House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Grocott and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 23rd November 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

There is only one point I want to raise, other than to say that of course we want a general election. Actually there are two issues. One, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, has just mentioned, is the importance of refreshing this House not only with those who happen to be sons of people who, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, were appointed by a monarch or a Prime Minister. It will be important to refresh the House so that it is not just men who are appointed. That will certainly be the case for the Conservative Party which, otherwise, will end up very male-dominated.

My other point, from the point of view of the Labour Party, is on an issue that has been raised and which I have responded to before about the binding commitment. The binding commitment was, of course, not binding in law; it was binding until it was possible to change the composition of the House. I remind the noble Lord that that commitment was made in 1997. After we lost office, his party were in government in coalition from 2010 to 2015 and did not manage to bring in a change to the House, they were then not in coalition and did not do it, and they are now effectively in coalition again and are not doing it. The lack of commitment to changing the House means that a commitment made much earlier no longer has the standing that it had at the time.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am grateful to a number of noble Lords who have spoken in favour of the Bill, and I do not want to add to the points that they made. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, shared a useful piece of information about the views of important people in the Commons in relation to this legislation. It gives me great heart if I am able to think that, should this House pass the Bill, as I very much hope it will, it would be a huge example to almost any other institution of an institution reforming itself in a sensible way.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for that, and to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, who mentioned the need for speed. These by-elections will take place with increasing frequency; that is the inevitable consequence of age. We are talking about people who were identified as the 90 in 1999. There have been 44 by-elections since then—or 44 new Members as a result of by-elections; some have been for two new Peers—but inevitably they will come with greater frequency. There are two in the pipeline. The need to get this Bill through is all the more urgent if we are not to be subject to, it seems to me, the reasonable accusation of looking completely ridiculous with some of these by-elections. The point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, about the effect that an increasing proportion of the membership of the House being hereditary Peers will have on different parties is powerful.

I do not disagree at all with the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, about the need for a cap on the size of the House. I think very strongly that we should reduce the number of people here. But of course, if nothing is done specifically about the hereditary Peers—this is the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown—it will be significantly harder to reduce the size of the House if there are 92 people to whom “two out, one in” does not apply. The stats in the second, most recent report of the Burns committee are quite clear. They are small numbers so one should not draw huge lessons from them, but they make it pretty plain that it is difficult to reduce the size of the House if hereditary Peers are being replaced one-for-one, whereas everyone else is being replaced on the basis of one in for every two out.

This is a big group of amendments and I urge the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, not to press them further, either here or on Report, as they would have the cumulative effect of delaying the Bill’s implementation. I will be kind to him today and say that he is not trying to wreck the Bill with these amendments—though it was hard for me to say that—but they would certainly significantly delay it. One or two of them are, frankly, close to being silly, such as the idea of reviews of the work of both Houses. But let us leave it at that, and I appeal to him not to press them further either here or on Report.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Report: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

As far as that is possible; the choice was and is still a binary one. I do not think that there can be a compromise between my noble friend Lord Adonis’s position and mine, because he wants to remain in the European Union and I want to leave it. There may be a halfway position there, but I have not quite discerned it yet. Larger brains than mine need to find a consensus on that, if there is one. However, I am utterly clear that once this House of Lords, as well as the House of Commons, has said to the British people, “We want you to make a decision. We’ll tell you what the wording on the referendum ballot paper will be. We’ve decided that, we will decide the date, and we will abide by that decision”, those statements are unchallengeable. It is our duty to deal with the legislation which is the inevitable consequence of that decision, of which the Bill is one part.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I will restrain myself from entering into a longer debate on this issue. I agree with my noble friend Lord Grocott that this is an important Bill, but it will also affect the negotiations, and part of that will be affected by the timetable.

It is interesting that at various times when we have discussed the promised vote on the final deal—it is not just a matter of leaving but of our future relationship with the EU after we have left—the Minister has said that he hoped that the vote, in both Houses, would take place before the European Parliament has had its say, but that he could not definitely promise that it would, because our parliamentary timetable might not be flexible enough to fit in with that of the European Parliament. I cannot say that I accept that argument, because after all, we control our business and when we have votes—not necessarily how late at night they happen, but effectively we control our timetable. However, if the Minister was correct in the assumption that the European Parliament’s vote might not be at a predictable time—it may be delayed because talks are still going on—it may suddenly be brought forward.

Here, I will answer the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Butler. It seems essential that the deal has to be agreed before April, when the European Parliament will go into recess, because under Article 50 the deal has to be agreed and have the consent of the European Parliament. If the European Parliament is to recess, adjourn or prorogue before its elections, the deal has to get consent before then. Therefore, there is a timetable, and it has to go before the European Parliament. I have had various legal advice about what happens if the European Parliament does not give its consent—it seems quite complicated—but certainly Article 50 says that it has to give consent. Therefore, the negotiations could go on a bit later than everyone wants, and the European Parliament will have to prorogue for its own elections and will have no authority thereafter. The date on which we leave could be fixed by the words in an Act of Parliament which will be passed in August or whenever, some months after those events, and that seems a very unhelpful position for our negotiators to be in.

I am sure that there will be late-night sessions and lots of consultations, with people ringing back for instructions as the negotiations go on—there are people who have been through all this. I hope that we have trained the Minister well in coping with late nights here, because he may well have more of those, but there could be very long nights as the negotiations go on. If one side—our negotiators—were curtailed by a strict date in the Act, that would put us at a disadvantage. The other side is not so constrained. The European Parliament can meet at very short notice when a decision has been taken.

However, I interpret Article 50 slightly differently. It says:

“The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after … notification”.


So, without having to go to the Council for a unanimous decision, the withdrawal agreement could contain a leaving date of a week or two weeks after the two-year period, which would allow the last-minute arrangements to be made. If that is what the withdrawal agreement specifies, if that suits all the parties and if our Government would like to sign up to it, it would seem silly not to be able to do that.

It is important that we enable the negotiators to get the best possible deal, setting out exactly how we leave and exactly what our future terms of trade will be. If the amendment is passed, it will remove the straitjacket that the Government inserted at the behest not of the negotiators but of certain ardent Brexiteers. Let us remove that straitjacket, make the task easier for the negotiators and reflect what our own EU Committee said:

“The rigidity of the Article 50 deadline of 29 March 2019 … makes a no deal outcome more likely … enshrining the same deadline in domestic law would not be … in the national interest”.


I am sure that the Government want to put the national interest first and I certainly believe that this House will want to do so. Therefore, we strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and we urge everyone to go into the Lobby behind him.