Role of the Lord Speaker
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Grocott for giving me the opportunity to articulate properly what I have been saying from a sedentary position for quite a long time now. Every time that I say it, colleagues outside say, “But we do not want to become a carbon copy of the House of Commons”, but, with respect, it is not just the Commons—or, indeed, every other legislature—which has a chair who conducts proceedings, calls speakers and keeps the meeting in order. It is not just legislatures; it is Rotary clubs, union branches, party branches and Women’s Institutes. I do not know if I have covered anything in which the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, is involved, but I am sure that he has been in meeting after meeting where there is someone in the chair who carries out the function of moderator, presiding officer, chair, speaker or whatever it is.
Like my noble friend Lord Grocott, with whom I agree totally, I am not proposing a revolutionary change. I should actually like the Lord Speaker to call every questioner one after the other, moving from side to side, from party to party. Probably that would not be to my personal advantage, since I have a loud voice and rather a powerful manner. However, it would be fairer.
If we cannot do that, we should, at the very least, change who resolves disputes about who the next person to be called should be, at Question Time and at Statements. We saw such disputes today at Question Time and at the Statement. As the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip, whom I have known a long time, both know, I really have the highest respect for them. My objection is not to them individually; it is that these decisions should be made not by a party-political appointee but by someone who is elected by the House.
I say to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, again with no disrespect to the Leader of the House, that the Leader of the House is not chosen by the House. She is chosen by the Prime Minister. So we could not get rid of her. We do not want to, but we could not. That is why we want that change.
No one has yet mentioned the Clerk. Again, with no disrespect to the Clerk of the House—we have the putative Clerk of the Parliaments here today and with no disrespect to him and to the current holder of that post—I do not know why the Clerk calls the four questioners on the Order Paper. Why does the Speaker not get up and name the person whose Question it is and call them to ask that Question? How did the Clerk get that role? Perhaps the Clerk will send me an email and let me know why it arose, but it does seem to be anomalous. I do not understand it. Nowhere else does the Clerk get up and call questioners. We should look at this.
There is also a role—I perhaps go a bit further than my noble friend on this—in relation to order in the House. When the Deputy Speaker, the noble Countess, Lady Mar, for whom I have a lot of respect, called to order a Liberal Democrat speaking from the aisle, which apparently is out of order, it was very strange that she was able to do so from the Back Benches rather than from the Speaker’s Chair. It seemed very strange. It might be more appropriate for the Lord Speaker to call for order at that time.
Non-verbal messages may be used to indicate that a speaker’s time is up. Pointing at one’s watch is one such non-verbal message. However, it would be more dignified and appropriate for the Lord Speaker to indicate that someone’s time is up and bring the House to order. By the way, I am watching the clock to note when five minutes have passed.
I would go a little further than my noble friend Lord Grocott in that I would like to see points of order introduced in this Chamber, although I do not think that will happen in the immediate future. However, there are ways of raising points of order. My noble friend the Leader of the Opposition can do it from time to time. I have found mischievous little ways of raising a point of order when we discuss the business of the House. However, it should not be just the Leader of the House and people like me, with mischievous intent, who can raise these things. There should be a proper procedure for doing that. As my noble friend Lord Grocott said, there is a danger that this could be abused, and I think it is something for the longer grass and longer consideration.
However, I hope that the noble Baroness the Leader of the House will look at the other points that have been made. If she could set up just a small group—a Leader’s group—to look at those points, it would show that she understands there is concern about these issues, and that action will be taken on them.
Lord Haskel (Lab)
My Lords, I think that I am going to be the odd man out, because in reviewing the role of the Speaker, I think that we should think in much broader terms than just Question Time in the House. Yes, the Speaker has a crucial role inside the Chamber, but there is a much more crucial role outside the Chamber. It has always seemed to me that this is of greater importance because we are an unelected House: we must reach out to the public so that the public understand the work and the role of this House.
When you google the Lord Speaker, yes, he is there on the parliamentary website and Wikipedia, with plenty of information about him and what he does, so that the public can learn about him, his job and responsibilities, but it needs a lot more. Already 100 of us are involved in the Lord Speaker’s “Peers in Schools” outreach scheme. We must add to this by reaching out to other places—universities and colleges, businesses, trade organisations and charities. I have rarely met a Peer who is not involved in a charity and I have always felt that an outreach scheme could both help the charities and say something about us. The Lord Speaker could maintain a public schedule of this involvement: it would be easily done on a website.
Of course, we receive Speakers and other parliamentarians from overseas, and once a year we reach out with our Chamber event for non-Members, but I think that the Lord Speaker has a particular role in outreach. It is a role that I would like to see further emphasised, to clearly enunciate our mission statement and sense of purpose. We are here to challenge the Government, to challenge the elected Chamber, to challenge proposed legislation. This is what defines us and by reaching out in this way, I think that the public will understand far better what we do and why we do it than they did through the recent BBC programmes.
Turning to the role of the Speaker inside Parliament, I agree with my noble friend Lord Grocott that his task must be to take a lead in maintaining the House’s reputation; yes, at Question Time, but also in other areas. Where I think the Speaker could intervene at Question Time might be by giving a signal when a Question or an Answer has been going on for too long, often much to the irritation of the House.
There is a case for the Speaker leading the way on modernising the House. Take dress, for example. Clerks in the other place now no longer wear wigs. Should we follow suit? Are we going to dress down? I think that this is the kind of thing on which the Lord Speaker could take the lead.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, compared with when we started nearly seven hours ago, we are a bit thin on the ground. However, we make up for it in quality, tenacity and, of course, fortitude. Let me put my cards on the table: I remain totally opposed to Brexit. I am not going to throw in the towel: if we go ahead, it will be a total disaster economically, socially and in every other way, and it was sold on a false prospectus. I will oppose it by any legal and constitutional means. As my noble friend Lady Crawley said, we have a long, long way to go. I say to the Ministers on the Front Bench in particular—and I am not threatening them in any way because all six of them are good friends of mine; I hope that does not do them any harm—you ain’t seen nothing yet.
We are just at the beginning of the beginning. We still have the Committee stage, the Report stage and the Third Reading, and then, of course, we have the great repeal Bill and, I am told, at least 7,500 statutory instruments to be dealt with as a result of that. That is going to keep this House busy with a lot of scrutiny, and I am sure that we will do it properly. Of course, there are a lot of hurdles ahead: we have heard about Northern Ireland; no one has mentioned in detail the problems relating to Scotland. I know there are one or two members of the Front Bench who know some of the problems there. We have heard about the need for approval by 27 national parliaments and the European Parliament. It is a long, long way to go, and there is many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.
Today, however, I just want to concentrate on one thing very seriously, and that is our form of parliamentary democracy. I was in the other place for 26 years, so I am very sensitive about our parliamentary democracy. Winston Churchill said:
“We believe Members of Parliament are representatives, and not delegates”.
He also said:
“We believe that Governments are the guides as well as the servants of the nation”.
Therefore, Governments should give the lead. I liked a quotation from Edmund Burke, to the effect that,
“a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and … most seriously to consider”,
the opinion of his constituents. But,
“authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,—these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land”.
That was Edmund Burke. That is our parliamentary democracy. We do not have a direct democracy here in the United Kingdom; we have a parliamentary democracy. That is why I was disappointed in the debate in the House of Commons, where they ought to know better.
I was going to mention that someone said, “This Brexit is going to be a total disaster, but I’m going to vote for it”. Incidentally, I have the greatest of respect for them. The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, outed that person earlier on, so I cannot be blamed for doing that. However, when these Members of the House of Commons took the decision, did they think about their judgment and their conscience, or did they just feel that they had to do what they believed the referendum told them to do?
Let us look at that referendum. First, as others have said, it was advisory. All pre-legislative referenda are advisory. The only one that has not been advisory is the AV referendum, post-legislation, where we knew exactly what we were voting for, and thankfully, we voted it down. In addition, 16 and 17 year-olds were not allowed to vote, as they were in Scotland. Some of them are 18 now, and all of them will be 18 if we finish these negotiations. Some of the old cod—oh! I am chair of Age Scotland, so I had better be careful. I should say some of the elderly people who voted against remaining are, sadly, no longer with us. That is one of the ironies. EU citizens, who work in this country in the health service and the financial sector, were not allowed to vote. They are taxpayers. Whatever happened to “no taxation without representation”? They are being taxed, but they were not able to say anything.
On the threshold, which my noble friend Lord Rooker, and the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Norton, raised on earlier occasions when we discussed this, it was 40% in the first Scottish referendum, yet this referendum was supported by only 37% of the electorate. It would not have got through if we had had the Cunningham amendment. Even—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, will know this very well—for Muirfield golf club to admit women, it has to have a two-thirds majority. We are making a major change to the United Kingdom constitution, not just a question of admitting women.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I am sorry—that was of course implicit in what I said. Finally, there were the lies on which Brexit was sold, not just different interpretations of the facts which we get at general elections, but manifest lies. I will not go into that in more detail.
I will finish with a little story, which goes back to my original point about parliamentary sovereignty. Many years ago, when I was an MP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, we were having a vote in the House of Commons to change the law on abortion. I am not a religious person and I did not feel strongly about it one way or another. I therefore went to my constituency party—we had a large turnout, with more than 100 people—and I told them that I did not feel strongly about it and asked them for their advice. We had a fantastic debate, which lasted over two hours, and it was about 50:50. However, they resolved unanimously to leave it to me, their elected representative, to listen to the arguments and decide how to vote. That is parliamentary democracy for you. If we do not stick to that, not just the House of Lords will be redundant but the House of Commons as well.
House of Lords: Size
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, with no disrespect to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who I count as a friend, I fear that this debate is largely a diversion from the real issue of the urgent need for radical reform. I personally favour replacing us with an indirectly elected senate of the nations and regions, which would have the advantage of some democratic legitimacy but without challenging the primacy of the directly elected Chamber. I would like this suggestion to be looked at by a UK constitutional commission. However, realistically, I recognise that that will not happen very soon. Therefore, I accept the need for more immediate reform to modernise the Lords and to make it more acceptable to the public. However, a change in size is only one of the many changes needed. Our archaic procedures need reforming, as does the wearing of robes, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, alluded, the swearing in procedure and the endless ceremonial. All these things make us look ridiculous and need revising.
The debate about size has concentrated on removing some existing Peers. We must agree that the retirement provision has already sensibly achieved a modest reduction. However, as my noble and learned friend Lord Morris and many others have said, before we go any further we need to stem the tide of new appointments or our efforts will have been in vain. The method of appointment needs radical reform and its procedure ought to have greater transparency. The Prime Minister tells us that we are not allowed to know about the procedure, as have previous Prime Ministers. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, there need to be clear criteria for appointment. I also argue that power should be transferred to a statutory appointments committee. I do not think that anyone has yet had the courage to make my next suggestion—namely, an end to the automatic appointment of heads of the Civil Service, the Armed Forces and other bodies. That point is conveniently overlooked by the establishment but I do not think that such appointments can be justified given what we do.
Once all that is done, current Members might be more sympathetic to, and agree to, a reduction in our number. In fact, we might make it a prerequisite that these changes should be introduced in advance of any recommendations that we make. However, any changes need to be introduced on the basis of logic, not just simple arithmetic. This second Chamber is here for a purpose. We are part of the legislature. We go through every Bill. As others have said, we all know this but people outside do not. We go through Bills line by line, often in more detail than the House of Commons. Therefore, we need working Peers. We need people to do the job in the House and in committees. As I say, we are here for a purpose. We should therefore argue in favour of keeping working Peers, not those who just covet the title or see it merely as a passport to lucrative appointment to outside bodies. That is why I favour as the main method of cutting existing numbers an assessment of past performance, including attendance, voting record, and service on committees. Like others, I support looking at removing the voting rights of those who fail to attend on an agreed percentage of days over, say, the past two or three years. If one looks at the figures, one sees that some Peers attend less than 10% of the time, a lot of whom I could name. In fact, the worst attenders are the Cross-Benchers and the Bishops. They are hardly ever here compared with others.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Noble Lords should look at the statistics and they will find out that is the case. If we had a criterion of 40% attendance over the past couple of years, that would reduce the number substantially. A criterion of 30% attendance would also reduce the number to well below 600 Members. If we structured the criterion carefully on attendance, we could achieve the requisite number.
It has been suggested that each political group, and the Cross-Benchers, should agree to vote to reduce their numbers by an agreed percentage. I hope that is not taken up by any committee that looks at this issue because it would be both unfair and destabilising. It would cause terrific problems within all our political groups and, I suggest, within the Cross-Bench group as well. If there is to be a group reduction, as the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, rightly predicted, it should be done on the basis of reducing the number for London and the south-east region. In a Chamber of the UK legislature, London and the south-east, with 27% of the population, has now more than 45% of the Members of this House, whereas the east Midlands, with 7% of the population, has only just over 2% of Peers, and the West Midlands and the north-west of England are equally underrepresented.
If we cannot achieve a sufficient reduction with these measures, although I think that we could, I would agree that we should look at a retirement age of 80 at the end of the Parliament in which the relevant Peers turn 80, as proposed by the Labour working party of which I was a member. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, agrees with that. However, I do not think we should look at that initially. There are other more sensible ways in which to reduce our number.
I note from the number of people who regularly attend the meetings of the group of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that he has very cleverly managed to get a momentum going behind his proposals. I hope that noble Lords will excuse the word “momentum”. Some of my colleagues may not excuse it. I do not agree with all of his proposals, although I agree with some of them. It would be unfortunate if a Select Committee was set up which pursued that momentum and kept it going through to the House. I am therefore a bit worried about a Select Committee of like-minded people. However, if our Chief Whip and the Leader of the Opposition were to twist my arm and say, “We really do need one of the awkward squad on this committee”, I might be persuaded.
Lord Higgins (Con)
My Lords, I join all those who have paid tribute to my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lord Norton and the work that the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber has been doing and continues to do. They have set out the parameters within which reform ought to operate; in effect, a manifesto for further incremental change and reform, which to some extent has already been carried through over a number of years.
There seems general agreement that your Lordships’ House is presently too large. This does not result simply in public concern, and to some extent, perhaps, disdain; it has very real problems in terms of costs, the resources available to Members, and so on. One point that has not been made but which is very important is that it also tends to result in a limitation on the length of speeches. The effect of this is that it is virtually impossible to take an intervention. We are not a lecture theatre, we are a debating Chamber and therefore this is a considerable disadvantage.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, I agree with everything that the noble Lord has just said.
Lord Higgins
I am most grateful. The noble Lord and I are not always in agreement so it is a happy coincidence that it should be so at this moment.
The situation with regard to reducing the size of the House changed quite radically once the law and the set-up were changed so that Members could retire. As has been pointed out, a considerable number have already retired. However, this is a pointless exercise if, the moment there is a reduction, the Prime Minister goes on filling in with new Members. Almost everyone is agreed on that. The royal prerogative has been heavily criticised in this respect. It is interesting to note that it is not only in this Chamber that the royal prerogative has been challenged today; it is being challenged on the other side of Parliament Square as well. Perhaps we ought to look at this really rather fundamental thing.
Part of the problem, as has also been pointed out, is that the creation of a peerage is both an honour—which of course it is—and a job. We need to distinguish between the two. What has emerged rather clearly is that we are short of a different honour. Perhaps it should be rather the same as it is for those who have retired from this House—an honour could be created which gave people that sort of facility within the Palace of Westminster. The confusion of the two roles which we in this House have is certainly very damaging.
I want to refer to something that I think was mentioned only briefly by my noble friend Lord Goodlad. We have a sudden development at the other end of the Building with regard to the House of Lords. I have always rather understood that we at this end do not interfere in their affairs and they do not interfere in ours. Then suddenly the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in the other place, chaired by Mr Bernard Jenkin, is apparently looking at the very issue we are debating. I view this with mixed feelings because one could say, “If they’re going to do that, we ought to have a committee looking into why the House of Commons introduced programming so that legislation arrives here not properly debated, and why they have abandoned their primary role of legislating”. We need to look at this rather carefully but they may come up with some useful ideas. If so, they will certainly have to take lots of evidence.
I am sure that if we carried out a survey of the membership of that committee at the other end, the number who have ever appeared at the Bar of this House during Question Time would be very small, and still fewer would have stood there through a debate to have some idea of what we are doing. I hope that if they carry out this inquiry, they will jolly well come and find out what it is all about. They will be surprised, as indeed the public at large would be, at the valuable work that we in this House do in improving legislation which, if it has been debated at all, has not been scrutinised as it used to be in previous years.
I must conclude. This debate has been extremely useful and we must carry it further. We have not been dealing with any of the detail and perhaps we should have a further debate after Christmas so that we can set out rather more clearly what the Select Committee should look at. That would give it some form of overall guidance as to what would be appropriate. None the less, we are making progress on this and, if we are to do our job properly, it is very important that further progress should be made.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure and privilege to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and I respectfully agree with absolutely everything he said. It is very helpful to have this debate today. When I was interviewed as a Cross-Bench candidate, I was asked whether, if I got it, I would attend. I said that of course I would; it was a great privilege to be able to take part in legislation, having been interpreting legislation for the preceding 35 years.
I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, was asked by the Prime Minister whether he would attend. It seems to me that it is a question that should be asked of every possible Peer: otherwise, what on earth is the point of coming here, other than possibly the honour that other noble Lords have referred to, which should be treated in a rather different way? I have to say, remembering what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said, that I attend nearly every day and I am not alone in that. I bitterly resent what he said about the Cross-Benchers not attending. Most of us attend very regularly and I hope that he might want to retract that, as it really is not a fair comment on the work that we do.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
May I intervene to say that I was certainly not referring to the noble and learned Baroness or to the large number of people who do attend regularly? But if she looks at the figures I got from the Library, she will see that of the three political groups and the Cross-Benchers, the Liberal Democrats have the highest attendance, Labour next, Conservative next and Cross-Benchers least. That is just the statistics of it. There are a number who, perhaps for good reasons, are unable to attend, and I think we should take account of that. I meant no insult whatever to the noble and learned Baroness, for whom I have the greatest respect.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I thank the noble Lord and withdraw what I said, because I understand what the statistics are. However, there is a hard core of Cross-Bench Members who attend very regularly and consider that our duty is to do the work of the House among other Peers.
I have to say that, being now 83, I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Steel and Lord MacGregor, that it would be a very sensible compromise that those who were 80 at the end of a Parliament should go. It would have the effect of immediately reducing the membership to not all that far above 600—so it would be a good idea.
There is, of course, another point: when this House is relocated there will be a lot of retirements, so it may be that by that stage a lot will be done. But this will be in 2022 or whatever it may be, and I entirely agree with other noble Lords that we absolutely have to get on with it now because the suggestion by the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, that 800 does not matter is quite simply not true, as many other noble Lords said. We are seen as ridiculous by many people and the word “bloated”, referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and which others have pointed out, is undoubtedly true.
Consequently, we have to move to the next stage, which obviously is the Select Committee. There is considerable unanimity on that. It should take evidence and make recommendations, and it should be done in months, not years. It should and could consider what steps this House could take by resolutions within our own procedures—but I recognise, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, said, that at some stage there may need to be legislation.
The Select Committee must identify what it is that we cannot do ourselves. Then, as the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, said, acting together we are actually very influential. We should use our influence, so long as this House is unanimous, to put considerable pressure on the other House to deal with patronage, which is an open sore, and other matters that we cannot deal with ourselves. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and the noble Lord, Lord Butler, that we could get a lot done both in our own work and in persuading the other place that we could have a Bill that would start in this House.
Strathclyde Review
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I do not want to give answers that diminish the enthusiasm we are showing today, but I shall not make promises I cannot keep. I add my thanks for the work of the Constitution Committee, both for its report on this review and for its wider work, which is extremely valuable and well respected.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I was slightly worried that the Leader of the House was implying that she and the Government would have an easy time when it came to scrutinising all aspects of Brexit. The legislation that gave us the referendum was itself flawed, in that it had a very restrictive franchise and no threshold, and it was not, in my view, considered properly by Parliament. As a result of that we are in a mess. That is why it is very important to scrutinise every aspect of Brexit and all the consequences, which are huge and serious, not just in Scotland and Northern Ireland but throughout the whole of the United Kingdom, affecting the constitution of this country as well as its stability and prosperity. If we do not scrutinise them properly, we are not doing our job.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
My Lords, I am under no illusions about the task that we have ahead and the role this House will play in scrutinising legislation relating to Brexit. As I said, noble Lords have already taken a constructive approach in dealing with the debates we have had so far, and I have faith that this will continue. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, we are also reliant on self-regulation and discipline to ensure the passage of legislation. We hope that that will continue.
Outcome of the European Union Referendum
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, our debate today has the potential to be one of the most significant in the recent history of your Lordships’ House. Indeed, I see today as a real opportunity for us as a House to reflect on the decision that has been made and to offer some clear thinking about the issues we now face as a country. It is an opportunity for the House of Lords to show why it exists.
In repeating several Statements over the last week, I have set out the views of Her Majesty’s Government, and I want today to be much more than an occasion for me to set them out again. Over the next two days my noble friend Lady Anelay and I are here primarily to listen, so, in opening, I will try to start the process of reflection by offering my perspective both on the vote itself and on the responsibilities incumbent on this House, as I see them, in the weeks and months ahead.
To state the obvious first, the referendum was a momentous democratic exercise. Over the weeks of the campaign we saw passionate cases put forward by both sides and, more importantly, we saw voters engage with an enthusiasm that we had not seen for many years. Indeed, more than 33 million people from across the UK and Gibraltar exercised their democratic right.
I appreciate that when the votes were counted it was not the result that many of us may have wanted— indeed, 48% of us voted to remain—but the result was clear. By a margin of more than 1 million, 52% of the people who voted elected for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union—an instruction that this Government, and all of us, must respect and seek to act on.
European Council
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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The Earl of Courtown
I apologise to the noble Baroness. We have had 20 minutes of Back-Bench debate on this and we will now move on to the next Statement.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
Order, order. I am so sorry, my Lords. As noble Lords know, we do not have points of order in this House.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
We are now moving on to the next Statement. The noble Lord asks about the time allocated to Back-Bench questions. As he knows—I think that he was here in the House on Monday—I was very happy to extend the time on Monday for Back-Bench questions. I have repeated this Statement today. We have scheduled time on Tuesday next week for a full day’s debate for noble Lords to debate Europe and we will have a series of debates on Thursday. I know that there is much that noble Lords want to debate and question, and there will be lots of opportunities, but I am afraid that we have to continue with our other business. My noble friend Lord Ahmad is about to make a very important Statement which covers some of the topics that noble Lords have been raising. I am sorry, but we are going to move on. I just want to explain to the House what it is that we are doing right now. My noble friend is now going to move on.
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, will the noble Lord give way? The whole House is perfectly aware of his thoughts on this matter but, in this instance, we are moving on to the other Statement now.
Business of the House
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I wonder whether the Leader of the House can help me in relation to business of the House. In the other place, if a Minister misleads the House, it can be raised on a point of order. We do not have that procedure. On Tuesday, the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, told the House that the St Helena airport was open, and it is not. She said that RMS “St Helena” was going to be available to continue taking people on and off the island; at that very moment, RMS “St Helena” was sailing up the Thames, about to be decommissioned, apparently. Could the Leader of the House arrange for the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, to make a Statement to the House next week correcting the mistake she has made and giving us true information about the situation regarding the airport on St Helena?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
On the procedural point that the noble Lord raised, as he has acknowledged, we do not have points of order in this House. That is an established arrangement in the way we conduct our business. I will have to take away the substantive point that he has raised and explore it further, and give it proper and due consideration.
House of Lords: Composition
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to make the composition of the House of Lords more representative of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, Members of your Lordships’ House come from all corners of the United Kingdom, but we do not represent those nations and regions. We all work on behalf of the United Kingdom as a whole. Any change in that respect would be fundamental. As is clear from the Conservative manifesto, comprehensive reform of this House is not a priority in this Parliament.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
Did the Leader of the House not see the Answer that I received from her colleague in the Ministry of Justice which stated that out of 808 Writs issued to Peers to attend this House in this Parliament, 385 were to Peers living in London, with very few in Wales, in the east and West Midlands, in the north-east and north-west of England and in Yorkshire and Humberside? To reflect all those interests properly, is it not better to have people from all quarters of the United Kingdom? Will the Leader of the House look at ways in which this terrible imbalance can be rectified?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, the noble Lord is right that certain parts of the United Kingdom are better represented than others. I believe that for us to be effective as a House it is important that we all offer a range of backgrounds, experiences and expertise. However, because we are unelected and do not have responsibility to represent any parts of the United Kingdom, it is not an easy question for us to remedy, but it is certainly one that I shall reflect on.
Adult Education: Part-time Attendance
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
This Government are taking a number of steps to help to encourage part-time learning. For instance, we will be introducing maintenance loans for part-time students for the first time, and we have expanded second degree student support funding for those who want to study a STEM subject. We have also expanded the advanced learner loan system, so from 2016-17 learners aged 19 and over studying at levels 3 to 6 will be able to access that support. We are doing what we can to provide people who want to study part-time with the support to do so.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
I thought that there could not be a worse Government than this Tory one for butchering further education until I looked at Scotland, where there are now 150,000 fewer places in FE than there were when the SNP took over. Are the Tories and the SNP in some kind of Dutch auction to see who can reduce further education places to their lowest number?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I am very pleased to reassure the noble Lord that in fact, under this Government in the last spending review, we have protected FE budgets at £1.5 billion over the course of the Parliament. Therefore I am sure that the noble Lord will recognise how much the Government are doing to support FE and will want to congratulate us on doing so.
Women: Representation
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, is it not worthy of note that two out of the three devolved Governments in our country are now led by women?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
My noble friend Lord Lexden makes a very good point and I am happy to agree with him.