Restoration and Renewal Programme Board

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder whether I could just ask my noble friend a question. He very kindly answered a Written Question from me quite recently, which indicated that the cost spent on restoration and renewal in the last two years is over £200 million, and the cost in respect of this coming year is anticipated at a further £85 million. That is £300 million being spent largely on design and corporate costs and other matters. It does seem to be an excessive amount, so can he assure me that this new body will have the necessary expertise and resources to ensure that money is spent wisely and carefully?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, further to the matters raised by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, I often get asked by people outside this House, “When did you agree to that?” It was agreed by the House of Lords and was passed, I am told—but I cannot remember it because we do it on the nod. We do too much on the nod in this House, and this is one example. Again and again we have been looking at this.

Going back over 10 years, we had the pre-feasibility study; we discussed it and set up a whole structure. That structure has been continuing and—as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said—we have spent hundreds of millions of pounds already, and nothing has happened. If we had agreed what some of us were suggesting—that we should build a new, purpose-built building away from here that would satisfy all our needs, have offices for every Member and for staff, have facilities for the disabled, who have great difficulty getting around this awful building, and provide proper services, that could have been built now, for a few hundred million pounds—well, a few billion. Then we could have sold off all the buildings around here—Portcullis House and all the others.

We could have moved out of this building, so that it could be restored slowly, securely and made into a good museum—a museum of democracy. Big Ben and the Elizabeth Tower would still be there. As was suggested at the time, we could recreate great events in history in the other Chamber and here. We could have used this whole building in another way. But we did not do that and we are now going into yet another phase which will cost more hundreds of millions of pounds. We are already going to spend £7 million just on the front door.

Procedure and Privileges Committee

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

No.

My noble friend said that he has carried out a consultation. Some 49 people responded to that consultation out of 767 Peers. One of those 49 was me, writing on behalf of the unanimous view of 12 members of the executive of the Association of Conservative Peers. It is somewhat misleading to say that there has been a consultation. It is true that various groups discussed this. We discussed this in the Association of Conservative Peers and there was pretty strong and robust support for things staying as they are, partly because it would be pretty well impossible for us to hold our meetings at the time we held them in the past—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

I am grateful. Earlier, the noble Lord mentioned the Motion that was previously defeated. It was defeated because it included Monday, and those of us who live outwith London cannot get here for 1 pm on a Monday. This Motion does not include Monday, which is why it should be supported.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord but, if we defeat this Motion now, he will no doubt say, “Actually, the Motion was defeated because it didn’t deal with Thursday and the need to get back early”—that is not an argument. The fact is that the House decided something less than a year ago and it is being brought back for no apparent reason.

My point was that some people think that they will be able to finish at 8.30 pm because there will be an 8.30 pm rule. We already have a 10 pm rule, but I have recently sat here until 2 am; what makes people think that an 8.30 pm rule would make any difference? How long will it be before those who wish to vote for this measure because they would like an 8.30 pm rule succumb to the Whips—whoever is in power—and the idea that we should have a guillotine, like at the other end? That is why we get vast amounts of legislation that has not been properly discussed, debated and considered. The notion that we should try to organise our affairs on the basis of a fixed finishing time is deeply damaging to the very basis of this House.

With the greatest respect, I suggest that it is very naive to think that we will be finishing at 8.30 pm when, in recent months, individual Members have tabled more than 100 amendments to one Bill. In this House, we have the right to speak to all these amendments, so how long will it be before the desire to finish at a particular hour results in the distortion of our procedures?

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, might accuse me of being nostalgic, but I remember the other place in the days when we had a 10 pm vote. You knew that, if you were getting the runaround from the Minister’s private office, you could say, “I’ll see your Minister at 10 o’clock and I’ll tell him how unhelpful you’ve been”. I remember that we all had to be in the Lobbies together because we voted at 10 pm, which meant that you were able to talk to colleagues about constituency and other issues.

I also remember the way in which the dining rooms worked: Labour sat at one end and Tories sat at the other, and you had to sit wherever there was a vacancy. You would get hilarious occurrences where Ted Heath had to sit next to Mrs Thatcher, or something else of that kind. That camaraderie and involvement are absolutely essential to the political process.

If we finish at 8.30 pm—assuming the optimists are right—it is too late to go anywhere else for dinner, and noble Lords will either be stuck here or will go home. I suspect that what will happen here will be exactly the same as has happened in the House of Commons: the catering services will lose a huge amount of revenue, because people will disappear, and then close. The effect in the House of Commons has been absolutely disastrous. What will happen then to the staff in the catering departments?

By the way, on the issue of staff, it is extraordinary that not a single member of staff was consulted on these proposals—they are affected by this, including our doorkeepers and the catering staff. Not only that, if noble Lords agree to this Motion today, we will find that in less than three weeks of sitting time it will all have changed. The proposal is that all of this will change as of September, so everyone’s hours will change. I am very surprised, having listened to questions about the importance of consulting staff and everything else, that this Motion should be in front of us.

If this all sounds a bit negative, I have a proposal. There clearly is a problem in our House with the conduct of business, but it should not be addressed by piecemeal changes of this kind. We all know that this is ridiculous; our speaking time can be reduced to a couple of minutes on really important issues of national importance—of which this is not one. Our ability to deal with legislation sensibly involves sending amendments down to the other place that it might conceivably accept, as opposed to amendments which are part of a political platform or campaign, and our ability to ensure the proper consideration of committee reports. On that, committees often sit beyond 1 pm; what are Members meant to do if they are to be here in the Chamber for Questions? All these things need to be considered. I respectfully suggest to the Procedure and Privileges Committee that it might try to convene cross-party agreement as to how we could change our operations in a way which will enable this House to do its best and to draw on the talents within it.

This is the final point I will make. We often tell people that this is a House of great expertise—and so it is—and a polite House which considers things carefully. A move in this direction is a move to a full-time House and away from noble Lords having interests outside the House. I know some people think that it is bad that some noble Lords have interests outside the House, but how are you going to have up-to-date expertise if noble Lords do not have these outside interests? If this is the reason that we tell people that we have an unelected House of expertise, what on earth are we doing moving a Motion such as this, which takes us in the direction of being a nine-to-five, full-time House, paid, and not populated by people who give it their best out of duty to their country and to our parliamentary system of government?

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 10th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the erudition of my noble friend, in every sense of the word, Lord Lipsey, whose amendment I support. He gave us a very good analysis of the Minister’s obsession with equal votes, pointing out that in safe seats, it does not have much of an influence. He also referred to turnouts. There is also the scandal of non-registration of many people who ought to be on the voters’ roll. There is a whole range of issues there and no one knows them better than my noble friend Lord Lipsey.

I did not want to intervene after the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, but I was a wee bit disappointed by her response to the last debate. I am afraid that she did not seem to understand some of the issues. I hope she will do some homework before we get to Report, because this is a very important matter. As I gather from the conversations that took place while we were adjourned, everyone agrees that this is an important issue.

We will come again to the general issue of flexibility at the next session of the Committee when we deal with my amendment in relation to local ties versus arithmetic, and the constant obsession with getting each constituency arithmetically as near as possible to the others rather than taking account of local ties. This matter and others that we have already debated are all part of the issue of getting some flexibility.

The Government seem to be obsessed with 5%. The Minister needs to explain why 5%. Why have they come across this? Why is 5% particularly the figure that they have arrived upon? I look forward to hearing the explanation. My noble friend Lord Lennie in his introduction argued the case convincingly, using some very powerful arguments, for much greater flexibility.

I look forward with even greater fascination to an explanation by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, of why 2.5%. I cannot think of any rational explanation whatever, except that, for once, the noble Lord may want to make the Government appear reasonable by making 5% a good balance between 2.5% and 10% It would be an interesting occasion to see the noble Lord take this opportunity to make the Government seem reasonable. Usually, he is—effectively and correctly—undermining, challenging and questioning of what this awful Government are up to.

I support my noble friend Lord Lipsey’s amendment. I want more flexibility so that council boundaries can be taken account of in Scotland, as well as Scottish Parliament boundaries, natural boundaries such as rivers, estuaries, lakes and mountains, and community ties as well.

When I was thinking about arbitrary lines, I remembered how the British imperialists in Africa drew straight lines and said, “This side is Uganda and this side is Kenya”, or whatever it was, not taking any account of community or historical connections whatever. It was just appropriate so that the British masters went in and ran their parts of the Empire, and they were arbitrarily drawn. Maybe this is not quite as arbitrary as that situation, but it reminded me of it. We must take account of local interests and community, of where people shop and where their schools are; all these kinds of ties need to be taken account of.

That is why I think 10% is the right figure. It does not mean that there has to be a variation of 10%; it just gives the Boundary Commissions flexibility. The commissions need to look at the constituencies carefully, and if they do not think there needs to be a big variation then they will take account of that.

I strongly support my noble friend Lord Lipsey’s amendment, and I am looking forward with real excitement to the following speaker, my “noble friend”—I use inverted commas because he is not my noble friend politically but he is in other senses of the word—Lord Forsyth explaining how 2.5% can be in any way be sensible.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con) [V]]

I am very happy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. I am not sure he is right about me not being supportive of the Government. I am very supportive of the Government, but it is our role in this House to hold the Government to account.

I did not speak at Second Reading. I thought it was a perfectly sensible Bill implementing a pledge from a manifesto on which the Government obtained a substantial majority, and that pledge was to update and create equal parliamentary boundaries. The Bill has been supported by the House of Commons, whose main concern this is, so I am very surprised that so many colleagues in the House of Lords want to second-guess the electorate and indeed the Commons by seeking to amend it in the way that I have listened to today and that I have read in previous debates. I am delighted that the Government have abandoned the coalition idea of reducing the number of constituencies from 650 to 600, and I very much support the Bill.

I have to say that I was hugely amused by the speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Lennie and Lord McNicol, on an earlier set of amendments, passionately arguing against what is intended here, which is to create equal constituencies. This is a measure that people have argued for since the last century; indeed, it was a central plank of the Chartist movement that they wanted 300 electoral districts consisting of equal numbers of inhabitants. I take the point that we have not yet got to the stage where the electoral roll includes all the inhabitants, but we can and should work towards that as part of a good democracy. However, for people whose heritage in the Labour Party is the Chartist movement to argue that we need something different from that when the Bill seeks to achieve it, and when the voters in the general election endorsed it so strongly, was, shall we say, interesting. The Bill seeks to introduce those equivalent constituencies.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said that he thought 10% was the right figure. I have to tell him that plus or minus 5% is a 10% variation, and plus or minus 10% is a 20% variation. These numbers that appear small are actually very large if they are plus or minus. My amendment would simply recognise that when people talk about 5% they are really talking about plus or minus 5%, and therefore it suggests that the figure should be plus or minus 2.5% to allow for a 5% variation between constituencies. The noble Lord, Lord Lennie, just dismissed that out of hand and said it would not happen. I have news for the noble Lord, Lord Lennie: I do not think any of these amendments are going to happen because this measure is what the Government won an election on proposing.

What has been central to the debate this afternoon, at Second Reading and elsewhere is that you have to choose. Either you have identifiable communities or you have equivalent votes. This Bill is about equality of seats.