria. The question is how much worse military force might make things in that country.
Of course, as has already been said, we are not just talking about Syria. We must have concern for the stability of the region as a whole. I shudder to think what will happen in the region if there are massive attacks by Britain, the United States, France and perhaps other countries. There will be revulsion at this and we will lose the moral high which we have been trying to claim all along.
Then again, it is possible to attack some of the installations in Syria without effectively taking sides in a civil war. We cannot say we are not doing so; we are bound to be doing it. We are taking action on one side against the other. How many of the people in the Syrian opposition are actually jihadists? How many of them would represent a type of Government which, if they controlled Syria, would be pretty inimical to anything in which we believe? If we have taken action to bring them into power, we will have a lot to answer for.
There are clearly large stockpiles of chemical weapons in Syria. I note that Syria is one of several countries that has not signed or ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. I wonder whether it would not be possible to resume diplomacy with Russia and Iran and say, “Look, we are not going to attack but Assad has got to get rid of these chemical weapons. There has to be a clear and publicly demonstrated policy of removing those chemical weapons from the soil of Syria”. Surely even the Russians might just listen to that and say, “If nothing else changes but those weapons have gone, we will not have lost out but the people of Syria might benefit because they could not be used again”.
Finally, we need to think hard about the refugees. There is a desperate crisis, whether it is in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon or Iraq. We need to finish our discussion on this by saying that we must commit ourselves as the West to doing more to help those countries to deal with these many millions of refugees.
I finish as I started: at this stage, I am simply not persuaded of the case for military intervention. There would have to be a lot of interesting evidence before I changed my mind.
Human Rights: Burma
Lord Dubs Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on managing to get the Commonwealth into this discussion. Burma is currently the poorest country in south-east Asia. If it is to pass through this transition successfully, it also needs economic assistance. My noble friend Lord Green has also been in Burma. We are engaged in the question of how far British companies, as well as British technical advice, can assist in the transformation of the Burmese economy.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I think that I would prefer to stick to “monitoring”. We always have to remember the very complex colonial history. We therefore have to be very careful not to be too authoritative ourselves in dealing with the legacy of authoritarianism. We are however actively working to hold the Government to the promises which they are making, and we are working with all forces in Burmese society.
Extension of Franchise (House of Lords) Bill [HL]
Lord Dubs Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Dubs
My Lords, this is not a new issue. It has been going for several hundred years. But what surprises me—perhaps it should not—is how many members of the public are not aware that we cannot vote in general elections. They say, “I am surprised, I thought you could vote”. I know that the public are not generally excited by this issue and there are no demonstrations in Parliament Square supporting my Bill—or even opposing it. Nevertheless, it is a matter of some importance.
Many eminent people in history have argued that Members of this House should be able to vote in parliamentary elections. I will take just one: Benjamin Disraeli. In 1868, during the debate on the Electoral Petitions and Corrupt Practices at Elections Bill, the Hansard record—which was not verbatim at the time—said:
“The Members of that House were now taxed by the Votes of the House of Commons, and therefore he could not understand why a Peer of the Realm should not have a right of voting for Members of Parliament and taking part just as another individual in the general business of a free country like this, with the view of protecting his property and guarding his own interests”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/07/1868; col. 1383.]
Perhaps there is not much more to be said. I am indebted to the House of Lords Library for its note on this issue, which saved me hours of research.
Let me say at the outset that this measure has nothing at all to do with Lords reform as we normally speak of it. It is an entirely separate matter and it is quite wrong to link the two. It is a single issue and does not represent the beginning of a slippery slope. I can assure your Lordships of that and I made sure that in the Long Title of the Bill that is the case.
Over my years in this House, I have often heard three arguments against change. One is, “We have always done it this way so why alter it? It has been good enough for the past 150 years so why change it?”. Secondly, there is the argument that this is the thin end of the wedge and dreadful things will inevitably follow if we take such a dangerous step. The third argument is that we should not make haste on an important issue. Of course, I reject all these arguments and I think that most of your Lordships will do so as well.
During the debates in October 2011 on the Steel Bill, one Member of this House—he is present today but I shall spare his blushes—urged caution in moving too quickly on a very important matter. I realise that 1868 is only yesterday but even so, we can be too cautious when it comes to change.
After talking informally to Members of this House, the argument against being able to vote at parliamentary elections appears to be that we are in such a privileged position in being able to amend and influence legislation that we have no need to vote at general elections. I find this a very strange argument. We are the only second Chamber in the world whose Members are not entitled to vote in elections for the first Chamber. About 190 countries have a second Chamber, according to the records. Even in Washington there is no problem: members of the Senate have the right to vote and it has caused no problems whatever.
In any case, logic ought to play some part in this. We try to argue logically. We can vote in local elections, in European elections and indeed in referenda. Surely it is only sensible and logical that we should be allowed to vote in parliamentary elections.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Is my noble friend aware that we are also able to vote in elections to the Scottish Parliament if we reside in Scotland?
Lord Dubs
I have said we can vote in referenda. Indeed, of course, Members of the House of Commons are entitled to vote in parliamentary elections. Furthermore, the prohibition on voting in parliamentary elections does not even apply to all Members of this House—I think we all know who I am talking about. The Lords spiritual have the right to vote, though they sometimes do not avail themselves of it. It would not be compulsory to vote; all I am saying is that we should be on the same basis as the Lords spiritual. The present position lacks logic and is unsustainable.
I have heard a further argument against the change, which has been used in previous debates, that legislation concerning the House of Lords should not be introduced in small packages; in other words, do not change anything until you can change everything. Until recently that was the position of the Deputy Prime Minister but I think he has moved away from that. It is absurd to say that we can only change everything—a sort of big bang theory. In practice, and we know this, it is usually better to argue for changes on an incremental basis rather than adopt an all or nothing approach. In any case, the only change I am suggesting is a vote. I repeat that this is not linked to any other suggestions about reform of the House of Lords.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
Is my noble friend not missing the main argument, that it is easy to distinguish the Scottish Parliament, local elections and so on because we in the House of Lords have no say in those, whereas we do have a say in this House in national decisions?
Lord Dubs
Of course, that would also apply to the Commons but the point is surely this: it is not a matter of influencing legislation, which we do and are very privileged to be able to do, but of being able to have some small voice in deciding who will be the next Government of this country.
Baroness O'Cathain
Surely the point the noble Lord made earlier about this not being the beginning of the slippery slope is counteracted by his other statement that it should be incremental, bit by bit. So is it a slippery slope or is it incremental?
Lord Dubs
I understand what the noble Baroness is saying, but my point is not illogical. People have argued in this House that we should not make this change without changing a lot of other things. I have argued that that is not right; I have argued that we need to change only this one thing in order to achieve the aim that I am talking about. I should repeat that this proposal is not linked to any other reforms of the House. A single change should not be conditional on changing everything else.
I admit that I feel emotional about the issue; perhaps that is an unusual sentiment to express here. To me, the right to vote is an enormous privilege, but it is also a crucial aspect of democracy. People have died for the right to vote in our history—the Suffragettes. This is not on a level with the right to vote for women, but it is still a point of principle.
In most general elections, I have campaigned actively in a number of constituencies. It is quite frustrating that, having spent my days knocking on doors and trying to get Labour colleagues elected to the House of Commons, when it comes to vote, I cannot take part. Sometimes, if the general election coincides with local elections, I can get one ballot paper but not the other.
Lord Cormack
Was the noble Lord not aware of this when he accepted his peerage?
Lord Dubs
Yes, my Lords, I was aware of it, but one has to arrive at a balance. Should I have said, “No, I am not prepared to accept the privilege of being here because I cannot vote in general elections”? My feeling is that it is better to get here and try to achieve the changes by using the arguments. I think that that applies to many of us. Even the noble Lord, I am sure, is not ecstatically happy about every aspect of our procedures here, but that did not stop him coming here and he is a very welcome Member of this House, even though I occasionally disagree with him.
Lord Davies of Oldham
How solicitous does my noble friend think returning officers and clerks in polling stations are about enforcing this position? Every time I have gone to vote in a local election that has coincided with a parliamentary vote, the returning officer has seemed oblivious to the fact and I have had to tell them, “Please don’t give me a vote for the parliamentary election because it is illegal”.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
The other side of the story is that when I go to vote in local elections that are on the same day as a parliamentary election, I am frequently told that I cannot vote in either.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I did not realise that a debate about a simple matter was going to be quite so wide, but I welcome the contributions that have been made. No, it is not easy for returning officers. Sometimes, when we fill in our form to register to vote, it is not easy to indicate that one is a Member of this House and therefore one is limited. One can indicate that one is from a Commonwealth country, from Ireland or whatever it is, and one’s age, but one cannot indicate that one is a Member of this House. When I have been to vote either they have known somehow, or I have not tried to cheat the system, so I felt that the best way is to change the law rather than to put myself on the wrong side of it.
The issue is very simple, and I do not want to take up more time. Of course, it is an enormous privilege to serve in this House and to influence legislation—that is why I was very honoured when I became a Member of this House—but I still find it sad not to be able to influence, just in a small way, who will be our Government after the election. I believe that the change that I am arguing for is inevitable in the longer term, but I would like to see it happen now. I put this Bill forward not as an idle gesture or a bit of political rhetoric; I put it forward because I seriously believe that it has a chance of becoming law. Of course, there will be difficulties in the Commons about getting this Bill through, but I shall do some lobbying there if this House passes it. I believe that it has a chance of becoming law and I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, will come back but, unfortunately, the Government resist this small, partial proposal for reform of the Lords.
Lord Dubs
Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps I may ask him one question. Given what he has said—and I will deal with that in more detail when I wind up—will he give one small undertaking? Assuming that the Bill gets through this House and goes to the Commons, will he undertake that the Government will not use their strength to block the Bill but will give it free passage and let the Commons decide on its merits?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I cannot give that commitment immediately. We would clearly have to consider that. Private Members’ Bills make their way, sometimes with the Government’s blessing and occasionally without, first through one House and then the other. Let us see how we go on this.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, it has been an interesting Friday morning. The debate has been good tempered, but has extended well beyond the very narrow purpose of the Bill. I suppose, if one says anything about the future of the House, one can get into a debate about everything to do with the future of this House, which is something I have tried to resist.
I will comment briefly on one or two of the contributions. My noble friend Lord Wills argued that this change should be part of a wider package of changes, and that I should add it to another Bill. That is, of course, exactly what I did when the Steel Bill went through. I did precisely what he said before I had the benefit of his advice and it was rejected on the grounds that it would make the passage of the Steel Bill too difficult and my proposal should stand on its own. I am getting conflicting advice on that. I did what he suggested some time ago and it did not work, which is why I am doing it this way.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, rightly put forward an argument of which I was not aware, about members of the Supreme Court. It is yet another instance of where we are in an entirely illogical position. In arguing for a little bit of logic, I do not think that I am being out of order. My noble friend Lord Parekh gave us a good historical sweep and was the first—apart from Disraeli—to talk about money Bills.
I have very high regard indeed for the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—I have known him for a long time—but I am not sure that the slippery-slope argument is a good one. It has been used by opponents of change since the beginning of time.
Lord Cormack
I just point out that if that argument has been used, it was not used by me.
Lord Dubs
In that case, I misunderstood; I thought that the noble Lord was using the argument himself. However, I very much agree about the power of the Executive and that it is up to both Houses to contain the power of the Executive—so I am with him on that, even if we have a difference of opinion about the Bill itself.
I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Hayter was supportive of the Bill. I pay tribute to her long political experience, with the Fabian Society and elsewhere. She said something about the 5 July anniversary of the start of the National Health Service. If I may trespass on the time of the House, I was in hospital on that day, in Stockport Royal Infirmary. I was quite ill, and I was the only child in the ward. In those days, when the consultant came around, one had either to stand or lie to attention because that was the discipline. A consultant and his big team came along and looked at me, and I asked, “Are we having a party?”. He looked at me as if to say, “How dare you speak before I have spoken to you?”, and then said, “Why?”. I said, “Well the hospital is ours today. We should have a party”. He gave me a dirty look and walked on. I felt that I had made my contribution to the health service at that time. I apologise for digressing a little but, but other noble Lords have digressed as well.
Finally, I did not think that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, would disappoint me quite as much as he did. Without wishing to be impertinent in any way, I feel that his heart was not in it. I think that, in his heart, he knows that I am right and he is wrong. It showed. I know what it is like being a government Minister. One has to defend things that are sometimes difficult; I have done it myself, although never quite to the extent that the noble Lord has done it today.
On the cherry-picking argument, and this is nothing to do with the Bill, I understand that if we were to move to an elected second Chamber, of course we would have to deal with issues like the primacy of the Commons, methods of election and so on. It would be a whole package of measures, as was evidenced in the Government’s Bill that did not get anywhere. However, if we had the vote in parliamentary elections, nothing would change in this House except that we would have the right to vote. It would not affect the way in which we operate, it would not affect our legitimacy and it would not affect our debates or anything else. It stands entirely on its own, so as to the argument that I was cherry-picking: if there are only cherries on the tree, that is all that one can do. That is not a valid argument.
This issue stands entirely on its own. It need not, should not and does not have any connection with any other aspects of Lords reform. We might throw it into a wider Bill on Lords reform, as I have tried to do, but I would argue that we should get on with it. Let us make this change. I believe that there is overwhelming support in this House and in the Commons for this. Of course, the difficulty is that it only takes one government whip to say, “Object” on a Friday, and that has killed the Bill. That is the problem in the Commons. If the Commons was allowed by the Government to have a go at this, I believe it would overwhelmingly support it, as I believe that this House would overwhelmingly support it. However, the difficulty with Private Members’ Bills is that they can be too easily blocked in an undemocratic manner.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord is not responding to my suggestion that if he perhaps linked the introduction of voting to a limitation of tenure and a retirement age, this might be more acceptable. He is not rising to that particular float.
Lord Dubs
Give me time. I have got it down here to comment on. If I had put forward a Bill saying the statutory retirement age from this House is 75 or 80, of course many Members of this House would have got incredibly excited about it, which would have diverted attention away from my purpose. It would have made it, as a Private Member’s Bill, totally unmanageable. The Minister knows that; I know that; we all know that. It just would not have got through. The point about a Private Member’s Bill is to keep it very simple if it is to have any chance of getting through. Once it gets complicated it has no chance. That is why I have brought it forward in this way.
Finally, the Minister disparaged the idea of logic. The position at the moment is inherently illogical. It is illogical by any standard, and I urge the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
Civil Service: Permanent Secretaries
Lord Dubs Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I think it is the turn of the Conservative Party.
Lobbyists: Register
Lord Dubs Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, that is the narrowest definition and where the Government started. The replies to the consultation have taken us much wider than many of us originally intended to be taken. Certainly, the concern—and I am very struck by this in the documents that I am looking at—and perception that there is undue lobbying is very much about large sums of money being paid to professional companies, very often by foreign Governments.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, on the question of all-party groups, does the Minister agree that if professional lobbyists insinuate themselves into all-party groups, that is a breach of the standards that we ought to expect, both as regards this House and the wider public? Although we have had several goes at cleaning this up, there is a lot still to be done.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I agree that we have to be very careful about all-party groups. It is a matter for both Houses as much as anything else. However, one might not want to say that Universities UK for example, which happens to assist the All-Party Group for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, is a lobbying company and should not be allowed to support that group. There is a gradation here; one has to think about what is proper and what is not.
House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]
Lord Dubs Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, this is a matter of some importance and principle. For centuries it has been the case that Members of your Lordships’ House may not vote in parliamentary elections to the other place, and this provision in the Bill reverses that ancient principle. That is a mistake. We should retain the arrangement whereby we in this House do not vote for Members of the House of Commons, and I hope that your Lordships agree. I beg to move.
Lord Dubs
I am rather disappointed with this amendment, as we considered the provision in some detail in Committee and agreed to it. When the House makes a decision in Committee, I am not sure how appropriate it is simply to reverse it on Report. I am not even sure whether it is in accord with the way we normally do things to reverse a Committee decision just because you do not like it.
On the point of principle, I hate having to go over an argument which we used in Committee, but, as the noble Lord has used a counterargument, let me put it this way. It seems wrong in principle that we are virtually the only people in the country who are not allowed to vote in general elections to influence what is to be the future Government of our country. That is a clear statement, and to reverse it would be a retrograde step. I cannot think of any argument in principle—beyond the fact that we have always done it this way—that justifies our not being able to vote in parliamentary elections. We can vote in European elections, local elections and referenda. After quite a long discussion, the House decided quite properly that that was a good move forward. I very much hope that the House will not accept the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne.
Viscount Astor
The House debated the matter. It did not make any binding decision, therefore it is perfectly open to my noble friend Lord Trefgarne to move his amendment. All I have to say is that I took my seat in your Lordships' House shortly after my 21st birthday, so I have never voted in a general election, but it seems to me perfectly fair that in order to sit here, I should be disbarred from doing so. I am perfectly happy with the arrangements as they are.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Steel, will consider this point. Clearly it is an important principle whether Members of your Lordships' House should vote in general elections. In the context of wider reform, noble Lords need to consider very carefully what are the implications of your Lordships' House saying that Members of this House should have a vote for the other place. Members of the other place might take that as being an invitation, when the substantive Bill comes, to think about parity. That has wider implications.
Secondly, we surely agreed just now that if the Bill is to proceed in the other place, it has to be as simple as possible and to provoke as little debate there as possible. I worry that this issue might provoke a great deal of debate. The noble Lord might consider that between now and Third Reading.
Lord Dubs
I am rather disappointed by what my noble friend is saying. How many Members of the other place has he discussed this with? Every Member of the Commons I have talked to says that it is an anomaly that we do not have the right to vote; they do not object to that change at all.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, we speak of nothing else in Telford or in Kings Heath but this very important matter.
I caution the House that there are wider implications. It is all very well some MPs saying, “I don’t see why you don't have a vote”, but we need to see it in the context of wider reform. Secondly, if the House wants to get the Bill through the other place it needs to think whether this is likely to provoke wider debate in the other place. That is my fear. I entirely understand why my noble friend wants to pursue this, and of course he is open to do so, but we need to think about how we can get the Bill through in this Session.
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
Lord Dubs Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Dubs
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, on initiating this debate. I know that it is normal to congratulate those who have initiated a debate, but in this case he really has broken important new ground. I very much agree with the thrust of what he said, although I find it hard to distinguish between the work of the OSCE as a whole and the work of the Parliamentary Assembly. I prefer to see them as part and parcel of a wider issue.
I have been on the Parliamentary Assembly since the previous election and I have attended two meetings in Vienna and Belgrade. In the next month or two, there will be another meeting in Vienna. In my discussions with colleagues, there is little awareness of the work of the OSCE. It might almost not exist. The first time I told people that I was off to the OSCE in Vienna or wherever it was, most people asked, “What is that?”. Even Members of this House and the Commons asked that and I had to explain. There is something the matter with an organisation, which involves a lot of good work, effort and money on the part of its member Governments, if its work is so little known and regarded.
At the first meeting in Vienna about a year ago, I was quite astonished. The OSCE local office in Belarus had just been closed by the regime and we were looking forward to hearing the OSCE official who had been in charge of Belarus. He was due to give us a report on the situation prior to his expulsion, but he did not turn up and we were unable to discover why. In terms of his own ability, there was certainly no reason for him not to come to the meeting, but something in the OSCE bureaucracy stopped him.
I very much appreciate a lot of the good work that has been done by the OSCE, to which the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, referred in some detail and which I shall not repeat. The local offices do good work. Clearly, election monitoring is very important and involves a lot of the organisation’s time and energy. The OSCE produces regular bulletins and reports on the situation in many countries about which there are concerns that are invaluable for keeping members of the Parliamentary Assembly informed of what is going on.
I was also appointed to a group of four parliamentarians who looked at the situation in Moldova. We had one visit to Moldova and to the Transdniestrian part of Moldova, which was a useful approach. We are going to continue with that and do some follow-up work. Having said that, I am still aware that one has to explain very hard to people what we are doing and why we are doing it.
In terms of the effectiveness of the organisation, the OSCE operates from three centres—Vienna, Copenhagen and Warsaw—which seems a little excessive for an organisation of that size. I am not totally clear why it has to be done in that way. I have two main criticisms. First, there is a lack of connection between what the OSCE does and the Parliamentary Assembly. Very little of the work of the OSCE and its many facets come before the Parliamentary Assembly, which is the one body that can properly scrutinise what is going on. For the life of me, I cannot understand why we have got into this position. It seems to me that the Parliamentary Assembly really has one main function: to scrutinise, monitor and oversee the work of the OSCE, the local offices, election monitoring and so on. It is very hard to get feedback on that at the Assembly meetings. This disconnect does not seem proper. I very much hope that the Irish presidency will be able to do something about that.
Surely we need proper accountability by the OSCE to the Parliamentary Assembly. I cannot understand how it can work unless there is such accountability. After all, we and the Commons are here in order for the Government to be accountable to Parliament. I cannot see why we have a Parliamentary Assembly that does not have a similar form of accountability. After all, it happens in the European Parliament. Even the Council of Europe seems to have more accountability than there appears to be in the OSCE.
My key point is that every organisation needs to have within itself the ability to assess on an ongoing basis its efficiency and effectiveness. We do not do it as well as we might at Westminster but we certainly do it. I should like to feel that the OSCE had some form of mechanism that did the same thing, otherwise we have no sense that the money is being spent in the best possible way or that the work is being done as efficiently as possible. We should look at the outcomes to see whether our priorities are right. It is a general proposition that organisations should assess their efficiency and effectiveness, but it certainly applies to the OSCE.
I should say that I have enjoyed my attendance at the Parliamentary Assembly and learning about the OSCE. Despite my criticisms, it does a lot of good work. I should like to know more about it. It is an odd comment to make that I have learnt more about the OSCE from the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, than I did in many days of attending Parliamentary Assembly meetings, looking at my e-mails and so on. There is something the matter. Noble Lords might say that that is my fault, but I do not believe that it is. I believe that something is amiss when we have to have a debate such as this to learn about an organisation on whose Parliamentary Assembly I serve.
As I said, I believe that the OSCE does good work. It has the supreme advantage that it includes the United States and Canada, which the Council of Europe does not. We get a broad spectrum of countries that can bring their experience and strength to bear on the many difficult issues in some countries, such as breaches of human rights, problems with elections and so on. I congratulate the OSCE on its good work but I would like to see better scrutiny and more accountability.
Armed Forces: Housing
Lord Dubs Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the majority of service family accommodation is already of a very good standard. In the United Kingdom, some 96 per cent of homes—that is 46,000 out of 49,000 homes—are at the top two standards out of four standards for condition, with more due to be upgraded to the top standards in this financial year. The MoD continues to target funding on the most pressing accommodation issues.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I understand what the Minister says, but does he not agree that to bring all housing for families of servicemen up to the right standard is going to take about 20 years and that this is not good enough when families will come back from Germany and when our troops in Afghanistan are entitled to believe that all their families are adequately housed?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I do not agree with that. Under the previous Government’s programme, the target for 2020 was for all service families’ accommodation to be at standard 1 level. I think they were confident that they would hit that target. As the noble Lord knows, we have now had to put into the advance budget of the MoD a pause in major upgrades for three years from 2013, which may make the 2020 target hard to hit. Minor upgrades, however, will continue. The vast majority of service accommodation will continue to be of a very high level.